How does a Conservative explain thier support of Public Education,Social Security and Medicare?

[Fly In the Ointment]

Seems to me that these are all Socialist programs, especially Public education, modeled after Germany. Yet when asked about these the answer is "well that is too important to allow the free market to run that" Ask a Conservative about Social Security and they tell you "we will get voted out if we oppose that" same with Medicare since these are all socialist programs. What does this say about conservatives and their philosophy, is it only for certain Govt run programs?

[dglaze11]

It tells you there is no diference between Dems and Republicans. They are about how may votes they can buy and how much power they can create for themselves.

[abfabinri]

They can't explain it as these fly in the face of their beliefs. The fact is that Public Education would be much better off if it was privatized, it could not possibly get worse! They are just Conservatives in name only. They just brush these off and try to bring up tax cuts when they are mentioned as if tax cuts were some magical answer to all our problems but as you can see Tax cuts did not work and we are now in the worst economic crisis since the Depression. The worst of all is Income Tax, I do not see many conservatives calling for the end of that(expect Alan Keyes). Some say a National sales Tax but this is also totally against true Conservative philosophy. They just like the word I think as they practice very little of what they preach.

Funny how few Conservatives will answer this question as admitting to wrong is also not in their playbook.

[Just-Jon]

Maybe the Log-Cabin Republicans can answer that...they're good at explaining contradictions!

[crunch]

I'm not in favor of any of them but I'm forced to support them.

[calmObserver688]

I don't know why I bother answering questions like this. You don't want to actually hear a legitimate answer; you merely want someone to stroke your ego and agree with you.

I'm a Ronald Reagan Conservative. Reagan wanted to get rid of Social Security and Medicare (and Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. Statistics have proven that you would get probably 50% more at retirement of you were allowed to invest that money into safe funds, rather than have the government sit on it).

There are some institutions that simply cannot exist to everyones satisfaction. We all know that public education is a nightmare. I'm living in Europe, and I can attest to the fact that Europeans spend as little as 1/8th the amount of money on education (no fancy buildings or football programs... sorry), but the level of education is higher. Students learn. Just check language mastery skills of Europeans against Americans. It's not only embarrassing, it's humilliating.

Public education makes sense in part because there are too many variables. If education is to remain compulsory, you need to have a ready-made institution to which you can send your children. Otherwise, people could simply use excuses such as, "the nearest school is too far, doesn't meet my requirements, costs too much", and so on.

So, to answer your question, we Conservatives don't pretend that programs such as public education don't smack of Socialism, but the concept of public education supplied by the States goes back to Thomas Jefferson, who made the very modest suggestion that people should be given four years of schooling so they can learn the basics of living in modern society.

But who is for the school voucher system, when it is a viable alternative? Conservatives. Our philosphy is not invalidated by realizing the need for public education. In fact, we're trying to make that education actually worth something through the No Child Left Behind Act. People can cite flaws all they want, but generally the deficiencies are the abysmal administration of the schools themselves that account for some places not meeting standards.

So, I hope you realize that Conservatives are not some group of blind followers of an idealistic philosophy. We are realists too.

[neuroticwilly]

our public schools system is turning out intelligent, but undereducated students every graduation day; the school administrators, and the NEA officials should be imprisoned for this travesty! i feel sorry for the kids and the parents who pay, and pay higher property taxes,to get very little return for the investment that they have made for their kids. social security cannot be fixed; it's been a liberal piggy bank to fund boondoggles almost since it's inception. that's how we paid for the "great society"! medicare is a great idea; if government would get it's fingers out of it the program, it could be salvageable. let the health professionals make the decisions here, not barney frank! but, there's too much money for the taking as is the case in all of these programs!

[icehoundxx]

Public schools were designed to be apolitical and free from ideological influence. Furthermore, public schools are primarily funded by local governments and funding is allocated by the local gov't from federal, state, and local tax money. If you are referring to the "No Child Left Behind" Program, that was an attempt to raise up the fledging public education program (which we are pitifully ranked in comparison to other nation's basic elementary education programs). General public schools date back 1643 in Dedham, Massachusetts, and it was funded by taxpayer dollars. Even back then, the public school was seen as "the seed of American education."

Social Security was brought in and established by FDR, a liberal and democrat. Medicare was added onto the Social Security administration by LBJ, also a democrat. Both programs were designed as a payback system where you receive a saved amount of money that you give to the government to hold onto until you retire or receive additional health care support when you reach retirement. However, with social security being given to illegal aliens (something conservatives do NOT want, yet liberals gladly give away) and medicare bound down and muddied with more red tape than a communist ticker tape parade, conservatives are looking for ways to salvage these overly extended programs to suit the needs of American citizens.

The voting comment you make could be said by any elected official wishing to keep his office come time for reelection. Looking at voting demographics, older Americans vote more frequently than younger Americans, so any candidate and elected official will look to court their vote. It's called pandering to their base.

[Demsmierda]

I don't support them.

They are All Failures and eating our taxes up.

Get a job and see for yourself.

[justgetitright]

I am a conservative that opposes public education or should I say public indoctrination, I am sick and tired of seeing some damn school bond on my ballot every time we vote here in California.
I also do not favor Social Security at least not the way it is being run today. Social Security has turned in to one of the biggest ponzi schemes ever imagined.Social Security should have been a savings account that people paid into as they worked, and when they retired they could withdraw their funds as they saw fit. Medicare is a bit different the money that we pay into that should be paid into a personal insurance program and used if you were laid off or at retirement. This should have been run like a life insurance program in that you pay for 30 or 40 years and it is then paid up.

The US Government has seen fit to rob the Social Security blind to pay for other social programs and Medicare is not any better. I can tell you that if I had only donated $10 a week into my own Social Security program since I started working (50 years ago) I would not have any problems with having a very comfortable retirement and would not have had to use any of my savings to do so (I am not retired yet but next year woo-hoo)

I am not nor have I ever been in favor of any social programs, I worked and I put my kids into private schools with teachers that taught not teachers that tell your kids what THEY want your kids to know.

Now you might be wondering if I will take my Social Security when I retire, simple answer is you damn right I will, I paid into it for more than
50 years and I will take Medicare as well.

Both of these programs need a major overhaul, especially Social Security and the only way that will ever happen is if we force the Congress men and women to live on it and take away their retirement
which at the moment is the same as their current annual salary. Seems they don't want to be forced to live on what they perscribe for the rest of us.