What the hell, let’s start off the week with a good flamewar. However, this will be a different kind of flamewar so don’t map STFU p33n to the F1 key just yet. For this thread only we plan to delete any comment that doesn’t advance an actual argument. Sure, flame somebody’s argument as historically misinformed, fallacious and outright neanderthal but attacks on the person or group (even within an otherwise-substantive post) will disappear as soon as John, Tom or I spot them.
So, what about? Heh. This past week I noticed that a preferred jackalope (that is to say, irrelevant side-track spawned by someone in order to change the subject) between our regular commenters and the recent influx of Instapundit readers concerns whether the left or the right owns the Nazi party. The question itself is of course ridiculous unless people bother to define their terms, since decades of hard work by jingoists has made the words ‘leftist’ and ‘liberal’ useless as anything more than empty pejoratives (for example see here, or frequent comments on this blog). Insofar as people want to hash out this silly point we ought to figure out whether we’re even talking about the same things.
To start off, what do we mean by left and right? Historically liberalism has been defined as the political philosophy of human equality and government policies which support that. The Declaration of Independence and its opening line that …all men are created equal comes directly from the liberal philosopher John Locke and is widely considered to be the most liberal experiment of its time. At the extreme left, communism is essentially an effort by government to reach the maximal limits of human equality (in theory if never in practice). Conversely I would define the political ‘right’ as comfortable with inequality in the sense of social, economic and sometimes (but not always) racial stratification. This is supported, for example, by social science data accumulated during the past century.
So where do the Nazis fit? I will advance three points, two original and one a response to a point raised elsewhere, and people can hash it out in the comments.
First, what’s in a name…The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, otherwise known as North Korea, is neither Democratic nor in practice a Republic. Political parties can choose names for many reasons other than accurately describing their politics, so the ‘socialist’ in ‘National Socialist’ by itself means very little.
Second, the statement that ‘all men are created equal’ would hardly have occurred to the Nazi party. National Socialist dogma held the most extreme views imaginable about religious and racial division and their economic policies, while recognizing the interest in protecting some workers’ rights, are widely regarded as more friendly to business interests than competing parties at the time.
Speaking of competing parties, an understanding of the political makeup of Weimar Germany will help to understand where the Nazi party stood. In the absence of a strong, unbiased security force (local police were usually run by and for local parties) each party built security and influence through its own violent gangs organized through partisan newspapers, social clubs and beer halls. Importantly, among the largest, most violent and terrifying to middle class Germans was the Communist party.
The Communist promise of revolution (and regular attempts at it) posed enough of a threat to the German order that many ordinary Germans, including the business interests, supported the equally-violent gang which promised to politically oppose communism/leftism and support the established social order, the National Socialists, as the less-unappealing alternative. Nazi symbolism swam in appeals to traditional German values, old-time German religion (to the point of calling out the old pagan gods on occasion) and ‘progress’ was largely presented as a return to the qualities that once made Germany great. In between the Nazis and Communists on the Weimar political spectrum a number of politically-moderate parties gradually lost influence. Those two observations, that the National Socialists supported (and were supported by) established business interests and that they advertised themselves as defenders of traditional German values, suggest that they were both to the right and conservative.
What do you think? It’s a silly argument to be having at all, yes, but as long as it keeps happening we might as well consolidate it into one thread. If you disagree with my definitions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ by all means point out what you would put in their place and why. Point out my historical fudging, or post some of your own. Have at it, but not each other.
Tulkinghorn
A useful distinction that may be made is that Fascism is nostalgic (restoring man and society to an authentic state) while Communism is utopian (changing the character of man so that new state of humanity is reached).
The common theme in both is that modern man lives in an unacceptable state of inauthenticity that needs to be violently overthrown.
Defense Guy
OK. I think you are fudging the history, and I think that your self identification as liberal is skewing the way you think of things. It was the Republicans, not the Democrats who were abolitionists. In addition, it was the Republicans who voted in greater numbers for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As to the Nazis, they are unlike either the modern Democrats or Republicans. In fact, they are so unlike any major modern American political party that any attempt to draw a parallel is doomed to fail.
Mr Furious
Yup. Nazis are off the charts.
And in that other thread, coming back with the N Korea to refute the Nazi comment was pure genius…
Bombadil
Both points are true, but the parties then are not the same parties now. During the civil rights era, Southern Democrats were breaking away from the Democratic party as “Dixiecrats” which eventually formed the base of Nixon’s Republican party in ths South.
Today’s Southern Republicans would not be voting for the Civil Rights Act in anything approaching the numbers they did in 1964. And the folks who became the Democratic “base” in the South were the ones for whom the Civil Rights Act was written, and with their votes the Democrats’ approval of the CRA would be overwhelming.
As to this point, right on.
Zifnab
Even back into the days of Lincoln when the Whig party had all but collapsed and the tender shoots of what would later become the GOP broke through political soil, the Republicans were a party of big business.
Two of the classic Republican arguements against slavery leading up into the Civil War were: 1) They’re taking good American jobs that could have easily been done by good American workers and giving them to slaves. So if you’re unemployeed, its because “Dey took’r jobs!” 2) Slavery had imported a disturbing number of black people into our pure white country.
In short, the old Republican stance on slavery then looks alot like the new Republican stance on illegal immigration now.
Those Republicans who supported freedom for black people and integration into open civil society were in the minorty. The truth is that much of the Civil War had to do with Northern economic expansion into Southern states. In that sense, the GOP of today hasn’t changed nearly as much as GOPers would have you believe. Northern Republicans of yesteryear were still a bunch of Pinkertons and Union bashers and Facists.
chopper
i think Tim failed to use the terms ‘democrat’ and ‘republican’ for a reason, defense guy. the whole argument is over ‘left’ and ‘right’.
Bombadil
Point of information, if I may, regarding function key setup. I understand STFU, but “p33n”? What’s that?
Zifnab
I just kinda assumed democrat/left and republican/right were synonomis for this discussion.
Punchy
SCMT might have it dead-on, actually. If you’d like to associate the Nazi party with a current, modern American party or platform, the experiment is easy–take the closest thing to an authentic Nazi–a Neo-Nazi–and see what party they’d vote for.
Since the Neo’s I’ve dealt with and read about are rabid anti-gay, anti-minority, and pretty much against anything not white, I’d say that conforms well to the Republican party.
The odd thing is, for diff reasons. Neo’s HATE blacks and gays. Republicans seem indifferent to minorities, and disrespect gays not due to hatred, but due to long-standing biblical reasons. So, while the reasons for these feelings are quite diff between the two, the end result is a marriage of ideals.
And as one recognizes Bush’s move to consolidate power, there is an obvious parallel to the early 30’s Nazi-ism there, too. Or course, this all hinges upon “Republican” as defined in the last 5 years….which is pretty much the polar opposite (big gov’t, big spending, nation-building, etc) of traditional Republican thinking.
Defense Guy
It’s hard to actually refute something that is purely guesswork, as this is, but I think you are wrong. This administration has elevated black people to actual positions of power, did so before the 2004 elections and was still voted back in by the south.
I agree that it was stupid for the Republicans to take in the racist Democratic exports.
I know it is something of a fashion to point at the south as the source of modern racism, but the truth is that racism is not a geographic constraint anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while.
Zifnab
I think that’s p30n or peon. Of course he could have ben going for p0\/\/nD or owned, or he could have streteched it farther and gone for p3n short for penishead. But I could be reaching on all of these.
Vladi G
Wow, now who’s fudging history? Who said the following:
You’re right, though. Newt Gingrich always was a flaming liberal.
Defense Guy
Ok, but I agree with Zifnab on this and am assuming for the sake of this argument that the Dems are the left and the Repubs are the right.
What was the Democrat stance on this? I notice you left that part out. Also, illegal immigration is, well, illegal, so shouldn’t everybody be against it?
Andrew
Name a single sensible individual that had participated in the revisionist fantasy of linking the Nazis to modern liberalism.
1) Advance absurd argument like “Nancy Pelosi is a modern day Goebbels.”
2) Liberals say, “No, we’re not Nazis.”
3) Public hears “blah blah … Nazi … liberals … Nazi … Michael Moore”
4) ???
5) Republicans win elections.
Defense Guy
I’m not lying to you Vladi, it’s history. It was advanced by the Democrat executive, but voted for in far greater numbers by the Republican congress. In fact, it so enraged many ‘Dixiecrats’ that they abandoned the party. The Republicans, showing truth in the name ‘the stupid party’, took them in.
Bombadil
Quite true, but Colin Powell and Condi Rice were not on the ballot. Few Republicans from any region would vote for a Democrat because the Republicans have put black people in positions of power.
Leaving aside the actual politicians who became Republicans, the GOP would have very little control over who switched their affiliation, and to think they would have turned away anyone based on their views on race is silly on its face. Indeed, they actively courted them, and were able to win elections doing so.
Blue Neponset
Driving over the speed limit is also illegal, but I imagine everyone who reads this comment will continue to drive faster than the speed limit when it suits him/her.
Andrew
Why do blacks vote for Democrats in ridiculously high numbers?
Are black people stupid? Or are they just of such weak moral character that Democrats can buy them all with welfare?
Those seem to be the two most common arguments I hear from Republicans, who refuse to accept the plainly obvious fact that Republicans really don’t care about black people.
Davebo
Well I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m going to have to defend the GOP against Defense Guy.
Huh? So the GOP should have hung out at southern voter registration centers and questioned anyone attempting to change party affiliation to Republican?
That’s just silly! First it assumes southern voters were incredibly single issue minded (which isn’t at all the case) and that the issue of segregation was the only motivating factor in southern democrats switching parties which is also false.
All of this didn’t occur in a vacuum you know. There were a few other things going on in the early to mid sixties that also affected the choices made by southern voters.
mrmobi
Ok, Defense Guy, you can’t really look at the House and Senate voting on the Civil Right Act of 1964 without taking regional differences into account, if you want to get an accurate picture of how the voting was distributed, as well as the terrible political consequences it had for the Democratic Party and President Johnson.
In the House, no Southern Republicans voted aye. That’s right, 100% voted against the act.
In the House, 85% of Northern Republicans voted aye, along with 94% of Northern Democrats. So the point you make of there being solid support is true, but I don’t see where you get that Republicans voted aye in greater numbers.
Remember too, that Lyndon Johnson’s courageous act of forcing this through congress cost the Democrats the solid South. The political landscape was completely transformed.
It was mainly Quakers who formed the first abolitionist groups in America, as far back as 1775. Benjamin Franklin was the first president of a group known as the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
Tim F.
SomeCallMeTim,
That comment went a bit too far. I know that it was tame by our standards but I’m trying to take the first paragraph of this post seriously.
Chopper is correct, I left them out because the parties have historically shifted around the left/right axis significantly.
Defense Guy
Ah, but you are starting to see a change in this. You are seeing a shift in the way some black folks see the 2 parties. Look at Maryland, where a longtime Democrat supporter is backing a GOP cantidate. Things are changing, and it is good for the country as a whole, but not so good for the Democratic party.
Plainly obvious? Why is it plainly obvious. In fact, I have to wonder just what the Democrats have done for black people lately, other than to perpetuate the myth that only the Democrats care for the darker-hued countrymen? If Condi shows up on the GOP ticket in ’08, expect a major shift in this old thinking.
Vladi G
That’s great. But Tim’s not raising this dicussion to find out which party was closer to the Nazis 40 years ago. We’re talking about what’s happening today. And your deliberate failure to acknowledge that the Democratic party of today includes little to none of the sort of people who made up much of the party 40 years ago, especially as it relates to the Civil Rights Act, is dishonest. History has context. When you fail to provide it in order to advance a position that you know is wrong, you argue dishonestly.
Davebo
Don’t hold your breath waiting for either the GOP to embrace a black never married female for prez/vp or for black Americans to change their view of the GOP because she does get nominated.
You might have more luck with Colin Powell but, after spending 4 years demonizing him I can’t see that 180 taking place either.
Andrew
It is plainly obvious because blacks vote for Democrats. If they are not voting in their own self interest, then why do they vote for democrats in overwhelming numbers?
Either you respect the fact that blacks choose Democrats for good reason, or you must believe that they are stupid or easily bribed.
Andrew
Furthermore, the few minority individuals that have achieved positions of power in the Bush administration hardly counterbalance the federal government’s failures around Katrina and Republican hostility towards Mexicans.
Blacks and hispanics watch the news too, you know.
Defense Guy
mrmobi
It might be helpful to look at the actual numbers. Notice that there aren’t a hell of a lot of Southern Republicans at the time.
In any case, that was then and this is now. Old ways are being replaced with new, better ways.
srv
The modern right owns the Nazi party. It’s all about deference to authoritarianism. Nazism was really practiced. Communism is just an unapplied social theory used by tyrants and oligarchs. Sorta like Glennuendo would be a “libertarian” if he was leader.
Defense Guy would have us believe Republicanism is still all about Blue Bloods with some social conscious. He seems to have missed the last 40 years of his party.
SomeCallMeTim
That comment went a bit too far. I know that it was tame by our standards but I’m trying to take the first paragraph of this post seriously.
Fair enough. I sincerely thought I was following the rules. I thought the comment, which was about the existence of a standard ideological map and possible motivations for moving from it, was appropriate. But it’s your house, and if you say I am wrong, I’m wrong.
Defense Guy
Then perhaps he should not have included historical examples of liberals in his post.
I would not be so bold as to speculate on why such a large and diverse group does what it does, as each individual makes up their own mind. I will say that the NAACP, which should be non-partisan, simply is not.
It’s a false dichotomy designed to trap me into agreeing with their decision or painting myself as a racist. Nice try.
Vladi G
So in other words, your claim that Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act in “greater numbers” was wrong. A greater percentage of elected Republicans voted for it based primarily on the fact that most Southerners in Washington were labled Democrats back then, regardless of what they’d be labled now. In fact, when we correct for region, not only did the Dems that dominated the regions that are currently considered Democratic strongholds vote for the Act in higher numbers, but also in greater percentages.
I’m not sure why you’d peddle that original argument here, though. You had to know you’d be called out on it.
Defense Guy
I was a Democrat up until late ’02 early ’03. I didn’t miss anything, I just don’t live in the glory days of the past.
Defense Guy
Vladi
A mistake, I should have said that more Democrats voted against the Act than Republicans.
Tim F.
Don’t think that I did not appreciate your point, I did. The comment only got nuked because I am angling for an entire thread without the terms ‘kook,’ ‘moonbat’ or ‘wingnut.’
Defense Guy
It would be better for this ‘expirement’ if you had more people arguing on the right side of the equation than just me.
Tsulagi
Well, there was one old Nazi who got it right. When interviewed by an Army captain during the Nuremberg trials, Goering told the captain how easy it was to sell war to the German people. “…the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Indeed it does in some with the right leaders. Dirka dirka 9/11 9/11 Iraq. Dirka dirka 9/11 Saddam. Goering just didn’t know how easy it could become.
RSA
I think srv hits an important point with deference to authority. If we focus on Christian influence in U.S. politics, for example, it strikes me that there are more similarities between the Nazi Party and the right than the left. Believing that the Bible is a final and universal source of authority in pretty much everything, I’d argue, is a better match for the authoritarian aspects of the Nazis than would be the case for religious beliefs on the left. Similar comments could be made about hawks on the right with respect to a strong hierarchical military, though there are of course hawks on the left (many fewer of them).
Punchy raises a good point as well. And if we look at how groups who were persecuted by the Nazis align themselves in the U.S. today (rather than looking at which party is willing to accept them), it seems they’re mostly on the left: Jews, ethnic minorities, gays, etc.
Sstarr
I think that the Barry Goldwaer Republicans of the 1960’s were very far from the ideology and practice of the Nazi party. However, as social conservatives have increasingly dominated the Republican party troubling parallels have arisin between the ideology of the “new” Republican party and the Nazi party.
The Nazi party was officially extremely socially conservative. Nazis attempted through coercian and force to prevent woman from working. Their realm was defined as “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” or Children, kitchen, church. They limited popular entertainment to German music, German literature and German theater. They banned “degenerate” art. One of Hitlter’s first acts was a law titled “The Law for the Encouragement of Marriage.”
I would say that in this area of cultural conservatism the modern Republican party is clearly walking down the path blazed by the Nazi party.
Paul L.
Wow, a study from psychologists at Berkeley about conservatives.
I am sure there was no preconceived notions or bias in this study.
Punchy
Wow, a Dem until ’03 and then a Republican! I’ve never heard of the conversion going that direction in those years. Usually, guy’s like Mr. Cole and many others go the other direction, and for good reason:
While the Dems have changed little (maybe from little spine to spineless), the Repub party has completely changed. 180 degrees. From small to big gov’t. From fiscal responsibility to fiscal insanity. From state’s and personal rights to Shiavio (sp?). Hard to imagine someone JOINING the Repub party, as charlatan-esque as it’s been the last 5 years…
radish
Didn’t they used to call this sort of thing “a debate?” My sweetie has a box in the garage that’s labeled “debate club trophies” and I think it has something to do with this sort of discussion. Plus didn’t John try something very similar to this about a year or so ago, only more socratic, where he would ask a question and insist on direct answers from the commentariat. Oh, wait, you mean even attempts at funny will be deleted if they don’t advance a serious argument?
Okay then, “left” and “right” refer to the two sides of the parliamentary chamber. (See France, First Republic of.) Of course if you’re a mere citizen, viewing the chamber from the back instead of the front, then everything seems wrong.
Another joke? I think not. “Left” and “right” have become so overloaded with cultural baggage that they are not useful as political labels. To the extent they have any meaning they refer to “rural traditionalists” vs “urban progressives.”
I disagree, again quite seriously. I favor “moonbats” for people who oppose the Bush administration and “wingnuts” for people who support it, because once you accept that you can move on to actual merits. I’m on the record about this in other “serious” threads as well, and I know I can find one of them on Obsidian Wings because it was pretty recent.
Pro-Bush vs anti-Bush is the definitive political dimension of 2003-2007. Triage mode vs business-as-usual mode. Separation of powers vs unitary executive. My best guess is that approaching the ’08 elections the defining tension will be between authoritarianism in general and libertarianism in general, but if Dems have any sense they will run on YOYO vs WITT. Economic populism vs corporatism, or maybe just populism vs oligarchy in general.
Bwahahaha. Now that’s funny. Not that I wouldn’t dearly love to see that happen, but as Davebo says, don’t hold your breath.
Andrew
How is it a false dichotomy? Either you believe that blacks vote for their own self interest in a rational manner or you do not.
I cannot think of any argument that large numbers of black people do not vote in their own self interest that does not involve their stupidity or gulibility.
If you believe that blacks do indeed vote rationally, then it is clear that their votes for Democrats, against Republicans, mean that Republicans do not care about black people as much as Democrats do.
Plus, 30 years of history supports this quite well.
The Other Steve
Responding to Defense Guys various points:
Agreed. However, if we are to learn from the Nazis to not make the same mistakes, we must not just look at the Holocaust, but at the political tactics used to subjugate the society.
There were a great many things used as tactics which were not illegal, but simply manipulative. The use of paid propaganda, for example.
I think you are right in that GW Bush is not personally overtly racist. He has appointed black people to levels of prominence which is good.
However, we do have to recognize that there is a level of “Only Nixon could go to China” here. That is, had Clinton tried to nominate a black person as Secretary of State the more racist members of the Republican party would most suredly halted the nomination. As they did to nominations such as Republican governor William Weld. Or Clinton’s court appointments.
Well, Democrats didn’t want them and the Republicans gladly embraced them.
The parties have changed. Today Abe Lincoln would be a Democrat, and Stephen Douglas a Republican.
To a degree yes, largely because Republicans have been trying to export the Southern Strategy laws to the north.
But it’s still only in the south(and maybe Indiana) where you see things like blacks being denied sitting up at the front of the bus, or white’s only high school proms.
Vladi G
Yeah, but you didn’t, which pretty much betrays any claim you had to making an honest argument. But that’s OK, it’s over now and you’ve pretty much had your ass handed to you on this point.
Tim F.
Mr Furious,
Please re-phrase the question.
Bombadil
I’m not sure that there’s a lot of rational thinking in the voting patterns of the last few cycles, particularly given the results. While I can understand the more “privileged” voting for Republicans, I’m puzzled at the support Republicans (at least “these” Republicans) get from the less well off. Voting based on such issues as gay marriage, school prayer, sex education and the like (which directly affect few) while ignoring tax cuts for the very wealthy, gutting of social programs and a very costly war that is making no one safer from terrorism (which directly affect many) does not strike me as being “rational” and voting for one’s self-interest. There seems to be “stupidity” and “gullibility” involved, but it ain’t limited to one race, that’s for sure.
Defense Guy
This is a false dichotomy. It assumes that there are only 2 possible choices, when in fact there are not.
Ah, the height of respect and reasoned discourse.
Tom in Texas
I use an expanded version of Godwin’s law — anyone who campares their political opponent to a Nazi has lost ground in their argument, no matter the side. The same rule holds for Vietnam. There are other ideologies and other wars that have been fought, and that typically offer a much more illustrative comparison. It galls me to no end that the only two critiques our parties can offer are “But they are Hitler — we have to defeat them” or “We’re getting into a Vietnam style quagmire.”
srv
Another item is Party Uber Alles wrt to the legislative branch. Have we ever had a Congressional majority in the last 50 years that was more deferential to the Presidency?
Can anyone imagine a non-right majority that was or would be as equally eager to make itself redundant? Look at someone like Johnson, who knew where all the bodies were buried and still had to use every possible tool at his disposal to drag Congress kicking and screaming where he wanted it.
Andrew
Present a single good reason that many or most blacks vote against their own self-interest that does not involve them being stupid or bribed.
The Other Steve
Going back on point. Left and Right continue to have very different meanings over time, and I’m not sure if you can ever nail it down.
I’m not a Republican today, because I don’t like blaming others for problems that I either caused myself or don’t have any control over. This is an area that I tend to get into arguments with Democrats over too, but it’s the Republicans trying to legislate it.
I also don’t like like a cowardice or cowing to opposition. Now granted, when I was a kid that tended to get me beat up a lot as I wasn’t a very big kid.
I have to admit in those regards, votes are emotional, and I’m unclear if there is any thinking ideology left.
Cyrus
What exactly did SCMT say? Maybe reiterating it would be contrary to the idea of this experiment, but I’m just confused. I was all set to assume that DG was getting off-topic by bringing partisan politics into a thread that Tim F. had deliberately tried to keep civil, until later comments made it clear that he was just responding to SCMT. Try handling hostile comments with disemvowelling instead, maybe? Either that, or get really quick on your trigger finger, to stop discussions of stuff like that before it starts.
It’s hard to say anything about this that couldn’t be interpreted as a cheap shot. The “Nazis were really liberals” idea is obviously not conventional wisdom – thank God our political dialogue hasn’t gone that far – but it is easily common enough to be worth addressing. So Tim F. writes a post disagreeing with it using direct arguments, about as fact-based as you can be and still in the realm of common knowledge, and he begins by (a) defining his terms and (b) calling for civility. And attempts to rebut his post are limited to… crickets chirping.
In sports, if the other team doesn’t show up it’s a forfeit, which counts as a loss. If one right-winger arguing about a side issue (arguing relatively well and civilly, I should add to be clear, despite the impression I got by coming to the thread too late to see the first post) is the limit of disagreement, then it seems to me that the “Nazis = liberals” idea pretty weak. Whatever that idea might be based on, it’s probably not a well-informed grasp of history.
John/Tim/Tom, if you delete this, fine. Maybe I’ll try to repost a more acceptable version. But if this thread hits 100 comments and the argument stays about the way it looks right now with only 36, there should be some effort to analyze the results of the experiment.
Defense Guy
Yes, making a mistake means I was trying to decieve you, which must be why I put the actual vote breakdown up. I bring facts, even when they contradict my initial statement, and you simply talk smack. I won’t repeat the mistake of talking to you again.
Tom in Texas
Andrew:
They could vote against their own self interest were a perceived threat to be considered dangerous enough to override those concerns, much as Liberals constantly lament how the southern poor continue to vote against their interests when it comes to gay marriage and other hot button issues. The argument I heard was basically: The Democrats just make the rich white man out to be the gay. Blacks are terrified, and feel they have to vote against them. It overrides any other issues that the Republicans could be better at solving.
Joey
Explain why the NAACP should be non-partisan. Shouldn’t they support the party that pushes the most for the advancement of colored people?
The Other Steve
You have to understand, that issues may conflict with one another but in perception one is more important than others.
Some poor red neck doesn’t care about tax cuts to the wealthy because he doesn’t see how it hurts him. And maybe it doesn’t right now, since we’re just borrowing the money to pay for the tax cuts. The funding for programs hasn’t been cut by much.
See that’s the beauty of Reagan Republicanism. It has no downside in the short term. You increase spending, decrease taxes and make everybody happy.
Now the poor red neck guy, he doesn’t worry about his welfare check not coming in. He’s worried about sodomites taking over and forcing him into a gay marriage he doesn’t want.
Why? Because you worry about what’s in front of you.
I think one thing some Left fail to understand in this country. Poverty is pretty much dead in America. Sure we have a definition of poverty, it means a family of 4 living on less than $X.
But it means they can’t afford a dishwasher.
Poverty used to mean you couldn’t afford food and shelter.
Andrew
I happen to think that blacks are generally voting rationally when they choose Democrats. I think that poor people who vote for Republicans because of low taxes are bad at math and are voting irrationally, and that the bulk of irrationality (aka stupidity) is currently on the right.
Tom: You are indeed making the argument that blacks are voting out of irrational fear, which is quite stupid. This fits into my dichotomy quite well.
Defense Guy
You still don’t get it. Ask an honest question, and I may answer it. Continue with this self serving crap and I’ll just ignore it from now on.
I only brought partisanship into it, as I thought the initial post skewed very heavily in favor of the liberal as good, conservative as uncaring twit camp. Which, is not the best way to begin, IMO. Tim clearly said that attempts to fudge history could be pointed out.
Krista
Poverty’s not dead, TOS. It’s just silent. The truly poor don’t really have access to the media, and are too busy trying to scrounge up enough change for lunch to be bothered to go vote. Unfortunately, the people who are hit the hardest by any given leader’s economic policies are the very ones who often are given no voice with which to protest those policies.
radish
Speaking as a
“lefty”fiscal/political conservative and social progressivelibertarian decentralistmoonbatfan of methodical inquiry, I would like to agree that the Berkeley study is way more useful as an example of raging confirmation bias than as an insight into conservative psychology. That particular bunch of post-doc hours would have been far more educational if they were spent working in a church-run soup kitchen.And as long as we’re on the subject of clean forensics:
Which is why your argument is so strong: Def Guy is arguing that black people believe something that he claims is untrue, so he has indeed obliged himself either to embrace the argument that black people vote irrationally or to offer some empirical explanation of why black people believe that.
Either they are more gullible than other poor folks, or they are being bribed, or aliens are beaming mind control rays into their brains, or something. But no explanation at all means no argument. Simply saying that something is a false choice doesn’t actually make it a false choice.
You have to provide a counterexample, as Tom in Texas does. Only Tom’s counterexample is vulnerable to the argument that poor white people and poor black people are equally gullible. i.e. poor white people are fooled into voting GOP against their own interests, while poor black people are fooled into voting Dem against their own interests.
The Other Steve
The NAACP is non-partisan.
Issue groups work one of two ways…
They can either support those who listen to them and oppose those who are hostile to them.
Or they can try to support those who are hostile to them with a goal of winning them over to their side. What you might call “buying” a vote.
“Buying” a vote tends to work for business issue groups.
But when you’re talking about civil rights, it hardly makes sense to expect a group to support someone who is hostile their cause.
Vladi G
I was going to ask this too, but I would agree that if the NAACP is going to present itself as a tax exempt organization, it should be non-partisan. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to advance positions, just like any church is able to. But they should steer clear of endorsing and campaigning for particular candidates.
Defense Guy
Yes and No. I will explain that if you can tell me how the Democrats have pushed for the advancement of colored people more than the Republicans.
Ok. I’ll explain it anyway. The NAACP does not serve it’s constituants well by putting all of their eggs in one basket. The black population of this country would be FAR better served with a more even split amongst the parties, because it’s simply no longer true that only one party has their interest at heart.
jh
Defense Guy,
As everyone else has pointed out, the Republicans and Democrats basically switched roles after the passage of Civil Rights legislation.
Black people do not vote Democratic for any other reason than the above – all of the Dixiecrats that had worked hard to make life hell on earth for several generations of blacks became Republicans after the Democrats forced the civil rights issue. Johnson acknowledged this in his memoirs, stating clearly that the Democratic party had lost the south for “at least one generation” with their support for equality for blacks.
And then there has been the Republican support for policies that ostensibly have had a disproportionately negative effect on African-Americans, the corrosive race baiting of the Reagan era and the prominence of bigots like Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond in the past 35years of GOP politics..
Bush’s high profile appointees, do little to mitigate the track record of well known (in black communities) Republican transgressions against blacks. Especially in comparison to all of the blacks that were given entry into politics and the middle class in the years immediately following segregation.
Joey
In your opinion. One could make the argument that the democrats are their better option because they tend to push more for social programs that would benefit the poor. A larger percentage of minorities are not in the middle or upper class, economically. Since that’s the case (if you disagree, just assume for a moment), then the NAACP would be doing their constituents a disservice by not supporting the party that helps them the most, correct?
RSA
This view would generalize to the NRA, Focus on the Family, and many other groups on the right. I may be missing the point on this, though.
Defense Guy
Show me where I did that. Otherwise you are compounding his logical fallacy with one of your own.
The Other Steve
People who can’t obtain food and shelter will SCREAM. Just look at the history of the Bonus Army and Hoover. It’s not a question of not having a voice.
The standard of living has changed. Poverty means something different today.
Dave Ruddell
I rather like how the Political Compass handles the issue. They put Hitler just to the right of centre (their definition of right/left is economic), while maxing him out on the authoritarian/libertarian axis. To quote their explanation of why:
This analysis obviously uses a different left/right definition than Tim F.’s.
The Other Steve
Which is a Business Advocacy world view.
But that’s not what the NAACP is.
mrmobi
Defense Guy:
First, thanks for your first post, in checking the facts I learned some interesting things.
However, while I agree that your new party is getting better with regard to racism in general, the past couple of weeks have brought to our attention that there is plenty of work to be done, primarily in the South, but also generally.
The George Allen thing is a good example. Here’s a guy who smears someone who “looks different” with a semi-obvious racial epithet, and is STILL trying to come up with an explanation. Truth be told, I thought he was a dolt before he did this, but I didn’t think he was a racist.
We now know that he, at one time, had both a confederate flag and a noose in his study. Nice. I assume that you don’t think Allen represents the “new and better way.” The noose tells it all, I think, but let me be clear, the confederate flag is a symbol of the practice of slavery and, as such, should be offensive to every American possessing a conscience.
On the other hand, we have the example of the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 last month. While congress-critters from 9 Southern states barked about being unfairly singled out, it did pass unanimously.
I’d be very interested in your reasoning for going GOP, particularly so late in the first Bush term. I hope you can see how completely incompetent the current regime is. I just don’t get it, frankly. Do you really think that an Al Gore administration would have done as terrible a job as this bunch? They couldn’t even mount a disaster operation with a weeks’ notice.
Defense Guy
jh, I generally agree with what you said before this. The right has a lot of digging to do to undo the damage of the past, but if you do not allow that this is being done by putting very qualified black people in actual positions of power, then you are simply saying that nothing will do it. In that case, won’t blacks always be beholden to only one party, and if so, how does that help?
If the Democrats were able to undo the past sins, then why should the Republicans not be allowed the same chance? Wouldn’t that be best for everybody?
Tom in Texas
A) Today’s Southern Republicans are of the same lineage as the Dixiecrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act, thus it seems logical to deduce they would vote similarly.
B) This administration may have elevated plack people to actual positions of power and still gotten votes, but that does not address the issue. The issue is not why white people vote Republican (and whether or not it should be affected by minority Cabinet appointments), but why black people don’t. They don’t vote Republican because the GOP does not consider them a voting bloc influential enough to influence its platforms, or its field of candidates. The GOP regularly takes stands on issues that are either outright hostile to most blacks (confederate flag brouhahas and hate crime legislation), or issues that matter to a constituency blacks feel hostility towards (fundamentalist Christians).
There are currently 57 elected black Republicans in the entire party — lower than the number of blacks in many individual high school classsrooms. There are thousands of elected seats up for election yearly, of which the GOP found 47 black candidates in 2006. If every one of these candidates were running for Congress, and they all won, the GOP would outnumber the Dems by 3 in the CBC. That the GOP can find so few black candidates to run for office helps explain why blacks are uncomfortable with being represented by Republicans.
The Other Steve
I would like to toss Defense Guy a bone in that to a certain degree I think racism is also dead in America.
Not entirely. It’s in it’s last throes, the end is around the corner, and all we have is a bunch of dead enders. But it is surely dying.
It’s a slow thing, hopefully in another generation it’ll be a non-issue. Just as in the last generation since the Civil Rights Act the opposition has died.
Tom in Texas
Here is a link of blacks running for office as Republicans.
OCSteve
If you go to the source materiel for the times and read some of the speeches and writings, you will see many explicit statements like this:
Etc.
Many of Goebbels speeches explicitly bash the liberals of the time. To that extent, it is hard to place them on the left. As has been pointed out, many of their purported beliefs and goals would not look out of place on the right today if cleaned up for the times. If the only choice is left or right they were clearly more to the right than the left.
But you guys on the left got the commies, and a much higher body count.
Ain’t it a bitch that you don’t get to choose your fellow political travelers?
The Other Steve
Agree, but the Republicans appear to not be interested in this.
I mean look at the opposition to the Motor Voter Act of ’93. Why on earth would anyone be opposed to making it easier to register to vote?
The other recent brouhaha regarding identification needs on voting day. They’re completely obvlivious to some of the concerns which have come up.
Why? Because the constituency’s these things impact… they don’t vote for Republicans more than 50% of the time. So the GOP has calculated, if they can cut X number of people off the voting rolls, if 70% of the time that X number votes for their opponents… that’s a boon for the party.
It’s that kind of fucking nonsense which proves the party isn’t serious on this issue.
Krista
They might scream, but is anybody listening? And I agree that there are different levels of poverty, and that there are many people living in “official” poverty who still have luxuries, such as a TV. However, I can’t agree with you that poverty is dead, when between your country and mine, the average number of homeless people at any one time is 1 million.
Defense Guy
It’s not just Business Advocacy. If the NAACP only backs one party ever, and in fact works to ensure that only that one party is in power, then they are closing themselves off from working with the other party when they are in power. It would be better to have solid positions, with the country (and blacks in particular) in mind, and then work both parties to see these positions come to fruition. The Byrd commercials which called Bush a racist hurt the organization, and rightfully so.
The Other Steve
Anyway, I have to stop posting here.
One thing I’ve noticed in recent years amongst some on the right is a tendency to take extreme whacky positions. Such as the Nazis = Democrats thing. Then try to defend them.
It started out as jokes. Goldwater or even Reagan would sometimes make extreme comparisons just to get some attention.
But what is scarey today is that they believe this stuff as serious.
jh
Defense Guy,
When one party actively engages in voter suppression against your constituency, as the GOP has actively done in the past two presidential elections, that does not leave a lot of room for comprimise.
The GOP has a lot to answer for with black people, but instead of repudiating the divisive policies that are its stock in trade, it seeks to cover its actions with apologetic language and high profile appointees.
That is not going to cut it.
Andrew
Not only is it plainly obvious to most people that blacks are voting rationally when the check the Democrat box on a ballot a large majority of the time, it is also plainly obvious that Republicans, to quote Kanye, don’t care about black people.
Most criticism of that statement only addressed the surface; that it was absurd or racist ot something to claim that.
But really, why would they care about black people? “Caring” about black people is antitehtical to many of the factions of the republican base. “Caring” about black people would drive solid Republican voters away. It would be irrational for Republicans to care about black people!
Defense Guy
I’ll shorthand it for you. It had almost everything to do with the different stances to the WoT. Since then, I have come to agree with the party on other positions as well. I’d give you Katrina, as I think it was screwed on every governmental level. Bush should have been there first thing ensuring the job was getting done and IMO, FEMA never should have been folded into Homeland security.
Having said that, I cringed at the Allen comment, and if he really is a racist, which he may be, then he will probably lose the election.
Defense Guy
It stems from the historical ways in which both parties have liked to try to steal elections. Republicans were more fond of suppression of votes and Democrats more fond of ballot stuffing. I guess it’s best to specialize when your going to try to steal.
Rusty Shackleford
So you were a Democrat until until the Bush Administration began to sell the Iraq war with lies and manipulated intelligence? Interesting.
Bombadil
One of the more acute observations in the entire thread.
Andrew
Well, the problem here is economists, not voters. And for the past 6 years, we have seen many liberals mistakenly claim that something is irrational when, in fact, it merely conflicts with a liberal belief.
Rationality does not necessarily involve optimal economic outcomes. It is completely rational to vote based on abortion, even if it hurts your pocketbook, for the group that will prevent abortions, if you place a higher value on preventing abortion than, say, tax cuts.
It ain’t irrational for a poor white Southerner to vote Republican to protect them against the gayness if they feel that gays are, like, totally evil.
Irrational behavior is when someone votes for party A because of issue B in spite of evidence that A makes B worse. For example, voting for Republicans to limit abortions, when we see evidence that abortions drop with Democratic plans to promote birth control, and rise when Republicans take over and demonize condoms.
The bulk of this real irrationality is clearly on the Republican side at this point in history.
ThymeZone
No, I think it means that those black votes are an expression of those voters’ opinions that the election of the Democrats will serve their interests better.
Your version is a gross extrapolation, to the extent that it misses the very point you yourself were trying to make … isn’t it?
Defense Guy
This brings up an interesting point, because you really need to ask yourself if the history of blacks living in N.O. started when Bush became president. Even more, the local politicians who are always the first responders and are supposed to know the situation better than anyone had done so little to ensure that there would be adequate handling of the largely black population. To me, that don’t spell much love coming from the Donkeys either.
So why is this supposed to be some sort of proof that it is the Republicans that don’t care about black people?
MAX HATS
How brain damaged do you have to be to say “hey, those guys opposing giving the leader unlimited powers and mock our lavishing him with praise? You, know, the guys opposed to secret prisons? You know, for the secret crimes which they also oppose? The guys against putting journalists in prison?
Yeah, they’re the Nazis!”
ThymeZone
I think it’s a waste of time to argue the relative rationality of voters’ voting decisions.
Unless the voter is covering his eyes and voting at random for choices he can’t even see at voting time, I can’t see how it serves any purpose to try to dissect the rationales invovled in voting decisions.
Even the blind, random vote has a rational quality to it. One could argue that blind, random voting puts a finger into the eye of all political machines, machinations, and manipulations … and one could even argue that random voting would produce better government than what we have been getting for the last
twenty thirty forty fifty one hundred yearscouple of centures.Eh?
MAX HATS
It might have something to do with the gut-instinct of republican commentators, upon seeing black people scraping mud off food in abandoned stores when no other help was avaiable, immediately demanding we have the marines deploy and start shooting.
How much do you want to be that would happen if the “looters” were white? It’s pretty clear what team the republican party plays for, and it isn’t the team with the brown faces.
Dean
I had always thought of the left-right divide as being one of time-orientation.
To a conservative, height of American culture was some point in the fairly recent past. During their lifetime (or the last news cycle, or since the sixties), the U.S. has ‘declined’. It is possible to return to that prior state by avoiding further unwise change, or undoing some of the changes of the recent past.
To a reactionary, American culture is almost hopelessly fallen. The height of the culture is well before their lifetime. The only path is to sweep away the corrupted organizations and return to what they believe is the fundemental core. Most often, that is the Bible and/or the Constitution.
To a liberal, the peak of American culture is in the near future. A series of small changes are what are necessary to change course toward the ‘New Frontier’, ‘The Bridge to the 21st Centruy’, etc. That encourages real liberals to be open to experiments that will create new solutions.
To a radical, the Utopian future is one dictated by whatever dogma they espouse. Any existing structures that impede progress toward that dogma must be swept away as soon as possible and by any means necessary.
In that way, the Nazis were clearly creatures of the Right. In fact, they were on the Far Right, since they sought to restore the pure Aryan race. Their entire propaganda effort was focused upon the distant past (Knights, Homeland, etc.)
If Republicans want to argue that the Democrats of today are further to the Right than they are, then I suppose they can try. However, I doubt anyone serious-minded would pay attention.
MAX HATS
Er, that ^ was in response to this buy defense guy:
jh
You mean other than the slovenly and cavalier response of the Bush Adminstration to the fallout of Katrina?
That’s all the evidence I needed.
Darrell
Agreed. Now let’s have some honest acknowledgement as to which “side” overwhelmingly tends to do that and other similar rhetoricl dishonesty the most. Take this thread for example:
And that’s not including SCMT’s deleted post. The left, far more than the right, tends to dishonestly characterize those with whom they disagree as racists, Nazis, gay haters, etc. That way, they don’t have to actually engage the substance of their arguments, because, after, all, they’re ‘obviously’ Nazis and racists.
Defense Guy
The comment to which you are referring was made by the Democratic governor of LA. So how is that a stain on the Republicans?
If you can’t even be critical of the mistakes made by your own party, then there is little hope that you will be able to think outside of your notions of Republicans=bad, Democrats=good.
Darrell
Good observation. Furthermore, we tend to be ‘creatures of habit’.
“I’ve always voted [fill in the blank] just like my parents did”
SeesThroughIt
OCSteve:
Man, tell me about it! And you’re not even safe if you go the indie route because then you end up in the company of a bunch of mealy-mouthed Naderites. Blech.
It is weird–and the attempts to rewrite history are distressing.
The “Nazis were liberals!” thing is a really messed-up one. Pursuant to OC Steve’s point about not being able to choose political bedfellows, there are those on the extreme right who wish to do just that, even if that means rewriting history. History’s greatest monsters–Jimmy Carter aside, of course–are Hitler and Stalin. Stalin is the left’s, Hitler is the right’s. But for modern day hardcore right-wing folks, it is simply not acceptable to have the Nazi stain on the right, so endeavors are made to push Hitler over to the left, thereby ridding their side of him and putting the two worst creatures of the 20th century on the side of political opponents.
When you step back from it and really see what they’re doing–trying to make the historical record the opposite of what it really is because of some paranoid political calculus–it’s more than a little disturbing.
Darrell
As has been repeatedly explained to you in the past, because the motor voter act did not provide any checks for citizenship, making it easier for non-citizens including illegal aliens to vote. Drivers licence = voter registration. That is the problem with Motor voter.
Sam Hutcheson
So why is this supposed to be some sort of proof that it is the Republicans that don’t care about black people?
The mistake in this sub-thread is the assumption that Republicans “don’t care about black people.” That’s identifying the symptom with the disease. It’s not the republicans don’t care about black people, but that republicans don’t care about POOR people. More specifically, the prevailing wisdom of modern republicanism is that being poor is a sign of moral weakness. People are not poor because of some historical or personal circumstance. People are poor because they are lazy and lack the work ethic and stick-to-it-ness to succeed. If poor people were not morally weak in this regard they would clearly succeed, because they are in America, and in America, if you work hard, you succeed. If you don’t believe that, just look at Republicans who are clearly successful. You don’t think that’s because of some circumstance of random fate, do you? Some accident of birth? Of course not, it’s because Republicans work hard, duh.
It just so happens that the group “poor people” and the group “black people” tend to overlap a lot in this country. Much like “poor people” an “Mexicans.” But Republicans equally detest poor white trash, in my experience.
Now granted, it is easier for them to identify the darker hued folk, and thus assume they’re poor and thus unworthy of concern…
ThymeZone
Well no, it’s a useless “observation” and it’s useless to give it a nod. Where’s the empirical support for such a claim? It’s nonsensical on its face, and nothing but proof by assertion.
SeesThroughIt
Totally spot-on. It can be rather amusing, though, that both parties scream about tampering with the voting process and yadda yadda yadda, but really, they both just want their way of ballot manipulation to be in the clear while their opponents’ way gets outlawed. Although some of the amusing nature of that scenario gets sucked out when you realize these little reindeer games have huge consequences.
MAX HATS
Asside from the fact that a governor doesn’t classify as a commentator, where did I say she was immune from criticism? The stain on the republicans is everyone from Rush Limbaugh to bloger #4722 seeing the tradegy in NO and going “you know what the problem is here? Not enough shooting.” This reaction was not that of the left, which was instead (generally) one of sympathy with the victims, rather than rage and demands for violence.
And RE: darrell
I would think running on a platform of making life harder for gays would safely classify as “gay hating.” But maybe I’m just in kerrr-azy moonbat land!
ThymeZone
No, yo aren’t. You are expressing a rational response to coded politics.
Ask Darrell to explain — to argue, in the parlance of this thread experiment — why it is rational to think that gays should not take kids camping. To my knowledge, he has always refused to answer these kinds of questions because to do so requires breaking the “code” that operates in coded politics.
There is no rational argument for the view that isn’t grounded in bigotry. So the way you handle that is by never talking about about … by never breaking the code.
Andrew
Sam H.,
The national Republican power structure doesn’t truly care about the welfare of poor people. However, they certainly depend upon the votes of poor whites and so they do exert some effort in winning their votes, both through propaganda and many pork barrell handouts. So, it is slightly more sensical for a poor white person to vote (R) than for a poor black person.
srv
Conflating “Communist” states to leftists is about as accurate as National Socialist = Democrats. There is more correlation between Nazi ideology and modern right ideology than with the left. Today, many pundits on the right are actively advocating general slaughter (Sunni), “no innocents” (Lebanon), and potential first use of nuclear weapons (Iran). We’re easily talking millions here. Where are their leftist equivalents?
There’s not much in Communist Theory about slaughtering masses. Just because Stalin and the Chairman were good at it didn’t make them good commies. But Hitler and Goebbels were pretty optimal Nazis.
Darrell
Well for starters, in divorce rates, substance abuse, bad eating habits, smoking, suicides, and abusive relationships. People make bad irrational choices all the time that are not in their self interest, including voting Democrat… it’s part of what makes us human. I like pie [ed.].
Andrew
By (R) I mean Republican.
Sam Hutcheson
Well no, it’s a useless “observation” and it’s useless to give it a nod. Where’s the empirical support for such a claim? It’s nonsensical on its face, and nothing but proof by assertion.
Are you asking me to break out econometric studies to prove that the base assumption of econmetrics is flawed due to the confirmation bias inherit in its founding? Because that seems a little weird to me. If you just want some lay literature on the subject, check out Tom Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” Or come at the question sideways by reading “Blink.”
The bottom line is that we use a lot more cognitive functions, in every aspect of our lives including politics, than rational actor theory would have us believe. Unless you’re willing to define “rational” so broadly as to make it meaningless. Kind of like calling Nazis “leftists” or something.
ThymeZone
No. I said, there is no empirical support that I know of for the claim about voting patterns.
Is there? Please cite it.
Darrell
Cite for us srv, who are these imaginary conservatives advocating the general slaughter of Sunni’s and claiming there were “no innocents” killed in Lebanon? As has already been demonstrated, I like pie [ed.]. Your post and this thread in general is Exhibit A.
Sam Hutcheson
The national Republican power structure doesn’t truly care about the welfare of poor people. However, they certainly depend upon the votes of poor whites and so they do exert some effort in winning their votes, both through propaganda and many pork barrell handouts. So, it is slightly more sensical for a poor white person to vote® than for a poor black person.
I think what you’re getting at here is the Republican alliance with evangelicals and fundamentalists, yes? Republicans get a lot of poor white votes because they are willing to cash in on lingering prejudices and bigotries, and because they’re willing to kowtow to evangelical protestants on social issues, which aligns them with a lot of poor white southerners.
chopper
and just on cue, darrell comes in to blame the entire problem at the feet of the liberals.
especially with this chestnut: The left, far more than the right, tends to dishonestly characterize those with whom they disagree as racists, Nazis, gay haters, etc.
yeah, i’d totally expect the right to be the ones to call out people as ‘gay haters’. totally goes against expectations, cause the right is all about gay rights.
especially since the whole painful-yet-unavoidable-nazi-comparison was brought up in the earlier thread by a rightist trying to stick it to the liberals. must’ve been a leftist conspiracy.
Bombadil
And therein lies the crux of my argument — the fear of the “totally evil” gays is the irrationality, not the vote itself. That irrational fear of gays (or whatever bug-bear you want to select), that they somehow pose a threat, is played upon by the right.
ThymeZone
Uh …..
Bombadil
Tim:
Darrell:
Bombadil
Darrell:
The boy can’t help it.
chopper
here’s an extra dimension to the argument..what side of the fence do neo-nazis in america overwhelmingly side with, liberal or conservative?
Darrell
Tell us chopper, who is this imaginary “rightist” who “brought up” the Nazi comparison. The first and only rightist comment on the subject here was made by DG, who may not even be a rightist, except by comparison to you leftist extremists. Here is his comment “sticking it” to liberals:
Andrew
Sam H., yes indeed, but it also really does come with pork. Have you seen the handouts that the feds are giving to evangelicals? If you have a research proposal on how totally awesome and super effective abstinence is at saving the unviersefrom evil, you can get money. Stem cells, not so much.
Darrell
Which party do hateful bigot followers of Louis Farrakhan’s nation of Islam tend to vote for in overwhelming percentages?
Defense Guy
How do you account for the vote in Oregon? Not exactly a bastion of Republicanism.
Mac Buckets
It’s little to do with that, really. It’s mostly to do with the pocketbook. Don’t discount that there is a large bloc of black fundamentalist Christians. When they do the “values” research, they always put blacks on the “conservative” side of the values spectrum, and the black evangelicals on the “ultraconservative” side. If values were the main issue, the Democrats would lose a lot of black votes. The fact is, though, that blacks are two-to-three times more concerned with the economy than with Christian values when it comes time to vote.
That’s a very silly argument. Let’s see, blacks accounted for over a million Republican votes in 2004. Gays accounted for 3.5 million Democratic votes in 2004. So how many openly gay men are running for state and national office as Democrats this year? I guarantee it isn’t three times as many as the black republicans.
Doesn’t that PROVE that the Democrats must not really support gay issues, since they don’t have many openly gay candidates?
As to the presumably small number of black GOP candidates: Gosh, I wonder why more blacks wouldn’t volunteer to be photoshopped as a minstrel singer by lefty black bloggers? Why would they not relish the chance to be called Uncle Tom and House N*gger and Race Traitor by the “liberal” Democrats, including their own black leaders, for no other reason than they are The Political Opponent?
No, they wouldn’t join the useless and divisive CBC, just like the highest-ranking elected African American ever, J.C. Watts, didn’t.
chopper
earlier thread, darrell, earlier thread.
Bombadil
Read for context, Darrell, and read all the words.
chopper
are we talking about the nation of islam? i thought this thread was about naziism. show off your jackalope somewhere else.
Bombadil
Hm. Excessive consumption of pinot noir?
chopper
it’s funny, this thread by definition can’t be queered by bringing up the painful-yet-unavoidable nazi comparison.
so he brings up the nation of islam instead. it’s like a jackalope gatling gun.
Bombadil
Silliness aside, Defense Guy, point taken. No example or explanation is going to be universally applicable.
Darrell
Oh I see Bombadl, then comments from another thread, or even another blog(?), excuse the dishonest leftist smears on this thread today which I cited…
Dave Ruddell
Actually, I thought this thread was an example of the Reverse Godwin’s Law; a thread about Nazi’s quickly becomes focused on something else.
Mac Buckets
I mean, that’s a pretty stupid argument (but I’m sure you’re OK as a person), but as long as the GOP can use your “daffy-nition” to call the Democrats “upper-middle-class-haters” and “white-haters,” then I guess we’re OK on terms.
ThymeZone
I don’t see the point of the experimental thread if you are just going to allow this guy to queer it like he queers every thread he touches.
just me
But really, why would they care about black people? “Caring” about black people is antitehtical to many of the factions of the republican base. “Caring” about black people would drive solid Republican voters away. It would be irrational for Republicans to care about black people!
I would like to see your evidence that republicans don’t care.
And better yet, what is your evidence that democrats do?
Because this is a pretty large brush to stroke repbulicans with, so give me some facts, real facts.
chopper
see, there’s this rotating thing, with a bunch of chambers. the jackalopes come in off the belt and are fired out when you turn this here crank…you hafta saw the antlers off first tho.
Andrew
Okay, here’s my suggestion: compare and contrast the Republican response to Terry Schiavo versus Hurricane Katrina.
chopper
if you could find proof that the dems have pushed a constitutional amendment intending to specifically limit the civil rights of whites and the upper-middle-class vs everyone else, go on ahead.
Joey
This may be a little late, but can we stop with the whole “Stalin belongs to liberals/left” thing? I mean, really? The massive body counts of 20th century communist nations were caused by extreme conservatism on a social scale, not the damned economic system of the country. Is it really that difficult to tell economic and social policies apart? Killing political opponents on a massive scale is not a trait of liberalism or communism, it’s a trait of totalitarianism.
Dave Ruddell
But doesn’t leaving the antlers on make for better penetrating power?
Mac Buckets
Are those goalposts made of styrofoam, or are they on casters? You moved those pretty quick!
And “limit civil rights?” Come on, not even you believe that one. Unless you’re talking baout the famous Kill Teh Gay amendment.
Tom in Texas
Yes Mack, I’m sure that a party advocating state’s rights concerning flying the flag of the confederacy didn’t affect black votes in the slightest. Look, I personally agree with one’s right to fly whatever flag they want on their porch — Mexican, CSA, Israeli, whatever. It does tie in to their pride in their ancestry, and it doesn’t mean they love America any less. Flying another flag over a state courthouse is unacceptable, however. I’m also against hate crime legislation because I believe that all we need is full enforcement of the laws we have. This doesn’t change the fact that the GOP’s stance on such issues alienates black voters.
Tom in Texas
Pardon — Mac
Darrell
I’d have to look up specific statements and writing of that time, but I believe that Stalin had quite a number of Western liberals defending him and making excuses for him. I’m not talking about one or two odd liberals either, I understand it was a lot of liberals during that time.
On a related note, right up until the fall of the Berlin wall, leading liberal economists were telling us the the Soviet economy was more or less on par with our own.
Sam Hutcheson
Everyone, I think we can assume that when Tim, Tom or John get a chance to check the thread, Darrell’s ramblings will be deleted. That _have to be_ by the rules of the experiment. So let’s all assume as much, ignore Darrell _as if he were already deleted_ and not bitch about the non-deleted posts until the operators of the blog have a chance to actually get to it.
How do you account for the vote in Oregon? Not exactly a bastion of Republicanism.
1. Rural Oregon, specifically the eastern edges as it blurs into Idaho, begins to resemble more and more “God’s Country.”
2. Portland has one of the largest contingents of neo-Nazis and skinheads in the country.
s/
Tom in Texas
Thus proving another law of the blogoshphere — No discussion of black Republicans in Congress (or lack thereof) can be had without a mention of JC Watts.
anonymous
… each party built security and influence through its own violent gangs organized through partisan newspapers, social clubs and beer halls. …
…[and with] appeals to traditional German values, old-time German religion (to the point of calling out the old pagan gods on occasion) and ‘progress’ was largely presented as a return to the qualities that once made Germany great. …
(from) An Experiment
By: Tim F. at 10:13 am
Suppose these two fragmentary quotations read:
… each party built security and influence through its own potentially violent gangs organized through Talk Radio, internet ‘blogs, and churches.
… and with appeals to traditional American values, old-time American religion, …
and ‘progress’ was largely presented as a return to the qualities
that had once made America great …
What do you think? A good fit?
Now, when someone finds similarities between the Nazi party of Germany and the contemporary American political climate, the objection is first and foremost: No, we have no concentration camps, no organized deportations and murder of citizens …. case closed.
True enough, (for the moment).
And that’s why my comparison is always the Corporatism of Mussolini and Italy in the 20s and early 30s to the current government in the U.S.
chopper
well, someone brought up the example of the GOP trying to make life harder for gays. the gay marriage amendment is the prime example of that. i mean, it’s not like the GOP’s arguing that gay people shouldn’t be able to use coupons at sizzler or anything like that to ‘make their lives more difficult’.
specifically amending the constitution to deny marriage rights to gay people would mean that gays’ rights are being limited vs everyone else, no? jesus, killing people isn’t the only way to limit their rights.
i figure, trying to get the US constitution amended so gay people can’t get married like you can is pretty much “gay hatin'”. i mean, it’s not like the GOP is doing it out of respect or love for teh gays, are they?
MAX HATS
The republican party is the party of the upper middle class? Are you joking or insane? Yeah, it’s real upper middle class in Alabama, in Nebraska, and in rural districts everywhere.
OCSteve
Errr, that was the point of my post. I pretty much said Duh – of course Nazi ideology is more to the right than the left.
And as accurate as conflating a Nazi state to rightists. After agreeing that Nazi = right, how is it inaccurate to point out that communism clearly falls to the (far) left?
My point is that both left and right have had points of their platform used by groups that rose to power and then quickly set about committing the last century’s worst atrocities. If you go strictly by body count, then those planks from the left have a lot more blood on them. Does that mean that the modern leftist is responsible for that or yearns to repeat it? Of course not, any more than those on the right want to racially purify America or round up folks for the camps and the ovens.
Bombadil
At close range, yes, but over distances they tend to tumble in flight and you lose accuracy.
Defense Guy
The current political climate in the United States is more akin to that found under Lincoln or FDR than it is to Mussolini or Hitler or Stalin. In fact, the executive now has asserted less power than under those 2 “regimes”. We came out just fine then, and we will again now.
Those that try to make the comparison to Italy, Germany or USSR need to do a more thorough reading of history.
MAX HATS
Follow-up – it’s a little hilarious, after years of hearing right wingers use “latte-drinking, sushi-eating” to be a derogatory synonym for “liberal,” of suddenly learning that those latte-drinking sushi-eating upper middle class urbanites we’re who the republican party was about all along!
chopper
exactly. they’ve done tests. if i wanted a tumbling jackalope i’d just opt for the basselope bazooka.
Joey
Exactly. ECONOMICALLY. Read the rest of my post. I wasn’t arguing that communism is far left. But people keep throwing the body counts in, applying it to leftist/liberal thinking. High body counts and genocide are not a required characteristic of communism. It’s just that all communist regimes thus far have used totalitarianism. That’s what the body counts should be attributed to: totalitarianism.
Bombadil
If you’re going to discuss all the black Republican
sin Congress, you might as well use his name. It’s only polite.ThymeZone
Not unless you can show that there is a demographic out there motivated by a belief that middle class people are morally inferior or that their behavior is morally offensive, as the basis for the “hatred.”
Because that is the case with gays. You are not going to argue that “defense of marriage” is actually about “defense of marriage,” are you? Because I haven’t seen that actual argument. Maybe you have information nobody else has?
jh
It wasn’t the communism that made the communists deadly, it was the paranoid totalitarianism that they used.
Communism may be a “left leaning” ideology but the means and methods of bringing about the “workers paradise” where authoritarian and totalitarian – two decidedly right wing methods.
That’s why the binary left vs. right model is too blunt a tool for the purposes of this discussion.
Darrell
I think we can assume I like pie [ed.]. And why not delete the ‘jackalope’ posts which most definitely violate the “don’t advance an argument” rule?
Defense Guy
chopper
Let me start by saying that I agree that the FMA is/was a bad idea. Having said that, you need to remember that you are talking about changing the definition of an institution with a long history. It won’t change overnight, and in this country it may never so long as the focus is on the word marriage. But don’t take my word for it, check out the positions of prominant Democrat politicians. They are by and large pro civil union, not marriage.
Tom in Texas
Sadly, Watts is no longer in Congress, so there are no currently elected black Republicans in Congress to refer to.
chopper
by all means, please do. i don’t mind at all, if it means clipping out your insult-laden posts.
jh
Maybe they will Darrell, maybe they will.
Unfortunately, you have your own rule violatin’ posts to worry about.
I suggest you focus on those and ask yourself why you can’t participate in a discussion without insulting people.
chopper
well, civil unions give gays the same rights they would have under marriage, no? it wouldn’t be a ‘marriage’, but that’s in name only, really. not that i prefer the civil union argument; i disagree with those democratic politicos who opt for CUs in place of marriage.
but being for civil unions means you believe that gays deserve the same rights the rest of us enjoy.
if they truly were arguing against gay marriage from a ‘traditional’ standpoint, you’d expect the GOP to be all about civil unions. but they’re not. obviously, more evidence its based on gay-hatin’.
Darrell
No, not just ECONOMICALLY. Leftists at that time, Hollywood 10 come to mind defended and even praised Stalin, as did the founder of the ACLU, and many other leftists. Hell, I’m old enough to remember liberals skewering Ronald Reagan for daring to call the Soviet Union’s murderously oppressive regime an “evil empire”. Liberals have a history of excusing totalitarian violence for the ‘overall betterment’ of society
Point is, no one on the right I’m aware of defended the Nazis. But many, many liberals defended, excused, and even praised Stalin. That is the point. Another example is liberal icon N. Chomsky making excuses for Pol Pot right up until the very end, well after his mass exterminations were known.
Bombadil
Then the “JC Watts’ of the Republican Party” will be used sort of like the “Jane Hamshers of the Left” — more symbolically than literally.
Vladi G
The lack of self awareness is simply astounding.
Tim F.
Editor’s note:
Just got back from not being at the computer for a while (I earn a living doing something other than typing). I have decided to change the policy from nuking offensive comments to editing the offensive stuff out because 1) I’m new at this and more or less learning as I go, and 2) I freaking dare you guys to accuse me of being objectively pro-Darrell.
chopper
exactly. it wasn’t capitalist beliefs that drove pinochet’s death squads.
Darrell
Why did you edit my post, but not Sam Hutchinson’s insults which provoked it? or the jackalope posts. You know, assuming you want to be fair and honest about it.
Darrell
Chile under Pinochet was like Disneyland in comparison to the mass murdering human disasters under communist rule – See Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, China under Mao, Cambodia under Pol Pot, or N. Korea today.
Tom in Texas
Tom’s note:
I have no idea how to edit or delete a post after it has been posted, so there’s not much moderation coming from me.
Bombadil
Allow me, Tim.
Vladi G
Let’s go to the tape:
Sam calls Darrell’s posts “ramblings”.
Darrell calls Sam a fucking asshole who prefers personal insults.
Folks, that’s better projection than you’ll get at any high tech movie theater.
chopper
maybe you should look.
jh
Exactly.
Darrell
Including deletion of this one?
Tim F.
To add, without the personal stuff (which I removed) Darrell’s posts are withing the rules. People can email me if they want to try a no-jackalope thread someday.
It surprises me that Darrell can name Americans who supported Communism but none who supported Nazism. Henry Ford never existed? The list is actually quite long, and if you include “objectively pro-Hitler” pacifists includes a number of elected Republicans.
Also, the people who overestimated the strength of the late-stage Soviet Empire are today known as neoconservatives. Paul Wolfowitz, for example, took part in a government shadow intelligence unit not unlike the recent Office of Special Plans whose job it was to put out alarmist reports about the unstoppable Soviet economy. Then the USSR crumbled and they looked like idiots, and now they have jobs again. Go figure.
Tim F.
Darrell, if you have a complaint then link the offending post. I didn’t see anything else objectionable on this thread but who knows, I might have missed it. And please, since I can’t spend my day at the computer, if someone irks you try to be the bigger man.
Darrell
The number of liberals who excused and defended Stalin is almost certainly in the millions. Was Henry Ford even a Republican? And who were these “objectively pro-Hitler” Repblicans Tim? I’m sure you back up that accusation.. can’t you?
chopper
don’t forget the look of sheer surprise on condoleeza rice’s face when the wall started coming down.
chopper
i take it you have some shred of evidence to back up such a wild assertion.
Mac Buckets
No. The argument is that there is no such thing as “marriage rights for gay people” (although I think we would also argue whether there’s any such thing as constitutionally-protected “marriage rights” at all) because the definition of of the thing called “marriage” precludes it being between two gay people. Civil unions is another matter.
Vladi G
Note: No evidence provided.
Note: Request for evidence.
It really is quite an incredible spectacle.
Vladi G
Here’s an excerpt from the amendment:
Are you claiming that Civil Unions are not what they have in mind when they framed the amendment to deny to unmarried couples “the legal incidents thereof”. If the amendment just said “Gays can’t technically get married”, you’d have a point, but that point is undermined by the proposed denial of any of the legal incidents that are g\generally associated with marriage.
chopper
that isn’t the point, darrell. the point is, the death toll isn’t able to be placed at the feet of the economic model of the country. death squads don’t come from economics, they come from totalitarianism.
Bombadil
Darrell:
You see, Darrell, I didn’t put any personal slams in my post. Had I, for example, refered to you as a whiny-ass titty baby (which I did not), then there would be a reason to edit and/or delete the post. Instead, was I trying to be helpful.
The Other Steve
I still think the perspective I get on Russia by asking questions of my girlfriend is interesting.
If you had asked her opinion of hte Soviet Union, she’d have an answer very similar to your own. That is, it really wasn’t that bad. Things are better now though.
Of course part of this was because her father was either a party member, or at the very least favored by a party member.(not sure which, but he was a manager at the state-run company that provided the heat to buildings).
I guess the point is, while your point may be factual, I don’t really feel that serves as justification for bad behavior.
Andrew
Darrell, clearly avoiding most of 1930’s American political history, said:
Lindbergh, for starters, and the rest of the right wing isolationist movement.
And most of American big business. Ford, GM, IBM, etc. had strong Nazi connections.
As for the modern era, Pat Buchanan ain’t exactly the most anti-Nazi politician around. But I’m sure that under the new political formulation, he is regarded as a leftist.
Mac Buckets
What about Roger Myers, Sr., who received criticism for his controversial 1938 cartoon, Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors?
chopper
who is asserting he was? the dude was definitely right-wing though. and an unabashed supporter of hitler.
Darrell
It’s not “wild” assertion in the least. Furthermore, I’m not sure if it’s even debatable that millions of liberals here defened and excused Stalin, or Pol Pot as I pointed out with Chomsky. Liberal Michael Totten certainly doesn’t seem to dispute it
Michael Totten on himself:
John D.
The issue I have with this take on it is that defaulting back to a definitional mechanism removes from the discussion all of the ancillary effects of marriage, such as taxation changes, estate decisions, etc. If you want to remove all of those effects from ALL marriages, then we are discussing things on a level field, otherwise, you’re gaming the discussion to place one group at a severe disadvantage.
I have no problems with the stance that marriage is for heterosexual partnerings only, provided that A) Civil unions are supported at the federal level, and B) said Civil unions provide all of the benefits/disadvantages of marriage in identical fashion. Otherwise, it’s blatant discrimination.
Darrell
Hold on a minute, Lindberg may have been an isolationist, but that is a HUGE leap from being a defender of Hitler
Tim F.
Here is a handy but limited history of the isolationist movement. Also, a history of the “objectively pro-Hitler” Republicans who sponsored the Neutrality Acts. Remember guys, opposing war with X automatically makes you objectively pro-X.
The Other Steve
I guess I had a couple of other responses to make to Defense Guy. There was some interesting trains of thought there.
But I note that this whole thread spiraled downhill, unremarkably at the same instant Darrell began posting to it.
And I notice Tim(and John and Tom) don’t seem to be doing anything about deleting his posts.
Darrell
Tim F asserted he was. And show us the evidence where he was an “unabashed supporter” of Hitler.. Hint – having a Ford subsidiary in Germany does not qualify as “unabashed” support.
The Other Steve
BTW, just one response to Darrell…
As has been repeatedly explained to you in the past, you have to show a birth certificate to get a drivers license.
And there you have it folks… I like pie [ed.].
Keep it pleasant for just one thread, guys.
Darrell
Tim and John, care to do anything about these jackasses who post primarily to insult, rather than debate? I think TOS clearly qualifies.
Rusty Shackleford
Once, when I was drunk, I shot a hunting buddy in the face with a basselope bazooka. Blamed it on the damn liberal media.
The Other Steve
While living in Europe, Lindbergh was invited by the Nazi government to inspect the German aircraft industry, whose size and capabilities for building advanced combat aircraft greatly impressed him. Adolf Hitler awarded the famed American aviator a German medal of honor. Although Lindbergh was harshly criticized by U.S. critics of the Nazi regime, he refused to return the medal, and later described the German dictator as “undoubtedly a great man.”
Tim F.
Charles Lindbergh. Face it Darrell, some Republicans had a fine time supporting Hitler by opposing war and, well, supporting Hitler. It just is not a debatable point. You have plainly failed to support your claim that “millions” of leftists supported Stalin so we can call that and your Michael Totten quote apocryphal as well. Let’s try not to get too far lost in the weeds shall we? Idiots on every “side” supported people that in retrospect they should not have. To declare otherwise is simply not credible.
Darrell
Tim F, you’re not seriously arguing that not wanting to get into a war (which at that time did not involve the US) = “objectively pro-Hitler”, are you?
Mac Buckets
I think the accepted reason that they specifically took out the “state or federal law” restrictions from the latest version of the Amendment is in order to allow the individual states (and/or the voters) to determine which “incidents” would be given which rights.
chopper
uh, no he didn’t. he brought up ford
when you stated
‘right’, not ‘republican’. unless you misread his post as an assertion that ford was an elected republican, which would be just plain goofy.
Darrell
Tim F, it’s dishonest as hell of you to equate “opposing war” (we had not been attacked) with “supporting Hitler”.
jg
LMAO
If the right isn’t down with it, its leftist, facts be damned. Facts can be ignored history is fluid. The left uses the word Nazi, the right says the nazis were socialists and it is so.
Andrew
Darrell, a strong oak standing against the powerful wind of the facts, says:
I guess Lindbergh got a Nazi medal because he hated them so much. And when he was Goering’s personal guest at the Olympics, I suppose it was the only way he could get tickets. And it must have been an accident that he became head of the poltical party that wanted to cede all of Europe to the Nazis.
Darrell
By Tim F’s standards, Neville Chamberlain was “objectively pro-Hitler”. You guys are dishonestly making equivocations where there are none.
A handful of individuals allegedly on the right supported some of Hitler’s ideas vs. millions on the left who excused and defended Stalin. That you try and compare the two says it all
chopper
being against the iraq war made people like me ‘objectively pro-saddam’, didn’t it? sorry the medicine doesn’t taste very good.
Tim F.
You must hate FOX news with the heat of a thousand suns, right? Otherwise you must view that exact logic as more or less watertight. After all, no Americans had been harmed by Saddam in ten years. If the logic pisses you off, good. Too bad your outrage only comes now when it is politically convenient.
Tim F.
It would demonstrate some credibility on your part to admit that you have nothing meaningful on which to base that number.
Vladi G
Still no evidence, except for alleged liberal Michael Totten quoting another author on one of the most far right wing sites on the net. I like pie [ed.].
Mac Buckets
OK.
Katrina: “Republican response” saved thousands of African-Americans from their rooftops.
Schiavo: “Republican response” did not save one white woman.
Geez, those Republicans must love teh Blak!
John D.
Given your track record with facts, I’d calling here and now for you to start typing out the actual *names* of the “millions on the left”. I’ll settle for 100, though. Less than .005% of the amount you claim shouldn’t be hard, right?
The Other Steve
That Lindbergh comment actually makes me kind of mad. I’m from Minnesota, where Lindbergh was born. So he’s kind of a hometown hero, and the airport is named after him. (which isn’t that uncommon, since every airplane manufacturer and airport likes to have a connection to Lindbergh)
Lindbergh made a mistake. I think he later recognized it, and he did help with the war effort in the long run. He was naive, foolish, and allowed his personal bigotry to make him a stooge to the Nazis.
But we have to look at the whole of the man, and despite this one area of failure, his contributions to America’s aerospace industry make him a hero in the eyes of most Americans. It is important not to gloss over the bad, but recognize it in balance with the good in the hopes that we all can become better persons from the experience.
Darrell
It’s also worth noting that liberals defended and excused Stalin (and some did the same with Pol Pot) well after his atrocities became known. After around 1941, when Hitler’s atrocities became apparent and Japan had attacked us, Lindberg became a US fighter pilot and Ford was a major producer for the US military. I think the attempts to compare Lindberg and Ford’s ‘support’ for Hitler to the millions of leftists who excused and defended Stalin are dishonest attempts to somehow equate the two.
Darrell
Oh I’m sorry Tim, did I ever call you, or anyone else “objectively pro-Saddam” by virtue of opposition of the invasion of Iraq? If not, then have the honor to admit you simply lied and made it up
Andrew
I think you need to start doing ads for the RNC, mac.
Voice over: “During the Terri Schiavo struggle, not a single African-American lost their life. Republicans promise not to kill any African Americans during emergency sessions of Congress to keep people in vegetative comas.”
Mac Buckets
FDR shook hands with Stalin (said “There’s a man I like!”)! That means they were best friends, that FDR agreed with everything Stalin had done to his people, and that they were probably lovers!
Mac Buckets
They couldn’t afford me.
Tim F.
Darrell, your entire rhetorical style is encapsulated in that little nugget. Did you leave the word ‘liberals’ unmodified by accident, not knowing that the word by itself suggests that the category as a whole stood behind Pol Pot? Gosh, I’m sure that idea never occurred to you. Now why in the world would anybody get angry at a sentence like that? Clea up your syntax, Darrell, and you will find that people write you off as a crank much less often.
Amazingly, you seem to deny the existence of modern neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers. That surely was not your intention, right? I could use your logic to write this sentence:
If you disagree then think before you write.
Tim F.
Bzzt. You use the concept of collective guilt against your opponents (see the unmodified ‘liberals’ above) far too often to take offense when it is turned around.
chopper
the response will of course be some twisted logic that ‘proves’ that the american neo-nazi movement is actually a bunch of left wingers. just wait for it.
Darrell
Well, not only do history buffs like Totten say there were + that whole Alger Hiss thing.. but more than that, it’s entirely consistent with liberals’ behavior, as I remember well how virtually every liberal in the country screamed about Ronald Reagan daring to call the murderous and oppressive Soviet union an “evil empire”
The Other Steve
My understanding is Chamberlain simply didn’t want to get into a war with Germany because of the costs involved, and the mistaken belief that their island status would keep them safe.
Lindbergh’s opposition was quite different. By 1941 it was quite clear what Germany’s intentions were, and Lindbergh liked them. That is, the survival of the white race was more important than the survival of democracy. If you’ve read his 1941 speech in Des Moines, IA, his opposition to the war had to do with an anti-Jewish bigotry. He didn’t just oppose war… He opposed US halting Germany, because Germany was doing the right thing.
(namely going after Russia)
Now, in my opinion both ideologies were horrific. There is one slight difference, however cold-hearted I might be.
Germany attacked the rest of Europe, particularly our “friends” at the time, notably western Europe(England, France, Holland, Belgium, etc.). Russia had by and large kept to itself. Although there was the division of Poland, and the winter war in Finland. Still, it’s a slight distinction that Germany posed a larger threat at the time.
I guess this is the crux of most of my source of dissatisfaction with Republicans today, that they’ve gathered all the morons who see threats in the shadows as justification for invasion of any old country. It’s not, at some point when a nation crosses a line you have to respond, but until then while you should oppose as much as you can, how a nation governs itself is outside of our control. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.
Russia came together to fight Hitler, and the nation was proud of it. Every last man woman and child wanted Hitler gone. They didn’t all like Stalin, but Hitler had invaded their home land. (This was not true for the Kossacks, the Czechans, many Ukrainians, and such, but exceptions don’t disprove a rule)
I don’t like GW Bush, but if Canada invaded tomorrow to liberate us from being ruled by a moron, I’d be at the front lines along with the rest of my countrymen.
Now maybe the Republicans wouldn’t have defended us against liberation from Clinton, but still, You ought to know better.
Darrell
I cited verbatim quotes from numerous leftists posting here. Quite a bit different then your lie
Darrell
Tim, you pretend that many/most conservatives have accused liberals of being pro-Saddam just by virtue of opposing the invasion of Iraq and I think that’s dishonest,but it provides you and your side an excuse not to have to defend the substance of the arguments against you.
RSA
It’s this kind of hyperbole that makes discussion kind of useless. A hundred million liberals screamed that? That’s what “virtually every liberal” means.
chopper
a buff says so? why didn’t you say so!
true, alger hiss was about a million people.
i think he’s about to hit critical mass, people. stand back.
John D.
Do you remember why that vocal minority (and it was a definite minority, Darrell, not “virtually every liberal”) “screamed” about it? Might it have had something to do with the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at us? I only ask since, y’know, I was alive then, and paying attention to politics, and Reagan, and his speeches. And I somehow missed an unmodified screaming about Reagan.
I remember quite a few of “Is he insane?!?” type Op-Ed pieces. I remember quite a few “’bout time someone told them Russkies whatfer” type Op-Ed pieces as well. Oddly enough, there was a startling amount of crossover from both sides on those types of columns. The end of the USSR as a political entity was a nervous time for the entire WORLD, and there were an awful lot of people who thought backing the USSR into a corner was unwise — from all sides of the political spectrum.
But hey, you keep up your perfect track record on historical events. Be a shame to mess with perfection, eh?
Vladi G
Similarly, if you refuse to poke rattlesnakes, that means you’re totally in love with rattlesnakes! Virtually every person who doesn’t like it when someone pokes a rattlesnake is totally in love with rattlesnakes!
Cite for one person “screaming” about that Reagan speech, please. And I don’t mean disagreeing. You have this fetish for requiring literal proof of everything your opponents say, despite your failure to hold yourself to this standard. So I demand audible evidence of virtually every liberal at the time “screaming” in response to this statement. Mere shouting or voice raising won’t cut it. It’s gotta be a scream.
And when you can’t provide this evidence, I shall return to calling you a serial liar.
The Other Steve
A couple of things:
– One of your patrons, the guy who owns Koch Industries, supported Stalin before he didn’t support Stalin. Actually quite a few prominent Republicans were Communists before they became anti-Communists.
– While I am aware of some leftists who “supported” Lenin and or Stalin in the 1920s and 1930s, I am unaware of any vast numbers who continued to support Stalin after word of his atrocities became known.
This same statement can be made for the Republicans who supported Hitler. For example Lindbergh. I think it’s pretty safe to say when it became clear just what Hitler was doing, Lindbergh recognized he was wrong.
Again, the Lindbergh example was brought up to refute your stupid claims. I hold nothing against Lindbergh today.
Darrell
The difference Tim, and it’s a huge difference, is that neo-Nazis are just a tiny fringe group, whereas from everything I’ve read, many/most liberals defended and excused Soviet atrocities. I can say first hand that most liberals gave Ronald Reagan tons of grief for daring to call the Soviets an “evil empire”, when they clearly were.
Most that claim to dismiss me as a crank are those whose arguments and positions can’t stand up to scrutiny (like yours), so all they’re left with is personal insults. See this thread and others for examples.
Darrell
Well, to the extent that liberals as a percentage of the population are a minority, Duh. But it wasn’t some small percentage of liberals screaming over Reagan daring to call the oppresive Soviets an “evil empire”, it was most liberals. I would say virtually all of them.
chopper
sounds like ‘everything you’ve read’ comes in the form of a pamphlet with a UN black helicopter on the front. did you know they can detect your guns from space?
chopper
again with the mountains of evidence. seriously, i’m buried in citations. darrell, you really have to stop providing such detailed information to support your assertions.
The Other Steve
Most of the opposition to Reagan came from Europe.
So are you accusing American Liberals of being West German?
ThymeZone
This has gone beyond farce. Darrell is the undisputed king of the insulting post “primarily to insult.”
And this blog has no history of encouraging “debate” or anything like it in the 18 months that I have been around here. “Hot air” is not debate.
You guys actually want “debate?” Then you have to get rid of Darrell and his imitators, and hold the commentariat to standards that are compatible with debate.
You might also consider the idea that when John gets in a pissy mood and announces that “you can’t say that on my blog” just because he doesn’t like it, that isn’t conducive to “debate” either. And then you have to decide whether this “free speech” model you’ve touted in the past is compatible with “debate,” because I’d argue that it is not. When commenters are free to abuse free speech by making up blatant lies and then refusing to take any responsibility for them, you can’t have “debate.”
The number and depth of the mixed messages here is a little overwhelming.
Darrell
American liberals virtually to a man opposed Reagan. To assert otherwise is a lie.
The Other Steve
Ok have fun. I’m done with the Darrell show for today.
John S.
Methinks Tim got under Darrell’s skin, as his comments here and here sound a bit desperate – even for Darrell.
And to echo a comment someone made above, I was rather enjoying reading this thread until the Senator decided to chime in. Seriously Tim and John (and Tom), this blog would be a far more productive place without the lad. I think this ‘experiment’ is rather conclusive proof of that.
Tim F.
As you are no doubt aware your quotes have nothing to do with how many ‘leftists’ supported the Soviets. It is really not worth talking unless you make a minimal effort to stay focused on the point.
Vladi G
So far, Darrell’s evidence consists of “I remember” and “from everything I’ve read”. Well, I think Darrell is the real killer of Jonbenet Ramsey. I have no evidence, but I remember him talking about it, and from everything I’ve read, he seems like the perfect suspect. Don’t ask for any hard evidence or anything, though. I’m just pretty sure that’s true.
Darrell
I don’t need it, and neither does anyone else who lived during that era need it either, as we saw everyday with our own eyes. It was real, manifesting itself in advertisements against Reagan showing mushroom cloud atomic bombs which would inevitably ‘result’ from his Presidency, to countless headlines, protests, and screams from virtually every liberal in the country.
“Can you believe that Ronald Reagan ahole actually called the Soviet Union an ‘evil empire’?”
Like with the excuse-making for Stalin, the left is trying to deny and minimize what they really and truly did at the time.
Tulkinghorn
While we are listing conservative/plutocratic supporters/apologists for fascism such as
we should not forget a certain ambassador to the court of Saint James, and a certain powerful banker at Brown Brothers Harriman.
Darrell
You mean like your “honest” attempt to stay focused on the point by trying to equate the relatively miniscule number of neo-Nazis in the country with the much larger widespread excuse making for Soviet oppresion? Yeah, I can see your really looking for honest debate.
John D.
Bullshit.
100% Pure, Grade-A Bovine excrement.
Darrell, I’m really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really tired of your assertion schtick.
You never provide any evidence whatsoever of your claims. You assign motives — and comments — to groups far, far beyond any rational belief. There were very dramatic arguments *among Democrats in Congress* in the 80s on this very issue. Claiming that a fifth of this country responded in a singular fashion beggars belief.
Krista
Well, it’d be real peachy of you to perhaps share the sources that you’ve read, then, as you’ve still provided no proof that “millions of liberals” supported Stalin.
By the way, I like pie. (No, that wasn’t Tim editing my post, I just actually like pie.)
Sam Hutcheson
And to echo a comment someone made above, I was rather enjoying reading this thread until the Senator decided to chime in. Seriously Tim and John (and Tom), this blog would be a far more productive place without the lad. I think this ‘experiment’ is rather conclusive proof of that.
I’d like to think the actual purpose of this experiment is to have Tim convince himself and John that a ban is truly applicable. The conversation was going well for a while there.
Vladi G
I just did a google search for that exact quote and found nothing. But that’s cool because Darrell doesn’t need evidence. Everyone else who tries to argue with him does, but he doesn’t.
Which is weird, because you’d figure that a serial liar might try to provide evidence once in a while, but I guess if he had evidence, he wouldn’t be a serial liar.
Krista
I’m sure you would say it. But that doesn’t necessarily make it true.
Vladi G
Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, Krista. Darrell doesn’t need no stiking’ evidence! If he says it, it’s true!
Darrell
You know, despite being a fighter bomber in WWII, Charles Lindbergh still had his reputation shredded, with justification, because he didn’t see the dangers of Nazism. But liberals, who in large numbers did the same and worse with their excuse making for murderous communist governments, have paid no price in their credibility for their horrific damaging judgement.
srv
The Weekly Standard and many right bloggers have long been sighing heavily about GW’s failure to go all Fallujah on the Sunni. Where have you been? We must destroy them to save them.
As for “no innocents”, I can see how you’d misread it – I intended it as “(there are) no innocents” not “no innocents (killed)”. You need only read a little Totten or Tacitus to see how everyone in Hezbollaland was a “legitimate” target. NO EXCEPTIONS.
I note you dropped the nuke Iran reference from your pie.
Krista
Humour me, then. I was just a wee tyke during that time, and would love to read up on this particular event. Could you be a dear and point me to a source where I can see for myself the depth and breadth of liberal support for the USSR during the Cold War?
Vladi G
Whoa, whoa, whoa…. “Large numbers”? That sounds like a backtrack. C’mon Darrell, it wasn’t just large numbers. It was millions! At least, according to everything you’ve read.
Darrell
And anyone examining your link can see why. Why not be more honest Vladi? it might help you from being so bitter and stupid
ThymeZone
So if some asshole political consultant made an ad in 1980, you are still here yelling that everyone on earth who disagrees with you is responsible for the ad and must be treated accordingly?
Again, I can only shake my head that they let you post here.
Andrew
Darrell, in his latest digression into sodomizing the truth to death, says:
The HUAC blacklists were fun and games, I suppose, compared to waiting on a rooftop after Katrina.
Darrell
Can you show us anything resembling advocating the “slaughter” of Sunni’s? cause I’m pretty sure you just made that up and when called on it, you can’t back it up
MAX HATS
Why is opposing Reagan held to be equivilant to supporting communist atrocities? Where did this leap happen?
Vladi G
That’s too much information, srv. Whenever Darrell asks for cites, you just have to respond with “from everything I’ve read” and leave it that. That pretty much covers all evidentiary requirements.
mrmobi
Defense Guy:
I’ll assume you are talking about Lincoln and FDRs power grabs that failed. Yes, that worked out fine in the long run. But what is happening now is by far the greatest expansion of executive power we’ve seen. Combine the blatent disregard for standing law, signing statements, and a lack of attention by the media and you have momentum toward something very un-democratic. If these law-breakers in power are allowed to continue, you might just find yourself with a President Hillary Clinton with the power to wiretap you without a warrant, look at your medical records, etc.
Can I assume you won’t mind that?
So we give up these freedoms for the WoT. Where is the cargo screening at the ports? Where is the coordination between agencies? Where is congressional oversight of Intelligence agencies? Where is a rational approach to airline security? What happened with the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan? Where is Bin Laden? When some of these things change, talk to me about the WoT. Until then, we’re all just terrorist targets being manipulated by an authoritarian cabal who just want to hang on to power. Fuck Bin Laden, McFlightSuit is not worried about him!
And you changed parties because of a fictional war.
Vladi G
It means you’re objectively Pro-Communism. But Darrell never literally said those specific words “objectively pro-communism”, at least not in that order, so you can’t call him on it. From everything I’ve read, those are the rules.
srv
This would be all the liberals who voted for Dems that supported containment for 50 years (as their right cousins did), or the liberals who voted for Nixon and destabilization of Cambodia that led to Pol Pot?
Vladi G
From everything I’ve read, srv is right. I think you said it too, Darrell. I can’t provide a cite, but from what I remember, and from everything I’ve read, that’s true.
srv
Or the liberals who voted for Nixon so he could go to China and pat them on the back for the cultural revolution?
Krista
It happened somewhere in Darrell’s frontal lobe. Why? Because it was convenient for him. Besides, are you surprised? The Darrells of the right are still of the opinion that opposing Bush makes one pro-Saddam.
Vladi G
From everything I’ve read, I am honest. And you provide a direct quote that was uttered, wait, no not uttered, but SCREAMED!!! by VIRTUALLY EVERY LIBERAL!!! But I can’t find one quote of a liberal SCREAMING that exact quote. From everything I’ve read, and from what I remember, no one ever said that.
ThymeZone
Well, there is also the Darrellesque “Most people would agree with me that ….” construction.
That one covers a lot of ground. Even if “most people” are just the guys hanging around the pay phone down at the Houston Seven-11 where Darrell buys his cigarette papers.
SeesThroughIt
POTD
Also, “Look out, Itchy–he’s Irish!”
demimondian
You do know that his diaries, released after his death, showed that he felt ever more strongly throughout the War that the US should have backed the Germans, right? He didn’t “miss the dangers of Nazism”, he was as much a Nazi sympathizer as Werner von Braun.
Darrell
Opposing Reagan in and of itself is not the equivalent of supporting communist atrocities and no one suggested otherwise. Liberals at the time screamed and protested because Reagan dared to call the murderous opprosive Soviet regime an “evil empire”, which it was. Liberals have a long track record of downplaying atrocities of communist governments. Denying that that there were Stalin-created and Mao-created famines comes to mind. I recall reading that the top liberal economist of his era, John K. Galbraith, made repeated statements about how the Soviet economy was as good or better than ours.. This, after having visited first hand to see the misery. Incredible
Tim F.
Yes, I am sure that you would like to change the subject but let’s try to stay focused for one blessed point. So far you have provided no credible evidence that “millions” of Americans supported the Soviets after the atrocities became known, despite repeatedly stating it as established fact. You have obviously decided that this is the most important point that you will make in this post so please make the effort to back it up.
Let me put it in monosyllables: I can not respond to the “substance” of an argument if the argument has no substance. Fill it out with evidence and then ask to be taken seriously.
Vladi G
You’ll have to forgive Darrell the serial liar. He’s unaware of the meaning of the word “provoke”.
ThymeZone
So, Tim, how’s the experiment going? It appears that this thread is just all about Darrell. Exactly the opposite of (what I took to be) the point of the thread.
So, the results of the thing will be collated and published in an upcoming paper?
Meanwhile, you might as well change the name of Balloon-Juice to Darrell’s Blog … because that’s what this thing is now. All Darrell, all the time.
275 posts in half a day. That is the point, after all, right? Churn? Page views?
I can’t fault you guys for being able to gin up the page views. It’s impressive.
Krista
Millions of them, from what Darrell tells me. We’re all still waiting with bated breath for that source, by the way.
Perry Como
My favorite part of the “Evil Empire” speech was, “regimes planted by bayonet do not take root.” There’s some wisdom there lost on modern Republicans.
Vladi G
Not just millions, Krista. Virtually ALL of them, from what he remembers. And from everything he’s read.
Pooh
I was going to post something similar – I’d like to thank Mac B. and Defense Guy for what started off as one of the more honest L/R discussions here in ages. It was pretty interesting until, well, you all saw what happened.
Krista
Honestly, Tim, I don’t know how well the experiment will work. Certain people seem to be having a bit of difficulty in keeping personal attacks out of their arguments. Do you guys really have the time or inclination to keep going through each post on each thread to delete offensive content? It’s your blog, your choice, but it seems to me that the only two choices you’re considering are 1. allowing a free-for-all in the comments, which often rapidly degenerate into a cesspool, or 2. spending an inordinate amount of time reading each comment in order to delete offensive content.
There’s a third choice. It’s been suggested to you on more than one occasion, and would solve the problem very handily. I’m sure you have an excellent reason for refraining, however.
Darrell
Tim, I cannot ‘prove’ that “most” liberals howled over Ronald Reagan’s use of “evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union. But I and everyone else who was over 12 years old and paying attn at the time heard the liberals screaming “you’ll make them mad” and explaining that communism as practiced by the Soviets, was some legitimate alternative to Western democracy.Those paying attn at that time KNOW this to be true, to the extent that it’s not really in dispute. But in your world Tim, if there’s no wiki link, then it can’t be true, right? Why don’t you ask JCole if it’s true that most liberals screamed over the ‘evil empire’ remark at the time and get back to us as to what he says. I don’t think ppgaz would deny it either.
Similary, you are asking me to prove the number of liberals excusing Soviet and Mao style communism. I’ve cited a Totten article (substance), the excuse making over Stalin and Mao famines, Alger Hiss being defended by the left, Hollywood 10 praising Stalin etc… You’re asking me to prove a sentiment which, from everything I’ve read, is pretty mch undisputed by most people who actually lived through that era.
But you don’t want honest debate, which is why you brought up the neo-Nazi crap.
Darrell
Liberals, who talk about their devotion to free speech, when someone disagrees with their position, they talk censorship.. and they’re all for it.
Krista
Quick question: Let’s, for a moment, assume that there were liberals who were upset about Reagan calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire”. Do we know WHY they were upset? You seem to be saying that the liberals were Soviet supporters. Do you not think that the possibility existed that the liberals were freaked out about Reagan using rhetoric which served no other purpose than to antagonize the USSR, at a time when people thought they had nuclear missiles pointed at the US?
MAX HATS
So opposing a speech calling the Soviet Union “evil empire” is equivilant to supporting Soviet atrocities? Am I misrepresenting your position?
And let me guess – this is because a lot of them didn’t like one of Bush’s speeches?
Vladi G
Shorter Darrell: If you can’t provide hard evidence that my wild assed assertion (for which I have no evidence) is wrong, that proves that I’m right!
Darrell
You know, when it comes to dragging down a thread with personal insults and off-topic rants, the top undefeated BJ champions are:
1. ThymeZ aka ppgaz
2. VladiG
3. jaime
4. JimAllen
5. nyrev
ThymeZone
You are either with Darrell, or you are …
Well, you know.
Krista
Free speech is a wonderful thing. Someone being intentionally insulting and disruptive to the discussion is quite another. There are righties on here like Mac who are very capable of having a productive discussion, and nobody’s called to ban him, even though many have disagreed with his positions quite vehemently.
So it’s not about censoring opposing viewpoints. It’s about encouraging productive discussion, and discouraging those who refuse to contribute in a meanful fashion.
Vladi G
From everything I’ve read, and from what I remember, that’s not true. Can you provide evidence for that assertion?
srv
Stalin and Mao weren’t ideologically driven to slaughter. Hitler was. The former were tyrants, and were no more left plank communists than Darrell. The latter was a tyrant and an ideologically driven Nazi.
As far as racial purification and rounding up folks… Uh, see Tancredo and Buchanan for a starting point.
mrmobi
Darrell: (I left off Gruppenfuhrer out of respect for Tim) Oh shit, I didn’t leave it off.
You know, GD, whenever you post something I pretty much assume that the truth will be somewhere in exactly the opposite direction. I haven’t ready any Galbraith, but after reading this, I believe I will.
I know it’s hard for you to admit that liberals might actually have made a contribution to our society, but his list of achievements inspires neither sadness nor contempt from me, only great admiration. He got the Presidential Medal of Freedom (twice!) before the time when you had to really fuck something up badly to qualify for it.
You might want to admit to yourself that someone can be wrong about some things and right about a great deal else. But introspection doesn’t seem like your long suit. You are the most dishonest person I’ve ever not met.
Darrell
I am saying that there were many liberals at the time saying that Soviet communism was just another legit alternative government to Western democracy. I am saying that there were many liberals who knew better telling us that the Soviet economy was humming along just fine with zero unemployment. I am saying that many liberals at the time defended, and continue to defend Alger Hiss who was a spy for the Soviets for chrissakes. I am saying that many liberals claimed that Stalin-created famines were just ‘food shortages’ as millions died.
Like Andrew Sullivan said
Pooh
Most people would think that from what I’ve read, remembering the time I lived through when I was 12 that every blogger SCREAMED about the Evil Empire fronted by Darth Gaz and his Pie-Faced Minions.
Tim F. is objectively pro-custard.
Darrell
First Krista, if you were sincerely interested in that, you would acknowledge the far worse offenders on this very thread, some of whom I’ve listed. Second, I defend my assertions quite well, and I typically don’t insult unless insulted first (re-read this thread). No, you want censorship while posturing like a phony that all you want is a “productive discussion”
John S.
What? You mean lefties lefties liberal kooks lefties scumbags Stalin-lover lefties dishonest objectively pro-Saddam lefties isn’t productive discussion?
Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that there’s only one person around here so compelled and self-posessed to utterly throw any discussion under the bus, and it isn’t MacBuckets or DefenseGuy or really anybody else. Just one person.
John ColeDarrell.Andrew
Literally millions of conservatives think that it’s true. Millions.
Darrell
Mac seems like a nice guy, who takes smears and insults and let’s them roll off his back, so cut the crap about not being disruptive. Others like Stormy and Defense guy for the past year, after enduring hateful smears from your fellow leftists just choose not to come back. If you were honest, you would admit as much.
I don’t take the personal insults like Mac does without giving back as good as I get. If you call that ‘disruptive’ while not saying peep about the far worse offenders, that says it all about you, doesn’t it?
Krista
“Millions” of them, huh? “Virtually all” liberals? Can’t wait to see that source — you’ve kept us waiting for so long, you must really be compiling a great, comprehensive collection of sources to back up your assertions.
Darrell
6. John S
John S.
Without evidence.
No evidence of this, either.
Or of this.
And of course, there is not even an inkling of this being true.
Do we all sense a theme? Of course we do. All except for poor Darrell who of course is the real victim here. 99% of the commenters here never see his things his way, but that’s not because he lies or fails to make cogent arguments. It’s because everyone else is the problem.
That’s one hell of a persecution complex.
srv
Darrell, I clearly remember that moment, and my response was exactly the same as the “Axis of Evil” speech. I predicted both would lead to more problems:
USSR) Andropov and hardliners would retrench and do more stupid things. To his credit, Reagan saw the opportunity Gorby provided later, and seized it. Much to the dismay of many republicans – had you desired to look out of your sandbox then, you would have found no small number of Buckleys, Buchanans, Kristols, Doles, etc who threw fits over Reagans embracing-the-evil behavior.
NK) Axis-of-Evil: NK would unseal the stored rods and enrich them, resulting in more nukes. Darrells: -6 (one for each NK nuke)
Iran) Axis-of-Evil: Iranian harliners would retrench and Khatami would be out. More progressive politicians and newspapers would be shut out. Iran would accellerate uranium enrichment, as they had no alternative to stop a US invasion. Darrell strategy: -2
Both responses had nothing to do with believing Sovietism or Islam were desireable alternatives to Western democracy. They were responses to general stupidity that didn’t make us safer.
John S.
#7 – #999,999. Anyone who sees through you.
Glad I made the list, though.
Darrell
When liberals get their echo chambers, and someone disrupts it, calls for censorship ALWAYS emerge, and they’re all for it. Such champions of diverse thought. Stormy’s gone, Bumperstickerist never posts any more, Defense Guy said he left because of the liberal personal attacks were causing him stress. But I am the problem. Got it.
Look, John wants me gone. All he has to do is ask.
Pooh
Well, since the fish are sitting there in the barrel and I still have my second ammendment rights, point by point:
You’ve listed them. Listed. Examples? Not so much. On what criteria are we judging “worse,” aside from a viewpoint with which you disagree.
Uhm, still waiting for even
100hell, 10 of those millions of leftists/liberals.Ok, from your first contribution:
Uhm, yeah.
Funny how Krista pointed out that no one was clamoring for Mac to be banned, as an example (some might call that “evidence”, or perhaps even “support for a proposition/assertion.” you might try it sometime.)
ThymeZone
You can call me Herb.
Vladi G
No one called for censorship of Mac or Defense Guy in this thread. But you’re a serial liar, so you won’t admit that.
We’ve known that for a while now. Glad to see it’s finally sunk in.
Liar.
Darrell
Except your judgement and the judgement from most every liberal at that time was dead wrong with Reagan.. and will probably be proven wrong on Bush (yet to be seen). I’m asking that liberals be held accountable for their bad judgment with Reagan vs communists, and with communists.
John S.
Defense Guy was here making some very good arguments in this thread and having a very amicable dialogue with everyone.
Until you showed up and did your thing.
Darrell
Uh Pooh, I had like 8 or 9 quotes earlier on the thread to demonstrate that point. Your side was accusing conservatives of being Nazis and racists. How dare me point out verbatim what you guys actually say!
mrmobi
Darrell, you mamzer, you drove off Defense Guy. Have you, at long last, no shame sir?
ThymeZone
That doesn’t mean that’s why he left. Maybe he left because he was seen as a blind defender of a disastrous and failed war, and couldn’t hold his own in the heated arguments that go on here?
Maybe, like you, he could not defend his postion (well, in your case, never taking a position is part of the problem) and ended up just being hostile all the time … until all he got back was hostility in return. Like you.
You guys went from “we won, get over it” to “stop personally attacking me you big meanies!” in about a year flat. You can dish it out, but you can’t take it.
Darrell
Defense Guy mentioned on another thread a day or so ago, that he left BJ about a year ago because the non-stop personal insults from leftists were not doing him any good. You never see Stormy, or Bumperstickerist or Al Maviva, or other conservatives who used to post here anymore, because liberal aholes turn every debate into personal attacks. See this thread for examples.
Vladi G
Proof please. I didn’t see that said in any of his posts. He posted numerous times in this thread, and never once mentioned stress due to personal attacks.
Jim Allen
To the contrary, LarryDarrell&Darrell — all of my personal insults and rants have been quite on-topic.
Vladi G
Yet he was posting very nicely in this very thread. Until you came along with your serial lying and ran him off. From what I’ve read, that’s what happened.
srv
No, Evil Empire was still a stupid thing to say regardless. It did not hasten the end of the Soviet Union. If anything, it delayed it.
And most liberals supported a general military buildup after Afghanistan. They just didn’t think Neutron Bombs, Winnable Nuclear War theory, more nukes and fantasies like Star Wars were going to make them or the Euros safer. They were mostly right.
We didn’t change vis-a-vis the Soviets. Reagan did. I credit him for that, but you don’t.
Krista
From everything I’ve read, there weren’t too much in the way of calls for Stormy, Defense Guy, Bumperstickerist or even Don Surber to be banned (when he deigned to visit). I actually miss Stormy, even though I disagreed with a lot of her viewpoints. Actually, I disagreed with The Other Steve earlier on this very thread, and don’t seem to recall trying to get him censored.
I don’t want you banned because we disagree.
I want you banned because you contribute nothing but acrimony.
Darrell
Several (not one or two) liberals start off accusing conservatives of being Nazis, racists, and gay-haters. Re-read the fucking thread. Then others come on board with nothing but 100% personal insults. But I’m the ‘disruptive’ one. Censorship is what you’re calling for. And you’re all for it. Read your own posts for proof
Krista
Oh yeah, I forgot about Al Maviva! I think he just stopped posting for awhile due to a terrible case of writer’s cramp from his absurdly long posts. I don’t know if I disagreed with him or not, because I just couldn’t slog through them. Never wanted him banned, though.
ThymeZone
Whereas your constant, unrelenting, nonstop drumbeat of insults against the left — whatever that means to you at any given moment — is really good for the rest of us.
You long ago gave up the right to complain to anyone about personal insults. You can’t make a post or write a paragraph without making an insult. You’ll reach back 26 frigging years for an insult … an ad against Reagan, for crissakes. Give it a rest.
You guys were all chest out and strutting your stuff two years ago as if you had the world by the tail.
What happened? The American people caught on to the scam that is this Potemkin government, and now your mighty GOP is probably headed for a 1994-style implosion.
Sure, it’s been tough on you guys, but you brought it on yourselves, and you deserve every bit of it. Here you are to this day defending a completely failed government. What the hell, man? Are you blind?
srv
DougJ just couldn’t hadnle the stress anymore. But I do miss Al.
Darrell, the reason so many of you aren’t around anymore here and elsewhere in the blogosphere is that most of you aren’t true believers anymore. 1/2 of my milblogger links haven’t been updated in a year. Redstate is down 30%. Most of you guys can only take so much of the Kool Aide.
Vladi G
That’s the second time you’ve been correct in this thread. Baby steps.
Vladi G
Well, that would certainly explain all of his posts in this thread. Liar.
Darrell
But they were so showered with personal insults and hate from you leftists that they chose to leave as a result. You can see this tendency on this very thread, starting out with “conservatives are Nazis”, then moving on as usual to personal insults.
They weren’t called on to leave, perhaps because they didn’t defend themselves responding in kind like I do to personal attacks from liberals. How dare I do such a thing! He must be censored!
Krista
Tsk, tsk. Language.
Now Darrell, from everything I’ve read, you do tend to be very disruptive in a thread. In fact, I can say first hand that you really don’t contribute anything except for vitriol to any given discussion. To say otherwise is a lie.
ThymeZone
You’re a liar. These people dished it out every day, but turned tail as soon as people stood up to them and started responding in kind. Whining the whole time.
Darrell
more likely they’re tired of the lowlifes here like “VladiG”, “ThymeZone”, “jaime” or “John S” or the other assholes queering the thread with their stupid-ass posts on ‘jackalopes’.
ThymeZone
Take a look at this thread, Darrell. Who went personal first?
Res ipsa loquitur.
ThymeZone
Poop, don’t.
Bombadil
Well, if you use the blocking software provided elsewhere, and eliminate Darrell’s comments, and ignore posts responding to Darrell (including my own), not only is this thread considerably shorter, it’s actually quite interesting. Tim, how do the results of your experiment line up with your original hypothesis? Is it possible to have a decent discussion without it devolving into personal flamage? If not, can you think of any adjustments to the environment that might allow for that type of discussion?
My thanks particularly for Defense Guy for being the early (and for some time, only) poster on the right side of the spectrum. Thoughtful and thought provoking stuff, DG.
Darrell
Thanks liberals for dragging the thread into personal attacks and calls for censorship.
OCSteve
Kind of hate to go here – but I can confirm the anecdote. I was on the pointy-end – in the FRG when Reagan deployed the Pershing II. The shrieks of the (later to be) EU were only drowned out by the lefties at home. Who was right?
Krista
Actually, I even recall getting into quite a few heated exchanges with Brian (remember him?) We didn’t just disagree, we disagreed at a level that often grew personal. I didn’t ask for him to be banned (he did that all by himself with a racial epithet, but that’s neither here nor there.) So your assertion that I want to censor those who disagree with me? Lie.
Oh, and your claim that Mac doesn’t give as good as he gets? Not very nice of you. I think Mac manages quite nicely, actually.
Darrell
Disruptive = disagreement with liberal echo chamber quoting verbatim what liberals say and write (“conservatives are nazis” etc)
Bombadil
Well, if you use the blocking software provided elsewhere, and eliminate Darrell’s comments, and ignore posts responding to Darrell (including my own), not only is this thread considerably shorter, it’s actually quite interesting. Tim, how do the results of your experiment line up with your original hypothesis? Is it possible to have a decent discussion without it devolving into personal flamage? If not, can you think of any adjustments to the environment that might allow for that type of discussion?
My thanks particularly for Defense Guy for being the early (and for some time, only) poster on the right side of the spectrum. Thoughtful and thought provoking stuff, DG.
ThymeZone
He knows how to argue. Unlike Darrell.
Darrell’s idea of arguing is to make up some shit and then run away when called on it.
MAX HATS
DEEP THOUGHTS
Maybe liberals tend to win online arguments because they’re right? If your only defenses for anything and everything are a) they called me mean names! and b) I’m right because I am because I’m right and facts or citations are for sissies – then maybe you were wrong.
Look at what you are trying to argue here – liberals didn’t like a Reagan speech, so they support communist atrocities. That is absurd. Of course you’re wrong and of course you can’t defend it except crying loud and often and hoping someone takes pity. Your point it nuts.
ThymeZone
What a bonehead. Produce any post of mine saying any such thing, and I’ll eat it.
Darrell
Mac seems to be a nice guy, and responds well to the gutter attacks from the left. He just respond as aggressively as he is attacked. Like I said Krista, you’re advocating censorship of those with whom you disagree while not doing the same for those on your side who are far worse offenders. It’s a lie to say you’re not advocating censorship out of ideological disagreement. Maybe you feel stupid when debating me and you don’t like feeling stupid.. who knows?
Tulkinghorn
Who was right?
I think the jury will be out on that one for some time. It was highly provocative at a time when it really was not necessary.
A lot of conservatives triumphantly declare that the arms build-up broke the Soviets, but I have never seen anything to justify that aside from circular reasoning. The the conservative intellectuals (AKA the Neocon cabal) were dead wrong on the internal strength of the Soviet Union, so it hardly follows that strategy gets the credit for breaking the Soviets unless you admit it was a lucky accident.
ThymeZone
How does moderation on a blog constitute censorship?
This is a private venue, is it not? We are all here at the pleasure of the proprietors. How is it censorship?
Censorship would be trying to stop you from saying something on your own blog.
These guys can edit me, or block me, and I have no say in the matter whatever. Even if I think it’s terrible, it isn’t censorship.
Darrell
tell us Max Hats, which “side” is the one calling names here calling conservatives Nazis, racists and the like? An honest answer to that question says it all, wouldn’t you agree?
srv
There is no demonstable linkage between Pershing (those are tactical nukes, folks) deployments and the collapse of the USSR. The unneeded political debate only made western policies look weaker. No one in the Kremlin ever cowered over some Pershings.
Darrell
A willfully dishonest interpretation of my position.
MAX HATS
Look up at the forum topic and read – very slowly – what this thread is supposed to be about. Of course people are calling different sides Nazis. THAT IS THE FREAKING TOPIC OF DISCUSSION, “WHICH SIDE IS MORE LIKE THE NAZIS.”
And how is that any more offensive that saying liberals are complicit in commie atrocity, anyway?
ThymeZone
Poor misunderstood me? Jesus.
The way to avoid that problem is to state your position clearly and unambiguously. You never take positions, you just poke people with sticks.
You avoid taking positions because doing that would require honest defense of the positions and honest argument. You won’t do that. Challenged, you just run away or change the subject.
MAX HATS
Honestly, how does you position differ? Please explain. Take as long as you have to. If that is not what you are saying, then in all these posts I have no idea what you are even arguing.
Krista
I DO feel stupid when I debate you, because engaging you is such a stupid and pointless activity.
Oh, and just to reiterate, as you didn’t seem to comprehend: I’m not advocating censorship of those with whom I disagree. Everybody with whom I disagree is more than welcome, AFAIC. Everybody except for you.
Pooh
What?
ThymeZone
I said “res ipsa loquitur” and I figured … well .. you know.
After dealing with Darrell, my brain is not operating at its usual peak of efficiency.
Pooh
Ah, well played sir ;)
vetiver
OCSteve, Darrell —
You might want to study up on confirmation bias.
As for the accuracy of your eyewitness memories — well, that’s highly questionable, as well; many studies have shown the malleability of memory. Elizabeth Loftus is the best-known researcher; you can download her articles here.
That’s why Darrell’s declarations and anecdotes (or yours) aren’t worth a pitcher of warm spit, absent some documentation. Could be a policy statement, could be a poll — some specific confirmation from a third party that can be examined and evaluated.
So, Darrell — millions of American Stalinists? Virtually all of the American left protesting Reagan’s speech, due to their comm-symp politics? If your descriptions are accurate, there’ll be lots of confirming documentation.
Tim F.
You cited Michael Totten’s opinion, which is known as hearsay. Amazingly enough, other opinions disagree. Who is “the left” who defended Alger Hiss? I doubt that they number in the millions. You made the affirmative statement so support it. Similarly you have no clue how many praised Stalin and no evidence that significant numbers did so after the atrocities were known. The Hollywood 10 adds a total of ten names to the list. I could do you a favor and throw David Horowitz on the list and you would still have a hard time filling a polka hall. Hearsay and a group smaller than neo-Nazis, aryan sympathizers and Pat Bushanan/Joe McCarthy Republicans whom I could name does not qualify as ‘substance.’
Also, it surprises me that you read my post to mean that rightwingers are Nazis. Do you have basic logic problems? That is an honest question.
John S.
Got any evidence of…
Nevermind. Forgot who I was talking to.
John S.
Precisely.
I would LOVE nothing more than to see an opinion that differs from my own which is presented in such a way that I have to give pause and think about whether my position is a valid one. That is what real debate is about. People with opposing views making a strong enough case to compel you to re-examine your views or challenging you to make yours.
That is NOT what Darrell brings to the table.
Darrell
Well, I’ve given the Totten article and also a link to a Volokh discussion. Here is another which discusses primarily the British left at that time, which is not much different than the American left
downplaying Stalin-created famine, minimizing Soviet oppression. Here’s another Stalin apologist applauded by the left at the time
My example of the near universal liberal denunciation of Reagan for daring to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire” is another example of the left trying to minimize the horrors of that regime. More on the leftist sentiment of that era. Not that any amount of citations or evidence could convince impenetrable liberals like you.
“If it’s not in wiki it’s not true”
John S.
Bullshit = Darrell’s synopsis of any discussion.
Pray tell, where did ANYONE make the statement “conservatives are nazis”? You put in quotes which means you are quoting someone, right? So WHO said this?
A simple answer will suffice.
Tim F.
That is a shockingly uninformed statement. Are you aware that most European countries have viable Communist parties?
Darrell
On this very thread
and this gem from a typical liberal “only looking for honest debate”
Complete aholes so many of you are. How dare I quote you verbatim!
Darrell
No it’s not. Glad to see such a “substantive” refutation of my point from you Tim.
ImJohnGalt
Um…Darrell’s making lists. Ergo, he is like Joe McCarthy. Ergo, we are all communists.
I want George Clooney to play me in the movie.
Darrell
Tim, in case you didn’t know, at the time of Malcolm Muggeridge’s reporting whom I quoted, the US had a vibrant communist party too.
Tim F.
America still has a Communist party, Darrell. It holds as many seats today as it did then. Note the term ‘viable.’
From your useful article:
Gosh, it sure sounds like liberals all lined up to support Soviet Russia. Yessir.
ImJohnGalt
I had no idea the rules of evidence were so, um….malleable. Apparently, linking to someone who claims to have heard someone say something, or who makes the same outrageous claim as Darrell is evidence that it actually happened.
I hope I’m never being defended by a lawyer with as loose a grasp of evidence as the Senator.
Darrell
Tim, I never suggested most liberals “lined up” to “support” the Soviet Union. I have said that they excused and minimized the oppression and the atrocities of the Soviet system at that time, as they did with Mao. They were sympathetic, and provided cover for the communists. Lenin called such liberals “useful idiots”
For that matter, I have read many liberals referring to Saddam, a mass murderer, child killer, as merely a managable tyrant or similar language downplaying his atroticities and threats.
John S.
Except none of those statements are “conservatives are nazis”. Do you understand how quotes work, Darrell? Do you understand that quotations – in the manner you applied them – are meant to be used when you are stating what someone said VERBATIM?
Like I said…
Bullshit = Darrell’s synopsis of any discussion.
ImJohnGalt
For goodness’ sake, then Darrell, how about a link to someone other than a wacky blogger doing so, or saying that he read another blogger who said it.
After all, you’ve *read* it! Let us do the same!
Ahem.
So, then. The fact that “many leftist” “even praised” Stalin doesn’t imply that they supported him.
Ok, then.
Darrell
Tim, you dishonestly minimize the legitimacy of the communist part at that time in American History. Today, American communists are a fringe. Back then, they were an integral part of the labor movement and considered legitimate. But you know that, but chose to deceive. Because with you it’s all about ‘winning’, nothing to do with finding the truth.
Darrell
Oh of course.. because there is such a substantive difference between saying “conservatives are nazis” and
“The modern right owns the Nazi party.”
John S, please don’t pretend you come here for honest debate with crap like that.
ImJohnGalt
Wait a minute…Darrell went from:
to
It seems you had no interest in finding the truth, even after it had been pointed out to you. I note, with some irony, that the fact that an assertion of yours was proven verifiably false by links didn’t cause you to flinch, and you used this new information (that you might have found had you done even some cursory research) to then bolster another argument against liberals.
Darrell
Oh ImJohnGalt, such a ‘gotch’ moment. Like I said, with you aholes, it’s all personal, you could care less about the truth if it conflicts with your dogma. Hence, the heavy focus on the personal
John S.
Really? The collected works of Darrell on this thread:
I stand corrected.
Bullshit = ANYTHING Darrell has to say.
ImJohnGalt
I’m sorry, what did I just say that was personal?
John S.
Might I add to my previous post, Darrell…
Please don’t pretend you come here for honest debate with crap like that.
Krista
John S. But he didn’t use the words “lined up”. So in DarrellWorld, Tim’s the dishonest one.
Tim F.
This is as good a post as any to point out your basic problem with logic. Some “leftists” certainly did what you describe. How do you translate from that to the idea that “the left” minimized and supported communist dictators? Through the magic fallacy of composition, of course! As a commenter this is your defining fallacy, Darrell. You have a potent ability to see the most extreme examples of a given group and make the convenient decision that those people actually represent said group. You do it when somebody makes a dumb comment (“typical leftist etc.”), you do it whenever some random protester holds up an especially offensive sign and you especially do it whenever somebody pisses you off and you want to draw some blood in return, such as on this thread.
When I say that you have a basic problem with logic, this is what I’m talking about. It pushes your morphine lever to think that your hated liberals all think and act like some detestable example that you just saw or read about and you, more than anybody I have ever seen, have a morphine problem. Highly ironic in my opinion that you are so quick to diagnose your adversaries a unified group with a mental disorder when doing so suggests just the reverse.
Krista
Oh, and he used “defended”, “excused”, and “praised”. But not “supported”. Because evidently, defending, excusing and praising are in no way to be taken as indications of support.
John S.
If there is no difference, then why QUOTE SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EXIST?
Why didn’t you just, I don’t know, QUOTE WHAT WAS ACTUALLY SAID?
Are you too stupid or just too dishonest?
DougJ
You know, I’ve always had a hard time with right and left. I used to be centrist, am now pretty far to the left, and I can imagine being on the right (hopefully not, but I can imagine it). The important distinctions to me are:
(a) faith versus reason
(b) pragmatism versus ideology
(c) authoritarianism verus libertarianism (maybe that’s not quite the right word since most libertarians these days are authoritarians)
Pretty much, I like reason, pragmatism, and nonauthoritarian versus libertarianism. That’s why I hate the Republican party. I could live with their blatantly pro-corporate philosophy (if you can call it that) if it wasn’t wedded to irrationality and fascism.
I have friends who are quite far to the left who are faith-based, authoritarian ideologs. I expect they will all end up as the next generation’s version of neocons.
ImJohnGalt
That should read:
Are you too filled with custard or just too criss-crossed with lines of chocolate and caramel.
John S.
Isn’t that a clever trick?
Tim didn’t quote Darrell using those terms, but Darrell “quoted” them in his response. Seems like Darrell likes to get creative with quotation marks.
ImJohnGalt
Can I suggest Patrick Stewart as the captain of Neocon: The Next Generation?
Darrell
John S, may I refer you to self professed liberal Democrat Michael Totten to explain the distinction:
Many liberals reacted similarly after 9/11 at Totten notes
Liberals, it’s who you are. If it takes one of your own like Michael Totten to open your eyes, then wake up and smell the coffee
Darrell
Apologies for omitting the link in my previous post
Krista
That’s just really depressing, Doug. I’ve had quite enough of faith-based authoritarianism for several lifetimes.
Darrell
One more observation from Totten:
ThymeZone
You are without doubt the biggest horse’s ass I’ve run into in a long time. And I’m sixty and I have run into a few, I tell you what.
Didn’t your mama ever tell you when you are in a hole, the smartest thing to do is to stop digging?
DougJ
Hopefully, they won’t attain any power this time. It’s amazing, though, how much one of them sounds like a neocon. Replace “capitalsim” (he has some other word for it, but I can’t remember what it is) with “Islamofascism” and he sounds exactly like Bill Kristoll. And I’m sure that Paul Wolfowitz sounded exactly like my friend when he too was a thirty year-old, trotskyite, U. of Chicago grad.
Defense Guy
Yes, but I would hardly call their grabs at power, failures. They did what they did, and history judged them to be wise.
No, it really isn’t. FDR was as secretive a president as we have seen, and attempted broad reaching changes to the American system which still exist today. He spied on anyone he felt was a risk, answered to no one and rounded up all Japanese Americans and put them in camps. His failure to bend to Japanese imperialism got us into WW2 and whats more, got the US into the war in Europe even before that by supplying our allies, allowing our pilots to go fly for England and put our merchant marines in the line of fire in their attempts to ship goods to England.
Lincoln, well, he was just a tyrant. Suspended habeus corpus, jailed dissenters, started a war of choice against his fellow man over what was the legal practice of slavery, pretended that wasn’t the cause, and then it was, and in the single greatest abuse of power seen at the time, ignored the Supreme Court. I mean, what a dick, right?
No, you can count on that never happening. She just won’t be elected, and if on the off chance she is, we the people will watch her as closely as we watched this one, and the last, and the one before that…
Name them, and give specific details about what has been given up and since you brought it up, how it is worse than what I mentioned about FDR and Lincoln.
Emotionalism, dressed up as some sort of reasoned response. I’m not buying into it, and come election time, neither will the people, again.
This, I would have to suspect is what most galls you. The only thing I can really tell you is that this war is very, very real and pretending it is not will not make it go away.
John S.
Wow, I’m convinced.
ALL HAIL MICHAEL TOTTEN, OVERLORD OF THE LIBERAL RACE.
May I refer you to self-professed liberal Democrat John S. who says:
I quoted it, so you can’t dispute. Additionally, I ate Michael Totten for dinner so I AM THE NEW OVERLORD OF THE LIBERAL RACE. Which means I speak for everyone and everything I say is true.
Good night.
Darrell
Krista, do you disagree with what your fellow liberal Michael Totten has observed about liberals and their excuse-making tendencies for the worst kind of tyrants and murderers?
John S.
Hey, anything to defeat the evil
segregationiststerrorists.Krista
Why yes! Yes I do. How kind of you to ask.
ImJohnGalt
Is this the same “self-professed liberal” Michael Totten who in April 2003 said:
Quite frankly, if I had written something this wrong-headed and overwhelmingly incorrect, I would become a “self-professed” mute. Totten seems nothing like my understanding of liberals, whatever he may call himself.
However, I am a piece of Mimolette cheese and I think Stalin was a bad guy. So therefore it is clear that dairy products are squarely in the anti-communist corner.
Defense Guy
Eh, tough times and all that. Even libertarians sometimes realize that the country was established with a strong, authoritarian executive for a very good reason. Fortunately, our founders built in escape clauses aplenty, in the form of elections, and recalls and finally the right to revolt should all other avenues be taken from us.
ThymeZone
Hopefully, she won’t get nominated.
Darrell
How is he wrong in your opinion? Do you dispute the quotes he attributes to liberals?
DougJ
Then they’re not libertarians, just Republicans who smoke pot.
Defense Guy
Not anything, but certainly some things. I don’t fault Lincoln, slavery was an abomination. As is terrorism, made even worse when it is done in the name of G-d.
Chickenlegalizationalists?
John S.
Wow, DG. I’m sorry but that is by far the most erroneous summation of what this country was founded on that I have ever seen. A strong, authoritarian executive? By a group of men seeking to escape the tyrrany of a monarch? I’m sort of speechless that you would even put forth such a counter-historical notion. Perhaps you could provide something that backs up your theory? Because here is what I have always come to believe:
Alexander Hamilton. Federalist 69.
Strong, authoritarian executive? Hardly.
Defense Guy
John S
You are reading too much into my statement. Our executive is strong, but limited. It is authoritarian, but within limits. I’m not suggesting they intended monarchs, but they didn’t leave the position with no power, and all our presidents have used that power when they felt it was in the interest of the country. Except Carter maybe.
Tulkinghorn
DG:
The presidency can be strong and authoritarian so as to allow the prosecution of a war, but only under certain legal situations, such as upon the declaration of war.
What many of us anti-Bush types dislike is the open-ended nature of the war that is used for justification of presidential power. The war may be ‘very, very real’, but it is less serious than the cold war, and it is probably less serious than other conflicts that may be just over the horizon (e.g. China).
The power grabs made by this president, which have been dishonest, cynical, and politically opportunistic, will undermine the willingness of the American people to allow for such centralized authority when we have a more serious and profound conflict.
To bring this argument within the Godwin-zone authorized for this thread, the political methods of Rove et al. is reminiscent of the Nazis, and the demand for ideological purity by the Christianist wing is reminiscent of the Soviets. The liberals, inasmuch as they act upon real liberal values, are reminiscent of the centrist Democrats and Republicans who won the cold war with force, planning, diplomacy, respect for the law and bipratisanship.
Cyrus
Bored, I decided to follow Darrell’s link. The third hit of the search caught my eye.
And yes, overall that article supports Reagan. But I thought it was funny because according to Darrell, everyone who disagreed with Reagan’s decision to use the “evil empire” phrase did so because they were “downplaying atrocities of communist governments”. Or at least, every liberal. How does Darrell know this? Mind reading, obviously.
MAX HATS
I was attending what was, and is, perhaps the most left-wing acredited school in America during and after 9/11. There was undeniably a sizable fringe that was all over the copvcia.org, “STOP THE AFGHAN GENOCIDE!”*, we deserved 9/11** scene. Undeniably, it was there. It repulsed me, and it kick-started my own journey from being a WTO protester to enlisting in the Marine Corps.
But to pretend that what was already fringe in this extremely fringe college somehow represents the majority (totality, even) of American leftism is the height of dishonesty. I can see why you make these stretches – you are both incredibly bad at arguing and set in your ways. The only way you can possibly come out ahead is if the other side are all moonbats beyond possible recourse to reason, stalinists and jihadi sympathizers to a (potentially gay) man. That’s fine, that’s your perogative, but it does make you a grade-A fool.
*actual quote, from an actual poster
**these folks, ironically, seemed to make common cause with the copvcia folks.
Zifnab
You’re objectively pro-Darrell because you’re a bad person, Tim. I say this not out of any rationale or logical consideration, but because you totally just dared me and I couldn’t pass that up. So bring it.
Cyrus
Sorry about the last post; I started writing it around 5:45 p.m. when there were less than 300 comments, left the computer for a while, and didn’t hit either “Submit” or “Refresh” until later…
The war.
That seems to be the important part, doesn’t it. What do you base that on? “The war on terror” is “very, very real” in the same sense as the wars on drugs, crime and poverty. However, those were not generally used to justify the same kinds of government actions as the war on terror has been. Is it “very, very real” in the same sense as the Vietnam War or World War I? Well, which victories in the war on terror have been won by military action, as opposed to police action? None come to mind. (You might count Afghanistan. A victory in the war on terror, at least temporarily, and military action was obviously involved, at least partially. However, from everything I gather, and I’m too lazy to look that up right now but I will if you want, things are regressing.) Contrast that number with the victories won by police action and/or diplomacy. The much-ballyhooed liquid bombers from a couple weeks ago. Libya’s compromise on its nuclear program.
So I ask you, hyperbole about both Bushitler and dhimmitude aside, why should we treat this war as a War when the alternatives seem to have worked so much better?
Andrew
I think that Tim is subjectively pro-Darrell. And that this came about after a long weekend camping trip with the Boy Scouts.
t. jasper parnell
“The Communist promise of revolution (and regular attempts at it) posed enough of a threat to the German order that many ordinary Germans, including the business interests, supported the equally-violent gang which promised to politically oppose communism/leftism and support the established social order, the National Socialists, as the less-unappealing alternative.”
So Bavaria and Spartacus were regular attempts? Kapp and Munich would be regular nationalist attempts then as well? And Kapp, by the by, was destroyed not by the Frei Korps and the Army but by the general strike, which by definition means regular folks, no?
“In between the Nazis and Communists on the Weimar political spectrum a number of politically-moderate parties gradually lost influence.”
Well maybe, but the only party really dedicated to the Republic was the SPD. Moderates thought they were, they were still the Left. Odd isn’t it that on the night of the passage of the enabling act the SPD voted no, the Nazi’s locked up the Commies and the Center voted yes. In short and in other words, please list the centrist pro-Republic parties other than the SPD.
“Speaking of competing parties, an understanding of the political makeup of Weimar Germany will help to understand where the Nazi party stood. In the absence of a strong, unbiased security force (local police were usually run by and for local parties) each party built security and influence through its own violent gangs organized through partisan newspapers, social clubs and beer halls. Importantly, among the largest, most violent and terrifying to middle class Germans was the Communist party.”
Actually no, Stahlhelm, which predated the SA, was designed to attack the Republic ditto the Frei Korps, although Noske’s use of them to put down the left might confuse folks, indeed Noske might confuse folks. The SA, which was independent until the NIght of the Long Knives, predated he SPD’s Reichsbanner which was designed to counter the SA, the Free Corps and associated nationalist thugs. The Red Fighting Front was tiny but active and the Iron Front a late and futile attempt to unite the center left. In short, it was the nationalist paramilitaries who promoted violence and the SPD and the KPD struggled to keep pace. Although the KPD’s ridiculous anti-bourge Repbulic stance, dictated by Moscow, was and is a discrace, which allows us to understand the power and importance of the “negative majority,” it is an error to assert that the KPD and the Red Fighting Front were either the largest or the most dangerous of the paramilitary forces in Weimar.
Darrell
MaxHats, who has suggested that “Stop the Afghan Genocide” types represent a majority of liberals? Quite a dishonest strawman on your part by any measure. I’m fully aware that these types are extreme leftist, but certainly not a significant percentage of liberals. I think more leftists support this kind of thing though, or at least excuse or minimize this sort of crap. Too many campuses harass recruiters, or don’t allow them on campus at all for anyone to honestly assert “only a few”.
DougJ
I kind of like it.
You seem different, Defense Guy — more Mac Bucketish, less Darrellish. What gives? Not that anyone is complaining.
t. jasper parnell
And for fun click here
Darrell
Keep in mind that DougJ calls John cole ‘dishonest’, whereas at the same time claiming Don Surber is one of the “last honest conservatives”. Also, DougieJ says Jeff G at Protein W is the “most dishonest” conservative in a league of his own. Just keeping things in perspective as to how whacked he is..
Darrell
yeah, you lefties really have great ideas on how to have “fun”. From your link
ThymeZone
Keep in mind that you sat here for a month defending a useless and dishonest war in Lebanon, waged by a foolish and bellicose government in Israel that has turned into the biggest clusterfuck in that country’s 60-year history. Not even Israelis are as eager to support the bombing of children in their sleep as you are. You support mechanized terrorism against civilian populations.
You waste your energy and our time pimping 26-year-old slights against your chosen idelogues, but can’t raise a breath to criticize the daily murder of children.
Nobody could invent you, Darrell. You aren’t believable even as fiction.
DougJ
I shouldn’t call John “dishonest” — the worst I could say is “disingenuous” or “naive”.
When has Don Surber ever been dishonest? Seriously. Name one time he has deliberately lied. What’s your problem with him?
DougJ
I try not to talk about Jeff G anymore. I think he is mentally ill.
Darrell
I have no problem w/Surber. None at all. But maybe you can share why you think Jeff G. at Protein W is the ‘worst’.. so we can see how far out there you really and truly are.
DougJ
Wait, those didn’t advance an argument. Delete them — but please leave in my compliment to DG.
srv
For Tuesday, Darrell, I’d like you get that dictionary out and work on these words:
All
Few
Many
Most
And Tuesday has been declared a “Micheal Totten is the bestest-liberal-theorist free day”. You will need to switch to Dershowitz or Poderhertz as the optimal self-proclaimed liberal theorists.
Your opposition will use conservative theorist Jane Fonda for all of their quotes.
Thanks for your support.
ImJohnGalt
Darrell, although I don’t expect you will hear this with any sort of humility, or that you might respect that it is an observation I offer only in the hopes that it might bring about some shared understanding, I think what bothers me most is that it seems that to you, every argument here is personal.
By that I mean it seems that you believe that nobody is putting forth arguments in good faith, and any disagreement is akin to calling the other person a liar, or stupid. Although it may only be coincidence, there was actually a productive and informative discussion (albeit one in which I was only lurking) that I found quite enjoyable, which seemed to take on a more hostile tone around the time that you began to participate. I’m not suggesting causation here, but the times were certainly coincidental.
The fact that I pointed out that you have not been consistent in this thread was not a “gotcha”, as you interpreted my post earlier. Nor was it personal – quite frankly, I don’t know you from Adam (who I am sure is quite a nice guy).
I was merely pointing out what many people in this thread have, some more and some less diplomatically. You are not being consistent between what you demand of others and what you are willing to proffer yourself.
To quote VladiG, who quotes you:
Do you really fail to see the irony in that statement?
In addition, you repeatedly ask people to cite things to support their claims, often unreasonably asking them to find an exact quote where they were paraphrasing, but think that requests to cite support for your assertions are ridiculous on their face, because everyone who was of a certain age knows the things you assert to be true.
I’m not sure what your goal is in participating here. And granted, it is none of my business although it’s entertaining to speculate. Are you trying to get all the “lefties” to stop posting in frustration? Do you use Balloon Juice to vent on anonymous people after you’ve had a particularly hard day at work? Is this a practice forum for your debates in the real world (in which case calling people “kooks” and “Wack-jobs” probably isn’t going to win a lot of people over)?
This has become one of my favorite blogs over the last while because it’s one of the few where people really do occasionally have back-and-forth discussions and where I learn a few things about food, booze, politics, and the way people on the other side of the aisle think about domestic and foreign policy. I sure would appreciate it if you could participate with perhaps a bit less thin of skin, and a bit more honest argument, without assuming that the people with whom you are interacting are hoping that Al Qaeda takes over America next week, or that they think everyone who doesn’t like Michael Moore should be shot dead.
To this reader, that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Defense Guy and Mac (who, God love him, seems to have embraced his inner Elvis Costello, been the bigger man and added some humour and fact-based argument from the right) seem to have no problem arguing their points of view without calling everyone else deranged loons that want to hug terrorists. Why can’t you?
Cue some sort of ad hominem comment in 3…2…1…
ThymeZone
How far out there do you have to be to defend the daily murder of children for a month?
Darrell
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that 90%+ of the time Vladi comments regarding me, he enters the discussion with nothing but personal insults (“you’re a serial liar” is his patented phrase as any search of BJ archives will confirm). What irony would you be referring to?
Now I’m sure the irony is lost on you..
srv
I have to agree with you there Darrell. DougJ is being loopy. PW is the site that most nominally represents current rightest thought. Just like Totten is a seminal liberal theorist.
ThymeZone
But, you are a serial liar. It’s been proved here again and again. You just make crap up, and then pretend you’re deaf when the questions come.
You’re a patholiogical liar, and a deliberate liar.
Jess
I wish y’all would just ignore Darrell. He doesn’t queer the thread–you do by responding to him, and so yet another potentially interesting discussion falls by the wayside. You see, this is the nice thing about having these sorts of discussions on a blog–you can just scroll on past the stupid stuff. Of course, maybe y’all just love wrestling with pigs, despite your complaints about all the mud…
ImJohnGalt
That wasn’t irony, Darrell, that was sarcasm. And I only used those examples because I thought that saying “without assuming that the people with whom you are interacting supported Stalin even after he had massacred hundreds of thousands” was too over the top.
Darrell
In your case in reference to me, your arguments have been 100% personal. I think that’s because I’ve made you feel stupid in other threads, but who knows for sure. I’m not your substance abuse counselor.
But in this thread, you’re certainly not advancing an argument.. instead, you are looking for any flaw to seize upon, no matter how irrelevant to play “gotcha” like a typical leftist prick. Just admit it, and stop pretending that you are addressing the substance of my arguments, or any other conservative’s arguments honestly, because you’re not. If so, please point us to said honest argument.
ImJohnGalt
Whatever Darrell. I should have known better than to think politely addressing you in a post might end up in any better result than calling you a cretin. Although I’m sure you don’t care, I’ll be greasemonkeying out your comments in the future, and would recommend that anyone else who wants to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio here do the same.
And by the way dickhead, that’s not censorship…it’s prudently ignoring the stupidest fucking moron this side of Doug Feith.
Darrell
Good riddance scumbag..
Mac Buckets
You’re lovely as ever, K. Cheers!
ImJohnGalt
It must hurt, Darrell, to live for the “Gotcha”, as you do every time you demand that someone should cite where you said exactly the thing they’re paraphrasing. How you titter with glee when you tell them that they can’t, because that’s just who they are. “I said ‘tomAto’, not ‘tomAHto’!” you snigger as you dance on your tippy-toes and clap your hands, knowing that you catching them in their paraphrase means that they must also have caused their own wounds in ‘Nam to earn a Purple Heart.
I can understand that it must be a little deflating to be caught out yourself, and have to deflect attention from your own rhetorical device being used against you by calling other people names, or accusing other posters of having no argument. As I send your posts off to greasemonkey purgatory, I’ll gaze wistfully at the empty rectangles that come up where your posts are, and muse at how sad you must be in the harsh fluorescent lights of your parents’ basement.
Vitriol like yours that isn’t read loses its essence, sliding slowly down the Cathode Ray Tube of your old Commodore monitor, until it puddles at the feet of your Boba Fett figurine that stands guard there. Its pungence gone, its intended effect nullified, it must be frustrating indeed to know that your hateful screeds find no purchase.
ImJohnGalt
Defense Guy, on the off-chance that you’re still reading this (and I do apologize for my severe digression with the Senator), I have a question.
Although Lincoln did indeed suspend habeas corpus (on three occasions, I believe), didn’t he put himself at the mercy of congress when they reconvened?
Also [and I am no lawyer, either] doesn’t Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution make allowances for suspending habeas corpus when there is a rebellion (as, arguably, the Civil War was) or invasion (which, more tenuously I suppose you could argue happened on 9/11)?
Andrei
I would be interested to know what conclusions were drawn from this experiment at 450 comments.
And I’m also still curious, why on earth would you continue to let a less than handful of commentors effectively ruin (in this case) a meaningful discussion that many people were having? I mean honestly? What good comes from that? I still think to this day I’m pretty much the only person who got banned, and for something as effectively harmless as using a naughty four letter word.
If it makes Tim and John feel any better, maybe they should consider banning Darrell to make sure they don’t contribute to Darrell’s potential mental deterioration. I mean honestly, the man posts more than any blogger I’ve ever seen. And he responds with the kind of vitriol and energy I’ve only seen out of drug addicts. That can’t be healthy.
ImJohnGalt
I consider myself among those that have effectively ruined this thread, and would like to apologize for that. It’s just sooooooo hard to turn a blind eye, y’know? Now that I won’t see Darrell’s posts, I can assure you that it won’t happen again.
MAX HATS
Uh . .you did. Or what else did you mean by posting that Michael Totten link about “the left’s” reaction to 9/11?
Forget it. I give up. You’re completely unparsible. I can honestly say I have no idea what you are trying to communicate in this entire thread, other than people here are mean to you. I really have no idea what you are trying to communicate.
Perry Como
I’m pretty sure that power is granted to the Legislative branch, not the Executive. That’s why it’s in Article I and not Article II (and is one of the reasons, in my non-legal opinion, that the unitary executive theory in war time is full of shit).
Darrell
Oh I’m sorry, so you felt it was ok to willfully misrepresent what I posted when you claimed I suggested that “Stop the Afghanistan genocide” represents most liberals? As you must certainly realize, you are a dishonest sack of shit for suggesting that. But as a leftist with no honor, no doubt you’ll sleep well after lying your ass off as such behavior defines who you are. Here is the post from Totten which you misconstrue:
He’s right.. but most of you have bought into the ‘we’re so noble’ crap that you’ll never acknowledge the obvious truth of what you are.
Richard 23
I’ve learned that Darrell likes pie and frontpagemag. And that I never want to see another Totten quote as long as I live.
Pb
450 comments, nothing, once Tim F. finally manages ‘to delete any comment that doesn’t advance an actual argument’, this thread will be way shorter! Let’s see if he can get it to under 100.
Cyrus
One conclusion I’d draw is that if there is a strong argument to be made that Nazis were really liberals, people who agree with it did not happen to read this thread in the first couple hours. That’s not a very strong statement, but from that, I’d personally make some further conclusions – that those arguments don’t exist, that people making them are grossly ignorant and/or deranged by a seething hatred for their boogeyman of choice, The Left – that seem likely to me, but don’t meet strict rules of evidence.
And like any good research (whether or not Tim F.’s experiment was good research, it was like it in this respect), it raises more questions. There’s at least some truth to the idea that Darrell is the last right-winger around here – why? OCSteve, Mac Buckets, Defense Guy, you’ve all commented less around here in the past month than you did, say, six months ago. Stormy and TallDave as well, but I haven’t seen the former here so there’s no point in addressing her and the latter, well, could be as bad as Darrell sometimes. Were you guys driven off by the insults, like Darrell thinks? Personal reasons and coincidences? A change in the tone of the blogger(s) or the political landscape?
Other than that, we can conclude that Darrell likes pie [Not an ed.]. But we already knew that.
Cyrus
Er, looks like I phrased that wrong. Of course “Nazis=liberals” arguments exist, but I was saying that good arguments for it apparently don’t.
lard lad
I clicked on this thread too late to leap into the fray, but I would like to extend kudos to Defense Guy for reminding us what constructive political dialogue looks like. The first portion was marvelous… crackling with the vigorous exchange of ideas, disagreements dealt with in a civil fashion.
And then along came Darrell, and the thread was lost.
And of course, my favorite:
Darrell is like some guy who signs up for a debate tournament… then opens with some outrageous claim that he can’t substantiate, topped with a personal insult to his opponent. When rebutted by said opponent, Darrell responds by throwing eggs at the guy while calling him names. Then when the judges attempt to have him bounced from the lecture hall, he starts in screeching that he’s being “censored.” Luckily, the proprietor of the lecture hall is underwhelmed, and eighty-sixes him pronto.
And that’s the image I’ll have in my mind, when I see a Darrell post in future: a man responding to civil discourse with a thrown egg.
John S.
Who is Darrell?
I don’t see any posts by a person with that name. Not any more. How does that Zen koan go? What is the sound of one hand clapping?
The sound of one hand clapping cannot be heard. We do not have the physical capacity to hear the sound of one hand clapping. Therefore, we have to recognize our human limitation. When we accept our human limitation, we can reconcile ourselves to the natural world, and can live in harmony with the universe.
Ohm.
Krista
Right back at ya, baby! ;)
The Other Steve
The amazing thing about Darrell. I, and most of the liberals I know thought Reagan’s Evil Empire Speech was brilliant.
He tries to create divisions, where divisions do not exist. For what purpose? to win at all costs?
In his world, it is better to turn Americans against Americans, than to admit maybe he’s wrong.
The Other Steve
I feel sorry for Defense Guy. I thought he was making some fairly reasonable arguments, even though he was being purposefully obtuse to protect his own world view.
Ohwell, it will be good when the Republican party finally dies, and GW Bush leaves office. This disasterous style of “leadership” has been a tremendous embarassment to the United States. Dividing your friends, and uniting your enemies is not a strategy for success.
I see today that Ahmajinajad of Iran has offered to debate President Bush on world issues. We’re all fairly certain that Bush will decline the invite.
The sad thing is, I think Reagan would have responded in the affirmative with “bring it on”.
demimondian
God, I hope not. Reagan was totally incoherent when he went off script. (W. is somewht worse — he’s totally incoherent, whether or not he’s off script.)
Zifnab
Reagen was an actor. He could at least act like a President. Bush… not so much.
Tim F.
I think that you’re misremembering Defense Guy, Doug. He was always one of my favorite commenters and I’m glad to have him back.
About the experiment, I think that we all know how it worked out. There isn’t enough time in the day for me to clean up this thread (that goes for more of you than just Darrell) so consider it closed, or an open thread, or whatever. The next time we try this I will just go back to deleting.
Zifnab
The vast majority of the time, the views of Darrell and the views of many others on this board are divergent. Which is fine. If everyone agreed, this would be the lamest blog ever.
It’s the ad hominem attacks. “You’re stupid”, “leftist peaceniks”, “liberal assholes”, … Good god. I’ve seen people debate like that in person and their own friends and colleagues have a hard time agreeing with them. Even if you’ve got a point, people want to ignore or censor you because you’ve got such a foul mouth. It’s like debating Rush Limbaugh, where every other word involves “evil liberal”, “lieing Democrat”, or “drive-by media”. It’s like debating President Bush as he waves his hands trying to explain how everything is so perfectly obvious and you’re just too stupid to get it (except Bush has the decency to swear a fair bit less than Darrell). It’s a weak debate. Good I hate Darrell. *sigh*
Vladi G
Truth hurts, doesn’t it. Ah, who am I kidding, you wouldn’t know “truth” if it bit you on the ass.
Krista
Now I feel bad. You’re right, Tim. It does take two people to make an argument, and I certainly didn’t advance the debate any by getting into a personal spat with Darrell. My apologies to you — it wasn’t the mature thing to do.
The Other Steve
Actually what would improve the discourse would be a way to ignore Darrell.
Then we could continue having reasonable discussions, and wouldn’t feel forced to respond to his ad hominem attacks in kind.
scarshapedstar
I can think of one whopping difference between the Right and the Nazis. Even Hitler was squeamish about personally ordering executions. But Bush signed well over a hundred death warrants without a second thought and even joked about them later.
Bombadil
A proposal, Tim. Delete Darrell’s posts — all of them. Delete any post responding to Darrell — all of them. Take a look at what this thread would have been without Darrell.
You don’t need to be a full-time cop to make this a better place. I’ve been banned and put in moderation limbo before, so I know what can be done.
Darrell
Ah yes, because leftists have no good answers to DG, they must demean him. It’s in your nature to debate in that fashion
lard lad, how honest of you to selectively quote me while omitting the insulting (and some expletive laden) attacks which provoked those responses from me. You’re really speaking truth to power man.
Darrell
Not 1 liberal on this thread has dared engage the substance of what Totten said. Much easier to rely on personal insults it appears.
Bombadil
Since this is now an open thread, I feel safe in saying, “Darrell, go fuck yourself”.
Darrell
More proof (as if more was needed) that when liberals cannot respond to the substance of an argument, calls for censorship ALWAYS come out, and you liberals are all for it.
Ask yourself honestly, have those demanding censorship of me ever demanded censorship of the liberals who pollute these threads daily with their off-topic nonsensical rants – like ThymeZone, Bombadil, jaime, John S, or nyrev? Of course not, which says it all really.
Bombadil
No, seriously, Darrell, go fuck yourself.
And I say that with all due respect.
Darrell
Banana cream!
Darrell
When you have no facts and no argument, this is what’s left.
Darrell
Don’t forget Bumperstickerist or “cordially” Rick, or Al Maviva. Maybe 1 or 2 might be explained away by personal reasons or change of the political landscape. But as DG mentioned a day or two ago, he stopped posting here about a year ago because the personal attacks and mental illnesses of the leftist posters here made it no more fun for him. So now Krista, backed by virtually every other lefitst on this site, is calling to censor me, complete with calls to “go fuck myself” so that no one will dare burst the leftist echo chamber bubble you all crave so much. Wonderful.
Bombadil
One consolation, I suppose. He’s not on the side of the lefties. The John Coles, the Mac Buckets, the Defense Guys and others on the rightie end of the spectrum have to live with the fact that he’s on their side, like it or not.
And since none of them are complaining about him, I’m assuming they don’t mind. Pity.
mrmobi
Defense Guy:
I just wanted to say that I have enjoyed the discourse with you. I’ve got a ton of work to do today, but we’ll continue this conversation about WoT sometime, I hope.
Just to be clear though, I believe that there is a real danger from Jihadists, I just don’t believe that our response, excluding Afghanistan, has been effective. And I believe our leaders deliberately lied to us in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Thymzone:
I hope HRC doesn’t get nominated either.
Vladi G
If he stopped posting here a year ago, how could he have mentioned something yesterday?
Liar.
ThymeZone
Do you ever listen?
It isn’t censorship. If the proprietors decide to block you, or me, it’s their call and censorship is not involved.
You can start your own blog. You can comment somewhere else. We serve at their pleasure, entirely.
It’s a private venue, not a public one.
Punchy
God dammit! Why can’t I ever be included with the cool kids? Why can’t I be labeled a miscreant, a thug, a hood, a bully, having turds in my pockets and eggs at the ready?
Looks like I need to bone up on my “asshole” skillz…
ThymeZone
Our party is screwed if she is nominated. The country is screwed.
I think she works as a senator from New York. President? She is one of the few things that might get me to vote Republican.
Defense Guy
Thanks to all who said kind things about me, or at least about my attempt to keep the conversation from becoming one-sided.
Yes, and thanks for taking my unstated meaning on when the president has right to be most authoritarian. Where we run into problems is that we really no longer have a system where wars are declared by Congress prior to the start of hostilities. IMO, the WPA is unconstitutional, but those pulling the levers of power seem to disagree. We could amend the constitution to bring it more in line with the nature of modern war, but for whatever reason, have chosen not to.
As to the rest of your post, I will just respectfully disagree, and over the course of time I imagine we will be given opportunity to go into the details of why. For now, let me just say that while I do not wish for a never ending war, I do believe that it will be over anytime soon.
Can you be more specific about what ‘alternatives seem to have worked so much better’? To me, this war will be won by a combination of intelligence (i.e. CIA, MI5), police work, and military action (as well as the real threat of military action). I think you are wrong to bundle this situation in with the war on poverty (which can be won) and the war on drugs (which cannot).
Darrell and I agree on many things. Over time we have just developed different ways to express ourselves. It cannot have been easy for him to be almost the only conservative voice here. Feel free to disagree, as it is a better country when we allow ourselves the ability to do so without it becoming personal.
Without actually looking it up, yes. Lincoln said he would abide by the judgment of the Congress should they decide to censure or impeach. However, he told the USSC to go screw. Or maybe it was just one justice.
Perry Como covered this; it’s the legislative branch that has this power.
No need to feel sorry for me. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘purposefully obtuse to protect his own world view’.
Bombadil
Listen up, asshole, you can’t bully your way in with the cool kidz, you thuggish turd!
There — better?
ThymeZone
Apparently you really believe that repetition makes a thing true.
You guys on the right are really pieces of work. You can call people you don’t even know “scum” on a daily basis, and then whine about “personal attacks” in the same breath.
I say for the hundredth time …. I cannot fathom why these guys let you post here. There is only one answer that even remotely makes sense, and that’s page views. “Freedom of speech” is not even in the ballpark. Not even on the table. The only way that argument even makes technical sense is if John just comes right out and says “I don’t care who posts here or what they say.” Which is a totally rational thing to say … but the problem is, he constantly sends signals that he does care and he does want to have some control over it. So not even THAT argument would wash.
Defense Guy
You bet. I think it’s an important conversation to have, more so because we fast approach an election which could help plot the future course of the war.
MAX HATS
I’ve tried to respond honestly to the points you raise. Every time I do that, though, I am “dishonestly misrepresenting your position.” Every time I ask for clarification on what your position is, conveniently, that is the part of my post you snip in your quote and choose not to respond to. I can only conclude you don’t have a position, and just enjoy flinging shit.
Bombadil
Hmm. Sounds like Defeatocrat John Kerry to me. I like it.
One of the more tragic legacies of the LBJ years. I’d like to hope that a new Congress will reclaim its powers as defined in the Constitution, rather than handing them off to the Executive, but frankly I don’t see much chance of that no matter who has the majority. Since the Pentagon is having difficulty adjusting to “the nature of modern war” (and that’s their job), I don’t see Congress having any easier a time of it.
Krista
nyrev’s ears must be burning. And she hasn’t even been here in awhile. She must have really made an impression on you, Big D. (I think somebody’s got a crush…)
Vladi G
Tell me about it. I dropped from #2 to off the list entirely.
Krista
And I think that’s a major beef of mine with how this whole situation has been handled. I think too much dependence was placed upon the military, and there hasn’t been enough emphasis on having intelligence, the police, and the military work in a cooperative fashion. We’ve seen how well things can go when they all work together, such as in Britain. I believe those various facets of defence/security should be better organized and encouraged to share their knowledge with each other.
Darrell
First, nothing I wrote could honestly be characterized as suggesting that the “Stop the Afghan Genocide” radicals represent ‘most’ liberals. Second, I DID clarify, and even provided examples with links. Draw your own conclusions about your honesty when you suggest I didn’t clarify. Please re-read my response.
Darrell
What evidence to you have to support that assertion (other than your “feelings”), and how do you square your comments about needing more intelligence with your opposition to Bush’s (intelligence gathering) efforts with regards to the NSA program.
Darrell
If one were to research VladiG’s posts regarding me, I think it’s safe to say 90%+ of them involve the words “serial liar” or “liar”. He’s an obsessed loon who pollutes the threads to vent his mental illness.
DG stopped posting here about a year ago, and just returned (welcome back, btw) a couple of days ago. What a “liar” I am.
ImJohnGalt
I am pleased to note, however, that a number of those insult-filled quotes in lard lad’s post were directed at me. And *I’m* the one who gets personal.
Irony, thy name is Darrell.
Defense Guy
I think things could be better, but I disagree that too much emphasis has been placed on the military. A good number of planned attacks have been stopped here in the US.
The laws are different in Britain, when we attempt similiar things here we get the screams of violation of our civil liberties.
I tend to agree, on the surface. I say on the surface because I know that there are things that we don’t know about, so we are forced to have this discussion based on imperfect information.
Vladi G
There you go lying again. I’m just going to keep calling you a liar until you admit. I still remember the first lie I caught you in. You said that when Valerie Wilson donated to the Gore campaign in 2000, she listed her employer as the CIA. It was great. You repeated it over and over and over again until you were finally called out on it and shown that it wasn’t true. Then you backtracked with your tail between legs like the pissant liar that you are.
Vladi G
Awesome! Mr. “I remember” and “From everything I’ve read” asking for evidence. Do you even read what you write? You devolved beyond parody into flat out mental illness. It’s really been quite fascinating to witness.
Darrell
I rest my case.
The Other Steve
Agreed. The choice is stark.
Do we continue to allow Republicans to manipulate the fear of the American people in order to maintain their cronyist power structure.
Or do we give the Democrats a chance to bring this back into proper perspective, so that we can engage the real dangers and not waste resources on the imagined ones.
Darrell
I can’t imagine a better example of a false dichotomy.
John S.
I hear a rustle in the trees…
But regarding actual comments of substance:
What indicators lead you to believe the war will be over soon, DG?
So the British obtain warrants to prosecute their war on terror within the boundaries of the law while the Bush administration runs their secret “Terorist Surveillance Program”, but people would scream about the way the British do things?
Pray tell, what exactly did the British do recently that would illicit “screams of violation of our civil liberties”?
And regarding your “strong, authotitarian executive” comment, thanks for the clarification. However, I don’t think I was reading into what you said. Claiming that the founders intended to create a “strong, authotitarian executive” is an incorrect characterization, and I took it at face value.
MAX HATS
No, you didn’t. Prove me wrong – quote where you did.
Darrell
UK and other European countries generally permit far more intrusive surveillance and detention policies, and far harsher interrogation techniques than the Bush Administration has ever considered. Furthermore, didn’t the Brits expel from the country without trial a number of suspected islamic terrorists?
Darrell
What are you Max Hats..in third grade? In my response to the post you mentioned, as I have already told you I clarified, and even provide two examples with links. You want to have a foot stamping tantrum pretending you have a point? well knock yourself out then..
The Other Steve
Perhaps we should move this thread to kakistocrats? The proprietors of that blog are less tolerant of trolls such as Darrell.
Krista
Oh exactly. That’s why my comment was more of a generality. It could very well be that in the WoT, the respective heads of the military, police forces, FBI and CIA are working together as best they can. It just seems that we hear about these collaborative “good police work” victories against terrorism in England, but not in the US. And I’m wondering if it’s just that the message isn’t getting out, or if there’s too much jurisdictional red tape for them to work together, or if the U.S. has indeed put most of it’s eggs in a cammo-coloured basket in regards to fighting terrorism. I’m somewhat inclined towards the latter, but that’s mostly due to my impression of this current administration as being inclined to see the military as the best solution.
Vladi G
Probably. I mean, from everything you’ve read, right? And from what you remember. That’s all the evidence you need, right?
The Other Steve
Facts and evidence just get in the way of a good argument.
MAX HATS
That was your clarification? This:
So even according to you, you started calling me dishonest and accused me of attacking strawmen. . .before you even made you point remotely clear. (I still don’t understand why you posted the Totten 9/11 thing in the first place, if you apparently didn’t mean to communicate anything by it.)
So, when can I expect an apology?
Defense Guy
Sure John, no problem. They’re allowed to get a wiretap without a court order. They can detain a terror suspect for as long as 28 days before he has to be charged. They also have cameras everywhere.
Source
Defense Guy
That statement should have read ‘not over soon’, should have proofread it one more time I guess.
Darrell
When you produce a quote by anyone on this thread which could honestly and reasonably be interpreted as suggesting that the “Stop the Afghan Genocide” type radicals represent ‘most’ liberals. Please do show us your evidence Max.
ImJohnGalt
Defense Guy, I recall a relatively recent story while I was living in New York that basically mapped all the known surveillance cameras in New York, and was moderately surprised at just how much of Manhattan real estate has a camera pointed at it. It almost looked like a complete blanket.
Granted, many of these are private surveillance cams, but warrants cover these, don’t they?
I think that every now and then some of the London tabs do a story about how one of the video operators uses these cams to monitor lewd and lascivious conduct, as well. I say that merely as a titallating aside, a propos of nothing.
That said, do you think that implementing such a consolidated surveillance system in large American cities would be effective in deterring terrorists? Or common criminals? Would you consider it an abridgement of current civil rights?
I’m genuinely curious to understand what sits atop the razor’s edge of liberties we are willing to sacrifice vs. liberties we’d like to cling to, and how we rationalize those decisions.
MAX HATS
Okay. Your previous posistion taken in this thread is that most liberals excused communist atrocities. The only bit of evidence you would supply to this is Totten quotes. Then you pop up with a Totten quote about leftist reaction to 9/11. I made an obvious conclusion, and it’s notable you still, after all this bitching, have not produced an alternate explanation for why you originally posted that Totten 9/11 quote.
I’m joking about the apology, by the way. I don’t seriously expect you to man up.
Darrell
I think we’ve begun to identify the root of the problem
Darrell
Liberals see no inconsistency in their calls for “more intelligence” gathering, with their attempts to undermine existing reasonable, legal intelligence gathering efforts. See liberal response to NSA and liberal support for NY Times ‘outing’ of of a program to track terrorist finances as examples.
Krista
DG – One interesting thing I noted from your source was this:
So there are still “rigorous” checks in place, and reasonable grounds have to be provided in order to obtain a permit for a wiretap. From what I’m reading, the only major difference is that it’s the bureaucracy, not the judiciary, issuing the permits. That really doesn’t sound all that different from what is supposed to happen in the U.S., so I don’t think the difference in administration of permits would be enough to make Americans feel that their rights are being violated. The main point of contention appears not to be that a wiretapping program exists, but that your Executive chose to disregard a law that it found inconvenient.
Kirk Spencer
ImJohnGalt – so where do I get a script to greasemonkey killfile Darrell’s posts?
Darrell, the problem from my point of view is – as others have already stated – you don’t debate honestly.
In part, you have a set of core assumptions that interfere with the ability. These include assumptions such as:
“All liberals are anti-America”;
“All liberals are liars”; and
“All my statements are axiomatic or commonly known truths.”
When confronted with the flaws in these assumptions you evade or ignore, never correcting them.
In part, you are hypocritical. You set a demand for standards of others that you fail to maintain for yourself. You declaim without substantiation, but demand substantiation – in detail – from others. You demand answers to questions, but ignore questions from others. You insult group and individuals, but are offended when members of the group respond with counter insult.
Due to all of these, you are guilty of only reading what you wish to read – of posting swiftly and solely to condemn ‘the left’, often without taking time to read, much less consider, what the other side of the discussion has presented. It is a flaw you demonstrated with your first post to this site, a flaw for which our host condemned you. (Your first blanket insult is in your third post.)
The reason I keep trying is that when forced to the fire you do produce. After blanket insults and indefensible posturing you can, and have, brought forth reasonable discussion. Eventually, after much effort on the part of everyone else.
But I’m just tired of the effort.
MAX HATS
You have yet to provide an alternate explanation for what you posted. Did your browser burp? Did you have a tragic fuckup cutting and pasting? Poor dear, the internet can be so hard sometimes.
Defense Guy
Yes, and you could get access to them by merely asking as well. Most security camera owners are willing to help the police, without warrent.
Not really, no. Most of the cameras that went in in the UK went in as a result of the IRA attacks, but the IRA bombers didn’t kill themselves the way these new guys do. I think it’s more useful in a forensic capacity for terrorist attacks. Although I suppose a case could be made that if you were paying attention, and were lucky you might stumble onto a person in the planning stages and be able to stop whatever they were planning.
According to the Brits, no. Although I suspect it stops some. Again I suspect it is more useful after the fact.
Tough question. I don’t think it is much different than having security guards or cops hanging out in a particular area watching everything, which is not an abridgement, so on that basis I would say no. On the other hand, I would think the government would have to make a very compelling case for state run security cameras. There are a bunch here in DC in the mall area, and I don’t have a particular problem with them. Move them into residential areas on the other hand, and I would want a real good reason why.
John S.
Terchnically, so can the Bush administration. Under FISA, they can obtain a warrant retroactively up to 72 hours after the fact.
We have terror suspects that have been detained for much longer (4 months), even though ‘charges’ were not filed. It’s a clever little loophole using the statutes on material witnesses. Also, some enemy combatants have been languishing in Gitmo for years without having seen counsel or being brought to trial.
So does New York. And many other cities are looking to get on board with similar surveillance programs of their own. True, these have been met with opposition by civil liberties organizations, but that hasn’t stopped them from being put into place.
Sorry, but I don’t think that your examples show that the British have done anything that we aren’t already doing. In fact, I think in the second instance our policies are far more oppressive.
Defense Guy
Krista, to transplant that into our terms, it would mean that Bush appoints all those doing the issuance of permits. Glad you read the source, it has other interesting little tidbits as well. Like the difference in focus of investigation and the way in which we obtain information. They can send undercover agents into mosques without warrent, while we cannot.
Cyrus
Well, I just saw this a little earlier today, actually, and the last question Michael Scheuer answered seemed relevant.
I’m not saying military action is totally useless for everything, but it’s ineffective at best to those goals.
Why? The war on terror, as it’s generally thought of, is a war on an abstract noun. It can’t be won in the same sense as a war on a country or political group can be won — we could win a war against certain terrorist groups, just like we could win a war on specific drug cartels or sweatshop owners — but eventually it comes down to a calculation of to what level can we reduce (terrorism/drug use/economic inequality), given the limitations of human nature and today’s politics. (I’m also curious about your assertion that the war on poverty can be won but the war on drugs can’t, but anyways.) But only one of those wars has been used to authorize war powers.
Darrell
Anybody keeping track of the number of you obsessed loons whose postings are 100% personal attacks on me with no substance whatsoever? I’ll bet there are 20+ such posts in this thread alone. I only ask that after this pathetic display, please don’t pretend you are looking for civil discourse.
Defense Guy
Of course you do John. You can think the sky is green for all I care. Have you ever considered going into law? You seem to like the argument more than the truth.
John S.
It already happened.
For further reading, Google NYPD VIPER. I think you may – or may not be – surprised to find what is going on.
John D.
Just as a quick aside, this holds true in the USA as well.
If I have a private security cam set up, I am within my rights to give the captures from that to the police if they ask. A warrant is only required if the owner does not wish to hand it over.
Krista
Would he be appointing all of them, though? It probably depends on who is doing the permits. If it’s the head of the particular agency/department, then yes, he or she would have been appointed by Bush. But if your bureaucracy works anything like ours, it’s only the top dog who gets appointed…the rest have been there for years. Would they all turn a blind eye to the very laws that they are supposed to uphold? Maybe you’re just more cynical than I, but I can’t see everybody in that department rubber-stamping a wiretap permit without performing due diligence, just because it was the Prime Minister’s office that sent in the application.
John D.
Darrell,
*I* am looking for civil discourse. Failing that, I’d like you to BACK UP YOUR ASSERTIONS. Failing that, I’d like you to learn how to argue, marshalling evidence and clear, reasoned discourse.
I, however, am somewhat cycnical and a realist, so I expect none of the above. Since, y’know, you have yet to answer any of my questions in any of the threads I’ve interacted with you. I’m still waiting for the names of 100 liberals I asked about upthread.
And no, attempting to shame you into being a better debater is not a personal attack.
Pooh
DG,
let me add my voice to the chorus of thanks, I just have on point of disagreement:
I don’t see how you can reasonably claim that one flows from the other – as the recent London arrests demonstrate rather well, those attacks were thwarted through intelligence/police means. I think we’re all in broad agreement that a mixed approach of policing/intelligence/military force-cum-deterrence is necessary. I think we disagree greatly on the contents of that mix. (Not to say that we need to put percentages on each category, or the nature of any given issue or threat determines the appropriate response. However I would like to see recognition that while a “brute force” approach is sometimes useful, it is sometimes not, and sometimes even counterproductive. We have more tools than just a hammer.)
Defense Guy
Cyrus
It would be interesting to know what he means by ‘but because of what we do.’ What actions have we taken that should be changed, and why is it reasonable that we change them? I happen to think that no action by the US can be used to justify attacks on us. Do you agree or disagree?
Darrell
Please repeat your question in context regarding the 100 liberals, as I don’t remember it, and Windows XP will not let me do an Edit>Find on a page with this many posts without locking my machine.. even with 2GB RAM. I don’t have time to manually search/scroll 500 posts to find your “proof” of me not ‘backing up’ my assertions.
Defense Guy
I could be wrong, but didn’t some of the information on this come out of Pakistan, and wouldn’t it be fair to say that the Pakistani government is more helpful than they might otherwise be if we had not invaded Afghanistan?
Andrew
Note that, in many if not most states, it is illegal to record audio. Just video is okay in most jurisdictions, though.
DG/Krista: Yes, it would mean Bush appointees issuing writs of surveillance. Except that’s irrelevant. Krista got the issue right earlier: the Brits do it legally, and Bush does not. If Bush wanted executive officers to be able to do such a thing, he’s had years and a subservient congress to pass a law for such a program. Furthermore, the Bush administration has actually endorsed FISA as the only legitimate foreign intelligence wiretap authority in a part of the PATRIOT act that he signed.
Darrell
Bingo. But so many liberals feel otherwise… that on some level, we ‘had it coming’.
Defense Guy
Krista
I’m not entirely sure. I’m looking at this site right now to see if I can get the details. It appears to have links to some of the relevant laws. It seems, at first glance, as if Home Office Secretary David Blunkett approves wiretaps.
Pooh
I don’t think that’s quite right – we can send undercover agents into a mosque anytime we want as long as it’s open – though I’ll read the article now so that I’m sure I’m not missing a key point.
I’d also point out that if we want to have a legislative discussion about the reordering of priorities of security vs. liberties, by all means lets. What I, and most people truly object to is the alteration of existing law by executive fiat. While I may have policy objections to certain proposed changes, I get to make my argument, call my Senator (who thinks the Intertrons are a bunch of Magic Tubes! With Trucks!) and if I win, great, if I lose, that’s democracy…
Defense Guy
Andrew
My initial point was that the systems are different. That to compare the US with Britain on what methods work without bringing up these differences is to compare apples to oranges. Further, that when similiar changes are proposed here we get the screams of the civil liberties purists, for right or wrong. That’s it.
The Other Steve
Defense Guy – While it’s certainly true that the British system is different from the American one. It’s hard to argue concern for civil liberties are different though.
I’d say the main difference is that Britain has a functioning Government with real discourse. This was my impression from watching their political talk shows when I was living in London back in 2004. Because of this, there is real concern about the propriety of action. Government officials are under closer supervision, and if they do something really bad(like there’s been a few scandals involving misappropriation of funds, etc.) they get scrutiny from the press.
Still the most important distinction is just the tone of debate. The conservative and liberal parties do go back and forth all the time, but they tend not to demagogue their opponents.
This demagoguery is a huge problem here in the states, and I admit it happens on both sides of the aisle, although the Republicans tend to be better at it for political then the sodomite baby killing Democrats.
Anyway, the debate is just different. This and other factors means that the government is still trusted by the majority of the citizenry.
And let’s be honest.
Who here trusts the US Government? I don’t. Most Republicans don’t. Most Democrats don’t. As far as we’re all concerned, it’s the place where the most incompetent people in our country go to find jobs.
And I think it has to do with the tone of our debate.
Darrell
I would tend to agree.
Krista
Defense Guy – let us know what you find out. And even if David Blunkett is BFFs with Tony Blair, I’m still dubious that they’d be able to skirt the laws on this. Blunkett might sign the permits, but there still must be a lot more going into it than that, if both a former counterterrorism official AND the director of the Immigration and National Security Programs at the Nixon Center refer to the Brit procedures as “rigorous”.
And regardless of whether it IS the judiciary or the bureaucracy administering the program, shouldn’t a wiretapping program and its administration be designed so as to be as effective as possible, while still having those safeguards in place so as to prevent abuses? My main concern with the NSA program is not that it’s in place, but that your executive is not following its laws regarding the obtaining of warrants, particularly as it’s legally allowed to do so after the fact, and with a pretty generous timeframe, AFAIC. If the laws are there, and they’re not preventing “urgent-situation” wiretapping in any way, shape or form, then why can’t those laws be followed?
Pooh
Hrm, could be, but 2 things. A) That’s pretty tenuous, B) the internal politics of Pakistan could well cut the other way. (We aren’t very popular amongst the populous in Pakistan, IIRC, and it seems likely that Musharraf is trying to balance ‘being helpful’ with placating his own people. I’m hardly expert on this subject, but I don’t think we can definitely resolve your theory either way.)
The Other Steve
Because they’ve been abused in the past and rather than acknowledging that and working to find safeguards to prevent it in the future, they scream and whine and complain and blame the guys for catching them rather than the guys who did something wrong.
And as such, the faith in our Government has collapsed.
That’s really been Bush’s greatest failing. As someone said in the 2004 race, he’s acted like a stereotypical hard-right nutcase just providing fuel to his critics rather than quelling the fires.
The Other Steve
Frankly, I expect more from recruiters. If they’re going to ask our children to go to Iraq and brave gunfire, it seems to me like they ought to have the courage to stand up to a bunch of children aremed with cans of spray paint.
Regardless, how did this advance the debate?
Darrell
But the Bush admin hasn’t been “caught” doing anything illegal. The NSA program is reasonable and legal.
TOS is trying to suggest good faith on the part of liberals screaming about Bush ‘shredding’ the constitution. If that’s the case, ask yourself, after the NSA program came to light, did most liberals respond like A or B?
A) “We support your efforts to monitor overseas terrorists, but would like to work with you to make sure we have adequate oversight”
or
B) “Bush’s ‘illegal’ NSA program is wiretapping Americans without warrant!”
An honest answer to that question says it all.
MAX HATS
“So many?” How many, Darrell?
I’m laughing pretty hard at you re-iterating the quote you just spent countless posts running from. Still waiting for that apology, btw, what with you attacking me for being dishonest for mischaracterizing your position – two sentences before you made any attempt to explain your position. Not that I expect it or anything.
MAX HATS
TEH LIBRALS!!!!!!
Bombadil
While possibly true, I don’t expect you to actually come up with one.
Pooh
Last one til I become one of Teh C3nz0rs
Is this from everything you’ve read, or does everyone who has lived through the past 10 months know this? What does Liberal Michael Totten think? It’s too bad you can’t fall back on the “show me one legal ruling” defense anymore [Cue Darrell: “Show me where I said that”]
Now that we have actual and articulate conservatives here again, your usefullness is over. More damning than your overarching wrongness is the sheer boringness of engaging you on any level. [Cue Darrell: “Boringness = no response to a substantive post”]
I’m done with you, and I urge the rest of you to join me in playing The Ignore Game [Cue Darrell: “Typical Leftist…”]
John D.
I’m not calling for “proof” of you not ‘backing up’ your assertions — it’s readily evident that you have issues with that. I’m calling for some fucking proof of your assertions. You made a positive claim; that millions on the left excused and defended Stalin. I want some proof of that statement. Actual names, with links to real quotes, please. No more handwaving. No more assertions. I’m letting you off easy by calling for at most .005% of your claimed number, in my opinion, but I’m trying to make it fair and easy for you to learn how to do this. Baby steps, as it were.
Jess
Nice turn-around, people–this thread got interesting again as soon as you stopped responding to (and thereby enabling) a certain person who will go unnamed. Now if Max Hats quit the game as well, I expect that person would fade away to an occasional blip on the margins of the discourse. (not to try to stop your fun, MH–do what you will.) This is the kind of discussion I come here for–thanks for all your interesting contributions!
John S.
Sorry, DG, but you made a crap argument. I challenged your attempt to back up your argument, and now you just want to throw your hands up in the air and go for a personal attack?
Fine. Have it your way. But as far as I’m concerned your claim that what the British did recently would illicit “screams of violation of our civil liberties” from the American public is unsubstantiated.
If you want to try a little harder to backup this assertion, be my guest. Or you can just go for another personal attack. Whichever you prefer.
John S.
Who the hell is Darrell?
Cyrus
Later in that same question, he gives some answers. Supporting Saudi Arabia, for example. Or not even trying to pretend to act sort of a little bit objective between Israel and Palestine.
If you mean nothing we’ve done should be used to justify the attacks that have happened, I agree. But no action by the US can be used to justify attacks? Well, no, you just don’t have the facts there. Certain US actions obviously are used to justify attacks, or terrorist groups wouldn’t have any recruits. Our actions make people mad. We can’t stop doing everything that pisses anyone off, but it’s dangerously stupid to not even consider it.
What if Saudi Arabia had made that “axis of evil” list? Or what if we had intervened in Afghanistan years before 9/11 for their human rights violations? The Saudis and Afghans themselves wouldn’t have liked it, obviously. But Pakistanis, Egyptians, moderate Muslims around the world who don’t agree with our foreign policy but aren’t hateful extremists yet… it would have helped with them. Instead, Bush invaded Iraq, talking about bin Laden and WMDs all the while. Whoops.
John S.
That was not entirely your initial point, DG. This was:
Had you left it at “the systems are different”, that would have been fine. But you felt compelled to take an extra swipe which I think I showed to be a rather unfounded. accusation.
Defense Guy
My assertion that the systems are different did not go unsubstantiated John. In fact I provided solid reasons why this is so, and backed them up with links to outside sources. One short day, and I’ve already had my fill of you.
Defense Guy
Yes, the outcry over the Patriot act was entirely in my head. You the man John.
Darrell
Actual names were provided in more than one of my links. Perhaps not enough to satisfy your pedantic foot stamping demands (“fucking proof”), but they were provided.
Bombadil
Deep cleansing breaths, gentlemen. Things were going pretty well there for a bit, lets get back on track. Leave the feces slinging to the monkey.
ImJohnGalt
Kirk, you can download the AntiTroll Greasemonkey Script at:
Anti-Darrell Pill, or Plan D, as we call it.
Darrell
Yes Max, I’m “running” from that spanking you gave me. Ouch! Cyrus, who is a regular poster here, a typical liberal imo who does not fall into the ANSWER type radical America-hater category.. he posted, as so many other mainstream liberals I’ve read, support for this assertion:
We are at war with a backassward murderous culture who longs for the good ol days of the 8th century, who chops the heads off innocents simply because they are infidels. It is excuse-making of the worst kind to suggest that 9/11, or the bombings in London or Madrid and elsewhere, are in any way justified because “our soldiers stepped on muslim soil” or any of the other ‘sins’ we’ve committed.
John D.
Actual names were provided in more than one of my links. Perhaps not enough to satisfy your pedantic foot stamping demands (“fucking proof”), but they were provided.
Darrell
Ah yes, the ever so dignified ‘reality based’ community..
Darrell
That’s rich, coming from someone who mindlessly posts about “jackalopes” on every other comment, over and over and over…
“Clap harder Pooh.. Clap harder for Dear Leader!”
Bombadil
Welcome to the monkey house.
Kirk Spencer
IJG, thank you. Done, and done.
Pooh
FWIW, I think DG has a point though perhaps framed a bit provacatively for what we are trying to do here – yes there are more/different concerns for civil liberties here then there are in Britain. That’s an objective, not a normative statement. As I said earlier, if you think certain tradeoffs are necessary, the onus is on you to make the case, bearing in mind that there are key differences between the U.S. and U.K. political systems as well change the calculus to a degree.
Also FWIW, much of the so-called ‘shrieking’ about PATRIOT has turned out to be well founded. Is their any question that many “anti-terrorist” provisions have bootstrapped their way into drug enforcement? (See Radley Balko who comments on this topic with regularity.)
But all that aside, I would love it if we were to actually have an overarching, honest, conversation about the tradeoffs necessary. But we don’t. We get platitudinous nonsense filled with buzzwords (from most involved, to some degree.)
ImJohnGalt
Well, despite the fact that the thread veered away from its initial premise, for which I am at least partly responsible (again, my humblest apologies), I think we made some decent headway toward finding a few topics we can talk about from all sides without any particular rancor.
Plus, we have at least one more person who won’t have to scroll by Darrell’s posts while wincing and trying not to respond.
Any chance we can open up a new thread which pulls out some of the issues that have come under discussion?
John S.
I didn’t realize you were so hyper-sensitive to having your notions questioned.
No matter, I wasn’t questioning that the sytems were different. Obviously they are. What I took issue with was your characterization that Americans don’t have the stomach for the measures the British employed, which I also happen to think are far less malleable than our own.
But apparently, this is too much for you. C’est la vie.
Darrell
Done indeed
John S.
How very honest of you to bring the Patriot Act into the discussion when all we were discussing were 1. Detention of suspects 2. Video surveillance and 3. Wiretaps without a court order.
Darrell
On that point, I think there is bi-partisan agreement. I would love for average American voters to see liberals shrieking over the most reasonable security precautions (as they did when the NY Times leaked details on the tracking of terrorist finances), so that they can see how extreme most liberals truly are when it comes to tradeoffs between security and privacy.
Defense Guy
You the man John.
John S.
No, no. YOU the man, Defense Guy.
I should know better than to question the pearls of wisdom that issue from your mouth, because you’re never wrong.
Just out of curiousity, though, what about this post set you into Darrell-mode?
Pooh
John S., back off a touch. He’s making an effort, how about we try to meet him halfway?
I might add that the Patriot Act is certainly germane to the topic of security vs. civil liberty.
Defense Guy
I’m sorry, I have to disagree with you John. You da man. Not I.
Also, I never admit error. Never. In fact, I think it is fair to say that I am perhaps the most unreasonable conservative commenter in the history of BJ, if not the intertubes.
Which is really just one more reason why. You. da. man.
rbl
Ok, I’ve read this entire freaking thread, and I have a few thoughts.
First, a negligable number of people on the left think the 9/11 attacks were justified. Many more say that the attacks had reasons rooted in actual American policy, not just an abstract hatred of our freedoms or our western lifestyle. If I stroll down a street in certain neighborhoods at certain hours, I am relatively likely to get mugged. It certainly isn’t justified, and I might have very good reasons for taking the walk, but I need to recognize that my behavior is not condusive to avoiding muggings.
Second, reasonable discussion between right and left really is good reading.
Third, how do I impliment the antitroll script?
ImJohnGalt
rbl,
a) install firefox, to the chagrin of (I believe) demimondian.
b) install greasemonkey (you must install at firefox v1.5 or greater to do this)
c) save the antitroll script to your hard drive somewhere
d) open it in your browser
e) right click on tools, and add it to your scripts
f) add the people to it whose posts you would prefer not to be distracted by.
Darrell
If you went to work in the WTC on 9/11/01, you may have had good reasons for going to work that morning, but you need to recognize that such behavior is not conducive to avoiding.. oh, wait
rbl
I take pleasure in knowing this is the last Darrel comment I will read. Seems fitting
ThymeZone
What I want to know is, you’ve been back for like one day, and already you are well into the kind of exchanges that supposedly everybody hates.
The thing is, these are pretty ubiquitous throughout the Intertrons. Why does every pretend that there’s a “better way” and beat each other up about it all the time?
And why is there pretense about what is desired here, but Darrell is allowed to post here? There will never be any stable posting environment here as long as Darrell is posting here. What’s up with that? Do you support having Darrell here?
John S.
I’m sorry, but I made a perfectly reasonable comment, and since then all I get are a barrage of “you da man” nonsense.
If that’s the best he has to offer, I could care less about meeting him half way.
John S.
Sure there will be. Ignoring him seems to work pretty well. What is he going to have a shouting match with himself?
That won’t last very long.
Darrell
That is too funny. You loons are obsessed with me.. you constantly post about me even in threads where I never post. It makes me smile to know that my commentary gives you so much torment.
demimondian
When you install free software, you take food from the mouths of my children! Won’t somebody think of my children?
If you are stuck in IE, but can install software, there’s another solution, too, also available through hedonistlab.
Vladi G
Wow, that’s awesome. Thanks. It took all of a few seconds to install.
ImJohnGalt
Screw the free software, can I just come over and take some food from your children? I’m cruel that way.
Besides, they could stand to lose a few pounds.
vetiver
Defense Guy —
Sorry to backtrack but there’s just a wee bit of crapola in your comment on August 28th, 2006 at 8:34 pm.
Yes, but I would hardly call [Lincoln’s and FDR’s] grabs at power, failures. They did what they did, and history judged them to be wise.
FDR’s Executive Order 9066 and the supporting Korematsu decision are considered both unnecessary and shameful. Well, outside Michelle Malkin’s collected works, anyway.
FDR was as secretive a president as we have seen, and attempted broad reaching changes to the American system which still exist today.
Did FDR limit access to presidential papers? Did he retroactively re-classify bales of government documents that were previously available to the public? Did either of his vice presidents hold “task force” meetings as part of crafting national policy and then refuse to release minutes of the meetings, or even attendance lists?
He sure did restructure the government. Unemployment insurance, disability insurance, Social Security, protected collective bargaining — all his. I don’t know offhand what percentage of Americans supported this restructuring but I guarantee it was much higher than 37%, which seems to be Bush’s upper limit. We can argue about the long-term effects of FDR’s actions and policies but to call it a “power grab” is absurd.
He spied on anyone he felt was a risk,
Did he really? Could you point out your sources here? You may be thinking of J. Edgar Hoover.
answered to no one
Which is why the Supreme Court still has nine justices.
and rounded up all Japanese Americans and put them in camps.
Wait, wasn’t this one of the wise things he did? Oh, that’s right — you like the power-grab stuff.
Lincoln, well, he was just a tyrant. Suspended habeus corpus, jailed dissenters, started a war of choice against his fellow man over what was the legal practice of slavery, pretended that wasn’t the cause, and then it was, and in the single greatest abuse of power seen at the time, ignored the Supreme Court. I mean, what a dick, right?
So Lincoln opened fire on Fort Sumter? How interesting.
This was not a fight Lincoln picked. If you want to blame the Civil War on anyone, blame John Brown. Harper’s Ferry scared the bejesus out of southern slave-holders, who began organizing and training militias that would become the CSA army. As for the rest — Lincoln was conflicted about slavery. And what’s your point beyond that?
I understand your larger point — presidents do what’s necessary to save the nation and, in retrospect, any overreach is forgiven and they become honored and revered.
This is where we part ways.
* Did habeus corpus remain suspended indefinitely? Are Japanese-Americans still in internment camps? The actions Lincoln and FDR took were rolled back once the war was over. When will this war be over?
* The Civil War and World War II were existential crises for this nation. It was obvious then, it’s obvious now. How can “Islamofascists” destroy our nation? They’ve killed 3,000 people on American soil — is that all it takes? Are we that weak? Do you really think that one attack gives the president carte blanche to suspend whatever constitutional rights he deems necessary, with no oversight, indefinitely? Because that’s what you seem to be arguing for.
My apologies if I’ve misunderstood you but nothing in your subsequent posts clarifies this.
Defense Guy
I guess I am just not fit to discuss things with you John. You seem to think that the arguments I make are in bad faith, which I don’t see. So it leaves me in position to argue with you pointlessly, ignore you, or concede that you are in fact the man. I just thought that since you don’t like to concede that I have a point, even a little, that perhaps you might like it if I pointed out what a man you are. Just trying to do my part to grease the tubes.
It’s ok that you like the argument more than the attempt at common resolution. It doesn’t make you a bad person, IMO. Hell, as far as I can remember ppgaz and I have never found common ground, and oddly enough the world continues to spin.
Andrew
I blame Stalin for Fort Sumter. And the liberals who sent him there to destroy the South with their time/weather machine.
ThymeZone
I think we agreed on one or two things here and there.
But “common ground” implies mutual respect. I think if you look carefully at the history here, you’ll see that lefties were treated like crap when the right thought it had the world, and the blog, by the tail. Things changed, but the treatment didn’t. Lefters can dish it out as well as take it. Now that the momentum has shifted, all you hear on the right is a lot of whining.
I guarantee ya, I can do this all day and all night and never use a cuss word or resort to an ad hominem. But I will absolutely not do so for people who act like righties have acted here. Period. Nah gonna doit.
If that’s too hard to swallow, then there’s this alternative: Ground rules. I can observe any ground rules. Not a problem. But I will not observe them unilaterally.
And we haven’t even talked about the complete lack of intellectual integrity on the right. The Bush Administration is a disaster and a disgrace. It’s a failed government, by every measure. If all the right can do is stand around here and piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining, sorry, I have no patience or respect for that.
Get real. Talk straight. Set guidelines and stick to them. Stop talking as if up had become down. Not you personally, but all of you who whine about the mean lefties. Stop defending a divisive party and a divisive government and then complaining about the divisiveness.
In short, basically just do what John Cole does. He actually gets this stuff just about right most of the time. Acknowledge the fact that this government has taken the opportunity given it by politics, and squandered it.
That’s not just my opinion, that’s reflective of the way the American people at large are feeling right now.
John S.
I guess I am just not fit to discuss things with you DG. You seem to think that the arguments I make are in bad faith, which I don’t see. When I challenge anytihng you have to say, you get offended by it. And since you don’t like to concede that I have a point, even a little, then I guess there really is no point having a dialogue.
You couldn’t even respond to a simple question as to what on earth about this post pushed you over the edge, preferring instead to do your best Bill Frist psychoanalysis over the intertrons. It’s ok that you like to assert your position wihout being challenged. It doesn’t make you a bad person, IMO.
I guess vetiver is da man, too.
Defense Guy
Well, ya got me John. I’ll hand the argument back over to you. Maybe in another year I’ll take another stab at your willingness to do a little give and take. For now, you da man.
To the rest of you, it really was nice.
Cyrus
Darrell, can you honestly say that you can’t even understand the difference between “X makes Y okay” and “Y happened partially because of X”? Are they really the same to you semantically and ethically? To put it another way, do you actually believe they “hate us for our freedoms” and that’s all there is to it?
John S.
Maybe over the next year you’ll learn to check your facts before floating such ideas as:
– Our founders intended a strong, authoritarian executive
– The British care less about civil liberties than America
– The majority of Democrats supported the AUMF
Until then, vaya con dios amigo.
Darrell
Cyrus, I don’t think anything the US “did” justifies in any way the attacks on 9/11 or any of the other islamic terrorists attacks. Bin Laden was clear about why we were attacked. His stated reasons were – 1) because US soldiers had previously set foot on muslim soil 2) the islamofascists are trying to restore 8th century caliphate and 3) they want to kill all infidels 4) to demonstrate that the islamic jihadists were a “big horse” (his words) to be reckoned with
We were attacked by murderous supremicist islamic extremists. All of the 9/11 attackers came from middle class to wealthy families and enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. For you and other liberals to try and justify those terrorist attacks as you did, is no different than telling a rape victim she ‘had it coming’. And yes, the islamic religious extremists who attacked us most definitely hate our freedoms too, and they openly state that they want to take those freedoms away while killing as many of us as possible.
chopper
that’s not what he asked. he asked
‘Y happened partially because of X’ is not ‘X justifies Y’, not by any stretch of the imagination.
it’s quite obvious to anyone with half a brain that the fact that we’ve been targeted by al qaeda has at least something to do with the history of our meddling in the area. not all, of course, but some.
but as usual, you went right to the strawman factory instead.
Darrell
He clarified with this statement, as the X makes Y okay comment was pretty vague
Nope, no strawmen. Just an honest answer to a question
chopper
“i don’t think that the US’s actions justified the 9/11 attacks” isn’t exactly an honest answer considering cyrus is asking you if you understand that he’s not talking about if the attacks were justified, but rather that US actions partly precipitated the response we saw.
cyrus: “i don’t mean A, i mean B. you understand that A is not B, don’t you?
darrell: “A is wrong! A is wrong!”
the idea that someone would confuse the two leads me to believe either one of two things: 1) that person is an idiot and can’t read a post or 2) that person sees this in such simplistic “they hate us for our freedom” terms that they don’t believe that anything the US did in the past 60 years of mideast policy had anything to do with the hatred we see pouring out of groups like al qaeda.
which explains cyrus’s second question to you.
Darrell
No more so than a rape victim walking to her car after shopping. It’s not like OBL didn’t spell out why he attacked us. He told us why, and he was quite clear about it. They are murderous supremicists who want to kill us because we’re infidels. They want to impose 8th century caliphate. They’ve told us that explicitly.
That you and other leftists try and excuse the actions of the terrorists on any level is despicable in my opinion.. and I think in the opinion of most people.
Krista
Darrell, I can understand your viewpoint on this (and frankly, wish you always expressed your viewpoint this clearly and calmly, but that’s neither here nor there.) I don’t doubt for a second that Bin Laden IS a murderous extremist who hates any and all western countries.
In regards to trying to “justify” the attacks, the thing that I am trying to express is this: America did not deserve to be attacked. Bin Laden was absolutely wrong to attack the U.S. And I don’t think it makes me a bad person to feel that way, while still wondering if there was some way in which America may have poked a hornet’s nest. It’s not to lay blame, as there is not much point in that. It is to try to get our leaders to look beyond the immediate effects of their policies and actions. From what I have understood, Osama Bin Laden benefited from US training during an Afghanistani conflict with the USSR (correct me if I’m wrong.) Now, I’m not saying that the US could or should have forseen what would happen. But, would it not behoove the US to keep a very close eye (and maybe a cordial relationship) with the people who have been trained by them?
No, the US did not deserve to be attacked. But that does not mean that there are not some lessons that can be gleaned, which can hopefully help prevent such attacks in the future.
chopper
how so? the US has been meddling in the middle east for decades. we’ve overthrown democratically-elected governments and installed puppet regimes just to get cheap oil. we’ve supported war-mongering assholes because we wanted to put the hurt on someone else.
how you can compare that to a completely innocent rape victim only shows your lack of understanding of history.
and we ‘soiled the holy land’ by putting military bases and US troops there. yeah, we decided it would be a good idea to pull out of saudi arabia. of course, by then we had a huge military presence in iraq.
if they truly hated us merely for such generic reasons as you point out, they’d be attacking every democracy on earth. they aren’t. they target us. they target our allies who offered troops in iraq, hoping they would pull out and leave the US to do the job alone and go bankrupt.
and yes, they want to establish a caliphate in the mideast, which means first and foremost kicking the westerners the hell out.
as cyrus has stated, it isn’t so simple. there are a number of reasons we’ve been targeted, and our persistent foreign policy in the mideast is one of them.
see, this is just more evidence that you fall into either of the two options i spelled out above. you either truly believe that stating that US foreign policy has ramifications which cause terrorists to target us is the same as saying ‘we deserve it’ or justifying the attacks, or you just plain can’t read.
apparently to you, actions have no ramifications whatsoever and our enemies operate under the most simplistic set of rules imaginable. the former is just plain silly and ignorant of history, and the second is dangerously underestimating the kind of people we’re up against.
Cyrus
Thanks. I thought about answering his post, but decided not to. I already had my answer — no, he apparently didn’t understand the difference, although his “most definitely hate our freedoms too” was confusing, because it implied he realized there was more to it and yet the other reasons he gave were every bit as simplistic — and I shouldn’t beat my head against the wall trying to get him to answer my first question explicitly.
And I waffled on whether to comment on his bin Laden citation, because I knew, I just knew he would read what I had to say as an equivalence between bin Laden the boogeyman and Bush the hero, but you know, fuck it.
Darrell, Bush told us explicitly that 9/11 changed everything — because it demonstrated that “oceans don’t protect us”. That he said it doesn’t make it true, and it sure as hell doesn’t make it the only reason. It’s a condescendingly simplified story meant to demonstrate something about the speaker rather than say something about the world. But the only people impressed by the revelation that the oceans don’t protect us are the people impressed by the imminent threat of a caliphate — people like you.
mrmobi
Hey vetiver!
I just read your rebuttal of Defense Guys response to my post of a couple of days ago.
What you said.
I’ve been buried in work here the past couple of days and haven’t had a chance to post, but you refuted many of his statments quite effectively. Lincoln a tyrant, indeed.
Darrell
Well, they did attack Spain, England, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Phillipines and of course terrorist attacks on Iraqis, and that’s just off the top of my head
What I have a big problem with is the “we didn’t deserve 9/11 but…” You and others insist on the ‘but’ when there are no buts, there can be no justification. Those who attacked us did not do so because of our past, a past in which we made mistakes, but also a past where we fought to save muslims – Afghanistan in the 80’s and the Balkans. You are dead wrong to suggest our record is so bad, or that past wrongs decades before done to other nations in any way justifies the attacks on us and others. This is an ideology which beheads women and children because they are infidels. They are not beheading them because of “foreign policy meddling”
Darrell
I’d say an overwhelming majority of Americans felt pretty safe against terrorist attack on our own soil before 9/11. Sure, everyone knew it was a possibility, but it was not a reality. In other words, 9/11 was a “revelation” or wake up call for most of us. Yet you demean such attitudes as people ‘easily impressed’.. I’m listening to what the terrorists actually say as much as I watch what they do. They say they want to kill infidels hear and in the middle east and then they go out and kill them. Not because of our foreign policy “meddling”, but because they are murderous supremecists who want to impose their backward ideas on others through violence and murder.
Darrell
Good post. You have overstated the benefits OBL received from the US (another thread to discuss that one) as he was not receiving funds from the US, but from Saudi and elsewhere at that time in Afghanistan. But even if he had received millions or even billions of dollars of aid to fight the Soviets, who were absolutely brutal to the Afghans, that does not obligate us to continue to have a cordial relationship with them afterwards, especially if they become involved in large scale terrorist activity as OBL was. I think it’s clear we were ‘keeping an eye’ on him and his terrorist activities, as evidenced by the Clinton Justice Dept. indictment naming OBL in the 90’s. We just didn’t anticipate how far OBL could and would take it to us.
chriskoz
It wasn’t a reality? So… events like The first WTC bombing, the Oaklahoma City bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing… they never happened? They weren’t “Real”?
Darrell
I suppose you are too ignorant to know that Eric Rudolf is not an islamic terrorist. Neither was Terry Nichols. The WTC explosion in the early 90’s was the only islamic terrorist attack of those you list.. and 6 died in that attack.
chriskoz
Well Darrell glad to see you went straight for the childish personal insult again. I expect no less.
Yes, I’m well aware of who the responsible parties were for each of those attacks. But to extend your quote…
Notice… you make NO mention of attacks from Islamic terrorists. You merely state that “Americans felt pretty safe against terrorist attack on our own soil”. And I merely list a few terrorist attacks that occurred on that same soil.
And, in fact one of those attacks I listed was indeed perpetrated by Islamic terrorist, but you seem to blow that off since only 6 people died. So… what is the threshold of deaths before you qualify it as a terrorist attack?
Darrell
Fair enough. My point was, and perhaps I should have stated it more clearly, that most Americans did not fully understand the dangers of islamic fundamentalism until 9/11/01. Cyrus insinuated that such Americans are simple minded, and he tried to minimize the dangers of islamofascism with his comment about ‘imminent’ threat of caliphate.. as if there isn’t a large murderous group of extremists actively trying to kill us. I think that aspect of liberal ideology, the attemps to excuse and minimize real dangers and theats, is what is so wrong with modern liberals.
chopper
saudi arabia is a democracy?
look, i explained a good reason for spain and england above (getting them out of the war to bankrupt us and keep us in iraq forever). and i wouldn’t bring up saudi arabia or turkey, or really the phillipines as examples of very free countries in response to the assertion that if al qaeda truly was that pissed about “our freedoms” they’d be attacking every free country around. that argument is plain goofy.
but the entire point is that nobody here is saying that the attacks were justified. you’re just interpreting scrutiny into actions which would have provoked or pissed off terrorists into some kind of justification, merely because we’re left-wingers and you just hate leftists.
i’m sorry, but we’ve overthrown enough governments to have caused muslims in the mideast to distrust us loooong before bin laden came around. do you think that the ‘revolution’ and associated america-hatin’ in iran wasn’t due to our overthrow of their government and the puppet regime we installed? the crazy-ass muslims in the mideast know enough of their history to know what kinda stuff we’ve pulled in the past.
see, this also shows you’re ignorance of the situation; while there is much tribalism and associated infighting in the middle east, hardcore muslims in the ME never forget the past. they’re still pissed about the crusades for cryin’ out loud (one reason why bush’s use of the term was not so wise).
again you’re confused; i’ll clarify it yet again for you. none of us are saying that everything these people do (such as beheading kids) is due to america’s foreign policy, nor are we saying its the sole reason for their actions against us. we’re saying that its a factor.
John S.
Damn it vetiver, why did you have to go and refute Defense Guy’s arguments? Why didn’t you just meet him halfway? You know, a little give and take – regardless of whether he was wrong or not. Now he’s never going to post here ever again.
= (
Darrell
Oh, now I see how the ‘game’ is played chopper. If I quote 5 examples which refute your assertion, but 1 is not a democracy… so you then point out the 1 error without acknowledging that your assertion was shredded to pieces by the other examples. How honest of you. Problem with you leftists is that most of you, like chopper, truly are dishonest sacks of shit. No possibility of honest debate with mentalities impenetrable to logic and facts. Sure, they’ll name call and insult.. but at the end of the day, they have nothing more.
chopper
apparently, you didn’t even read what followed:
it’s plainly obvious that your examples don’t show much of anything. the only two on the list that would be considerable in response to the question would be england and spain, and there are much more convincing reasons those two (out of how many other ‘free country’ targets?) countries were attacked than ‘al qaeda hates freedom’.
if ‘al qaeda hates freedom’ is the reason we were attacked, you wouldn’t expect attacks against the philippines and turkey, which aren’t exactly bastions of liberty.
what i love is, you still can’t even stick to the rules of this thread, even after days. and then you turn and say the rest of us can’t have an ‘honest debate’ with a guy who’s debating style boils down to calling everyone else a ‘sack of shit’. from the guy who can’t even stick to the basic rules of a discussion because of his abject, seething hatred for others.
i mean, this is just priceless. “you sacks of shit have nothing but insults!”. the sheer, unadulterated projection is astounding.
your arguments have been torn to pieces, and so as usual you predictably climb back on the insult wagon.
Cyrus
Insinuated? I don’t need to insinuate, I’ll come right out and state that anyone who thought we were protected by the oceans was simple-minded. Democratic peace theory, America being a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, a rising economic tide lifting all boats, knowing when to be isolationist and when not to be, who knows exactly why America was sheltered… but geographic barriers? That’s as dumb as “they hate us for our freedoms”. That was what I pointed out, which apparently went over your head.
Likewise, I think this aspect of reactionary ideology, the inability to tell the difference between political theory and that loud guy down at the end of the bar, is what is so wrong with modern reactionaries. I feel like I’m dealing with Fred Colon here, except the corporal is never so angry.
Lamont Cranston
So this argument is over which party is going to get America to invade Poland?
Neither party is remotely like the Nazis.
Call me when they start rounding up the Jews and them you might have an argument.
We have plenty of Lebensraum.
Dread
I have this idea for a t-shirt. Don’t think it will sell very well, but here it goes…
[Front]
[Back]
“The battle is NOT between right and left; it is between US and THEM.”
Will WE ever get this through our heads???