5 Popular Conservative Talking Points Debunked By Common Sense - By Allen Clifton

Found here. (Link disabled due to virus.) My comments in bold.

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This is another attempt to debunk conservatives with supposedly devastating arguments, but it's just another failure. In fact, it's such an embarrassing failure that I'm surprised forwardprogressives.com published it. (Now defunct...) Oh. The writer is also the website owner...

Read on:

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The words “common sense” and “conservative” don’t often go together. Especially since the rise of the tea party. You know, the people who base facts and reality based on what they want to be real instead of what actually is real. (First an insult, a distinctly non-intellectual approach.)

But while reading through a few comments left by conservatives on several of my articles, I decided I’d throw out stats, sources, and fancy political talk and simply write an article using just some good ol’ fashion (sic) common sense to counter 5 popular conservative talking points. (Actually, good ol' fashioned liberal sense. Or lacking sense. You'll see what I mean.)

So let’s just get right to it. 

Tax Cuts Create Jobs 

(The author begins by oversimplifying the conservative position. The link between tax cuts and jobs is a correlation, not a causation. And, it is considerably more nuanced than the author's presentation.) 

This is the cornerstone behind trickle-down economics. Which, of course, is the heart and soul of the Republican economic philosophy. (The author switches terms. The Republican position differs greatly from the conservative position.)  

Honestly does anyone really think a corporation creates jobs based on their tax rate? (Now begins the misdirection. First, the use of the word "corporation," as opposed to a business or a shop. The author is attempting to create a false perception that big, bad, eeevil juggernaut corporations are the issue here, when actually every business labors under the burden of taxes. Particularly small business, which employs 48% of all workers and creates 63% of all new jobs.)

The reality is, the burdens of government, like any other expense, diverts cash away from the business. The business no longer has that cash available for its own uses, which means it has been limited by government in its ability to hire, expand, or make capital purchases. 

Contrary to the author's characterization, conservatives do not claim that "corporations create jobs based on their tax rates." Rather, businesses of all sizes DO make financial decisions based on their perceptions of the market, their sales, their tax burden, and their need to develop new products, among a whole host of other things. And clearly taxes are a significant consideration as businesses consider their strategies.)

Heck, does anyone think a corporations creates jobs just for the sake of creating jobs? (Not conservatives, but certainly many liberals do believe this, or at least are ignorant of the market forces that lead to job creation. In fact, the Left views business as a defacto arm of government, a tool to enact its agenda.) 

Businesses create jobs typically because they have to. Mostly because demand for their products or services dictates that they do. (Well, he gets that right, surprise. He believes in supply and demand! 

Then pray tell, perhaps the author might explain to us what happens to the demand for an item when its price increases? And what happens to the cost of the product when business taxes go up or regulation increases? Or what happens to the demand for employees when the cost of employing them increases due to the minimum wage, mandated benefits, and potential litigation? Or perhaps he can tell us what happens to the buying habits of people whose paychecks now must be stretched to pay for more expensive items?)

If a business is meeting demand, then suddenly a massive tax cut is passed, who really believes the next thing on their agenda will be to create jobs that they really don’t need? (Implicit in this statement is that is better for government to keep the money against all other considerations.)

If a business is meeting demand, no matter how low their tax rate is, they’re not going to create more jobs. (The author continues to restrict his discussion to a specific single item, jobs. As in, "if they get a tax cut, they can only create jobs with it. And if they don't need more employees, well that means that tax cuts do not create jobs." You see the un-nuanced thinking on display here.)

The same rule applies if demand goes up. No matter the tax rate, a company is not going to risk deflating growing demand based upon their tax rate. They’ll create jobs to meet that demand. (In other words, businesses want to do business, and will do their business regardless of the restrictions and burdens imposed on them. Thus, reducing those burdens is somehow irrelevant, and government might as well keep taking the money. 

In fact, by this reasoning there is no reason at all to decrease business taxes, correct? Indeed, why not increase taxes? There is no apparent effect on hiring. According to the author, there are no discernible negative effects at all.)

Because if they don’t, some other company will, and they’ll soon be out of business. Doubt me? Go ask Walmart about the lesson they recently learned. (What lessons might those be, Mr. Clifton? Do you even know?

The author never puts two and two together. You see, a business needs to be competitive in order to succeed. That is, it needs to be efficient, innovative, and a discerner of the economics involved. Taxes are an obstacle to that must be planned around, they are a burden, a disincentive to push forward into the unknown.

That's the bottom line to the discussion, which the author avoids: Taxes are always a problem for business.)

Abortions 

This one is pretty simple. People are going to have sex. Liberals, conservatives, Christians, Muslims, atheists – we’re all doing it. (Yes, of course. People have sex. They have had sex since the first human crawled out of the primordial ooze. Since this is true, his point is irrelevant, because sex is a permanent feature of life. But abortion is a relatively recent phenomenon on the scene. 

This means the author is smokescreening. Abortion is a subtopic of sex. The author avoids abortion by taking about sex.)

You can pray really hard for people to stay abstinent from sex until marriage, but for the vast majority of Americans it’s not going to happen. (Now the author conflates abortion and abstinence. There is no necessary connection between the two.

And notice the pejorative characterization. Those stupid praying Christians are the problem... 

The author is apparently unacquainted with historical trends, doubtless because he's too young to remember. Unwanted babies and the need for abortion haven't been large problems until relatively recently in history. Previously, people tended to behave in traditionally moral ways, and confined their sexual activities to the confines of marriage. There was social and moral pressure to raise children in intact marriages. And society flourished. 

But because of the implementation of "progressive" philosophy, moral and societal restraints have been vilified, impugned, and generally cast off as a repressive condition of a bygone era. Thus, the problem has been created by progressivism, and now they seek to remedy what they created by the wholesale slaughter of innocent unborn babies. So the innocent are made to pay for the activities and policies of the libertines.)

Sex sometimes leads to pregnancy. Some are planned, some are not. Many unplanned pregnancies are the result of sexual activity without any kind of birth control being used. (Oops. So it's not about abstinence, it's now about birth control.)

The more unplanned pregnancies that occur, the higher the abortion rate goes. (So in the linear progression of the author's logic, people have sex; people sometimes have unprotected sex; then people need to have abortions. Do you notice any gaps in the progression? Here's a few:

• Adoption
• Moral pressure from religion and society
• Self control and virtue
• Honoring life by protecting the unborn
• Improving families by advocating marriage
• Recognizing the superior results of intact families

The author jumps straight to abortion. It's the laser focus on killing babies that prevents the author from considering that a deteriorating society is a primary driver of unwanted pregnancies. If the Left weren't so intent on destroying families and traditional morality, society wouldn't have to bail out the Left via abortion.)

So if you’re truly against abortion, and the fact being that a woman’s right to have an abortion has been deemed a Constitutional right, ("Deemed?" So a few black robed high priests of the judicial system placed their stamp of approval, and thus created a constitutional right? 

How the Left loves Roe v. Wade! But they hate Citizens United. And I'm sure Dred Scott does not number among their favorites. Suffice to say, the Left appeals to "the settled law of the land" as rendered by the Court - - until the Court does something they don't like. In the meantime, because it's a "constitutional right," apparently we should have as many abortions as possible.)

wouldn’t it just make more sense to make birth control as widely available as possible? And wouldn’t it just make more sense to properly educate our children about sex rather than pretend like if we don’t mention it they’ll never find out about it? (Really? As if birth control isn't on the shelves of every retail outlet in America. And might we be so impudent to point out that the Left has had free rein in public schools for decades, teaching children the vibrant details of every sort of sexual act and how to do it safely? 

So how is it that there is still all this unprotected sex despite the Left's best efforts? Would it be too soon to proclaim their efforts to be an abject failure?)

Isn’t it better if younger Americans learn about sex from an educational standpoint as opposed to the stuff they’ll find on the internet? (Clearly the answer is no, in view of the results of the Left's existing efforts. But also, notice the false binary equation. This is not an either/or. There are other alternatives. 

In addition, there is no basis to claim that sex-educated kids are not viewing sexual things on the internet. The one does not preclude the other.

As an aside, remember the author's condescending statement about "...people who base facts and reality based on what they want to be real instead of what actually is real?" Thus we are presented with an apparent thinking man's take on the issue, and we note for the record a lazy intellect, a person unjustifiably persuaded of his superior reasoning skills.)  

Or do you really think that the best way to lower abortion rates is to oppose birth control, reject sex education being taught in schools and push the unrealistic notion of abstinence? Because reality, and common sense, tell us that combining those three things undoubtedly leads to more abortions. (Waaaait. The current status of public schools is the lionization of birth control, the de rigueur promulgation of sex ed, and a palpable hostility toward abstinence, and yet we still have over 700,000 abortions per year. But for some reason the author blames factors that are not in operation!)

Republicans are Fiscally Conservative 

(Switching from conservatives to Republicans again. However, we don't think there is a single conservative who would claim that the Republicans are fiscally conservative. In fact, the chief complaint of conservatives is that Republicans AREN'T conservative, they spend like Democrats. 

In addition, since there are precious few actual conservatives holding national elective office, they cannot be blamed for our fiscal woes. They simply don't have the political power to implement anything. 

And might we remind the author about the media-trumpeted rift between conservative factions and establishment Republicans, which resulted in the ouster of centrist Republican John Boehner? No one can honestly evaluate the situation and claim that Republicans are fiscally conservative. 

Far from this being a "conservative talking point," conservatives claim just the opposite.)

Another easy one. Nearly every Republican I’ve ever met sings the praises of “conservative legend” Ronald Reagan. But can you guess who the last Republican president was to actually balance the budget? Hint: It wasn’t Reagan. It was actually Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950′s. (It is the constitutional responsibility of the House of Representatives to make and keep a budget, balanced or otherwise. Presidents do not have that authority, and even if they did, we have a compartmentalized government that requires obtaining majorities in the House and the Senate. 

And we know that conservatives did not dominate either branch of Congress during Reagan's two terms. The fact that he was able to pass any of his agenda is very nearly a miracle. 

But Reagan somehow managed to deliver some success. Revenues nearly doubled to the treasury during his terms. However, all the revenue in the world cannot make up for the gargantuan democratic spending that was implemented during those 8 years. It's convenient to blame Reagan, but reality shows us otherwise.)

Republicans controlled all, if not a part, of Congress for nearly all of Bush’s eight years in the White House. (Whoops. Topic change. Now we're back to talking about Republicans. Conservatives again were left sitting on the bench while these "moderate" republicans simply knuckled under in the face of the Left's protestations and constant criticism. Thus the implemented agenda was Left, not Right.)

Guess what? We went from a balanced budget (When, in the 50s? Or does he think that the budget was balanced during the Clinton years? This persistent myth is false.) 

to doubling our national debt. And he did that by cutting taxes right as he started two wars. You don’t cut revenue right when you plan to spend trillions you don’t have. How’s that fiscally conservative? (How strange it is for the author to ask why a moderate Republican president isn't fiscally conservative. Even still, the author's ideology blinds him to the facts. Below is a chart of government receipts and outlays. Notice that after a small decrease in tax receipts, due largely to the recession Bush inherited, that revenues started increasing again. Spending increased all the more, which means it isn't a revenue problem, it's a spending problem.

Reagan, the conservative legend, massively grew our national debt too. (Once again we note that revenues increased substantially over Reagan's term. And once again we note that spending with a democratic congress increased even more.)

Even George H. Bush, in just four years, managed to grow our national debt. So, how can your party be the party for “fiscal responsibility” when for over five decades Republicans haven’t once balanced the budget? Heck, they haven’t even come close. (Since he attributes to the presidency the power to balance budgets, can we ask when a democratic president balanced the budget? Harry Truman in 1946 was the last one. Not a single one since. Not JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton, or Obama [Note the above chart shows a surplus during the Clinton years. This is not correct, when considering the fact that the National Debt continued to increase over this time.] 

The author uses the phrase "fiscal responsibility" in connection with balancing the budget. Can we then deem these Democrats as fiscally irresponsible?)

Christianity and our Constitution 

(The author constructs a straw man. No Christian claims the Constitution is Christian. There are many, however, who have claimed the nation was founded on Christian principles. Let's document this claim:

John Adams: "The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity."

John Quincy Adams: "In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity."

Any unbiased investigator would agree that the Founder's Christian faith played a pivotal role in the founding of the nation.)

Real simple. The words “Christian” and “Christianity” don’t appear even once in our Constitution. (This is a strange claim. The Constitution is the document that creates government and describes its powers. Why would such a document address Christianity?)

With all these men who many conservatives claim were Christians (many weren’t by the way), (This is the leftist narrative, but it isn't true. Of the 150 or so Founders, only a few could be considered non-religious. Most were what only could be described as right wing extremists. They were almost universally committed Christians. This isn't even debatable for the honest inquirer.)

doesn’t it seem as if those words would have found their way in there somewhere… anywhere? Even just once? (No, not at all. The document is about government.)

Right now if you took 50 Christian conservatives and had them draw up a new Constitution, do you believe that those words would still be omitted? (Yes. That's exactly what happened on September 17, 1787. A bunch of Christian conservatives gave us this very document.

Again, the Constitution is about government powers. But let's remind ourselves that religion/God is mentioned in the Constitution either directly or indirectly several times.

1. The Preamble: "...secure the Blessings of Liberty..." There cannot be blessing without a Blesser.
2. Article 6: "...but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office..."
3. Article 7: " the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven..." Whose Lord? Was it Buddha, Allah, or Shiva? No, it was "our Lord," the God of the Bible.
4. The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

And let's not forget the Declaration of Independence, upon which the legitimacy of the Constitution is based:

1. "...the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God..."
2. "... they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."
3. "...appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions..."
4. "...with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence..."

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that religion was very much on the mind of the Founders.)

It’s highly unlikely. So it doesn’t make any sense to believe that our Founding Fathers meant for this nation to be founded on Christianity, yet left all mention of Christianity out of our Constitution. (This is a particularly inane conclusion that can only be arrived at if one is completely ignorant of history and the founders' writings.)

If anything the fact that neither word appears even once in our Constitution seems to be by the Founding Fathers’ “intelligent design” rather than by accident. 

Liberals are Socialists/Communists/Fascists 

First, all three of these are different ideologies. You can’t be all three. (No one has claimed that liberals are simultaneously all three.)

Besides, while you do often find far-left liberals who are true socialists, neo-Nazi’s (sic) are found on the far-right. (No, neo Nazis are totalitarians, which belongs on the Left. It is common for the Left to place Nazis on the far right [of course they want to avoid owning their ideological brothers], but this is not correct.)

You know, the fascists. (Fascism advocates government control of business and the economy. This is squarely authoritarian and belongs on the left.)

Second, this belief that “socialism” is completely terrible is ridiculous. ("Completely terrible?" Tens of millions of dead at the hands of socialists, but hey, there's still a little good there...)

Public roads, public schools, the post office, our military, the police, fire fighters, public drinking water, stop signs, traffic lights, our national parks, the Interstate Highway system, our country’s largest universities, Social Security, Medicare – all brought to us by some form of socialism. Just to name a few. (Profoundly incorrect. Most of this list has nothing to do with socialism.

• The Post Office: The Constitution [Article One, Section Eight] specifically empowers government to "...establish Post Offices and post Roads...," and to create and maintain the military in Article One, Section Eight: "...To raise and support Armies... To provide and maintain a Navy..." 

• Police, schools, fire fighters, stop signs, traffic lights, and public drinking water: These are all state and local entities, and as such do not support the author's argument.

• National Parks: Article Four, Section Three empowers Congress to "...have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States..."

• Universities: Article One Section Eight also empowers government to "...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." As an aside, it is worth noting that most of "our country's largest universities" were started and ran by the church.

With the exception of Social Security and Medicare, none of these things have anything to do with Socialism, that is, a "...social and economic system characterized by social ownership and control of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy..." And we certainly know what disasters Social Security and Medicare are.

You can start to get the idea of how really ignorant the author's assertions are.)

So unless conservatives oppose all of those things, they’re supporting some forms of socialism as well. Alright, I’ll go ahead and wrap this up. While I know it probably won’t make any difference with most conservatives, I just thought I’d write out a pretty straight-forward and simple common sense guide for addressing these five popular conservative talking points.

(Unfortunately, the author's failure is complete.)