What Does it Mean to be a Conservative Democrat?

[RainDog]

49. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

I think your examples are things we all pretty much agree on - and are also issues of corruption (which, let's face it, is a big attraction to politics for some because there's a lot of money being transferred for this or that.)

And I REALLY agree with you on the value of "preventive" action on the part of govt. That's what confuses me so about this nation with its history of innovation). In the area of energy, for instance. When other western democracies are setting and reaching goals for more varieties of renewable energy sources - this nation has spent the last forty years trying to destroy any forward-thinking environmental policy.

I can't help but think that has a lot to do with big money concerns in gas and oil and coal.

And then we see what's going on with this horrid practices that are destroying communities via the water supply and more...

You know, there's a show on the BBC called "Filthy Cities: The French Revolution." The guy talks about the filth that was part of Parisian life - with tanners tossing fat from calf skin used to make leather right into the unfiltered water supply. The royals and aristocrats dealt with this by moving out of the city. The situation came to a crisis when those in the upper middle classes were treated as peasants left to choke on human waste in drinking water.

The king said... okay, tell me what you want. People wrote reams about the horrid conditions - and from this statement that they deserved to be noticed by the king, that their lives were worth living with some dignity - from that situation (simplified greatly, because there was a climate disaster that caused famine, debt from financing the Americans to weaken France's rival, Britain... anyway, from this misery - came the declaration of the rights of man (sic) that proposed a basic level of human decency toward others no matter their station in life.

There's a lesson in history for the current robber barons like the Koch's with their fouling of cities for coal, and fracking, and so much more.

Like the French aristocrats who removed themselves from the lives of working people, our modern-day aristocrats seem to think they can heap abuse upon Americans with impunity. I think they're wrong, but I don't want to have to be proved right.