I do believe in supporting the disabled including the elderly. I also support providing a transitional safety net for people that find themselves experiencing a temporary hardship (the key is temporary).

I also support earned income credits over minimum wage, since as you point out there are individuals who work, but the value of their work is not enough to provide what most of us would consider a minimum standard of living. As such society, not just employers should share the cost of providing that minimum standard of living.

I support the expanded Medicaid program to provide the working poor access to health care as an incentive to work rather than not work to preserve health care access.

As a conservative, I am prepared to help those trying to help themselves, I am less sympathetic towards helping those who won't help themselves or redistributing income through taxes and entitlements to facilitate people not working.

So, hopefully I have addressed your concerns about conservatives being "cold hearted" and without compassion. I fear that many progressives "cripple" people by trapping them in entitlements they can't afford to walk away from. My oldest daughter faced this dilemma as a single mother, her marginal tax rate when she went back to work was over 80% even though she was earning less than 50K. There was about a $20K corridor in which as her income went up her entitlements went down almost as much.

Something is wrong with an entitlement system that almost encourages poverty.

I tend to like what FDR did with the CCC, not because the people were particularly productive, but because he tied government help to work. As long as assistance is tied to work, I think government assistance does not undermine our society, since if you have to work anyway, you might as well invest the effort to upgrade your skills to earn more per hour.

I do believe all children have the right to a basic education and if public schools are failing to meet that goal, then parents deserve the right to send their children to schools where they can get a basic education.

It is not fair to deprive these children from a safe place to learn and a place to acquire skills to allow them to compete in the workplace. Teaching children they are victims, won't make them successful in life. Teaching them how to read, write and do math will. I wish schools spent more time teaching valuable skills over ideology.

As a retired employer of thousands of employees, I was distraught about how many people go through our educational systems ill prepared to function in our society as productive citizens.

With education comes equality of opportunity, and as a grandfather of five African American grandchildren and father of two Asian American grandchildren I support diversity (we practice it every day in our home) and do not believe you can fix racism with racism. Nothing works better to achieve equality than a good education.

When it comes to human dignity, I think some people don't understand the term. I grew up in a family business and the first job we got as the "owner's children" was picking up litter and later cleaning the employees' bathroom. I feel lucky to have learned early in life that no work was below me or unworthy of being done or dehumanizing if it was necessary work.

My wife and I employ people who do not speak English very well, did not graduate high school, but earn $3-4K a week as a result of self-taught craftsmen skills. We employ women who don't speak English to clean homes, and they earn $400 a day cleaning two homes a day. We work with realtors to keep these homes looking like new for prospective buyers.

America is a remarkable place, you don't have to be super bright or well educated to earn a pretty good living, it is easier if you are. But if you are hardworking and trustworthy, there are employers willing to pay you a good wage. Sadly, to many people see these jobs as "below them".

I look at your profile and I congratulate you on your academic achievements. I have kidded people like you, that education is the "lazy" way to earn a good living (don't be offended), you pay people a lot of money for what they know in their heads, you get to "resell" the same information over and over again (think software). Other people get paid for their sweat and skill (think hardware). I know welders that earn $200K and plumbers that earn more than that. But its hard work that leaves them exhausted at the end of the day, but it's important work.

I do feel lucky that my Dad had us do such hard dirty jobs as children. I can still remember one day as I was loading a truck in the middle of a hot summer day thinking, I am going to get a college degree so I can work in an air-conditioned office.

I secured a football scholarship to William and Mary and ultimately graduated and went to work for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and later specialized in healthcare and insurance and became an executive working in a nice air conditioned office.