The Trustworth Encyclopedia?

I caught a bit by Lewis Black on the Daily Show and part of it dealt with a new online encyclopedia set up by conservatives called, Conservapedia.com.  I guess Wikipedia, edited by millions, is just too liberal for this crowd.

I started research definitions defined by this site.  It’ll either make you laugh or cry.  But I wonder if this site provides true insight into the hearts and minds of conservatives.

Here are some definitions, and I swear, I’m not making any of this up:

Liberalism: 

Many of the following views are held by Americans who consider themselves ‘liberals’:

One definition of liberal is anything that is not conservative. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas …

A conservative is one who adheres to principles of limited government, personal responsibility and moral virtue. He or she may agree with the statement in George Washington’s Farewell Address that “religion and morality are indispensable supports” to political prosperity.[1] Conservatism arose in the 19th century as a response to liberalism, particularly as manifested in the French Revolution. In addition, Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary has the following definition of conservative: “tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : TRADITIONAL” [2] Therefore, a conservative Christian would be one that tends to adhere to the doctrines of the early Christianity and Judeo-Christian values.

In the United States, conservatives are generally characterized by adherence to limited government, public morality and free enterprise. Specifically, conservatives tend to adhere to the following principles:

  • A strong national defense
  • Return of prayer in school
  • The Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms
  • Economic allocative efficiency (as opposed to popular equity)
  • Stronger law enforcement and anti-crime laws, including the death penalty
  • Parents, rather than school teachers, educating children about sex
  • Choice in education
  • Private medical care and retirement plans
  • Weakening or cancellation of failed social support programs
  • Prohibition of abortion
  • Opposition to same-sex marriage licenses
  • Support of laws against pornography

The gay rights movement seeks to elevate homosexuality to the same level of social and political respectability as heterosexual relationships. It denies or dismisses the Biblical prohibitions against homosexual acts and the proven health risks of gay sex.

It seeks to remove the stigma of sexual perversion from homosexuality by arguing that either,

  1. Homosexuality is an immutable trait, and discriminating against immutable traits is wrong (cf. race discrimination), or,
  2. Homosexuality, if not immutable, is highly correlated with personality, and discriminating against such deeply rooted notions of self is wrong, as well (cf. religious intolerance).

The movement does not seek to convince others that homosexuality is right: rather, it seeks to convince the public that it is not wrong enough to regulate, criminalize, or stigmatize.

Homosexuality is an immoral sexual lifestyle between members of the same sex. It is more than simply a sexual act, it is going beyond the boundaries that God has setup for marriage; one man and one woman.

Sexual relations between the same sex is condemned in both Old and New Testaments. It is forbidden directly four times in the Bible.

  • Leviticus 18:22 – You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.
  • Leviticus 20:13 – If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:9 – Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,
  • Romans 1:26-27 – For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Immigration is the lawful entry of a person of a certain nationality to another nation. Most immigrants use immigration to escape from conditions of poverty, persecution, or overpopulation in their home countries. Immigration often undermines the opportunities that poor or vulnerable citizens may have to improve their working conditions and wages. Immigration laws differ from country to country, so it is best to educate yourself before you decide to immigrate.

Most Americans envisage and advocate for a coherent set of national interest principles for immigration policy and the enforcement our Constitutionally derived laws. Some so-called open border advocates try to cloak themselves in the mantle of “immigration reform,” but they fail to address the concerns of the American populace and detriments to foreign countries that lose people. Due to lack of enforcement, illegal immigration occurs widely in the U.S., especially along the Mexican border.

The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States of America. It is generally seen as being politically between center and left of center, while the rival Republican Party is positioned to the right of center (see political spectrum theory). Members and supporters of the Democratic Party are known as Democrats.

The Democrats currently control the 110th United States Congress together with the majority of State governorships and legislatures. [1] According to a Pew Research Center poll, 50 percent of Americans identify themselves with the Democratic Party as opposed to 35 percent for the Republican Party.[2] However, Democrats have served out only three of the last ten presidential terms. Democrats in the US Congress currently have a 64.2% disapproval and only a 25.2% approval rating — the lowest in ten years since the Impeachment trial of President Clinton — according to the RealClearPolitics Average of several dozens of Congressional Job Approval polls conducted 06/05 – 06/14 . [3] Investor’s Business Daily remarked, “For all the promises of its new Democratic leaders, Congress seems truly interested in doing only one thing: surrendering in Iraq. No wonder its public approval ratings have sunk below the president’s.” [4]

Like the Republicans, the Democrats are currently selecting their candidate for the 2008 presidential election; the front-runners in the contest are Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. The most recent president who was a Democrat was Bill Clinton, who served from 1993 to 2001.

The outstanding difference between the mind set and political ideals of the Republicans and that of the Democrats is that the Republican Party tends to emphasize more the ideal that societal health is rooted in personal responsibility and actions. The Republican Party holds the mindset that all material things are earned, not owed. This mindset is seen most often in the party’s push for lower taxes. This is fought for in an attempt to treat all citizens equally despite income, race, gender, or religion. They also see taxes as a drag on the economy, and believe private spending is usually more efficient than public spending.

Republicans also show concerns about having big government in charge of such vital issues as food, shelter, or health care, as they believe the private sector and/or the individual are better suited to control their own lives. The much revered president Ronald Reagan who became a Republican in the early 1960s after being a fervent New Dealer at one time, has been quoted as saying “Government is not the solution, it is the problem.”

The party tends to hold both conservative and libertarian stances on social and economic issues respectively. Major policies that the party has recently supported include a neoconservative foreign policy, including War on Terror, liberations of Afghanistan and Iraq, strong support for democracy especially in the Middle East, and distrust of the United Nations due to the organization’s incompetent bureaucracy, anti-capitalist undertone, corruption on the Security Council and in UN humanitarian programs. Along with demanding radical reforms in the UN, it also opposes the Kyoto Protocol due the protocol’s unfair application to certain countries (especially the United States) and that it prevents economic growth and slows the reduction of poverty.

It generally supports free trade, especially NAFTA and CAFTA. It is responsible for a series of across-the-board tax cuts since 2001 that have bolstered the economy and reduced the punitive aspect of the income tax. It has sought business deregulation, reduction of environmental regulations that restrict fair use of land and property, and other policies that are pro-capitalism. It supports gun ownership rights, and enterprise zones (low taxes for investing in poverty areas). On social issues the majority of its national and state candidates usually favor the death penalty, call for stronger state-level control on access to abortion, oppose the legalization of gender-neutral marriage, favor faith-based initiatives, support school choice and homeschooling, social welfare benefit reform, and oppose racial quotas.

In recent years the party has called for much stronger accountability in the public schools, especially through the “No Child Left behind Act” of 2001 (which also increased federal funding for schools). The party is split on the issue of federally funding embryonic stem cell research that involves the cloning and killing of human embryos, with many seeing it as unethical to force tax payers who believe this type of research is morally wrong to finance it. Historically Republicans have had a strong belief in individualism, limited government, and business entrepreneurship.