I'm an old school Southern Democrat. I'm Progressive and extremely to the left of modern Democrats. I believe that everyone is entitled to a standard of living and that includes a home and a mode of transportation and a mode of communication and a way to provide for themselves. I hate how the New Southern vision was sabotaged by Reagan and the Republican Party. We could've had a more inclusive and diverse South. I'm from the Gulf Coast. When I was growing up the Gulf Coast was the last bastion of Southern Democratic dominance. Republicans have taken over our area and corrupted the minds of our people. Southern Democrats are often seen as a monolith but just like the overall Democratic Party it was a big tent. I believe we can revive the Progressive tradition in the South but it's going to take effort.
This entire comment is a perfect example of what I was talking about: you keep trying to force me into a political box that I don't fit into, then acting shocked when I don't accept the labels you're assigning to me.
I couldn't run as a Democrat and I couldn't run as a Republican. Conservatives call me a liberal and liberals call me conservative. Both sizes attack me. Both sides unite against me when I actually start criticizing structural problems. That's the funny part.
And to be absolutely clear, I would NEVER run as a Republican. The fact that you can read what I wrote and conclude that I could just go run as one says more about your political framework than it does about mine. Republican politics are fundamentally incompatible with what I believe. But so are plenty of contemporary Democratic positions. That's the point you're repeatedly missing.
You also keep using the word "moral" as though I'm making some grand theological argument about good people and bad people. I'm not. We're talking about common sense, social responsibility and the consequences of people's choices. Saying that some behavior is destructive isn't the same thing as declaring somebody spiritually evil.
And the drug argument is especially funny considering that opposition to widespread drug use isn't some a right-wing position. Even Lenin and Stalin understood the political usefulness of intoxicants in terms of social control and pacification. Then there's the passive-aggressive little "Since you're good at accents" routine.
And your "welfare queen" comparison completely misses the history you're invoking. Republicans gutted, restructured and appropriated welfare into a system designed around political and tribal selectivity and business interests.
Most importantly, your entire argument assumes that recognizing individual responsibility means denying structural conditions. It starts on the individual level. Good people make good societies. Bad people destroy good societies.