I wonder if any these bailouts are going to happen.  I have to admit – I am a big believer in less government.  I also really hate the idea of handing large amounts of money to people that have proven they can’t read the signs of the times and keep their companies going.

Of course, those are just my ideals.  Our country is kind of beyond ideals right now – we are in crisis mode, and we need to do what is necessary to fix the problems – even if it is not ideal.  It’s just too late for ideals, unfortunately.

What really surprises me is how flippantly or callously people oppose the bailouts.  They say things like we should let the auto makers “fail” or “tank.”  Saying that is like saying the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a firecracker.  Do people realize the widespread devastation that would happen if even one auto company would go out of business?

There was a story on the news last night about what would happen in the Dallas Metroplex of GM goes bankrupt.  Tens of thousands of people would lose their jobs, resulting in over $2 billion worth of income gone overnight.  The resulting loss of tax revenue from that could cause entire cities to shut down.  All of that would cause tens of thousands more to lose jobs, and then tens of thousands more, and you would have a massive domino effect until the area would be in a major depression.

I realize that it was okay to be flippant about the economy when it just meant that you couldn’t get the newest, coolest iPod because prices were going up, but we are in a different situation now.  Losses like this would can devastation in peoples lives – starvation, suicide, crime, etc.  We can’t just go back to “living off the land” as some have suggested we need to do – there are just too many people on the planet to do that.  Do you know who much space one person needs to live off the land? More than most city apartment buildings have… just for one person.

And let’s not forget the fact that if GM tanks, they will stop manufacturing parts.  So, once you lose your job and have to drive to go to an interview and something breaks in your vehicle – a replacement part might just not exist anymore.  So, no job or way to get to a job interview.

the problem with the bailouts is that the government just doesn’t want to bite the hand that bribes them.  They need to keep the people working but get rid of the top level management in many cases – but that would mean firing the people that are keeping them comfortable with lobby money.  That is the basic reason they are taking their time on deciding on these.

Letting a car company tank is only really going to hurt the hard working people at the bottom.  There is no way ten thousand people will be able to find jobs next month in DFW if GM goes away.  I’m not sure about a bailout, but we shouldn’t let hard working people suffer because idiot CEOs don’t know what they are doing.

Some of my friends (the few that will discuss politics with me) know that I don’t claim a party affiliation.  Many of my beliefs fall into the conservative realm.  But not necessarily Republican.  In fact, there are many things about being a Republican that I just can’t agree with.

I can say the same about Democrats, too.  I think my running mix is about 55% GOP and 35% DEM and 10% random unknown.  Lately, many prominent Democrats have just been bugging me, with their smug cockiness over Obama’s win.  I am glad to have the first black president, I just think DEMs should be concerned that nearly half the voters didn’t get the president they wanted… and that we are still stuck with one of the lowest rated Legislatures in history.

But back to my original post.  I tend to ramble, which is bad for you reading this.  Anyway, I have thought that there has to be some other middle ground or third party worth following, or some system that I can tell people when they ask me what side I am on.  Recently I have been interested in the concept of the “Crunchy Conservative” (CrunchyCon).  There just isn’t that much out there on CrunchyCons, so I am reluctant to throw my support behind a movement that might be gone faster Guns’N’Roses chance of having a hit record.  But I am intrigued by what I’ve read so far… we’ll see if they keep gong the direction I want them to.

A Crunchy Con Manifesto
By Rod Dreher

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.
2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.
3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.
4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.
5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.
6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.
7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.
8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.
9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”
10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.

Now, if I can just find a good middle position for the Calvinism/Arminius debate….