Quotes About Government

Morality of Reward and Punishment plays an enormous role in the conservative worldview. The reward side rules out any government distribution of wealth or benefits that is not based on free market competition, and it makes the right to the disposition of private property absolute; the punishment side focuses the criminal justice system on retribution.

Empathy is the heart of democracy. Citizens care about other citizens. Freedom means freedom for everybody. That's government of, by, and for the People.

It could not be said by the media at the time, but it was true. No taxes from the wealthy were raised to pay for the war. Indeed, they were cut!

That makes the federal government a thief. Hence, a common conservative attitude toward the government: You can't trust it, since, like a thief, it's always trying to find ways to take your money. Liberals

It's about protection: The government should make sure we have healthy food. It's about equality: Good and healthy food should not be a luxury reserved for the rich. It's about diversity: having a polyculture system and distinctive varieties of food. It's an expansion of freedom: Everyone should have access to good food. It's using the common wealth for the common good to promote public health and increase quality of life. The

The political effect of runaway wealth is, for example, to cut taxes on the wealthy, taking away funding for the public resources that made that wealth possible in the first place.

Conservatives are not against big government when use of the power of the federal government fits their moral system.

Runaway privatization of public resources. The private depends on the public, but conservatives are drastically cutting funds for public resources while successfully promoting privatization. They say that government doesn't work, and by cutting funds they can make government cease to work. And by cutting government resources for all, they can make democracy cease to work.

The common wealth has been used to build highways, develop the Internet and the satellite system, uphold the banking system, regulate the stock market, and support the court system, which guarantees contracts. No business functioning in the market could exist

Markets can't thrive and serve the common good without the constructive role of government. This is what conservatives ignore when they speak of the "free market." THE

Privatization and deregulation constitute the outsourcing of democratically elected government with a moral mission to corporations that have a profit-making mission. The effect is to turn democracy into corporatocracy. PROFIT

Finally, Obama's remarks are carefully constructed to undermine the arguments of conservatives, who frame the social programs funded by taxation as government handouts to the undeserving. Obama flips the taxes-as-handouts frame on its head, to yield a frame in which tax breaks are handouts to the rich, and the estate tax is a transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to wealthy individuals—a frame that tells a vital truth. It

We will begin with three analytic failures by liberals: 1. Conservatism is "the ethos of selfishness." 2. Conservatives just believe in less government. 3. Conservatism is no more than a conspiracy of the ultrarich to protect their money and power and to make themselves even richer and more powerful. T

Conservatives don't merely want less government. They want to raise spending for the military—even bring back Star Wars—not reduce it. They want to build more prisons. There is no move to eliminate the drug enforcement agency.

The main concern of the frame is that money be kept in the common wealth (or the hands of the government) in order to be used for the common good. HOW

From the beginning, the United States has been based on a nurturant principle: • Citizens care about other citizens and work, through their government, to provide public resources for all. Those

Conservatives deny that the private depends on public resources. Citing Ronald Reagan's credo that "The Government is the Problem," conservatives are constantly trying to eliminate public resources and to privatize as much as possible.

Liberals conceptualize government regulation as the protection of those who cannot protect themselves—protection of citizens, workers, honest businessmen, and the environment against possible harm by unscrupulous or negligent businesses and individuals. Government regulation of business is there to be sure that businesses don't hurt or cheat anyone.

In the system of conservative moral categories, government regulation falls under interference with the pursuit of self-interest by people trying to make a living, people using their self-discipline to become self-reliant (and, if possible, rich). These are the good people in our society. We want to encourage people like them and it is wrong to put roadblocks in their way. The

Norquist meetings have expanded to forty-eight states. Via ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), conservatism has spread at the state level, allowing conservatives to take over state legislatures, gerrymander congressional districts, and take over the House of Representatives with a minority of national voter support.

There are three principal conservative descriptions of conservatism. 1. Conservatism is against big government. 2. Conservatism is for traditional values. 3. Conservatism is just what the Bible tells us. We

Conservatives want to eliminate the EPA on the grounds that government should encourage and reward free enterprise, not constrain and punish it. This fits the conservative view of nature as being there to serve private interests. Solutions to as many problems as possible should come out of free enterprise solutions that reward self-discipline and enterprise, rather than out of government-imposed constraints that punish enterprising companies through regulation. Or

Conservatives tend not to want to fund early childhood education. First, they see it as a government program to be destroyed. Second, they are concerned about what would be taught—perhaps not the subject matter of what would be taught in a strict father household. They want to be sure that children are taught a conservative way of looking at the world. Children

As we pointed out, the common principles of conservative thought make up a list crying out for an explanation of how they fit together: smaller government; strong defense; lower taxes; traditional family values; personal responsibility; and free markets. As we have seen, these all flow from a strict father morality. Finally