What Happened to American conservatism?

the US system of government was designed such that each branch of government would be inherently protective of its constitutional authority. what we are seeing today is what happens when Congress and the Supreme court bow to the executive, driven by the fact that as a country we have almost no truly contested districts to actually hold people accountable. it will require a real revolution at the ballot box to change the course we are on assuming we ever have fair elections again.
I really worry about our nation's ability to regain our constitutional norms with all the damage that has been done over the last few years, and especially if the Great Gerrymandering proceeds apace. It's not about the left's desire for a new, modern constitution. It's that the right has effectively nullified it, so we're now in a moment between social contracts, and unfortunately, that moment is almost always violent.
 
the US system of government was designed such that each branch of government would be inherently protective of its constitutional authority. what we are seeing today is what happens when Congress and the Supreme court bow to the executive, driven by the fact that as a country we have almost no truly contested districts to actually hold people accountable. it will require a real revolution at the ballot box to change the course we are on assuming we ever have fair elections again.
The problem isn't so much the Supreme Court "bowing" to the executive as completely failing to comprehend your first sentence. I mean, the result is the same, but the Supreme Court sees what they are doing as principled. "Separation of powers" considerations always seem to dominate, but reading their opinions, you'd never know that separation of powers was considered a means to an end. It's as if they think Articles I-III were just a classification system, and not a design of checks and balances.
 
the US system of government was designed such that each branch of government would be inherently protective of its constitutional authority. what we are seeing today is what happens when Congress and the Supreme court bow to the executive, driven by the fact that as a country we have almost no truly contested districts to actually hold people accountable. it will require a real revolution at the ballot box to change the course we are on assuming we ever have fair elections again.
In which case it would require a real revolution
 
There's an element of the "fallacy" of the Either/Or in arguing about which side of the Laffer curve we're on.

It forces us into to presupposing that optimizing tax revenue is the correct barometer for promoting generalized social good. Lets assume that the Laffer curve showed that optimal tax revenue is achieved with the top 10% paying no taxes and the bottom 90% paying all taxes. Just because we are at some "optimal" point on some arbitrary curve doesn't mean our society is better off because of that.

Arguing about where we are on the Laffer curve puts you squarely in the trap whereby you agree that "optimal tax revenue" is the be all end all metric we should be using to measure societal good.

The correct decision is to chose not to play that game.

EDIT: Me replying to a months old thread topic. Bit scatterbrained.
 
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There's an element of the "fallacy" of the Either/Or in arguing about which side of the Laffer curve we're on.

It forces us to presupposing that optimizing tax revenue is the correct barometer for promoting generalized social good. Lets assume that the Laffer curve showed that optimal tax revenue is achieved with the top 10% paying no taxes and the bottom 90% paying all taxes. Just because we are at some "optimal" point on some arbitrary curve doesn't mean our society is better off because of that.

Arguing about where we are on the Laffer curve puts you squarely in the trap whereby you agree that "optimal tax revenue" is the be all end all metric we should be using to measure societal good.

The correct decision is to chose not to play that game.

EDIT: Me replying to a months old thread topic. Bit scatterbrained.
You’re exempted…. Thread got BTTT by somebody else 🤓
 
I’m too lazy to look beyond the 1st page to find the “correct” thread for this, but I think it might work here.

I made a quick trip to Sam’s this afternoon. I had to stop and wait in an aisle because a woman and her kids were in the middle. Anyone that goes to big box stores knows the worst part is often navigating the people. What made this one noteworthy was the family. Mom was wearing a shirt with sparkly USA on it. Her son (11 maybe) was wearing a Trump 45 shirt with a graphic of a colt 45 handgun. Mom finally realized they were in the way and apologized. The little shit kid though decided he didn’t have to move until she physically dragged him over.

I have this feeling the kid wasn’t wearing the shirt because he believes in small government and low taxes. I could be wrong though and I was just inconvenienced by a future CO senator.

I can’t wrap my head around letting a kid wear a shirt with a gun or trump on it. I mean WTF is wrong with magats?? Why was this kid not in school? Schools definitely aren’t allowing clothing like that. That’s shirt’s also likely 6+ years old so they’re doing hand-me-down provocative children’s clothing???

I’m gonna guess no one has had a similar experience with an antifa family.
 
I’m too lazy to look beyond the 1st page to find the “correct” thread for this, but I think it might work here.

I made a quick trip to Sam’s this afternoon. I had to stop and wait in an aisle because a woman and her kids were in the middle. Anyone that goes to big box stores knows the worst part is often navigating the people. What made this one noteworthy was the family. Mom was wearing a shirt with sparkly USA on it. Her son (11 maybe) was wearing a Trump 45 shirt with a graphic of a colt 45 handgun. Mom finally realized they were in the way and apologized. The little shit kid though decided he didn’t have to move until she physically dragged him over.

I have this feeling the kid wasn’t wearing the shirt because he believes in small government and low taxes. I could be wrong though and I was just inconvenienced by a future CO senator.

I can’t wrap my head around letting a kid wear a shirt with a gun or trump on it. I mean WTF is wrong with magats?? Why was this kid not in school? Schools definitely aren’t allowing clothing like that. That’s shirt’s also likely 6+ years old so they’re doing hand-me-down provocative children’s clothing???

I’m gonna guess no one has had a similar experience with an antifa family.
Worse. Why is it that all the Hollywood celebrities have trans kids, many time multiple kids? It's like they're a Hollywood accessary. Convincing/encouraging your kid to transition in order to virtue signal to other adults is worse than encouraging your kid to wear an offensive shirt with a gun on it. A quick list:

Ally Sheedy
Annette Benning
Charlize Theron
Cynthia Nixon
Cher
Deborah McGrath
Gabrielle and Dwyane Wade
Heather Dubrow
Jamie Lee Curtis
Marcia Gay Harden
Naomi Watts
Rosie O'Donnell
Sigourney Weaver
Sting and Trudie Styler
Michelle Visage
Marlon Wayans
Jennifer Lopez
Robert De Niro
Megan Fox
Mel B and Eddie Murphy
Sade
Busy Philipps
Khary Payton

How is that possible without STRONG parental encouragement? Extremely high % of trans children for such a small group of top celebrities.
 
Worse. Why is it that all the Hollywood celebrities have trans kids, many time multiple kids? It's like they're a Hollywood accessary. Convincing/encouraging your kid to transition in order to virtue signal to other adults is worse than encouraging your kid to wear an offensive shirt with a gun on it. A quick list:

Ally Sheedy
Annette Benning
Charlize Theron
Cynthia Nixon
Cher
Deborah McGrath
Gabrielle and Dwyane Wade
Heather Dubrow
Jamie Lee Curtis
Marcia Gay Harden
Naomi Watts
Rosie O'Donnell
Sigourney Weaver
Sting and Trudie Styler
Michelle Visage
Marlon Wayans
Jennifer Lopez
Robert De Niro
Megan Fox
Mel B and Eddie Murphy
Sade
Busy Philipps
Khary Payton

How is that possible without STRONG parental encouragement? Extremely high % of trans children for such a small group of top celebrities.
Not remotely. First, the universe of celebrities at that level is huge. I've never heard of some of those people, and many of them who I have heard of are small-timers. There are thousands of people as famous as Khary Payton or Heather Dubrow. So 24/1000 = a pretty low rate.

Moreover, most of those people have multiple kids. So you have to add that to the relevant population. All told, it's probably like 24/5000, which is about 0.5% -- same as the regular population. Maybe I'm off by a factor of two; fine, 1%. Again, not different than normal.

The problem here is that you don't speak math or statistics.
 
Worse. Why is it that all the Hollywood celebrities have trans kids, many time multiple kids? It's like they're a Hollywood accessary. Convincing/encouraging your kid to transition in order to virtue signal to other adults is worse than encouraging your kid to wear an offensive shirt with a gun on it. A quick list:

Ally Sheedy
Annette Benning
Charlize Theron
Cynthia Nixon
Cher
Deborah McGrath
Gabrielle and Dwyane Wade
Heather Dubrow
Jamie Lee Curtis
Marcia Gay Harden
Naomi Watts
Rosie O'Donnell
Sigourney Weaver
Sting and Trudie Styler
Michelle Visage
Marlon Wayans
Jennifer Lopez
Robert De Niro
Megan Fox
Mel B and Eddie Murphy
Sade
Busy Philipps
Khary Payton

How is that possible without STRONG parental encouragement? Extremely high % of trans children for such a small group of top celebrities.
You have the absolute most bizarre obsession with transgender people. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. You think about transgender people far more often than transgender people think about transgender people. Hopefully you can sort through whatever you’ve got going on that causes you to fixate on a fraction of 1% of the population. I think we are all cheering hard for you.
 
How is that possible without STRONG parental encouragement? Extremely high % of trans children for such a small group of top celebrities.
Before making statistically foolish statements, you could try to run them by the board. There are lots of people here who are good with stats. Some even better than me, if you can believe it. Now, many of them might have you on ignore, but surely not all of them. And there's still me.
 
Worse. Why is it that all the Hollywood celebrities have trans kids, many time multiple kids? It's like they're a Hollywood accessary. Convincing/encouraging your kid to transition in order to virtue signal to other adults is worse than encouraging your kid to wear an offensive shirt with a gun on it. A quick list:

Ally Sheedy
Annette Benning
Charlize Theron
Cynthia Nixon
Cher
Deborah McGrath
Gabrielle and Dwyane Wade
Heather Dubrow
Jamie Lee Curtis
Marcia Gay Harden
Naomi Watts
Rosie O'Donnell
Sigourney Weaver
Sting and Trudie Styler
Michelle Visage
Marlon Wayans
Jennifer Lopez
Robert De Niro
Megan Fox
Mel B and Eddie Murphy
Sade
Busy Philipps
Khary Payton

How is that possible without STRONG parental encouragement? Extremely high % of trans children for such a small group of top celebrities.
Weird that Elon Musk didn't make this chain email ...
 
Worse. Why is it that all the Hollywood celebrities have trans kids, many time multiple kids? It's like they're a Hollywood accessary. Convincing/encouraging your kid to transition in order to virtue signal to other adults is worse than encouraging your kid to wear an offensive shirt with a gun on it. A quick list:

Ally Sheedy
Annette Benning
Charlize Theron
Cynthia Nixon
Cher
Deborah McGrath
Gabrielle and Dwyane Wade
Heather Dubrow
Jamie Lee Curtis
Marcia Gay Harden
Naomi Watts
Rosie O'Donnell
Sigourney Weaver
Sting and Trudie Styler
Michelle Visage
Marlon Wayans
Jennifer Lopez
Robert De Niro
Megan Fox
Mel B and Eddie Murphy
Sade
Busy Philipps
Khary Payton

How is that possible without STRONG parental encouragement? Extremely high % of trans children for such a small group of top celebrities.
Why don't you just say you don't understand how math or science works? When your selection is based on them having transgender children, how can you be amazed that there is a high percentage of them with transgender children. Btw, that's 23 families out of literally thousands who have that degree of celebrity and are scattered across multiple generations and locations.

Sorry, folks, I know that was obvious to you but some things are just so stupid on the face of it, it deserves being pointed out.
 
it was a representative sample of celebrities children, not a complete list. Most of the people named were A or B list celebrities. What’s that sample size, 1000?
 
You have the absolute most bizarre obsession with transgender people. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. You think about transgender people far more often than transgender people think about transgender people. Hopefully you can sort through whatever you’ve got going on that causes you to fixate on a fraction of 1% of the population. I think we are all cheering hard for you.
It’s the left that has an all encompassing obsession with trans issues. It’s been shoved down my throat and put in my face the past 5 years or so. I am told to accept that trans women are women who have periods, can breast feed and have children as well as compete fairly in girls’ sports. If I don’t believe all that I’m a trans bigot. AND I must also accept that young children’s sex can and should be surgically changed.
 
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