Fiscally Conservative & Social Liberal?

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
Fiscally Conservative & Social Liberal?
60
Mon, 07-26-2004 - 9:55pm
I read another post and someone mentioned being fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Personally I find this hard to believe.

Perhaps you could be

A. Conservative on Both

B. Moderate fiscally and moderate socially

C. Liberal on Both.

It just seem difficult if not impossible to be Fiscally conservative and socially liberal and here is why.

Most liberal programs increase gov't control over private institutions, increase spending on issues, or increase red tape, etc. This all adversly affects efficiency or causes increases in gov't spending. Both of which a fiscal conservative would be against. Yet I hear this uddered all the time. I wonder if it is a way of presenting yourself as not one of the extremes on either side. You certainly can get labeled when you say I'm a conservative or I'm a liberal. So you play both sides of the fence.

I'm not convinced it is not possible it just seems unlikely. It would seem in every case you would end up being a moderate or liberal if you support liberal social programs because of their restriction on the free market or their inherent cost from tax payer coffers.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-01-2004
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 4:34pm
Thank you joywriter1 I couldn't have said it better myself!
Asha
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 4:41pm
<< Alan Greenspan seems to be getting off kilter!!!!>>

Alan Greenspan dare not frown.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-29-2003
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 4:56pm
That's patently ridiculous. Firstly, there is no "separation" of church and state in the US Constitution. There is an amendment that prohibits the establishment of a state religion and ensures that the free exercise of religion cannot be abridged. I daresay that there was not a single atheist at the Continental Congress. The concern was simply that the Quakers and the Puritans and the Protestants all got to worship as each group saw fit, without interference from the others. Despite what you'd like it to have been, the Congress was not a big meeting of the concerned friends of the atheists and devil-worshippers.

If anything, those of us who WISH to outwardly profess our religious beliefs at a football game or in a classroom or wherever we happen to be should be outraged by those whose sole purpose seems to be to turn this richly blessed society into a godless pit.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 5:12pm
Oh heck make something with fruit & nuts in it!

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 9:01pm
The history of the Anglo-American system of government is really the history of getting religion out of government. The "Great Writ" of habeas corpus was designed, originally, not to free wrong imprisoned people, but to force the church to turn over to the King's Court churchman who committed a crime against the Kings' law. Prior to that time, a churchman who committed a crime could only be tried in the church court, and the maximum penalty was excommunication. The King (Henry II, if you're curious) demanded that churchman answer to the King for act the King deemed wrong, and suffer the same punishment that other subjects of the King suffered. It is the first example I know of when the English speaking people tried to asset power over the church. They did, too.

From Henry II to Henry VIII, religion and secular power were locked in a battle over who had the right over issues. Henry VIII finally threw out the Catholic Church in England and established a new one, with himself at the head. But from this enterprise came the Star Chamber, and abuses of law and government never before seen.

Do you ever wonder why so many rights are listed in the Fifth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution? It's because of abuse of English courts, most of which had their underpinnings in the religious doctrines then used by the courts. The courts, the executive branch and the state religion were all mingled together in England. The founding fathers were very aware of it. Yes, they did want a wall. A strong one. So the abuses they saw could never take place again.

And by the way, there is a facinating history behind state vs. federal constitutions that ultimately gave rise to the Fourteenth Amendment. Sometime, if you're interested, and I have more time, I'll tell you about it.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 9:51pm

Whew!!!!!!!!


There is an amendment (the Constitution would not have been ratified without it)that prohibits the establishment of a state religion and ensures that the free exercise of religion cannot be abridged


Actually the first amendment reads


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof


Establishment of religion--(not a religion)--that is a separation of church and state


the Congress was not a big meeting of the concerned friends of the atheists and devil-worshippers.


No One said that it was although there were a few agnostics there--


those of us who WISH to outwardly profess our religious beliefs at a football game or in a classroom or wherever we happen to be


I have no objection to that--I do object to you and others forcing people who do not believe to profess something they do not believe -- or forced by you and others to recite something that does not belong to

  
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 9:54pm
Actually that is sometimes true!!!!!!!!!



Barb


To be a Gardener is to believe in tomorrow

  
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
Wed, 08-04-2004 - 9:56pm
ROFL
  
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-29-2003
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 12:08am
No, it's not "separation of church and state." The letter and spirit of the amendment simply aim to prevent the government from "establishing" a state religion.

Here's what FindLaw has to say about the First Amendment. In several historians' viewpoints, the "establishment" clause did indeed aim to prevent the elevation of any one particular Christian sect at the expense of the others. The idea that the states were threatening not to ratify based on some fear that churchmen wouldn't be able to be prosecuted in state court isn't mentioned at all; instead, there is extensive explanation about the different Christian branches in each state "jockeying" for supremacy.

Again, no matter how much y'all "wish" things were different, the founders were not attempting to extricate religion from government.

"Madison's original proposal for a bill of rights provision concerning religion read: ''The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established." The language was altered in the House to read: ''Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience.' In the Senate, the section adopted read: ''Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion, . . .' It was in the conference committee of the two bodies, chaired by Madison, that the present language was written with its somewhat more indefinite "respecting" phraseology. Debate in Congress lends little assistance in interpreting the religion clauses; Madison's position, as well as that of Jefferson who influenced him, is fairly clear, but the intent, insofar as there was one, of the others in Congress who voted for the language and those in the States who voted to ratify is subject to speculation.

J. Story, who wrote Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States in 1833, thought that ''the right of a society or government to interfere in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons, who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice.' He looked upon the prohibition simply as an exclusion from the Federal Government of all power to act upon the subject. ''The situation was that the different states equally proclaimed the policy, as well as the necessity of such an exclusion. In some of the states, episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others presbyterians; in others, congregationalists; in others, quakers; and in others again, there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible, that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition of all religious tests. Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship.'

''Probably,'' Story also wrote, ''at the time of the adoption of the constitution and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.' The object, then, of the religion clauses in this view was not to prevent general governmental encouragement of religion, of Christianity, but to prevent religious persecution and to prevent a national establishment.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2003
Thu, 08-05-2004 - 12:49am

the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience*, and the freedom of religious worship.


*this is what is ignored--and therefore has not always been followed.