Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Souder Begs Of Me?

I was fairly surprised to get a beg letter from Congressman Mark Souder, a Republican representing Indiana's District #3, covering the northeast corner of the state. Surprised, because I live in District #5, in the central part of the state.

The gist of the beg is that Souder is under attack by 'liberals', and that he is a good 'conservative'.

These terms are relative, of course. I consider myself a conservative in that I am to conserve the traditions of the Founders. This is not how most people portray conservatism today, although Souder's letter does site the Founders, so I'll hold him to it.

Souder describes himself as not a 'big spender'. Yet he votes consistently to fund Amtrak, voted to subsidize private health insurance, and votes in favor of farm subsidies- all hallmarks of big spending as far as I can tell. Source.

Mainly, I just don't trust a Republican who voted with George Bush on so many government growing budget items who then turns around and slams the Obama Administration for doing exactly the same things, only at a greater degree. I don't care to shade bad policy in terms of very bad and extremely bad. Bad is bad.

I'd be much happier to see Mark Souder replaced with a Libertarian- a conservative who meets my definitions of the word, conserving the actual principles of the Founders.

2 comments:

Doug said...

I don't disagree with your analysis of Souder, but as I see it, libertarianism conserves only some of the values of the Founders.

Slavery is the most glaring exception. A number of the Founders owned slaves. Slavery was enshrined by the Founders in the Constitution. But, libertarianism would seem to be the strongest anti-slavery philosophy there is. (Except, I suppose, for those who would go so far as to suggest that a man should be free to sell himself into bondage.)

Mike Kole said...

Quite true about libertarianism. The Founders were not perfect, and their error in slavery is gigantic. But, it was also a compromise that made the government possible.

Perhaps slavery is one large reason so many libertarians are so anti-compromise.