The difference between liberals & conservatives

I've made this point before, several times in fact (though not here), but seldom have I had a perfect quote to illustrate my point. To wit:

Go ahead. Keep voting for the people who make sure you can barely feed your family. You deserve only the pathetic crumbs they dole out.

This is the difference between liberals and conservatives: Personal responsibility.

Though anonymous, the person who left the above comment in my last post has marked itself quite clearly as a liberal. Note such key phrases as "the people who make sure" and "they dole out."

Conservatives don't talk like that.

For the record: No one is responsible for my lot in life save myself and (to a lesser extent) my husband. It is he & I who earn the money--or don't--that keeps us here or moves us up to a nicer place. It is we who made the poor financial decisions that didn't turn the separation pay into what it could have been. It is he & I who made the decision years ago to forgo the hormonal birth control that wreaks havoc with my system, and who realize that pregnancies are never problems to be solved.

Politicians have little, if anything, to do with it. Radical concept, I know (perhaps for some on both ends of the political spectrum). But true: The vast majority of Americans go about their lives much the same absolutely regardless of who's in office in Washington. The last big politician thing that made an impact on my life, positive or negative, was W's tax cuts for the rich. They knocked our taxes down by a third. (From 15% to 10%.) I never knew I was rich til the Democrats told me I was, but that's a whole other topic.

Democrats aren't going to see us into a better economic stratum, either. Barack Obama, that man of the people, came to San Antonio earlier this year and gave two speeches. The cheaper of the two was $20 a head to get in. One of our former Eastside councilmen talked glowingly of the "diversity" present at this gathering--white and black and "Hispanic". (Liberals can't say Mexican even if the heritage of a city is overwhelmingly so.) As an Eastsider born and raised, I found this nicely ironic. That is the poorest side of town, which means that pretty much no one over there has a spare twenty bucks to go listen to some politician promise to make things better.

I dare Obama--or John Edwards, who has also been here--to take a walk over in Wheatley Courts (I'll be fair & say they can wear bulletproof gear) and talk to those youngsters concretely about how he'll...oh, I dunno, maybe get them to enroll in one of the multiple economic development initiatives this city currently offers. We can address larger issues like rampant fatherlessness and a disdain for education later on.

In fact, I'll say it now. In the upcoming Presidential election, I'll vote for the candidate who gets his (her?) ass out there on the streets with real, authentic poor people and does something for them, as opposed to hiding in an air conditioned place with the upper-middle-class and rich.

Failing that, I'll be writing in Neal Boortz's name.