Edi:
Did you read the note about translating the term "uuskoservatiivi"? That's literal for neocon, but the term as used in the article also takes in the fundie strain of conservatism in its analysis, because the Finnish term is not as narrow a tag as "neocon" is in American politics. Translations sometimes run into these problems. If I'd used the term the "the new right wing", would that have altered your perception?
The "new right wing" in American politics is the neoconservative movement. The moral majority has consistently voted right (even when the Democrats were the rightwing party). The rise of neoconservatism is seperate from the rise of the moral majority type voting bloc.
That depends on how well the system is organized. Cost effectiveness must also take into account the issue of how many people the system can reach and how easily. And it is a bad idea to build a system on the assumption that there will always be such great amounts of religious charity available with the attendant free labor (people donating time, work, money etc). If you can set up a well planned centralized system, it doesn't much matter if it's the government or an NGO doing it.
This is America, there are well meaning religious folks in every town. Given that in excess of 80% of the population is Christian and a good portion of that quite fervant, odds are that numerous such people exist in any given location.
Well planned, yes I agree. Centralized I don't. A centralized system in the US would be the equivalent of Finland turning over all its social safety nets to Brussels. The overhead requirements, the inevitable porking of the budget, and the problem of making accurate decisions based on limited data make a decentralized approach superior in many cases (say at the state of metropolitan level).
In other words, if they are not allowed to push their religion on everyone else, all efforts toward the common good that do not also serve their proselytizing efforts (on government dime, no less) must be torpedoed. Gotcha.
To a degree. Anything which benefits a group who seeks to curtail their proselytizing efforts is not going to be well supported. Basically it comes down to the perception that Democrats oppose proselytization and Democrats support social safety nets. In their opposition to Democrats, social safety nets are collateral damage. In religious groups that trend heavily democratic, this opposition to social safety nets is not seen (at least as a collective bloc).
This is again nothing more than wanting a theocracy and trying to prevent everything that does not work toward that goal.
This is also the minority position, even among fundies, most people are against European style safety nets primarily for secular reasoning. Even those who do oppose them on religious grounds tend to so more out of politics than for wanting a theocracy.
They may want a theocracy, but that tends not to be their stated reason for opposition. A small minority, however, does make that their stated reason.
Yes, how nice of them to use data 15+ years old. They could take a look at our current model, which is doing relatively fine (needs some tweaking yes, but it works so far), it torpedoes their argument completely.
Data? You have got to be kidding me. Both sides of the socialism debate rely upon ancedotal evidence and only cherry picked figures are used if any at all. American views of European socialism were cemented 15 years ago simply because that was when the real policy discussions in the US were occuring and the electorate is of age to have made their impressions then.
Aside from all that even European data from today isn't all that compelling, a good opponent of socialism can recite a massive litany of facts and figures and a good proponent can do the same.
You need line item veto, a solid core of job-secure non-partisan (or career) civil servants working on making the legislation and a rigorous review to see that no pork gets in. Currently, that's a pipe dream, but it's largely how it works here, and the results are concise, usually unambiguous laws. Anybody who tries to get pork in gets shot down by everyone else, because it would (rightly) be seen as favoritism unless everyone got pork, and that is untenable.
The problem with entrusting the government to a mandarinate is that in the US the mandarinate is going to be enfused with a cross section of the populace. A majority of Americans supported GWB, a sizeable minority of Kerry supporters are fundies, etc. Hell the CIA is currently undergoing claims of partisanship that ring from both sides of the aisle.
Most of the reasons you listed actually are exactly the ones specified by article to be rooted in religion, and by your own words they accomplish exactly what Mr. Helo states is the aim of the religious right.
Mr. Helo needs to understand that the "religious right" in America is bloody huge. The big thing to remember is that it rarely moves as a monolithic bloc. Most of the time the black wing votes democrat, the hispanic portion is currently the margin of US politics, the Jewish and Muslim votes split off either way. Who do you think passed the Great Society? In the 60's you didn't have enough secularists in the country to get somethign like that through - you needed the fundy wing of American politics. Today the religious don't oppose social welfare out of religious grounds, they do so primarily because:
1. Socialism is viewed as less efficient than capitalism. They'd rather have an inequal sharing of blessing than an equal sharing of misery.
2. The federal government is incompotent. Every program the federal government has touched in this area has ended up bloated and underperforming.
3. Religious charity is more cost effective.
Virtually no one is against helping others simply because it undercuts the church. Hell you have Muslims, Mormons, Jews, and Hindus donating to Catholic charities.
Fundies support "faith-based" aid to the poor because it's a new source of cash and puts them in a position of power over others: "You want that sandwich, Mrs. Battered Wife w/ 3 Kids on the run from her husband? Praise Jesus -or else!"
Oh get real. The fundies already donate billions of dollars to charities, virtually never do any of those charities deny material comfort on grounds of religious practice. Right now these charities, from soup kitchens to free clinics, have
unfettered control of billions of dollars worth of charity; they don't even begin to approach the "convert or starve" mentality you put forth.
As fun as I'm sure it is to view all opponents as comically evil and/or brain dead zombies; let's remember that if that were the case they:
1. Have more guns and more adherents than secularists in the military.
2. Would not be afraid to use them.
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.
