You're assuming that the various things that get lumped in with one political ideology are related rather than just thrown together.
Fight smart, not fair.You may very well be correct, though I would have expected some measure of consistency.
I suppose that's a reasonable conclusion. I can think of a good local example
of that kind of attitude (though he has calmed down significantly in his old age). Then again, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me, because putting Christianity at the centre of the world is what I imagine a good Christian should do (well, more accurately they should put Jesus at the centre of the world, but that's not really the debate). It's not a belief that one can really reconcile with pursuit of non-interventionist government.
edited 11th Jan '11 7:48:22 AM by TheGloomer
Why?
Fight smart, not fair.Compare and contrast: there is no distinction between Church and State in most Muslim countries. You don't hear them crying for smaller government, though, and they're pretty doggone conservative.
What you have here are two separate messages that have one goal: get conservatives elected. The government haters and the fundamentalists may overlap, but that's not the point. When you oversimplify your message and you've trained your audience not to think things through, you get this kind of cognitive dissonance.
Under World. It rocks!I can sort of see where they're coming from. The sorts of things people usually push for on this level are Broad Strokes things like abortion, etc. that don't come up very often in one's everyday life. They could still easily be opposed to shit like this
or this
for being a level of bureaucracy that invades and tries to micromanage your everyday life, or this
for being an extremely invasive and feckless security measure that cannot be bypassed without being molested.
If we take this as true, how would a politican who shares the attitude of the author react to somebody who feels that imposing religious values on them is an infringement of their personal liberty? At what point would they concede that they have facilitated the creation of an interventionist state?
Hypothetically speaking, because no human being would admit to being wrong if they have nothing to gain from it.
edited 11th Jan '11 2:14:11 PM by TheGloomer
"Small government" is just a myth to get people elected anyway. There's not a single politician in congress willing to make meaningful cuts. It's not necessary a personal failing, just a consequence of the way congress works.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayIt means you fuck over social programs and the common welfare of the citizens in general for the sake of a small oligarchy, while jerking off the military to a frankenstein and polluting the country with "military values" & forcing fundamentalism and disdain of science down the throat of regions of the country that disagree with that mentality.....
my bias is blatant
I suppose the real "small government" party is the Libertarians. (The Tea Party had something going too, but I think they've lost their way in that regard.)
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful"Small government" generally means one that collects less wealth in the form of taxes, which according to belief means that it is free to flow within the market, leading to economic development. For many US conservatives, it's strictly a financial thing, with little connection to one's views regarding institutionalized religious values.
That said, the large majority of US citizens identify themselves as Christians but put "separation of church and state" (as well as personal tolerance) central to their value system. Most of us are smart enough to realize that if the government starts picking sides, it wont end well at all.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.

The terms I have used in the thread title probably aren't especially apt. You shall have to forgive me; they were the first that came to mind and they seemed appropriate to me.
Anyway, to business. Last week I was in the university library to revise for a politics exam. I encountered a book of collected essays which described and explained political ideologies, extracted from books or lectures by major proponents of each. One which interested me was that on religious conservatism.
One discrepancy that made me think was the fact that the writer seemed to be a proponent of small government in the non-interventionist sense, but at the same time he was quite strong in his insistence that the federal government should intervene in the interests of Christian values and overturn state legislation or judicial rulings which do not uphold said values. The problem as I see it is that his specific qualification for "small government" was "one that does not intervene in the affairs of private citizens or states".
If he had defined "small government" in a literal sense (reduction of bureaucracy etc.) there wouldn't be anything terribly inconsistent. As it stands, this sentiment seems somewhat hypocritical to me. At least with a liberal one usually knows where one stands on this issue; they'll speak in favour of big government and, for better or for worse, will typically pursue policies which facilitate an increase in the size of government or lead to government intervention.
Does anyone have any thoughts?