Bashing republican\democrats thread
- Thread starter ElectricFetus
- Start date
Clearly Brutus was thinking of the famous Churchill quote:
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
So the problem liberals have, according to the song, is that people grow out of liberalism as they become an adult and take on the responsiblilites of the real world. While this is a valid point, it's not likely one to be made by Tiassa.
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
So the problem liberals have, according to the song, is that people grow out of liberalism as they become an adult and take on the responsiblilites of the real world. While this is a valid point, it's not likely one to be made by Tiassa.
I've noticed this, too. Here are some theories:marv said:
1) They smoke too much pot, thereby destroying their brain cells,
2) They are undereducated (which I feel is one of the requirements for a person to fall under liberalism)
3) Just one more symptom of the mental disease of liberalism
Now that is simply not true. Look at our entertainment industry. It is part of our culture. What we eat is part of our culture. Sure, we have Chinese restaurants, but we also invented McDonalds, Burger King, Dennys, etc. I could go on, but I want to keep this post short. I feel that you are only trying to deny this because you want nothing to do with it. You have told me you don't like this country. The only logical conclusion to draw is that you are consciously denying an important fact so that it gives affirmation to your beliefs.Athelwulf said:
What does this mean? I am not fluent in this internet language.Athelwulf said:
It is a well known fact that I am always right. There was this time when I thought I was wrong, but it turns out I wasn't.Athelwulf said:
Madanthonywayne
Yea that was the idea. When Tiassa said it was a silly song I'm An Adult Now is the one that came to mind.
Yea that was the idea. When Tiassa said it was a silly song I'm An Adult Now is the one that came to mind.
Did Hollywood Help or Hurt the RE-Election of George W. Bush?
I guess sciforums is kind of like Jeopardy you have to form your thread titles in the form of a question or they get locked up.
A Conservative group called "Citizens United" Is putting up billboards in Hollywood thanking the local liberal elitists and leftists for helping re-elect George W. Bush. One Billboard is visible from the Kodak Theater for all the glitterati to see during the upcoming Academy Awards. Here are the billboards that will be going up.
http://conservativerevolution.com/index.php?cat=30
I do think that the antics of Michael Moore, Babs Streisand, and other Hollywood liberals definitely helped Bush get re-elected. Just like Mayer Gavin Newsom of San Francisco helped Bush by flaunting the Law and allowing gay marriages and making it such an issue during the election. What do you think?
I guess sciforums is kind of like Jeopardy you have to form your thread titles in the form of a question or they get locked up.
A Conservative group called "Citizens United" Is putting up billboards in Hollywood thanking the local liberal elitists and leftists for helping re-elect George W. Bush. One Billboard is visible from the Kodak Theater for all the glitterati to see during the upcoming Academy Awards. Here are the billboards that will be going up.
http://conservativerevolution.com/index.php?cat=30
I do think that the antics of Michael Moore, Babs Streisand, and other Hollywood liberals definitely helped Bush get re-elected. Just like Mayer Gavin Newsom of San Francisco helped Bush by flaunting the Law and allowing gay marriages and making it such an issue during the election. What do you think?
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I don't think they did. All the states where Hollywood and glam would seem to matter, they all voted blue, but they would have voted blue anyways since they're the more aware and rational of states that actually run this country (west coast, north east, great lakes). All the backward states that most could care less about voted red and would have voted red regardless due to their blinded sense of "patriotism".
All the states that voted red are like the scene in Farenheit 9/11 (since you mentioned Moore) where he mentions our powerful Coalition of the Willing with places like Mooorrrrrocco and other less impressive countries that are of not much help. The same applies to the red states to me, heh. Idaho! South Dakooooota! Montana! Wyoooming! Arrrkansaas! Ooo yeah, way to go, red! You think the isolated people in those states even know who and what Hollywood even is? Heck, Farenheit 9/11 could have worked in regards to the national security issues and the like that was exposed considering all the states that would be the most likely targets of terrorism, they’re all the states who voted against Bush.
Regardless though, it doesn’t really matter who voted for who as both candidates were pretty crappy so there really was no intellgent vote unless one wanted to vote Green, Independent, or Libertarian to make a third party a bit more viable in the future rather than ignoring them all because they’re not Republican or Democratic. Heck, I doubt most people even know there’s more than two parties in this country!
- N
All the states that voted red are like the scene in Farenheit 9/11 (since you mentioned Moore) where he mentions our powerful Coalition of the Willing with places like Mooorrrrrocco and other less impressive countries that are of not much help. The same applies to the red states to me, heh. Idaho! South Dakooooota! Montana! Wyoooming! Arrrkansaas! Ooo yeah, way to go, red! You think the isolated people in those states even know who and what Hollywood even is? Heck, Farenheit 9/11 could have worked in regards to the national security issues and the like that was exposed considering all the states that would be the most likely targets of terrorism, they’re all the states who voted against Bush.
Regardless though, it doesn’t really matter who voted for who as both candidates were pretty crappy so there really was no intellgent vote unless one wanted to vote Green, Independent, or Libertarian to make a third party a bit more viable in the future rather than ignoring them all because they’re not Republican or Democratic. Heck, I doubt most people even know there’s more than two parties in this country!
- N
Repo Man
You better hope G.W. Bush was "re-elected" because if this was his first election then he would still be eligible to run again next time. Yea, 8 more years of George W. Bush Yes! Hee hee
You better hope G.W. Bush was "re-elected" because if this was his first election then he would still be eligible to run again next time. Yea, 8 more years of George W. Bush Yes! Hee hee
Bush exploits the issue of gay marriage to scare people into voting for him. He has no intention of stopping it, he needs it as an issue.
As to the billboards, what's the point? Are they just upset the Passion of the Christ didn't get an oscar? They should put up a billboard thanking Diebold.
sieg heil
As to the billboards, what's the point? Are they just upset the Passion of the Christ didn't get an oscar? They should put up a billboard thanking Diebold.
sieg heil
Muhlenberg
Registered Senior Member
Hollywood, along with Kerry's donor list, scared people into voting against him. GOP had 1.4 million unpaid volunteers explaining what a George Soros/John Kerry administration would be. Soros, Bing, Lewis and the Sandlers alone spent over $70 million hiring people to get out the Kerry vote. No contest when you have voluteers vs (mostly) paid derelicts.
The old FDR/LBJ coalition is no more. Had the longest run of any coalition in American history.
The old FDR/LBJ coalition is no more. Had the longest run of any coalition in American history.
(Endless nameless?)
The song is "Consciousness Raising As A Social Tool".
When I was in high school, one of my class' diamond couples went through a traumatic breakup. It had something to do with polystyrene. They were both granolas, to be sure, and as I understand it, she dumped him after they got in a fight because he--seriously--ate his diet frozen yogurt from a styrofoam cup.
Liberalism often seems to have its head in the clouds. This is because it represents a continuation of early-life assertions about community, cooperation, and socialization. Are we so cynical as to confess that Sesame Street, the buddy system, the fact that there is no "i" in "team", and other such niceties are merely distractions contrived for the convenience of the caretakers?
For many middle-class liberals, it starts with a sense of deprivation, a perception of imbalance. According to the rules of society, something seems unfair. The future liberal wants that imbalance corrected, regardless of whether or not the situation directly perceives them. When it comes to issues, the reality is that conservatism, by its very nature, disagrees with youth. Youth looks forward to promise and ambition. Conservatism looks to tradition and conformity to the roles thereof. For the post-Vietnam generation, it was speech and art, seemingly soft by comparison to what came before us: war, peace, drugs, sex, love, life, the Universe, and everything. As consciences outgrew the quaint bitchery of censorship arguments, they reapplied those lessons in other issues: environment, law enforcement, poverty, drugs, reproduction, education. Time and time again, youth found itself squarely opposed to the conservative assertion. And so it was that each issue in each conscience took on exaggerated context: "She went looking for a solution to a problem that did not exist."
Think of global warming.
Certainly, the environment is important, but do you ever get the feeling that we're arguing about the wrong things?
People address the issues as they perceive them, as issues are related to them, as issues are communicated. This in no way asserts that people are actually addressing reality. While it's fun to laugh at the greenie with misplaced palpitations, one wonders what it is about the vociferously critical opposition that even they can't state the issues in a useful, relevant manner. Yes, panicking over numbers that omit volcanoes is funny, but how cynical are we? Conservatives not only help foul the lines of communication, they depend on such a breakdown.
A pattern emerges: Despite the shortcomings of any human organization, liberalism errs toward trying to make the world a better place for everybody while conservatism errs toward trying to make the world a better place for a select few at the expense of others. This involves conning a large number of people who will be hurt by policy decisions into believing that such policies are advisable and even beneficial. From the beginning, when it's merely an anti-identification, liberalism perceives the dishonesty. People are imperfect, but one imperfection works to help people while another works to exploit them. The choice seems natural.
And it is amid the insecurity of a torrent of ideas and ideologies vying for familiarity that liberals coalesce. Diversity often depends on a secondary commonality, the abstract bonds captured in other popular music of decades past and present: Widowmaker's "The Lonely Ones", Savatage's "Legions", Floater's "Exiled".
If the fringe culture is a bit like a blizzard, the feeling is something akin to coming in out of the storm. Ideas connect, cliques form. "She found an answer, and she found some friends there."
And what of the political identity itself? Family might chide one another on certain things, but the liberal finds a moral conundrum. If we do what is expected, we acknowledge its correctness and ought not bitch. If we withhold, we are failing in our responsibilities and have no right to bitch. That's a simplification, of course, but why does it strike so few people as significant that both Communism and Christianity reject the nuclear family? In the one it hampers societal efficacy; in the other it compels people to sin. Push an idealistic liberal, and they'll often stand on ideology. "She left her husband and she left her family ...." It need not be so dramatic, but politics divides any family dinner.
As to feeding hungers and needs to believe, tradition--e.g. conservative identity politic--doesn't suffice; it seems a betrayal unto itself, and people strike out in search of something that does not suffer such a problem. And here's where it gets a little sticky. Traditional perspectives often involve dualisms: if it's not one, it's the other. If tradition, institution, and basic societal presuppositions are the point of departure, there is no guarantee that all who leave will follow the same route.
The bonds that form around any one given political ideology do not necessarily extend to the next. Greens and labor frequently clash; politics and ideology often separate.
What the Democratic party lacks is the rank-and-file cohesion that comes with conservatism. Empowered by tradition, dedicated to an inward progress, the ends justify the means for conservatives in a way that, on the one hand, young generations are actually taught against, and on the other liberals have never understood. Bush's spending spree isn't so much confusing as the insincerity of the Christian right--e.g. the GOP "base". Fiscal conservatives are generally wise in this day and age to bet on the GOP, but the Christian right is ferocious. GOP supporters seem willing to trade their cause for recognition on the scoreboard. Liberals find themselves at a crossroads: if they don't play ball, it's bad politics and they'll be shut out of office; if they do play ball, it's a betrayal and therefore a sign of liberal insincerity and untrustworthiness.
The problem with the Democratic party is selfish liberalism. And that's fine: people are entitled to make what they want important to them in the world. But it does suggest that the Democrats will always lose part of their bloc to third-party candidates, and it does mean that liberals will always have a hard time playing up the slick. Look at what the GOP did in response to Bill Clinton, a Democrat who could definitely slick it up to ya.
They often liberalize in a search for inner peace. And that's problematic, as it makes it harder for the various liberal factions to coalesce. In this age of cynicism, it becomes even harder for many liberals to recognize the breadth of their identity politic.
Watch closely. Liberalism among the poor is often intensely focused, but generally sees clearly what it is looking at. Liberalism among the middle and upper classes: that's where the problem is at. Tradition plays into conservatives' hands, and the stakes get so high so quickly for many newly-liberalized young minds that they just run to keep up, and never really step out and try to set the pace.
Which, for the record, goes well with another song:
And despite it all, they still liberalize.
There's a reason for that: life is unsatisfying. You can get used to that reality or you can try to change it. Conservatism has a natural advantage in that: it is easy to expect the impossible when you do not have it. For all the faults of tradition and institution, those faults are acceptable. Progress, though, must be able to promise perfection, and while no human being or human endeavor can provide perfection, that natural condition is held against liberal political ideology as if it was a unique crime.
A few thoughts on the discussion: Getting any sort of decent analysis from conservative advocates is often like pulling teeth. Part of the point of mentioning the TPoH song in the first place is that, while it's a very general argument and one subject to myriad misinterpretations--after all, there is no one real interpretation of the song itself, even within the band that recorded the song--it still transcends the general quality of discussion conservatives usually put up. Arguing with conservatives often brings diverse human sympathies:
That last one is especially tragic because its many forms sting more or less based on the phrasing. I should be thrilled, for instance, that we're finally doing something about Iraq. But my political conscience formed in the day when patriotism was explained to a young mind as including the notion that yes, in propping up these dictators, we were doing a good thing. Always compare against the worst alternative; Sufis ask, "Is the best we have the best we can do?" And it's a fair question. "Yes, Mr. President, I would like to agree with you. It would give me pleasure to agree with you. I could, I think, agree with you, but only if I abandoned this silly need I have to determine action according to facts."
It is widely acknowledged that, in Iraq, if the U.S. wanted only the oil, it could have achieved this end without a war; coddling Saddam worked well enough, and certainly kept that particular patch of square miles relatively stable. And that argument sufficed twenty years ago when people questioned, "Why support Iraq? It's ruled by a dictator!"
Stability, said the reply, is better for our national security than instability.
This is understood, but is the best we have the best we can do? Why didn't we know to ask the question then? Is it really because so many of my generation were taught to ask the question only of ourselves as individuals, and only in a limited context that pertained to reputation derived from conduct and workplace potential? Thematic, it seems. I have asserted before that the difference between liberalism and conservatism is "we" and "I". And there we see it again: "Is the best I've done really, truly, the best I can do?"
Because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right the first time.
So why did we abandon that part?
We weren't to ask that of any collective except those the caretakers assigned, and in adulthood, those the bosses assigned. "Is the best we have the best we can do?" It's a slogan for teamwork in the classroom and the staff meeting. But it's an absurdity in terms of society, it seems. People don't like to ask that question; the answer gets expensive.
I should be thrilled that we're finally in Iraq. But I"m not. I bought the warring way for two-thirds of my life. Don't think the melodrama and hullaballoo surrounding Clinton's Yugoslavian adventure went unnoticed. It was during the Clinton administration that I abandoned my acceptance of violence as a legitimate or useful tool of humanity. The best thing about wars is that the most coherent of the surviving soldiers reflect on the war and its insanity, and for a brief moment one might hope that Americans will finally come to understand the problem with warfare.
And with this war, something remotely resembling a shred of honesty or decency would, at one time, have warmed my heart to it. I'm not impossible to sell to. I just have exacting standards. The deficit of credibility this administration has accrued would have been a ludicrous assertion during the time my conscience was fashioned by conservative politics. My father is not a violent man; the closest he ever came to hitting me had to do with a bad haircut. ('Nuff said about that.) However, to assert that our national values would lead to the kind of reaction we've seen in the wake of 9/11 was downright offensive. It was seen as calling the culture a certain unimaginable kind of stupid. Then again, suggesting President Reagan was going senile was equally offensive. Go figure.
Even I believed we would find WMD.
"Yes, Mr. President. I could agree with you, but, well ... it's you. And Rummy. And Dick. And Karl."
Yes, my conservative neighbors here at Sciforums, I could almost agree with you on many things, but too much of it orbits the psychosis of conservative politics.
I'm struck by the difficulty of getting any substantial analysis from Brutus1964. I don't know him, so to expect such turbulence is unfair, but I will say that it has met to a certain reasonable degree an historical pattern in conservative rhetoric.
Is he just dicking me? Is there something unclear about the terms of discussion? Am I somehow asking for a discussion so foreign to him as to escape conception?
And the turn brought by Madanthonywayne and agreed to by Brutus: to a certain reasonable degree, this also matches a pattern. It comes back to an oft-abused sound-bite.
One of the reasons liberals find Republicans superficial is that it always comes back to a superficial assertion. It's kind of frustrating, and a bit insulting, as if conservatives just don't have the time to give anything decent consideration.
In this case, however, I do admit I'm amused. There's a certain poetic superficiality about the guess, and I was genuinely wondering what the reason would be.
It's been this way for at least a quarter-century, with Republicans lowering the bar and Democrats leaping over the abyss in a frenetic flurry of statistical insinuations that tell them they're losing points here and there. Actual liberals are an odd phenomenon; most "anti-liberal" rhetoric swirling in the American political arena corresponds to myth, first and foremost being that Democrats are particularly liberal. They may seem liberal to people in Kansas, but if you asked whether coal would go diamond first in Cheney's ass or Lieberman's, it would be a tough call.
Anti-liberal rhetoric is a straw man. If conservatives genuinely cared about society, perhaps they might stop and consider the damage they're doing by orienting the politics to rage against myth.
Playing to idiocy, to the crass end of marketing, isn't an idea with a strong resumé. Consider sitcoms, for instance. Think Dharma & Greg.
Or the top forty. You know, I hold nothing against the guys who actually recorded "Macarena", and I'm glad they finally found success, but if popular music sales, including the wretched country charts, measure anything culturally substantial, it is a damning indictment of pitching to the lowest common denominator in society.
Dangerous, yes, but why should conservatives stop? It obviously works.
The song is "Consciousness Raising As A Social Tool".
When I was in high school, one of my class' diamond couples went through a traumatic breakup. It had something to do with polystyrene. They were both granolas, to be sure, and as I understand it, she dumped him after they got in a fight because he--seriously--ate his diet frozen yogurt from a styrofoam cup.
Liberalism often seems to have its head in the clouds. This is because it represents a continuation of early-life assertions about community, cooperation, and socialization. Are we so cynical as to confess that Sesame Street, the buddy system, the fact that there is no "i" in "team", and other such niceties are merely distractions contrived for the convenience of the caretakers?
For many middle-class liberals, it starts with a sense of deprivation, a perception of imbalance. According to the rules of society, something seems unfair. The future liberal wants that imbalance corrected, regardless of whether or not the situation directly perceives them. When it comes to issues, the reality is that conservatism, by its very nature, disagrees with youth. Youth looks forward to promise and ambition. Conservatism looks to tradition and conformity to the roles thereof. For the post-Vietnam generation, it was speech and art, seemingly soft by comparison to what came before us: war, peace, drugs, sex, love, life, the Universe, and everything. As consciences outgrew the quaint bitchery of censorship arguments, they reapplied those lessons in other issues: environment, law enforcement, poverty, drugs, reproduction, education. Time and time again, youth found itself squarely opposed to the conservative assertion. And so it was that each issue in each conscience took on exaggerated context: "She went looking for a solution to a problem that did not exist."
Think of global warming.
Certainly, the environment is important, but do you ever get the feeling that we're arguing about the wrong things?
People address the issues as they perceive them, as issues are related to them, as issues are communicated. This in no way asserts that people are actually addressing reality. While it's fun to laugh at the greenie with misplaced palpitations, one wonders what it is about the vociferously critical opposition that even they can't state the issues in a useful, relevant manner. Yes, panicking over numbers that omit volcanoes is funny, but how cynical are we? Conservatives not only help foul the lines of communication, they depend on such a breakdown.
A pattern emerges: Despite the shortcomings of any human organization, liberalism errs toward trying to make the world a better place for everybody while conservatism errs toward trying to make the world a better place for a select few at the expense of others. This involves conning a large number of people who will be hurt by policy decisions into believing that such policies are advisable and even beneficial. From the beginning, when it's merely an anti-identification, liberalism perceives the dishonesty. People are imperfect, but one imperfection works to help people while another works to exploit them. The choice seems natural.
And it is amid the insecurity of a torrent of ideas and ideologies vying for familiarity that liberals coalesce. Diversity often depends on a secondary commonality, the abstract bonds captured in other popular music of decades past and present: Widowmaker's "The Lonely Ones", Savatage's "Legions", Floater's "Exiled".
If the fringe culture is a bit like a blizzard, the feeling is something akin to coming in out of the storm. Ideas connect, cliques form. "She found an answer, and she found some friends there."
And what of the political identity itself? Family might chide one another on certain things, but the liberal finds a moral conundrum. If we do what is expected, we acknowledge its correctness and ought not bitch. If we withhold, we are failing in our responsibilities and have no right to bitch. That's a simplification, of course, but why does it strike so few people as significant that both Communism and Christianity reject the nuclear family? In the one it hampers societal efficacy; in the other it compels people to sin. Push an idealistic liberal, and they'll often stand on ideology. "She left her husband and she left her family ...." It need not be so dramatic, but politics divides any family dinner.
As to feeding hungers and needs to believe, tradition--e.g. conservative identity politic--doesn't suffice; it seems a betrayal unto itself, and people strike out in search of something that does not suffer such a problem. And here's where it gets a little sticky. Traditional perspectives often involve dualisms: if it's not one, it's the other. If tradition, institution, and basic societal presuppositions are the point of departure, there is no guarantee that all who leave will follow the same route.
The bonds that form around any one given political ideology do not necessarily extend to the next. Greens and labor frequently clash; politics and ideology often separate.
What the Democratic party lacks is the rank-and-file cohesion that comes with conservatism. Empowered by tradition, dedicated to an inward progress, the ends justify the means for conservatives in a way that, on the one hand, young generations are actually taught against, and on the other liberals have never understood. Bush's spending spree isn't so much confusing as the insincerity of the Christian right--e.g. the GOP "base". Fiscal conservatives are generally wise in this day and age to bet on the GOP, but the Christian right is ferocious. GOP supporters seem willing to trade their cause for recognition on the scoreboard. Liberals find themselves at a crossroads: if they don't play ball, it's bad politics and they'll be shut out of office; if they do play ball, it's a betrayal and therefore a sign of liberal insincerity and untrustworthiness.
The problem with the Democratic party is selfish liberalism. And that's fine: people are entitled to make what they want important to them in the world. But it does suggest that the Democrats will always lose part of their bloc to third-party candidates, and it does mean that liberals will always have a hard time playing up the slick. Look at what the GOP did in response to Bill Clinton, a Democrat who could definitely slick it up to ya.
They often liberalize in a search for inner peace. And that's problematic, as it makes it harder for the various liberal factions to coalesce. In this age of cynicism, it becomes even harder for many liberals to recognize the breadth of their identity politic.
Watch closely. Liberalism among the poor is often intensely focused, but generally sees clearly what it is looking at. Liberalism among the middle and upper classes: that's where the problem is at. Tradition plays into conservatives' hands, and the stakes get so high so quickly for many newly-liberalized young minds that they just run to keep up, and never really step out and try to set the pace.
Which, for the record, goes well with another song:
And despite it all, they still liberalize.
There's a reason for that: life is unsatisfying. You can get used to that reality or you can try to change it. Conservatism has a natural advantage in that: it is easy to expect the impossible when you do not have it. For all the faults of tradition and institution, those faults are acceptable. Progress, though, must be able to promise perfection, and while no human being or human endeavor can provide perfection, that natural condition is held against liberal political ideology as if it was a unique crime.
• • •
A few thoughts on the discussion: Getting any sort of decent analysis from conservative advocates is often like pulling teeth. Part of the point of mentioning the TPoH song in the first place is that, while it's a very general argument and one subject to myriad misinterpretations--after all, there is no one real interpretation of the song itself, even within the band that recorded the song--it still transcends the general quality of discussion conservatives usually put up. Arguing with conservatives often brings diverse human sympathies:
• "I could agree with you, I think, if I decided that yes, I do have the right to decide who lives and dies, who goes hungry or eats."
• "I could agree with you, I think, if I turned off my human compassion. User access is, unfortunately, denied."
• "I would like to agree with you because it would feel very good to agree with you, but I cannot because I simply don't see reality that way."
• "I could agree with you, I think, if I turned off my human compassion. User access is, unfortunately, denied."
• "I would like to agree with you because it would feel very good to agree with you, but I cannot because I simply don't see reality that way."
That last one is especially tragic because its many forms sting more or less based on the phrasing. I should be thrilled, for instance, that we're finally doing something about Iraq. But my political conscience formed in the day when patriotism was explained to a young mind as including the notion that yes, in propping up these dictators, we were doing a good thing. Always compare against the worst alternative; Sufis ask, "Is the best we have the best we can do?" And it's a fair question. "Yes, Mr. President, I would like to agree with you. It would give me pleasure to agree with you. I could, I think, agree with you, but only if I abandoned this silly need I have to determine action according to facts."
It is widely acknowledged that, in Iraq, if the U.S. wanted only the oil, it could have achieved this end without a war; coddling Saddam worked well enough, and certainly kept that particular patch of square miles relatively stable. And that argument sufficed twenty years ago when people questioned, "Why support Iraq? It's ruled by a dictator!"
Stability, said the reply, is better for our national security than instability.
This is understood, but is the best we have the best we can do? Why didn't we know to ask the question then? Is it really because so many of my generation were taught to ask the question only of ourselves as individuals, and only in a limited context that pertained to reputation derived from conduct and workplace potential? Thematic, it seems. I have asserted before that the difference between liberalism and conservatism is "we" and "I". And there we see it again: "Is the best I've done really, truly, the best I can do?"
Because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right the first time.
So why did we abandon that part?
We weren't to ask that of any collective except those the caretakers assigned, and in adulthood, those the bosses assigned. "Is the best we have the best we can do?" It's a slogan for teamwork in the classroom and the staff meeting. But it's an absurdity in terms of society, it seems. People don't like to ask that question; the answer gets expensive.
I should be thrilled that we're finally in Iraq. But I"m not. I bought the warring way for two-thirds of my life. Don't think the melodrama and hullaballoo surrounding Clinton's Yugoslavian adventure went unnoticed. It was during the Clinton administration that I abandoned my acceptance of violence as a legitimate or useful tool of humanity. The best thing about wars is that the most coherent of the surviving soldiers reflect on the war and its insanity, and for a brief moment one might hope that Americans will finally come to understand the problem with warfare.
And with this war, something remotely resembling a shred of honesty or decency would, at one time, have warmed my heart to it. I'm not impossible to sell to. I just have exacting standards. The deficit of credibility this administration has accrued would have been a ludicrous assertion during the time my conscience was fashioned by conservative politics. My father is not a violent man; the closest he ever came to hitting me had to do with a bad haircut. ('Nuff said about that.) However, to assert that our national values would lead to the kind of reaction we've seen in the wake of 9/11 was downright offensive. It was seen as calling the culture a certain unimaginable kind of stupid. Then again, suggesting President Reagan was going senile was equally offensive. Go figure.
Even I believed we would find WMD.
"Yes, Mr. President. I could agree with you, but, well ... it's you. And Rummy. And Dick. And Karl."
Yes, my conservative neighbors here at Sciforums, I could almost agree with you on many things, but too much of it orbits the psychosis of conservative politics.
I'm struck by the difficulty of getting any substantial analysis from Brutus1964. I don't know him, so to expect such turbulence is unfair, but I will say that it has met to a certain reasonable degree an historical pattern in conservative rhetoric.
Is he just dicking me? Is there something unclear about the terms of discussion? Am I somehow asking for a discussion so foreign to him as to escape conception?
And the turn brought by Madanthonywayne and agreed to by Brutus: to a certain reasonable degree, this also matches a pattern. It comes back to an oft-abused sound-bite.
One of the reasons liberals find Republicans superficial is that it always comes back to a superficial assertion. It's kind of frustrating, and a bit insulting, as if conservatives just don't have the time to give anything decent consideration.
In this case, however, I do admit I'm amused. There's a certain poetic superficiality about the guess, and I was genuinely wondering what the reason would be.
It's been this way for at least a quarter-century, with Republicans lowering the bar and Democrats leaping over the abyss in a frenetic flurry of statistical insinuations that tell them they're losing points here and there. Actual liberals are an odd phenomenon; most "anti-liberal" rhetoric swirling in the American political arena corresponds to myth, first and foremost being that Democrats are particularly liberal. They may seem liberal to people in Kansas, but if you asked whether coal would go diamond first in Cheney's ass or Lieberman's, it would be a tough call.
Anti-liberal rhetoric is a straw man. If conservatives genuinely cared about society, perhaps they might stop and consider the damage they're doing by orienting the politics to rage against myth.
Playing to idiocy, to the crass end of marketing, isn't an idea with a strong resumé. Consider sitcoms, for instance. Think Dharma & Greg.
Or the top forty. You know, I hold nothing against the guys who actually recorded "Macarena", and I'm glad they finally found success, but if popular music sales, including the wretched country charts, measure anything culturally substantial, it is a damning indictment of pitching to the lowest common denominator in society.
Dangerous, yes, but why should conservatives stop? It obviously works.
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Muhlenberg
Registered Senior Member
The liberal concept of progress is destrutive. We can see how it affected liberals as they keep fighting battles which were won decades ago. They storm Normandy Beach and wonder why nobody cares anymore.
A man's gots to know his limits.
Liberalism in its more virulent form is a gnostic pseudo-religion (as are Ojectivism, communism and fascism). The world cannot be healed. The best you can do is the best you can do. When you force people, as liberals do with their unending taxes and regulations you regress. When 90% of auto emissions are eliminated and you lobby to spend billions getting rid of the last percentages, your actions are not rational.
Liberalism today is not progressive but reactionary. No to school choice. No to "Choose Life" license plates. No to tax cuts. No to privatizing Social Security. No to the free exercise of religion. No to expanding IRAs. No to expanding Medical Savings accounts. No to drilling in Alaska for oil. No to a return to Federalism (examplified by the filibustering of Janice Brown and others to the Federal courts).No to the most modest restriction on abortion (parental consent).
That is why liberals are losing elections. They have nothing to offer except recycled stuff from LBJ--most of which failed dismally.
A man's gots to know his limits.
Liberalism in its more virulent form is a gnostic pseudo-religion (as are Ojectivism, communism and fascism). The world cannot be healed. The best you can do is the best you can do. When you force people, as liberals do with their unending taxes and regulations you regress. When 90% of auto emissions are eliminated and you lobby to spend billions getting rid of the last percentages, your actions are not rational.
Liberalism today is not progressive but reactionary. No to school choice. No to "Choose Life" license plates. No to tax cuts. No to privatizing Social Security. No to the free exercise of religion. No to expanding IRAs. No to expanding Medical Savings accounts. No to drilling in Alaska for oil. No to a return to Federalism (examplified by the filibustering of Janice Brown and others to the Federal courts).No to the most modest restriction on abortion (parental consent).
That is why liberals are losing elections. They have nothing to offer except recycled stuff from LBJ--most of which failed dismally.
Brutus1964 said:
See, this is an example of something I was talking about in the "Liberal Dictionary" thread. To quote a point in that topic:
As I responded then:
(A) This is not necessarily a bad outcome.
(B) Is it possible that, as nature abhors a vacuum, it might just turn out that comedians tell better jokes?
(B) Is it possible that, as nature abhors a vacuum, it might just turn out that comedians tell better jokes?
You've provided an excellent example.
You get ten years as a theoretical maximum. Bush gets eight.
If your response was factually-based, it would have been more effective. Of course, then you couldn't have tittered as you did, so ... what, is it a coin-flip at that point?
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Notes:
Sciforums.com. "Liberal Dictionary". See http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=44611
Legal Information Institute. "U.S. Constitution". See http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxxii.html
Legal Information Institute. "U.S. Constitution". See http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxxii.html
Muhlenberg
Registered Senior Member
Charles Schumer was slated to be Kerry's first pick for the Supreme Court.
The United States of America and its constitutional representative democracy dodged a bullet to the heart.
The United States of America and its constitutional representative democracy dodged a bullet to the heart.
shrubby pegasus
Registered Senior Member
muhlenberg:
nearly every one of those things you just said is totally contrived or blatant distortions of some barely recognizable instant. that is right wing spin. go do some research and you will see liberals arent anything like what you just portrayed.
nearly every one of those things you just said is totally contrived or blatant distortions of some barely recognizable instant. that is right wing spin. go do some research and you will see liberals arent anything like what you just portrayed.
In reality it was Janet Jackson's boob that gave Bush the presidency. By shifting the focus away from the war and onto "family", Bush was able keep his base happy.
The ridicule many gave to the movie "The Passion of the Christ", didn't help either.
The ridicule many gave to the movie "The Passion of the Christ", didn't help either.
They can't help... they're very transparent and at the end of the day no one cares what they think. Seriously... has a movie star changed your opinion on anything? ever? They're entertainers with the pretention of being leaders... they're just not.
Muhlenberg
Registered Senior Member
static76...Ridicule had nothing to do with the reaction to the attacks on the Passion of the Christ.
Many who don't even go to church were stunned to see a Christian could not make a film about his own faith with his own money without the liberal elites, the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal center jumping down his throat.
They didn't ridicule it. They tried to kill it, then change the script, prevent a distributor from handling it and then did all they could to drive off viewers.
I never saw it. But I followed the attacks by Frank Rich and others--disgusting, un-American performances. I would say the exact same thing if a film about another religion was so savaged.
I want nothing to do with people like that. I sure don't support the candidates they support.
Many who don't even go to church were stunned to see a Christian could not make a film about his own faith with his own money without the liberal elites, the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal center jumping down his throat.
They didn't ridicule it. They tried to kill it, then change the script, prevent a distributor from handling it and then did all they could to drive off viewers.
I never saw it. But I followed the attacks by Frank Rich and others--disgusting, un-American performances. I would say the exact same thing if a film about another religion was so savaged.
I want nothing to do with people like that. I sure don't support the candidates they support.