I don't much talk to conservatives anymore. There are legitimate arguments for staying in touch with people who are morally and intellectually stunted just as a reality check on the general state of society, but for me it comes down to a choice between personal growth or basically being a pro bono babysitter / amateur psychiatrist for wingnuts. Still, there are some conservative cliches that float around in general conversation that are worth answering.
Note that I'm only referring to conservative claims in the barest, most "mainstream" sense, and not wingnutty ideas - no matter how pervasive the latter have become among the Republican defectorate:
1. An attack I recently saw on the California High Speed Rail project: Government agencies just look for excuses to spend money, and don't really care if anything actually comes of it. In the private sector, businesses have to constantly show a return and stick to a schedule or they're cut off.
Yeah, and in the primordial jungle, there isn't even that level of socialist coddling - your budget is how much water and food are in your belly, and your schedule is how much daylight is left before you have to find shelter. No mass transit back then. Let's go back to that "purer" time of "maximum accountability." Jerkoff.
2. Government should be run like a business.
Why stop there? Run a toaster like a videogame, a car engine like a hand-cranked phonograph, and a kindergarten like Cosa Nostra. If something does its limited job adequately, surely it could do a completely different and totally unrelated job even better than things specifically designed for it! The best way to do something is obviously to do something else. 2 + 2 = 5, because 2 = 3. It's the New Math!
3. In the private sector, so-and-so would already have been fired.
In the private sector, your opinion doesn't matter. Shut up and get back to work, serf.
4. Taxes decrease investment.
Like eating food decreases nutrition because obesity is one possible failure mode. Nothing says healthy like a protruding ribcage - the pounds just melt away when you're deceased. It's the Small Government approach to metabolism.
5. Tax cuts increase investment.
Nothing motivates entrepreneurship like filthy rich people getting free money that has no impact whatsoever on their lifestyle. While we're at it, we should probably drain all the desert oases and continental aquifers so we can put the water in the ocean where it will do the most good.
6. Private enterprise built America.
Actually, slaves built America. And then the federal government's investment in railroads and Western development after the Civil War. And then FDR's works projects electrifying the other 3/4 of the country, building dams, bridging rivers and canyons, creating wilderness parks, and paving roads. Then the wartime mass-production of tanks and military aircraft being turned to civilian vehicles. Then the Interstate highways. Then the Apollo program. Then ARPAnet presaging the internet. And hopefully now the unprecedented support for renewable energy, high-speed rail, and electric transportation still occurring despite Republican obstruction. But I'm sure New Coke and the Pet Rock played a role in there somewhere - keep it up, fellas.