I assume that most liberals are liberal for all of the right reasons. They are seeking justice, equality, freedom and a better life. Unfortunately, liberalism can’t provide this if the lessons from history are to be remembered.

I probably wouldn’t be somewhat conservative today if I hadn’t been exposed to liberal thinking in college. (I’m never “full-on anything” because nothing in life is perfect). Some of the attractiveness of liberalism to youth comes from being uncertain about ones future. The thought of a “safety net” is always a great thing when the future is uncertain and when someone is just starting off on their journey through life.  The same is true during tough economic times when jobs are on the line and things are uncertain.  There’s a certain comfort to be had knowing that the bare essentials will be provided — although, I’m certain that most young people want more than just the bare essentials.

While I’m not hard-core conservative — I’m more of a libertarian at heart — I do see that it ends up being a better system than liberalism because conservatism is the system that mirrors the way that most people learn to be self-sufficient in their own lives. I’m Catholic, so I also see the need for social justice and helping the poor the way that Jesus wants us to do. It has been my experience that entities other than the government usually do a better job at helping the poor.

Liberalism can be compared to parents letting their kid live at home for many years after graduation from college — all of the parental compassion ends up running the risk of limiting the child’s overall quality of life. Along with the free rent and food, often comes other restrictions. The same is true when the government is providing ones livelihood and food. Nothing comes for free and the cost of security is sometimes a loss of personal freedom.

In its worst forms, liberalism allows the state to take control of the lives of others because it becomes so entangled in the daily lives of its constituents. When the government provides all, it can also deny all to those it doesn’t like.  Our government was developed because the founders didn’t trust the government to not end up becoming a tyranny.  It’s human nature for those given power to abuse it when there are no checks on said power.  (This is a criticism of a lot of the security measures that have come out of the global war on terror — governments of all political leanings crave more and more power and control).

No government is ever going to be caring and really concerned about any individual, despite all of the rhetoric because there is no way that a government bureaucracy can ever really care about its constituents. Despite its stated intentions, government bureaucracies end up existing to expand and capture more power and funding.

Liberals at heart are seeking love and compassion. Unfortunately, government bureaucracies can never provide what the liberals are looking for.

While there are many faults that can be found with conservatism, it does provide a higher level of freedom and free will for its constituents when the checks and balances contained in our Constitution are fully functioning.

I’m curious to read your thoughts and views. Feel free to share, especially if you disagree with anything I’ve written.

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Technorati Tags: conservatism, liberalism

Having heard this, any jokes I could make about UC Boulder suddenly seem inadequate. So great is the political bent on their campus that they are thinking about hiring a Professor of Conservative Thought. This is not someone in perhaps their Economics or political science department who teaches a subject and is in fact conservative, but rather someone whose job it is to think conservatively.

It will be very important for the professor of conservative thought to be granted immunity from the various university speech codes and other academic restraints designed to limit thought and debate since it is likely that every weapon available in the arsenal to silence dissent will be used against this professor.

While conservatism on campus is a rare thing, students can still learn to be conservative by virtue of exposure to their liberal professors who often become negative examples. Observing liberalism in operation in America — just look at the top two liberal cities in America — is enough to send someone searching on their own for an alternative philosophy that works in the real world.

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Technorati Tags: conservatism, higher education, liberalism

The numbers aren’t just lower for the left because George W. Bush has been making liberals crazy for the last 8 years. Studies show conservatives have been happier than liberals for 35 years.

The Economist reports about the happiness findings:

Despite this, American parents are much more likely to be happy than non-parents. This is for two reasons, argues Mr (Arthur) Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University. Even if children are irksome now, they lend meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy are also more likely to have children. Which leads on to Mr Brooks’s most controversial finding: in America, conservatives are happier than liberals.

Several books have been written about happiness in recent years. Some have tried to discern which nations are the happiest. Many more purport to offer a foolproof guide to self-fulfillment. Others wonder if the obsessive pursuit of happiness is itself making people miserable. Mr Brooks offers something different. He writes only about Americans, thus avoiding the pitfalls of trying to figure out, for example, whether Japanese people mean the same thing as Danes when they say they are happy. And he writes intriguingly about the politics of happiness.

In 2004 Americans who called themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” were nearly twice as likely to tell pollsters they were “very happy” as those who considered themselves “liberal” or “very liberal” (44% versus 25%). One might think this was because liberals were made wretched by George Bush. But the data show that American conservatives have been consistently happier than liberals for at least 35 years.

This is not because they are richer; they are not. Mr Brooks thinks three factors are important. Conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to be married and twice as likely to attend church every week. Married, religious people are more likely than secular singles to be happy. They are also more likely to have children, which makes Mr Brooks confident that the next generation will be at least as happy as the current one.

Some factors are in play in discovering happiness.

Religion makes people happier, whether they are liberal or conservative.

Also, ideology plays an important role in happiness. Conservative philosophy holds that people are in control of their destiny — it just takes hard work and effort — therefore conservatives tend to be optimists because they can always adapt and change their situation. Liberalism continually stresses the notion that the average person’s life at the mercy of outside powers and forces. The idea that the system is rigged is a depressing one indeed and is a factor weighing against liberals’ happiness.

Who are the happiest people?

Political extremists who believe they are absolutely right. However, those people are often so convinced they are right that they come to see their ideological opposition as being “evil,” reports the Economist. Despite their happiness, the extremists are the ones who make everyone else unhappy.

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Technorati Tags: conservatism, happiness, liberalism, psychology

Usually, I listen to a combination of local talk radio and XM satellite radio. I usually tune into WLS’ Roe Conn show in the afternoons for some entertainment, to catch up with the news, and get traffic updates.

This afternoon, I took a different expressway back home than my normal route for this particular trip because of road construction signs warning of long waits and new lane configurations. While I was driving along the expressway, I saw a billboard advertising the local progressive talk radio station.

The ad inspired me to flip from WLS to the Air America channel on XM’s satellite service. The ad got me to act, but it sent me in the wrong direction because I didn’t want to change my AM radio dial. Maybe one of these days, I’ll dial in the local version of Air America to hear what’s going on over there.

While I was listening to XM’s Air American channel, I heard a progressive talk host spend at least 10 minutes asking a caller a series of questions about Iraq.

Each question “drilled down,” as the talk host said, deeper into the question of whether there were actually really bad guys (and gals) in Iraq who want to do harm to America. We all know there are bad guys there blowing up bombs, so it seems silly to even challenge the facts, but lets ignore that for this discussion.

When the caller wasn’t able to compare and contrast all of various factions who could be causing trouble or who might be friendly or who might be playing both sides for the best deal, he launched into an attack on John McCain.

The whole exercise had been a way to show that most people aren’t tuned into the particulars about who is blowing up the IEDs in Iraq, so therefore John McCain’s Iraq policy is all wrong, according to the host.

It would be the same as asking someone from Northwest Indiana to make a diagram of all of the major criminal figures in the region. I’m not sure that most people would be able to do so, but even without detailed knowledge of the local criminal element they wouldn’t mind the police being out and about enforcing the laws.

A broader perspective always comes in handy in these situations. People don’t need to know flow charts and flash cards to know if things are necessary.

I flipped back to local programming because it was a waste of time to continue listening to the silliness on Air America.

There’s nothing entertaining about listening to a laundry list of questions being asked of someone about arcane topics that don’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things. If you’re against the war, be against the war. Be proud of that fact and try to win over people who might be in favor of the surge.

Don’t base your disagreement on the fact that you know more about the various social, political and religious factions on the ground than someone else.

I don’t know how to fly an airplane, but I can appreciate that there are thousands of airplanes flying overhead right now. Not knowing the physics of flight doesn’t detract from my appreciation that air travel is a good thing.

Just knowing a lot of details about a subject doesn’t mean that your opinion is right.

Liberal talk radio would do well to focus less on all of the “beautiful mind” details and more on the larger picture.

The same could be said of the current Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama battle. If I was a Democrat, I’d demand that Hillary step back and look at the situation from a broader perspective, instead of focusing on the smaller details of running a campaign and hoping to win her party’s nomination.

Of course, if history is any guide — remember Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union — progressives usually focus on the details and forget about people, especially if they get in the way of progress.

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Technorati Tags: liberal, progressives