I am from a conservative state originally...

• McCain to attend debate. - Guess the crisis is over! nm
  • I'm glad its over - haven't seen the news yet - me
  • He got done what he needed to get done... - sam
    • Sam, was he your choice from the very beginning - Curious
      • No, I will be honest, I waffled between he and two others at first... - sam
        • My mom voted for the first time in 40 years - Curious
          • I am from a conservative state originally... - sam

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

Two Border State Governors Declare Illegal Immigration State of Emergency

SIGN THE PETITION!
CLICK HERE!

THANK YOU!

Many people were confined against their will just because someone wanted them "out of the way." These were normal people with no mental illness - that is why it is so difficult - don't blame the liberals. Blame your state.

CONFINING THE MENTALLY ILL


In the legal space between what a society should and should not do, taking action to restrict the liberty of people who are mentally ill sits in the grayest of gray areas.

Our notions about civil and constitutional rights flow from an assumption of "normalcy." Step beyond the boundaries and arrest and prison may legally follow. Short of that, government's ability to hold people against their will is severely and properly limited. Unusual behavior on the part of someone who is mentally ill is not illegal behavior. Freedom can't be snatched away on a whim, or on the thought that a person is hard to look at, hard to hear, hard to smell.

It was only a few decades ago that the promise of new medications and a change in attitude opened the doors of the mental hospitals and sent many patients into society. There, they would somehow "normalize" and join everyone else, supported by networks of out-patient facilities, job training, special living arrangements and regular, appropriate medication. But the transition has been imperfect, long and difficult.

In some parts of urban America there is little professional support for those with mental health problems. A new generation of drug and alcohol-fueled mental illness has come on the scene. People frequently end up on the street, un-medicated and exhibiting a full range of behaviors that are discomforting at the very least and threatening at their worst.

Written last Thanksgiving:  "Some would argue that two different nations actually celebrated: upright, moral, traditional red America and the dissolute, liberal blue states clustered on the periphery of the heartland. The truth, however, is much more complicated and interesting than that.

Take two iconic states: Texas and Massachusetts. In some ways, they were the two states competing in the last election. In the world's imagination, you couldn't have two starker opposites. One is the homeplace of Harvard, gay marriage, high taxes, and social permissiveness. The other is Bush country, solidly Republican, traditional, and gun-toting. Massachusetts voted for Kerry over Bush 62 to 37 percent; Texas voted for Bush over Kerry 61 to 38 percent.

So ask yourself a simple question: which state has the highest divorce rate? Marriage was a key issue in the last election, with Massachusetts' gay marriages becoming a symbol of alleged blue state decadence and moral decay. But in actual fact, Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country at 2.4 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants. Texas - which until recently made private gay sex a criminal offence - has a divorce rate of 4.1. A fluke? Not at all. The states with the highest divorce rates in the U.S. are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. And the states with the lowest divorce rates are: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Every single one of the high divorce rate states went for Bush. Every single one of the low divorce rate states went for Kerry. The Bible Belt divorce rate, in fact, is roughly 50 percent higher than the national average.

Some of this discrepancy can be accounted for by the fact that couples tend to marry younger in the Bible Belt - and many clearly don't have the maturity to know what they're getting into. There's some correlation too between rates of college education and stable marriages, with the Bible Belt lagging a highly educated state like Massachusetts. But the irony still holds. Those parts of America that most fiercely uphold what they believe are traditional values are not those parts where traditional values are healthiest. Hypocrisy? Perhaps. A more insightful explanation is that these socially troubled communities cling onto absolutes in the abstract because they cannot live up to them in practice.

But doesn't being born again help bring down divorce rates? Jesus, after all, was mum on the subject of homosexuality, but was very clear about divorce, declaring it a sin unless adultery was involved. A recent study, however, found no measurable difference in divorce rates between those who are "born again" and those who are not. 29 percent of Baptists have been divorced, compared to 21 percent of Catholics. Moreover, a staggering 23 percent of married born-agains have been divorced twice or more. Teen births? Again, the contrast is striking. In a state like Texas, where the religious right is extremely strong and the rhetoric against teenage sex is gale-force strong, the teen births as a percentage of all births is 16.1 percent. In liberal, secular, gay-friendly Massachusetts, it's 7.4, almost half. Marriage itself is less popular in Texas than in Massachusetts. In Texas, the percent of people unmarried is 32.4 percent; in Massachusetts, it's 26.8 percent. So even with a higher marriage rate, Massachusetts manages a divorce rate almost half of its "conservative" rival.

Or take abortion. America is one of the few Western countries where the legality of abortion is still ferociously disputed. It's a country where the religious right is arguably the strongest single voting bloc, and in which abortion is a constant feature of cultural politics. Compare it to a country like Holland, perhaps the epitome of socially liberal, relativist liberalism. So which country has the highest rate of abortion? It's not even close. America has an abortion rate of 21 abortions per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44. Holland has a rate of 6.8. Americans, in other words, have three times as many abortions as the Dutch. Remind me again: which country is the most socially conservative?

Even a cursory look at the leading members of the forces of social conservatism in America reveals the same pattern. The top conservative talk-radio host, Rush Limbaugh, has had three divorces and an addiction to pain-killers. The most popular conservative television personality, Bill O'Reilly, just settled a sex harassment suit that indicated a highly active adulterous sex life. Bill Bennett, the guru of the social right, was for many years a gambling addict. Karl Rove's chief outreach manager to conservative Catholics for the last four years, Deal Hudson, also turned out to be a man with a history of sexual harassment. Bob Barr, the conservative Georgian congressman who wrote the "Defense of Marriage Act," has had three wives so far. The states which register the highest ratings for the hot new television show, "Desperate Housewives," are all Bush-states.

The complicated truth is that America truly is a divided and conflicted country. But it's a grotesque exaggeration to say that the split is geographical, or correlated with blue and red states. Many of America's biggest "sinners" are those most intent on upholding virtue. In fact, it may be partly because they know sin so close-up that they want to prevent its occurrence among others. And some of those states which have the most liberal legal climate - the Northeast and parts of the upper MidWest - are also, in practice, among the most socially conservative. To ascribe all this to "hypocrisy" seems to me too crude an explanation. America is simply a far more complicated and diverse place than crude red and blue divisions can explain.

they are adding police and only in the big cities do they have paid firemen. The rest are volunteers.

I look at it this way: If a state can't stay in the black, then they have to cut spending some place that wouldn't jeopardize the safety of the citizens. Threats of cutting essential services like Barney Fife stated today are unjustified. Cut the non-essential services first.

Our governor talks about cutting back on services, laying off government workers, which I think is a good idea because government is too big anyway, but then he turns around and spends more money on non-essential items. Doesn't make sense.  

than an "anything goes" liberal. Yeah, we make mistakes sometimes, and we're not perfect, but at least we have a goal we're striving for. And for every conservative you ridicule, I could name 5 liberals that did the same thing but the media doesn't make a big thing about it. Of course, if it's a conservative, it's broadcast 24/7 - like Sanford - but the Edwards affair was actually covered up by the mainstream media and got no attention until the National Enquirer forced it into the open. Selective outrage, anyone?

I try not to visit the bog of eternal stench. Funny though...sm

or else you'd have mastered the art of "twisting" and wouldn't have such high regard for the truth.

Lesson 1:  Visit the Conservative Board and study closely.

(Lesson 2 will follow as soon as you have successfully completed Lesson 1.)

You apparently have issues that are not going to be solved by endless bashing on a liberal board.

Although I may not like the rules on this board I am mature and courteous enough to at least try to follow them. 

icon, declares McCain temprament unfit for presidency.  You don't get any more conservative than George Will.  Meanwhile, Sara P has pictures taken with foreign leaders but absolutely no questions allowed.  Photo op.

"Smaller government and lower taxes" is one of those slogans that our side slings around but doesn't have any real meaning that allows us to defend it.

You can't just say such things without defining your terms.  How small should government be?  How low should taxes be?  Government - at every level - DOES have a critical role to play in the life of this nation.  We could never defend ourselves from foreign enemies, create a nationwide system of roads, or even coordinate interstate commerce among the states if not for federal government.  You'd be paying tariffs on everything produced in other states, for instance.

We need law enforcement agencies that operate at every level of government.  We need coordinated programs to help deal with problems like unemployment.  We need to know that our food and our drugs are safe. 

A better slogan would be "Only as much government as needed to do the relatively few things that government does well, and only the taxes needed to support it." 

where we are free to talk about the extreme hatefulness coming from this board.  However, when some people wish the president dead...well that's bordering on a THREAT to the president.  I actually be afraid to post things like that.  You might receive a friendly knock on the door from the FBI.

Again, There were trolls on the liberal board (no consistent moniker that's the first thing that gives trolls away) posting VERY NASTY replies anytime a conservative posted anything on THEIR OWN BOARD.  It takes a lot nerve to argue with the administrator of this board who can delete you and ban you for any reason. It is a private board BTW no public doman.   Many of you have been stalking on the conservative board for weeks.  You have been posting near threats on the president....what do you expect the administrator to do!?  Start talking about real subjects and quit having a hate fest over here and you might find the administrator a little more sympathetic to your plight....