Conservative: What (Who?) Is a Conservative (Free Market)?

To be a modern conservative (see previous two entries before the related entry earlier tonight), you MUST believe in free markets, and free market theory.

Barack Obama is NOT a conservative (surprise!!!).  It is NOT enough to SAY you believe in free markets and free trade, you must ACTUALLY believe in those things. 

Yes, this is directly related to the first two principles (see those same two referenced entries) fundamental t modern conservatism.  IF you really believe in free market theory, you CANNOT beieve in a continually expanding Federal "solution" to all problems.  Further, conservatives believe that people should be responsible (mainly) for their own lives, which is the first fundamental principle of modern conservatism.  That means that people should have the FREEDOM to both succeed AND FAIL.  That does not mean we have to let people starve to death (we don't).  It DOES mean that we do not "use" the Federal Government to try to keep people from ever failing.

Is Pat Buchanan a mondern conservative?  I don't think so.  Yes, there IS a conservative "tradition" of "America First", which exhibited itself in a "fortress America" ISOLATIONIST foreign policy and a protectionist trade policy based on the theory that we do not NEED foreign  countries.  As far as I am concerned, Pearl Harbor discredited these people (including Pat Buchanan) for all time.  This was confirmed by the global economy we have today, and the fact that protectionism was one of the MAIN causes of the Great Depression.  In a global economy, you CANNOT believe in "free markets" just for the United States.  It is intellectuallt inconsistent, and factually absurd. 

This brings us to poor Barack Obama (the man is NOT "qualified" to be President).  He says he is for "free trade" and free markets.  That is a LIE.  It is objectively a LIE.  He has said he wants to unilaterraly renegotiate NAFTA to place "conditions" favored by the AFL-CIO.  He has OPPOSED the free trade deal with Columbia, even though the governemnt of Columbia has been doing its best to crack down of the drug trade (with some success, as distinguished from the FAILED country of Mexico where MURDER is occurring as we speak within 10 miles of where I am typing this, as a DRUG WAR--between drug cartels--continues along the Mexican side of the Mexican border).

Obama is a captive/leader of the FAR LEFT of the Democratic Party, which does not believe either in free market theory or free trade.  You know it. I know it.  So why the LIE?   Well, leftists persist in trying to prove Lincoln right that you CAN fool "some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time".

As I have shown repeatedly, free market theory is the ONLLY mechanism which even theoretically allocates resources properly (over time).  Central planning has proven a failure throughout history, and there is not even a theoretical reason for believing it can work.  Fallible human beings CANNOT know enough to DIRECT the proper allocation of resources, and when they try unsucessfully, it is an absoulute DISASTER.  That is becuase central planning is, basically by definition, NOT self-correcting, and the inevitgable, terrible mistakes are not corrected until it is far too late.

Meanwhile, free markets ARE self-correcting, and not subject to polical agenda. 

Does John McCain believe in free markiets?  Nope.  You can't believe in free markets and propose all of this "global warming" CENTRAL PLANNING>

Do big corporate types believe in free markets?  Here, you have to make a distinction.  SOME of them (although not, I suspect, most) may BELIEVE in free markets, for everyone but themselves.  Big corporate types believe in corporate EMPIRES, and they regard competition and free markets as an IMPEDIMENT to those empires.   That is why it is a mistake to believe that most big corporate types are conservatives, just as it is an obvious mistake to believe that most rich people are conservative (Kennedys, Clintons, Obamas, Edwards', etc.).

However, there is no questioin that you simply cannot claim to be a modern conservative and not believe in free markets--including free trade (which may be negotiated to try to keep the "playing field" "level" by not allowing barrieers one way which do not exist the other, but CANNOT be netotiated on the basis of imposing leftist views of the rights of "workers" throughout the world--much less the "environment").

I am sorry if that exculdes Pat Buchanan, and the "populist" conservatives who may think like him.  I just don't see how they can claim to be modern conservatives, and I think history has left them behind (as I say, Pearl Harbor really doomed these people to being MARGINAL players).  The world is just too small now to believe that you can selectively invoke the concept of "free markets" (Obama style), while waning to impose your particular political agenda on those markets.