Questions

I have a few questions, and I'm hoping someone can point me in the direction of an answer. They're not rhetorical, I just don't understand and I need someone to clue me in.

1. If the Republican Party is all for faith-based initiatives and such, why are community organizers bad? If the government isn't supposed to help the less fortunate and the community isn't supposed to help them, then who do they expect to do it? The less fortunate should help themselves? But... what if they just can't? Too bad?

2. From what I understand, the conservative movement (not necessarily the Republicans) wants government out of their lives - no limits on guns, land use, etc. But then why are they OK with English-only education? Isn't that the government mandating what the school should decide? How is this not government insinuating itself? Also: Patriot Act. Is it that the government shouldn't be able to regulate your private life, just know every last detail about it including what you check out at the library?

3. I'm still pondering how I can be pro-choice (hoping no one ever makes the choice to abort) yet anti-death penalty. I'm quite comfortable with both - I can't impose my moral choices on another woman because morality is flexible (see: women showing ankles/hair/a backbone as immoral in some conservative Islamic cultures). But I do see a big logical problem with telling someone that killing is wrong, yet as your punishment we're going to kill you. I don't buy the eye-for-an-eye argument - we don't rape rapists and we don't take possessions away from theives. It's not our code of justice.

Now, separately, they make sense to me. Big picture and next to each other, I can't quite get it. It's like atonal music - you have to cock your head and work at it.

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I have many more questions, but that's all I have time for today.