Our Society Is Dedicated To Promoting And Conserving The: Fill & Download for Free

Star Trek, particularly The Original Series, embodies the radical idea that both liberalism and conservatism are necessary to arrive at the best possible answer.Consider the second pilot episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before. Attempting to explore beyond the edge of the galaxy, the Enterprise encounters an energy barrier that gives crewmember Gary Mitchell extraordinary god-like powers. In a classic liberal lesson of absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely, Mitchell sees himself superior to the rest of humanity and plots to conquer the ship.But the real drama is between Kirk and Spock:SPOCK: Recommendation one. There's a planet a few light days away from here. Delta Vega. It has a lithium cracking station. We may be able to adapt some of its power packs to our engines.KIRK: And if we can't? We'll be trapped in orbit there. We haven't enough power to blast back out.SPOCK: It is the only possible way to get Mitchell off this ship.KIRK: If you mean strand Mitchell there, I won't do it. That station is fully automated. There's not a soul on the whole planet. Even the ore ships call only once every twenty years.SPOCK: Then you have one other choice. Kill Mitchell while you still can.KIRK: Get out of here.SPOCK: It is your only other choice, assuming you make it while you still have time.KIRK: Will you try for one moment to feel? At least act like you've got a heart. We're talking about Gary.SPOCK: The captain of the Valiant probably felt the same way, and he waited too long to make his decision. I think we've both guessed that.KIRK: Set course for Delta Vega.This is a classic dialogue between liberalism, driven by compassion, and conservatism, anchored to ugly reality. Spock knows that compassion must be tempered by realism, or else it leads to tragedy. Kirk knows this too, but resists the path until there is no other alternative.In The Enemy Within, this dualism is literally split for viewers to examine. Due to a transporter malfunction, Kirk is split into two halves: one is compassionate and sympathetic while the other is aggressive and impulsive. Neither half is able to successfully command the Enterprise. The aggressive half is, well, too aggressive to succeed while the compassionate one is too indecisive.Unsatisfied with the present, liberalism tries to summon the future, sometimes at great cost. Conservatism fears giving up hard-won wisdoms, sometimes risking stagnation. Neither is right all the time, and it is the struggle between them that has steered the world to prosperity.City on the Edge of Forever dramatizes this tension remarkably. When the Enterprise finds a time-portal, a series of accidents strands McCoy in the past, where he inadvertently alters history. Kirk and Spock journey back in time to rescue McCoy and undo his mistake.They end up in 1930s America, during the Great Depression and just before World War II. Kirk meets and falls in love with Edith Keeler, a woman who has dedicated her life to helping the poor and who believes that peace is always the best policy.SPOCK: This is how history went after McCoy changed it. Here, in the late 1930s. A growing pacifist movement whose influence delayed the United States' entry into the Second World War. While peace negotiations dragged on, Germany had time to complete its heavy-water experiments.KIRK: Germany. Fascism. Hitler.SPOCK: They won the Second World War. Because all this lets them develop the A-bomb first. There's no mistake, Captain. Let me run it again. Edith Keeler. Founder of the peace movement.KIRK: But she was right. Peace was the way.SPOCK: She was right, but at the wrong time. With the A-bomb, and with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.KIRK: No.SPOCK: And all this because McCoy came back and somehow kept her from dying in a street accident as she was meant to. We must stop him, Jim.KIRK: How did she die? What day?SPOCK: We can estimate general happenings from these images, but I can't trace down precise actions at exact moments, Captain. I'm sorry.KIRK: Spock, I believe I'm in love with Edith Keeler.SPOCK: Jim, Edith Keeler must die.This is a remarkable episode, written by the inimitable Harlan Ellison, and it simultaneously advances both liberal and conservative ideas. On the one hand, it clearly promotes peace and charity as the highest ideals: they are the way of the future. But on the other hand, it clearly states that when faced by evil, good people must nevertheless prepare for war. Ideals are not enough—one must also have the power to defend them, by force of arms if necessary.I don’t know of any other series that would dare to suggest that killing the leader of a pacifist movement could sometimes be the wisest course of action.Star Trek endures because it holds up a mirror to our present society and examines it through a sci-fi lens. Yet its genius is that the mirror reveals both liberal and conservative ideas, not because it’s trying to promote a false balance, but because that’s how the world really is.

If you believe that everything about your politics must be dominated by a single defining characteristic about you, regardless of your beliefs, knowledge, experiences, aspirations, or virtually anything else about you, then no, the Republican Party has no room for you. Of course, that has nothing to do with you being gay/black/female/immigrant/ext… it is because you define your politics based on identity, which is fundamentally prejudicial in all future policies such an ideology could create.And if you think and feel this way, then you also aren’t a Conservative.If, however, you view that vast social programs often do more harm than good, primarily to those they are intended to aid, you might really like the Republican party. If you feel that a massive bureaucracy is cannibalistic to the society it is intended to serve, you might like being a Republican. If you feel that we are living in the most prosperous time in human history specifically because the civilization we have, yeah Republican is the way to go. You want to be a successful and thriving member of the middle class, maybe with aspirations of the upper middle class or greater? There’s a party for that. You want to go a night club and hope that some good guy with a gun is allowed to protect the rest of you, or that you want to maybe be that guy yourself, you definitely want to be a Republican. I could go on, but I don’t think I have to.The fact is, the Republican party is the only party that has room for conservatives, of any identity group. Or perhaps we don’t remember when Peter Thiel came out at the Republican National Convention… as Gay Republican? You remember what happened next? Standing ovation.I’ll do you one better, maybe you’re trying to navigate the sea of diversity in the Republican Party. It’s hard when you’re told we’re all just a bunch of evil white men who hate you, so no judging if you don’t know your way around, but there is a group specifically created for you… over three decades ago.They are the Log Cabin Republicans: Log Cabin Republicans. Their main page says it all.Log Cabin Republicans is the nation’s largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives and allies. For more than 30 years, we have promoted the fight for equality through our state and local chapters, our full-time office in Washington, DC, and our federal and state political action committees.So yes, there have been plenty of opportunities for gay conservatives to be a part of the Republican party.

There are Democrats, Republicans, and independents who believe this. Government can and should help the poor because private, voluntary charity falls short.It's important to promote equality of opportunity.You really can't assure that everyone gets an equal opportunity in life if you rely on private voluntary charity or public efforts alone, but together, they help bring our country closer to that goal.The principle of equality of opportunity begins with education. If you believe that everyone deserves the right to some sort of education, even those who are orphaned at birth or born into extreme poverty, then you have to fund that in some way. It's arguable that something ought to be spent to facilitate this.The nation's private philanthropic institutions are simply not large enough to fund educational efforts for our country on a national basis. The endowments of top 10 largest US charitable institutions total around $200 billion.[1] Assuming they give away 5% of that money per year or less, that's less than $10 billion. If you look at the total giving by all charities, individuals, and institutions, the total is around $300 billion, of which about $40 billion goes towards education.[3] In contrast, spending on public schools alone exceeds $500 billion.[2]It's sad but true that the US private charities simply don't have the scope to attack problems at a large enough scale on a national basis.It would be unfair if poor people didn't have access to schools because of an absence of funding. There should be at least some effort to normalize the playing field and give poorer Americans a chance.Also, under the equality of opportunity banner, come things like food and healthcare for children who can't afford it - and whose parents can't afford it.Beyond equality of opportunity, private charities do not really have the scale to attack a wide variety of problems.You could argue that, for example, scientific discoveries in this country are hugely helped by public efforts in addition to private ones. Private giving for health in this country total $25 billion. I don't know how much of that goes to research, but the NIH budget alone is $28 billion.[4] Government health spending is orders of magnitude larger than that. The point is that government really does things at a scale that private charities can only dream of.You can argue that everyone has a right to life. Spending on Medicaid, the government's health program for the poor is around $400 billion[6], in contrast to the less than $30 billion given to any health related private charities.Everyone has a right to food. It's part of the right to life. The cost of food stamps alone is around $75 billion.[7] More is spent on food and shelter at the local level via homeless shelters. In contrast, all private charitable giving to human services which includes a wide variety of causes totals $35 billion.[3]I believe that it's the right thing to do in this country that we prevent people from dying and give them basic access to food and healthcare, so that they can get back on their feet. I think providing life is one of the basic decencies one can offer.Again, private charitable giving simply has nowhere near the scale needed to do this sort of thing.The list goes on.You could make an argument that if governments stopped giving, rich people might step in and fill the void. However, experience suggests that's unlikely to occur. For more on that, see How do the super-rich spend their money?It's interesting to see the list of what gets funded via private charities:2011 Contributions By Type of Recipient OrganizationReligion $95.88 billionEducation $38.87 billionGifts to Foundations* $25.83 billionHuman Services $35.39 billionPublic-Society Benefit $21.37 billionHealth $24.75 billionInternational Affairs $22.68 billionArts, Culture & Humanities $13.12 billionEnvironment & Animals $7.81 billionFoundation Grants to Individuals $3.75 billionUnallocated $8.97 billion*Estimate developed jointly by Foundation Center and Giving USA[3]Interestingly, the one area where private charities outspend government on a wide scale is religion. $95 billion is spent on private charities that are religious in nature.[3] In theory church and state are supposed to remain separate, so the government should not spend money on charities that are primarily religious in nature.Private charities also make a huge difference with respect to arts, culture and the humanities. The budget for the National Endowment for the Arts is around $135 million, which pales in comparison to the $13 billion that is given away privately to arts, culture and humanities.Beyond that government excels at the management of public assets. It's rare to see parks that are funded via donations and endowments. Most parks are managed by federal, state, and local governments.Taking these figures into account, it's easy to see why some of the biggest, most successful charities actually focus some effort on influencing the government. Pew Trusts, for example, prioritizes improving public policy and has had a number of notable achievements.One example of this is the Pew's work to protect marine ecosystems for future generations:Global Ocean Legacy originated as an outgrowth of work done by Pew in 2005–2006 to support the creation of a fully protected marine reserve in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. That effort resulted in designation of the largest, permanent “no-take” marine reserve in the world. The area measures 360,000 square kilometers (138,000 square miles) and includes reefs, atolls, shoals and islands in largely unspoiled condition.Inspired by this success, the Pew-managed Global Ocean Legacy project is dedicated to establishing, globally, over the next decade, at least three to five large, world-class, no-take marine reserves. Global Ocean Legacy marine reserves will provide ocean-scale ecosystem benefits and help conserve our global marine heritage.[5]This is really an example of how private charities can work together with governments to achieve big goals and make dreams happen.So that's another way to view this debate. Private charities are typically more nimble. They can do research that government can't or won't fund, and provide research on why various initiatives are important to pass. They can then put that research in the hands of governments. By doing so they can leverage the dollars they spend on that research to create far-reaching change.The needs of the poor are often things we all need. Everybody can benefit from a basic level of environmental protection, scientific research. Private charities don't have the scale to do those things either.However, most importantly the poor especially benefit from an equality of opportunity and the basic right to life, and for better or worse, private charities simply don't have the scale to provide that.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_charitable_foundations[2] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20.html[3] http://www.nps.gov/partnerships/fundraising_individuals_statistics.htm[4] http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/09/sequestration-would-cut-us-scien.html[5] http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_detail.aspx?id=136[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/us/politics/campaigns-have-sharply-different-visions-for-medicaid.html[7] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-05/food-stamps-the-new-normal.html