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Originally Posted by kane
We will start with the second Bush. He grew the government by adding an entire new branch of government called the Department of Homeland security.
Here is some info on Reagan and Bush (this comes from the census information). In 1980 the number of federal employees in this country were around 2.8 million. In 1988 the number of federal employees was about 3.1 million. Can you explain to me how you can hire 300,000 new employees while shrinking the government? Bush Sr. actually kept it about the same and didn't really add any new federal employees, he did, however increase the budget deficit by 64%. How you you spend that much more money than your predecessor if you are trying to shrink the roll of federal government?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics
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I am strongly against the patriot act. We should not be passing laws that erode the freedoms of every day people.
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That's because I think you see it as a black and white freedom, or as an absolute, which it isn't. Neither is freedom of speech and it shouldn't be.
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Just ask the people who were trying to sell porn in the 80's under Reagan about having personal freedom and the government staying out of their lives.
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Ok...Go on
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Wasn't it the republicans that thought segregation was good. Didn't one of them (I think it was Strom Thurmand who was a segregationist and ran for president as such? Didn't Trent Lott once say, ""And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." in regards to Thurmands run for president meaning that the country would be better off if it were segregated?
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Thurmond later represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to April 1956 and November 1956 to January 2003, at first as a Democrat and after 1964 as a Republican, switching parties as the conservative base shifted.
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Read the bold. What you have to realize is that starting in the 50s, the political shift from the right went slowly towards the center, while the left went far left and became modern liberalism. Not to mention he was generally a racist and a dick.
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What about my state which twice passed a law allowing for doctor assisted suicide and twice passed a separate law legalizing medical marijuana, but had to fight the Bush administration in court because the feds didn't want us having it? Our voters want it, we approved the measures, but the pro-personal freedom republicans thought otherwise.
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What about it? What state are you in? I don't really know what you're saying. Both parties sometimes move away from their original intentions. That's not going to make me switch over to an "independent", just because the party I support isn't following my values 100%. I can criticize them but that's about it.
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There are states in this country where you can get arrested for having gay sex. There are states in this country where it is illegal to sell any kind of sex toy or any kind of sexual aid unless you make 100% sure that you are selling them for novelty purposes only. What do almost all of these states have in common? They are republican controlled. Apparently you can only have an orgasm in a red state if it is via an approved method.
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Not really sure how truthful this is, can you provide proof.
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Wasn't it these freedom loving republicans that wanted to alter the constitution to make it define marriage as between a man and a woman so they they could outlaw gay marriage at the federal level.
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I'm not sure about that because I've always defined marriage as between one man and one woman.
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Yeah, these guys are a freedom party wagon chugging down the road.
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Could be worse, you could be a democrat.
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Not in the last 30 years they didn't Reagan and both Bushes grew the deficit and the national debt. They spent money like crazy. Clinton actually had a surplus and reduced the deficit (you will say this is because of Reagan's policies, I will say it is because of the dot com explosion)
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Ironic, because the Democrats controlled the house during most of Reagan's presidency, and the Republicans controlled the house and the senate for the majority of Clinton's presidency. You also forget the Cold War and needed defense spending.
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As far as who's spending is legit or not, I'm not going to get into that. Both parties will claim their spending is legit. If you agree with the philosophy of a person then you tend to agree with their spending. Legit or not is still shows that they spend money and don't balance the budget. If Reagan really wanted to shouldn't he have just been able to cut spending on other things so he could increase it on the military?
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Nobody said Reagan was perfect, just that he was a good president.
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And I would say our founding fathers were smart enough to devise a system for us to determine our own course and determine our own morality. Did they not set it up in a way that individual states should have the most power. This way if you wanted to live in a cesspool of city filled with hedonism and violence and whatever you were free too, but if other states wanted to be more sanitized, religious and strict, they were free to and those who wanted to live their life in a certain way were free to move to wherever those values were most prevalent. I made this point above with personal freedoms. If I want to live in a place where I risk arrest for using a pocket pussy and some lube I am free to do so. At the same time if I choose to live somewhere where laws like that don't exist I am free to do so. This doesn't mean that states morality should be forced upon me if if I live somewhere else or vice versa. Those in Utah should be allowed to live how they want and those in New York the same and if they are different, so be it.
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Determine our own morality? As in relativism? I don't think so. Let me ask you something, being as you're in the porn industry. Would you allow porn to be played in normal theaters, or on normal channels, seeing as it is a freedom of speech?
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An independent is someone who is free of any part affiliation and bias that comes with it. I hold no pre-disposed thoughts on a candidate just because of their party affiliation. Both parties are failures. Both parties are bloated, corrupt and morally bankrupt. So I choose to look at a candidate for who they are and what they claim to stand for. Until they are elected you can only take them at their word. Once they are elected you can see them in action and judge them by their actions.
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I think you and I have the exact same views, except for me refusing to become an independent just because things aren't going my way. I understand the true Conservative/Republican principles and I hold to that. Now if the Republicans start really turning into shit like the Democrats, and it's possible they will, then I'll call myself an Independent.
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I don't need a book or a focus group or a doctrine or a panel of any kind to tell me how to live a moral life. I treat people as I would want to be treated. I help people when I can. There is no need to "switch" values to be an independent. You know who you are and what you believe in. If you still think that most of what you believe in is shared with the republican party, great. But you said yourself you don't agree with much of what they say or do and I have argued that they rarely actually follow through on what they say they are going to do so I personally don't see how most people could have anything in common with either party.
Sorry for the long post 
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I don't agree with much of what they do. I do agree with them more times than not, which is why I'm still a Republican and not an independent.