{"id":529053,"date":"2010-04-15T14:10:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T18:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignforliberty.com\/blog.php?view=34653"},"modified":"2010-04-15T14:10:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T18:10:00","slug":"understanding-pro-war-republicans-and-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/529053","title":{"rendered":"Understanding “Pro-War” Republicans and Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matt Holdridge<\/p>\n

Lately I’ve found myself struggling to understand the devotion Republicans\/conservatives have to war and anything remotely related to the military. <\/p>\n

I’ve had numerous conversations regarding this topic with friends and family members who are regular talk-radio type conservatives that believe in small government yet promote war; the great state centralizer. <\/p>\n

I know they’re good people who mean well but I can’t logically square their ideals. How can you want lower taxes, less regulation, and fewer government programs but get upset when NASA is cut<\/a>? <\/p>\n

The best explanation I’ve seen was on blogcritics.org in an article called, Understanding Pro-War Republicans<\/a><\/em>. In the piece the author says,<\/p>\n

\n

While there are a small number of Stalinistic, pro-war expansionists in the GOP, their viewpoint is alien to the party and is not shared by most Republicans. Most Republicans who support our current wars do not do so because they are in favor of war or of imperialism, but because they are unquestioningly pro-America. They may believe in a strong national defense, but they do not believe in wars of conquest and occupation. They oppose the anti-war position, not because they like war, but because they dislike those who take issue with the actions of America as a nation no matter what the reason.<\/p>\n

They operate from the perspective that our government is good, not because government is good, but because our government is American and America is good. They therefore assume that the actions of our government, including making war, must be good and right actions because they are the actions of an American government.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While I take issue with some of the author’s points, I think he may be correct on that particular item; it’s an irrational<\/em> devotion to anything quote “American” that drives what appears to be rank-and-file Republicans’ support of current US foreign policy; not a desire to make war for the sake of empire.  <\/p>\n

This assessment brings to mind Sean Hannity’s proclivity to call people “great Americans” or the wild chants of “USA” at rallies. Logic doesn’t play a part in this phenomenon, it’s strictly based on emotion and years of thought conditioning. <\/p>\n

What is your opinion? <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matt Holdridge Lately I’ve found myself struggling to understand the devotion Republicans\/conservatives have to war and anything remotely related to the military.  I’ve had numerous conversations regarding this topic with friends and family members who are regular talk-radio type conservatives that believe in small government yet promote war; the great state centralizer.  I know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3999,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3999"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}