Salamurhaaja said:
How about making fun of yourself and telling us why, in the
name of all that is, would you be so stupid as to support Bush?
I'm sure we all could use the laugh.
Oh and no Kerry bashing either.
i'm not bashing anyone. here's your answer:
1 - on the whole i'm quite conservative. i don't know if you want me to explain my motives, but to avoid turning this into a three-page rant i'll just say that it's a combination of moral values that i feel comfortable with, circumstantial beliefs and the way i was raised. where the values are concerned, i concede there is an irrational factor, because there always is in ethics: i might find something 'right' and you might find the same thing 'wrong' based on feelings alone, and then we will find more reasonable the arguments in favor of our side than those of the rivals. of course there's a rational process too, but the founding movement is very basic, at least in my opinion. the rest, the circumstantial beliefs and the environmental influence, can be explained in a clear, chronologically ordered way, but i don't think that's what you asked.
this doesn't mean i agree with the american republican party on every single issue, nor that i agree with my country's conservative parties on every single issue. for example, i'm pro-guns, but i support the legalization of marijuana and cannabis (which makes me a gangster more than a conservative, possibly.
). i'm a small government fan and i support private schooling and health care; the whole idea of compassionate conservatism resonates very well with me, because i believe that people should decide for themselves as much as possible, without state interference. for this same reason, i'm against all censorship, which is normally a liberal stance.
i feel that it's especially important to highlight that i'm not some bigoted fanatic because, as it is pretty clear from your own words, most left-wing people feel they are entitled to call someone "stupid" merely on the ground of disagreeing with them. here in italy i vote for the right-wing coalition and i guess i'd vote for the republicans in the USA, but i am not ever going to call you "stupid" because you don't support my views. i will call you "stupid" if you avocate the extermination of people of a certain race or religion, yes. but not if you vote for a legally recognized party that just happens not to be the same i vote for.
2 - i am actually convinced, on the basis of a certain view of history and economics, that it is increasingly hard to reconcile western nations and middle eastern ones.
the gap in beliefs, especially where the degree of desirability of democracy and/or separation of church and state and/or legitimacy of the use of violence in the political struggle is concerned, is too large to be bridged by short-term diplomatic manoeuvres. it's been builnding for about 400 years and we are not going to do anything about it with fickle agreements now.
of course, the oil interests put in frequent contact societies that would have maybe otherwise been separated enough not to get into fights, and the magnitude of monetary flows of course prompted would-be tyrants on either side to try and formulate grand schemes. only, when a would-be tyrant comes up with ideas in the west there's public control, elections, laws to be passed before his plans can be implemented, so no matter how badly some companies egemonize some oil fields they still don't kill or enslave anyone, and recently they also try to refrain from environmental violations lest they get a bad reputation at home.
on the other hand, pan-arab thinkers such as osama bin laden (who is not the first one in history to entertain the project of bringing muslim nations together against non-muslim ones, by the way) do not depend on electoral support, are not controlled by courts, and can actually get widespread public support by showing they are ready to use brutal means against their ideological enemy. in most of these countries, the average education level is not extremely high, so it is even easier to make an impression on the masses without needing to grant them any protection of their interest or rights. for the record, i do concur on the fact that global inequality is a factor in heightening the tension, because starving people normally fight with more passion than well-fed ones, but this doesn't mean that i believe that giving up what was hard-earned in the northwestern emisphere for the advantage of other peoples should be forced.
so, basically, one has to fight fire with fire. the enemy exists, as far as i understand, and he's not going to be lenient, because leniency is not a part of his mindset. it's a different civilization, with beliefs that cannot be reconciled with values most westerners share, such as pluralism. look at the NGO people, they maintain that the poor middle eastern are only oppressed people who need more funds and food, and still the volunteers get kidnapped. terrorists don't care whether you're verbally on their side if they see you as a political target to intimidate an enemy nation.
in my opinion (and it's just my opinion), a conservative administration in the USA - especially one with hawks like rumsfeld and wolfowitz in top defence slots - will fight the war with more convinction and energy, because they have a worldview that favors sharp good/evil and friend/foe distinctions over more nuanced visions of reality. this is not necessarily the best option ever. but it's the best option now. i don't
like the idea that we are in for a very long war, i don't
like the fact that children die, and i don't
like the effects of nuclear bombs, but i'm still thinking that an extensive, escalating asymmetrical conflict is in the cards and the options are either win or get vanquished. i'm not in favor of crusades, and i'm not saying that christianity should annihilate islam: but i strongly believe that either the islamic world accepts freedom of religion and speech or the western world loses it.
this does not mean that i think bush is the sharpest person in the universe: he's not. i don't even think that the iraq campaign was conducted in the best possible way: it wasn't. but i think that breaking the enemy front by occupying a strategically relevant area was a good idea to start with, and no, i do not care about what was said to the media and about the whole WMD story, because it would have been a lie anyway, no matter the underlying message. people in the free world with enough brain cells can reconstruct what's behind the official declarations for any event, peace or war, new railroad or demolition of a building, left-wing or right-wing.
so that's why i support bush: not because i think kerry (or his supporters or the democrats or the left-wing politicians and voters) are dumb or warped, but because i'm conservative (which is still legal afaik) and i also think that right now we need straightshooters in order to react
without second thoughts to enemies who don't share any of our basic values and who interpret civility as weakness. i don't want to be taken over by fundamentalists, because i believe they're wrong on many levels. bush once said "i'm a war president" and i think he was quite right.
the fact that i was cracking some jokes after election day was due to wanting to rebalance the very much biased repertory of insults and aggressive opinions on the previous pages of this forum.
