Why is it always the conservative position to support any war?  We conservatives are supposed to believe in fiscal responsibility but we throw that belief out the window when it comes to any foreign conflict, no matter how foolish.

Take Vietnam. In 2008 inflation-adjusted dollars, Vietnam cost the U.S. $686 billion. More importantly, the war cost us 58,260 service members killed in action with another 1,724 missing and 303,644 wounded.

A complete waste of lives and money.

Our leaders foolishly thought that Vietnam was a strategic domino in the Soviet Union’s grand scheme, but it turned out the conflict was a civil war and Vietnam’s communists posed no threat to our national security.  Yet, even today, my fellow conservatives complain that we didn’t fight to win, without questioning whether we should have fought in the first place.

We now see the same attitude with Iraq: Why didn’t conservatives question the reasons for fighting the war?  We removed the greatest obstacle to Iran in the region (Saddam).  Is it the U.S.’s job to plant democracy around the world?  In Pat Buchanan’s book, “Where the right went wrong,” he points out that many of the great empires throughout history – Roman, British, Ottoman – crumbled because they overcommited their resources by trying to impose their form of government around the world.

Shouldn’t this be a theme that conservatives should champion the next time one of our leaders tries to drag us into a conflict that doesn’t impact our national security?

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…’

With Thomas Jefferson’s immortal text in 1776, America was born; a nation that sought to uphold democracy and freedom for its citizens as the antithesis to England’s monarchy.

Flash forward 87 years later – November 19, 1863 – to President Abraham Lincoln standing on a battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Though he said the world would little remember what he said there that day, his words echoed the stronger notion that America is a country built on equality.

‘Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’

These sentiments, repeated again by Dr. Martin Luther King during his ‘I have a dream’ speech, speak to the goal of our Founding Fathers to create a nation that treated every citizen with same; that each were afforded the same right to freedom from persecution, no matter the basis. These men travelled from England to establish a new nation that was free from class. Although their definition of ‘class’ may have changed with the times, the sentiment toward the segregation of class in America remains the same.

Though hate crimes legislation was intended to defend those whom some thought needed added protection, it has created a new class divide in this country: those whose lives and liberties appear more important than another’s.

Hate crimes legislation isn’t new, of course. Enacted after Dr. King’s assassination, Congress and state legislators began to create special protections for people based on their race, gender, religion or disabilities.

In Ohio, we have “ethnic intimidation” laws which carry a penalty of an added degree to any charge where discrimination was thought to play a role in victim selection. For example, let’s suppose two men get into a fight and the second man is seriously injured. The first man who threw the punch would be charged with felonious assault, which in Ohio is a second degree offense punishable by two to eight years in prison and a financial fine. But suppose the second man claims the fight began because he was Jewish. The charge now jumps to a first degree felony which carries a penalty of three to 10 years in prison.

Is it fair that the first man is punished more severely because he may or may not have hit the second man because of his religious affiliation? Isn’t this like saying that an attack on the second man is worse than an attack on the first man? How is this equal?

A crime is a crime, and a victim is a victim, regardless of their race, gender, religion, nationality, disability or sexual orientation. We are all humans and therefore, we are all equal. Creating laws that protect certain types of people is the same as saying they are worth more than someone who doesn’t fall into those categories.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve $560 million as part of the Defense department’s appropriations bill on Thursday to allow GE in Evendale to continue developing an alternate military jet engine despite a veto threat by the White House.

In a 281 to 146 vote, the House approved continuing the program even though the Pentagon has said the alternate engine is not needed.

Congress awarded the primary contract for the F-35s engine to Connecticut-based Pratt Whitney; however, in an effort to reduce the cost of the engine as well as provide a backup system, Congress awarded a second contract for an “alternate” engine to GE and UK-based Rolls Royce.

It’s this alternate engine that has become a point of contention around Washington and Cincinnati, and caused GE to embark on its largest lobbying effort in history.

During the 1990s, the Pentagon began developing the next generation jet, known as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The F-35 will not only be used by U.S. military forces. Several U.S. allies, including the UK, Italy, The Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Israel, will share the its technology as well as the cost.

Retaining the alternate engine project is important for GE’s local aviation facility. Although Congress has already spent $2.5 billion since the mid-1990s on the alternate engine project, it is expected that F-35 engine contracts could top $100 billion. The U.S. Navy, Marines and Air Force are expected to order as many as 3,500 F-35s over the next 30 years, and orders from America’s allies could double that number.

Because the F-35 will become the primary U.S. military jet fighter, gaining access to supply the engines means big business.

Proponents of the alternate engine argue that keeping the program promotes market competition, essentially putting pressure on Pratt Whitney to deliver a better quality product with fewer cost overruns. They also say it provides a backup in case the primary engine doesn’t work.

“History shows competition works; it drives down price, spurs innovation, builds a better product and saves money in the long term,” Rep. Jean Schmidt, a Miami Township Republican, told CBS News in an interview in July.

In a letter to President Obama in April, local U.S. Reps. John Boehner, Geoff Davis, Steve Driehaus and Schmidt, among others, urged the White House to continue funding the program.

“Competition within any market is understood to yield products of a higher quality at a lower price. With the continued development of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) as our nation’s sole air superiority aircraft, it is essential that the components used within the platform are highly reliable. It is with the spirit of competition that we request full funding for the research, development, testing, evaluation and procurement of an alternate engine that may be interchanged with the currently contracted propulsion system,” the letter said.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has pressed for Congress to cut the program since 2006, while the Pentagon said the current engine is performing well. They call the alternate engine a waste of money and said those funds could be used elsewhere.

In July, the House voted 400-30 to pass a Defense department appropriations bill that included the $560 million to continue the alternate engine program, although President Obama had already said he would veto any legislation that included funding for it and in opposition to the Pentagon’s requests.

All four Cincinnati-area representatives — U.S. Reps. Boehner, Schmidt, Steve Driehaus and Geoff Davis — voted then in favor of the bill.

The Senate initially voted to scrap the program in September, following the recommendations of the Pentagon, but on Oct. 6, the Senate passed an amended version of the bill in a vote of 93-7 which put back funding for the alternate engine after receiving staunch opposition from the House for cutting it.

Ohio U.S. Sens. George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown approved the measure.

When the bill returned to the House on Oct. 8, however, it had lost some support, most notably from House Minority Leader Boehner, who, along with Schmidt, voted against the appropriations bill, reversing their earlier support because of “hate crimes” legislation that was tacked onto the bill, authorizing the federal government to prosecute crimes that are racial or homosexually motivated that local and state law enforcement has neglected to pursue.

A spokesperson for Boehner said: “He would have voted ‘yes’ on the bill if the Democrats hadn’t tacked on a ‘hate crimes’ rider that attempted to use our military as leverage to enact radical social policy.”

The bill is now scheduled to go back to the Senate for final approval before being sent to the White House.

The approved appropriations bill authorizes $680 billion in Defense spending for fiscal year 2010.