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Okay Ironman. I'm really counting on you to punch a big hole in my arguement. I know its there, I just can't articulate it.

If you are a person of principle, how can a person who calls themselves a conservative buy a GM or Chrysler vehicle? My thinking is that if you are a conservative and you do, then you are a hypocrit. Doing so highlights your hypocricy by saying you want the government out of your life until it is inconvenient.

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Thanks TimD.

IF you try avoiding all companies that get subsidies, it's quite a challenge. Some are just more overt. Ford man myself. Wife likes the foreign cars. We vote conservative.

In the way you framed it, the criteria is wanting the government out of YOUR life. Buying a GM or Chrysler is doing a transaction with a business, and therefore doesn't fit the criteria. If you framed it to where the hypocrisy is supporting any business who does, your argument would follow, but with one utterly massive caveat; that being that oil companies get subsidies. Therefore by that logic any conservative that drives would be a hypocrite.

It also depends on whether or not using government services is ok because you pay taxes, or if it's hypocrisy because it's from the government. This leaves you without roads, infrastructure, libraries, and much more.

So the question is, where do you draw that line in the sand and why?


My opinion, is that it should be drawn only at the boundary of one's own views. By that logic, a social conservative is necessarily a hypocrite, as is the militaristic conservative. Both call for more government in certain areas. You on the other hand are consistent in your advocacy of small government on all issues. In my viewpoint buying a particular car is outside the scope of the criteria. So I see nothing inconsistent in a conservative owning/buying a GM or Chrysler.

You also have to consider what is beyond your control, and that we cannot do all things our ideals demand of us. For example, I own an iPOD, I did get it before learning of the terrible treatment of the workers there, but I do have one. Probably other devices I have came at a similar costs. There are other products that likely come from child-manned sweatshops. I also disagree with the meat industry's treatment of animals. The pollution caused by the creation of the power I use and the car I drive. The list goes on. These things are beyond my control though. I do what I can, which is speak up, that I am against these things, that I want these things to change. If I can support a company that does something about one of these issues, over a company that doesn't, then I do that. You are not a hypocrite because your ideals aren't possible at the moment, and this is certainly no reason to abandon those ideals. For if they are abandoned, then they really won't ever happen, and that is the only true hypocrisy.

And that, Ironman, is why I asked.

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Thanks TimD.

Glad I could help.