hi dig and csl,
you know it is atomic bob who has these rules about swear words and i reckon it behoves us to respect them - as he provides this site just to be a nice guy! It isn't a business. But it is up to you if you wish to police yourself. You're not a kid. I'm not here to provide a fence for you to push against. There's no fence other than the one you impose on yourself.
i think - csl - you are only one small step away from being a conservative.
Don't wish to patronise with lesson, but the foundation of the conservative idea (and why it is called conservatism) is that you respect what you have received and mess with it at your risk.
That doesn't mean you cleave to some ancient version of virtue, such as a constitution. Instead, you cleave to the social structures that have gradually emerged over time, as wisdom accrues bit by bit through experience.
This means that a conservative is reverent of, and seeks to conserve, the structures received from his/her parents, and that they received from their parents.
Over time, the wisdom of each generation creates a more robust architecture.
This is in stark contrast to the idea of originalism. Originalism is not a conservative idea. It is a romantic ideology. It demands that the founders must have envisaged all possibilities and found the perfect principles for all time. But we (and they) know they were just humanoids like you and me, subject to limitations, unable to foresee the future. They embedded the ability to amend the constitution into the document itself.
Burke, who is the original conservative, lived around the same period as the founders. He wasn't anti-government. He accommodated it. He respected it. He also respected personal liberty and knew there was a conversation between these ideas.
If you were a conservative, I think you would see the value in FEMA. We learnt under Bush that FEMA can be a very useful thing if it is run well. We learnt this the hard way. From what Gov Christie says, it is now a very useful resource as it was intended to be. He is saying a conservative thing when he does so. Obama was being a conservative when he sought to prepare FEMA for disaster.
This makes Romney, who wants to dismantle FEMA, not a conservative but a vandal. You too, I'm afraid.
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