The Right Wing

I was talking with a friend today and she admits she is politically apathetic, not by choice necessarily but she just doesn’t find the issues relevant to her.  The upcoming election will be the first presidential election she votes in so she is doing her best to become educated on the issues.  Finally she just flat out asked me what is the difference between a liberal and a conservative.  First I just started to list the differences on abortion, taxes, environmental issues, etc. but I found that wasn’t really having that much of an impact on her.  So finally I flat out said how a liberal thinks vs. how a conservative thinks; a liberal looks at an issue and makes an opinion based on its face value or judging a book by its cover, while a conservative will actually gather all facts from multiple viewpoints on the issue and then form an opinion.  In other words a liberal reads the title of the book and the back of it and claims to have knowledge of the book and the conservative reads the book.  Then I actually took it a step further and gave her some examples.  

1.  Wal-Mart:  A liberal looks at Wal-Mart and calls it an evil corporation.  A liberal claims that Wal-Mart puts mom and pop stores out of business, and is destroying small town America.  A conservative also sees that Wal-Mart is putting mom and pop stores out of business, but understands that we live in a capitalist society and the lower price usually wins.  A conservative also thinks of the single mom with three children on a low income, and how she can buy extra clothes for her kids because of the low prices Wal-Mart brings.  In a time where every dollar counts, it’s good to have a low cost option like Wal-Mart.  If people really didn’t like Wal-Mart, they wouldn’t shop there and it would go out of business, it’s that simple. 

2. Iraq War:  Liberals call it Bush’s war.  They claim he’s finishing daddy’s work and is in it for the oil at the cost of American lives.  A conservative says the best defense is a good offense.  Quite simply put it means by fighting islamic fascists in Iraq and Afghanistan we are not fighting them here in the United States.  We’ve got them on the run and disorganized, and the more stable allies we have in the middle east the harder it will be for terrorist groups to organize and plan attacks which in the long run will save countless American lives.  

3. Income Redistrubtion: Liberals believe the rich should pay for the poor.  They want to punish people for making money and it increases with the more money you make.  That is why we have a progressive tax code, which means tax percentage increases as your income increases.  It is important to note that there is a significant difference between a progressive tax system and a proportionate tax system.  With both systems, the more money you make the more taxes you pay.  However in a proportionate tax code, you always pay the same percentage.  If you make $10,000 or $1,000,000, you will pay the same percent of your income.  This is the tax code that many conservatives support because everyone pays the same percentage of their income.  In the current progressive system, your tax percentage increases incrementally with your income.  So you pay a larger percent.  In other words, you are punished for making more money.Comment with other issues and I will be glad to do another post like this with those topics.