- Conservatives insist that children with severe health problems get born, regardless of the heartache, regardless of the pain and trauma, and regardless of the expense. I have no problem with that, and would not, of course, trade my May for anything in the world. But those same conservatives don't support funding social programs to serve these children; they don’t support subsidizing schools that are burdened with paraprofessional and nursing expenses when these children enroll; and they don’t want to require, as the ACA mandates, that insurance companies cover these children.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Of course, the underlying idea of forcing birth on women without offering any social safety net for mother and child post-birth is very much rooted in right-wing religious "values" of sanctity and morality. If you're pregnant, you had sex (or were provided with a "gift from God" via rape, if Santorum is consulted). If you had sex, you should have been happily married and making enough money to support a child, and you should probably have prayed about it first. If you had sex while happily married, middle class, and pious, then you're probably part of a church community, which--credit where credit is due--will indeed help members of the congregation if they are suddenly faced with something like $200,000 in medical bills for a child with a "God-given" heart defect. But, if you have sex outside of the mold where you're a churchgoing, married, middle class or above family, you'll either need to go get "saved" and hope for help from a Catholic charity or similar, or you can appeal to the doctors directly to write off the costs of care for your child, or apply to secular charities for help. Being liberal myself, I see this as a problem and contrary to the entire concept of government, in which, ideally, a system is set up that protects the weak from the tyranny of the strong and the minority from tyranny of the majority. Conservatives would probably see this as only fitting, and the proper way to encourage "personal responsibility" and discourage the use of children as a substitute for an income. (Never mind that there's no such thing as "welfare" anymore, and temporary assistance programs are so limited now that nobody can realistically just keep having kids and expect the government to pay for their upkeep.) Also on the theme of credit-where-due, my roommate recently had $17,000 of medical bills written off by a Catholic women's charity, even though she is not an active Catholic herself.
To answer you're question, you are one of the most conservative people I know based on the popular definition of conservativism from 1988. You're what I would refer to as an Alex P. Keaton conservative. You're decisions seem to be made largely on pragmatic grounds and not idealistic ones. From what I've gathered, you don't seem to be one to mingle unproven concepts and policy, in fact you seem stridently opposed to such things. Based on todays fundamentalist christian usurpage -(is that a word?) of the term "conservative", I would not place you anywhere near that camp. Perhaps you would, I wouldn't. I would however place you pretty squarely in the libertarian camp. Much of the policy makers on the right, certainly Bachmann, wear their theology on their sleeves and use those sleeves to pen policy that effects all of us. Do you think and I act that way we can tackle this one off line ;-) -no, i don't.
Rick Santorum, for example, would have been considered not particularly religious as late as 1950. At least as a candidate for high office. -XC
Santorum doesn't just refer to God and his personal relationship with God etc.. he actually sites Satan too.
And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies - Satan - would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America’s pre-eminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.
-Santorum 2008.
I'm slowly beginning to suspect that the ultimate plan is to make everyone enter the labor force immediately out of high school, and leave college up to the richest citizens. Why do people get confused when they here young people aren't buying houses? Is that really so surprising given the cost of everything we need to pay for? If your parents can't or won't pay for your college you're in the whole an enormous sum of money, if you can afford it at all, and if ACA is repealed I have to add health insurance on top of it. Then I have to add car insurance on top of that in order to get to work and get around because I live too far from public transport, and I'm not paid nearly enough to cover all of this. Good thing we're giving the rich all those tax cuts, I'm sure that last nickels and pennies in my pockets can more than make up for it.
I had a pretty bad semester, due to some personal drama and the resulting depression. Okay it was romantic drama. I'm young enough to be stupid. Regardless, I did poorly enough that my parents would not pay for any part of college, even cosigning a loan. The student loan I was offered for 6.5k was pretty much worthless; I couldn't find anyone to cosign it for me and since I'm still a middle class white male with generally above average but not fantastic grades, I had no scholarship available either. I am resolving that if I ever win the lottery, one of my actions will be to establish a scholarship fund for middle class white people who are slightly above average. I'll call it the "Egan Dunne Fund for Middle Class White People Who are Slightly Above Average and Don't Have a Chance at Another Scholarship but Still Want to Go to School." I hope you guys are comfortable knowing my name. It might get awkward if you track me down and try to start deep conversations or share interesting stories outside of the internet.
You can still file as an independent at age 24 under the FAFSA and greatly improve the aid you get, but that's obviously far from ideal.
www.EganDunneFundforMiddleClassWhitePeopleWhoareSlightlyAboveAverageandDon'tHaveaChanceatAnotherScholarshipbutStillWanttoGotoSchool.com You're going to have to pony up some $ for that URL pal!
I was debating getting the one t-shirt. "Strike Hard to Break the Bone." Might be pushing my social standing a bit too far though.
It changes how capable people decide what they will do with their lives.