Why I Won’t Vote for a Conservative
This post is a tad bit of a rant as to why I’ll never vote for a conservative (con) party.
To illustrate my example, I’ll use the conservative goals of dismantling national health care and the welfare system. The cons argue that welfare and national health care are communistic abominations which punish those that work hard for their money.
For a second, imagine Canada without either of the two services. No welfare, and no health care.
A father of a six year old child has found himself out of a job for the last two years. He was the sole breadwinner, but has been without work for over two years now. His poor health resulted in a lot of time missed on his last job, and the employer had to hire someone more reliable. Since, the family used up all family savings on day to day expenses like putting food on the table. As if things were not bad enough, his child is now sick too.
If the child does not get medical attention, things are only going to get worse. What are the man’s choices? No job, and a dieing child. What can he do now? What would you do?
Crime is the quickest solution. He is going to go down the road, break the window in your new BMW. He’ll then steal it, cut it into pieces, and sell it for parts so his child can see a doctor, and his family can eat again.
The man is only but one of many in a similar situation. Their society abandoned them, because ‘they were owed nothing’. The flip side is that they don’t owe you and me anything either. How long before the guilt of stealing your BMW becomes justified in the mind of an individual in such a predicament?
Any system you put in place is susceptible to abuse. There will be people living on welfare that don’t have to be there, but if you think it’s such a great life “sitting on your ass and getting paid (shit all) to do so”, do me a favour and quit your job. Go on welfare. “Live it up” as you tend to call it, because I’m sick of hearing you whine what a great life it must be to live in a dump, with nothing to do but drink yourself into an early grave. I’ll gladly pay the extra taxes so you can live this delusion dream of your’s, and to shut you up while at it.
Coming full circle, a society that wishes to have any sort of stability needs to care for those weakest. If we don’t, we’ll pay for it in the form of increased insurance premiums and monthly insurance deductible charges. More police officers will be needed to try and keep some form of order, and many, many more jails will have to be built. Now, taxes will have to be raised too. The list of expenses is long.
Let’s work on prevention, not paying for the cure down the road. Next time you see a poverty stricken individual, do me a favour and don’t open your mouth unless you’re willing to use your brain first. His life is not great, and you wouldn’t want to be there yourself. His life sucks a lot more than us paying taxes to keep him away from crime necessitated by the primal need to survive.
March 1st, 2007 at 11:08
Very true.
As for not voting Conservative, we could also add: because they want to be able to try 10 year-olds as adults, because they want to politicise the judicial process, because they’ve Americanised the Canadian government, because they’re homophobic, because they claim to be the “fiscally responsible” party and then raise taxes and introduce fiscal policy that is unanimously blasted by economists, because they disrespect civil liberties, because they are the antithesis of “environmentally friendly”, because their minister charged with responding to and preparing for national emergencies and terror attacks believes the earth is only 2k years old, because they’re hypocrites, because the PM is a control freak whose style is more suited to a soft dictatorship than a parliamentary democracy, because their members aren’t allowed to communicate with either their constituents or the media unless their comments are vetted by the PMO, because they’re arrogant bastards…
I could go on, but I don’t have all day. :)
April 23rd, 2007 at 22:16
I wouldn’t call welfare “taking care of the weakest” but rather enabling them. The case scenario you presented is not the norm, but rather a rare exception. It is unfortunate but most of those on welfare don’t have legitimate reasons to be on it. They are only milk’n it for all it’s worth. And if their life sucks it is probably due to a series of “sucky” decision made by them in their first place. Give the man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a life time. (No to mention what he will have to offer the next generation)
April 23rd, 2007 at 23:03
Sometimes, one is left with nothing but ’sucky decisions’. With enough of those stacked, they tend to erode the human ability and spirit to raise oneself out of a bad situation. Imagine a child growing up in a broken home, with no positive role models, a spotty school attendance, alcohol and other chemical abuse. How is such a child to learn a life other than what s/he sees every single day? Courage and will are necessary, but so is an early opportunity.
I may have the will to run a 100 kilometers, but sheer will does nothing for me. I need time and a positive environment in which I can build the necessary strength to accomplish my goal, and the conservative government is too quick to remove that support where it is needed the most - from social programs to health care.
The conservative government is about finding a cure - ‘if we must’ -, and not prevention. They are by far the most shortsighted of all major political parties in Canada, and while they may improve something for today, tomorrow, we will pay triple for the ‘break to the tax payer’ designed to please the voters just long enough to win a majority.
If my reasons alone are not enough, Larissa’s comment does a great job bringing forward a few other things wrong with the Conservative Party. Maybe her reasons are ones that more readers can better identify with.