Ive considered myself conservative and a republican my whole life. Lately though, ive been questioning some of that. And i dont mean that im going anti-maga blue haired weirdo. But Ive been faced with some situations that have me questioning my convictions.
To begin, i generally think of myself as a capitalist, but i cant say im happy with capitalism the way things are. All these mega corporations have unlimited capital and snuff out the small businesses. Meanwhile, folks who work for these corps are having a hard and harder time getting by. When walmart first started popping up decades ago, one by one, the small mom and pop shops went out of business. The mega corps also have all the polititians in their pockets and it seems that they get all the backroom deals. Recently, big money developers have been buying up all the farmland in my rurual county and putting in high density subdivisions. This has made alot of the local folks very angry and and we pleaded with the county coucil, but one member, whos also a republican just says "its not the governements business what a person does with their land". While i do agree, it feels wrong that all this big money swoops in, buys all the land and builds stuff that local folks really dont want. And I mean, we had hundreds of signatures, dozens of townfolks speaking against it and they just approve them anyways.
The other thing making me second guess my convictions is environmental conservatism. And i dont mean give all our money away in the Paris Accord, but I genuinely worry about the extinction of various species of local wildlife. I worry about some of these factories and the pollutionntheyre putting in our local waterways. When these developer comes, they just mow down hundreds of acres of woodlands and i worry about where all the wildlife will go.
One thing is for sure, im sick of human government, political corruption, and some of these corporations and their dirty money in politician's pockets. Honestly, I'm ready for Christ to return and establish His Righteous and Holy reign on Earth.
Small "r" republican.
When minority votes are protected (think rural vs urban, or local town vs state), the republic works. For example, many cities and towns worked hard to prevent Wal-Mart from moving in, to save local businesses and jobs, but were overruled by state and sometimes federal enforcement of laws. NIMBYism has gotten a bad rap in the media, but giving rights to local voters is what a republic is all about. Same thing with Amazon, and a thousand other cookie-cutter corps that use centralized (and corrupt) power to override the will of locals everywhere. The big R party is full of rinos, and merely one wing of the uniparty, at least until MAGA.
Party politics is messed up, and even more messed up with a centralized power structure. People politics and decentralized power is where politics should be. George Washington pointed this out beautifully in his farewell address.