This is what makes being a secular conservative so difficult sometimes because the vast majority of people that you might have one thing in common with, you invariably strongly disagree with them on their underlying principles.
Take Charlie Kirk, for example. In general terms, I agree with a lot of the things he says. It’s just when he opens his mouth about religion that I absolutely cringe. So let’s explore one of his videos and see exactly where the problems lie.So below is one of the videos that I’ve watched and while yes, he starts out just fine, he almost immediately falls into God-talk and that’s just sad. So go and watch the video, it’s only a few minutes long, and we’ll continue when you get back.
My problem here is that none of the God-crap is necessary at all. You don’t need a god to be a conservative, you just need a brain. It doesn’t take much to reject the regressive bullshit that wants the U.S. to pay for things, just because, it only takes a fiscal clue Conservatives expect everyone to take responsibility for themselves and the political left hates that idea. What this ultimately is all about is “you’ve got money, give it to us!”
No. Go fuck yourselves. Or, more properly, stop fucking yourselves. Show some self-control. But that’s something that both sides need to exercise. Yes, it is true that we don’t want to be the next Japan, where they stopped breeding for so long that now, the majority of their population is old and not working and there’s very little coming up to replace them when they die. This is a fundamental cultural change and we’ve seen, at least to some degree, the same thing happening in the U.S.
To survive, any country needs to either reproduce at a level to offset losses, or import from the outside at a level that offsets losses, otherwise you’ll whither and die and that will be the end of you. But at the same time, you can’t just breed like rabbits and overtax your infrastructure. If you have too many people, that’s just as bad as having too few. Ask a lot of nations in Africa, where they have tons of people and no ability to feed them. Ask China, where they had to put draconian population controls into place because otherwise, they would have turned into a third world country.
I think it’s a pretty basic requirement that nations be able to support their population. They have to be able to feed them, house them, clothe and educate them in some fashion, otherwise they’re going to fall. The problem that we see, both from the far left and the far right, is that there are a lot of really bad ideologies out there, progressivism and evangelical Christianity to name but two, that cause problems coming to a rational solution. They’re both, however, ultimately doing the same thing.
On the far left, they want the government to take care of everyone, so long as you follow its dictates. The government is the great savior that loves us all. On the far right, it’s God. God will take care of everyone if you just do what he says. God is the great savior that loves us all. Unfortunately, both of those options are nonsense. If we, as humans, want to save humanity, it has to start with the individual. We have to make rational decisions, based on our own personal responsibilities, such that we don’t make more children than we, ourselves, can feed and care for, nor so few that we wind up going extinct because we can’t replace ourselves.
Now that doesn’t mean everyone has to breed. There are always going to be people who don’t want to and there will always be those that do. So long as it averages out, it’s fine. I mean, this isn’t Robot Jox, to name an old, bad movie where they’d lost so many people that having babies was compulsory and rewarded by the government, but it should never come to that. We also shouldn’t be pushing anyone to behave like the Duggars because that’s just idiotic.
As I said, it’s really, really hard these days to find someone who isn’t on one of the two extremes. The extremes don’t work. You don’t have to believe in an imaginary father figure in the sky, nor in an all-powerful government to get by. Those are just a way to avoid personal responsibility. You actually have to take it on your own shoulders to get the work done and collectively, with other personally-responsible people, you can build a strong nation. Otherwise, you get the third world countries, like Venezuela for the left or much of Africa for the right, where everyone is suffering because that’s the end result of these two ideologies. But, of course, none of them care because, as should be no surprise, the point of both is to coddle the follower’s fee-fees and that’s ultimately the biggest problem we face these days.
Can everyone just grow the hell up? Please?