Nate Perkins wrote:
SNIP
Bush effectively disengaged from the peace process and only made a token
There was no "peace process" - there was the voice of Arafat to
the West, and the exact opposite voice from Arafat in Arabic to
his own constitutents. Bush "retreated" from someting that was
an illusion. One more time: Peace comes after armed conflict
has a distinct winner and that winner dictates the terms of peace.
(Durable) peace never comes from negotiation - at least it never
has so far in the vast bulk of human history.
effort at a "roadmap to peace." And when the Israelis sent tanks into
the West Bank and Gaza, Bush did nothing diplomatically or financially
to restrain them.
Nor should he have. In fact, I personally thing the US should
officially depart the region entirely other than to trade
with the participants. It would be entertaining to watch
the various Arab leaders of the area suddenly be forced to
learn Hebrew.
SNIP
The Dems/Left/Libs got shellacked over the last several election
cycles at most levels of government for two reasons: This kind of
"blame our opponent" mentality, and their general sense of elitism
coupled with a palpable contempt for Everyman. And they richly
deserved to lose.
Bull****. The Dems got beat because the Bushies demonized anyone who
was to the left of Jesse Helms. The Bushies made it seem like the
progressives weren't for strong national defense, that we don't have
First lets define terms: "Progressives" are people who want to make the
world a better place with *other people's money* (just like the various
flavors of "Necons"). "Better" is as they define the term at any
moment in time (just like the neocons). In actual practice, the
only difference between the Left and Right is Who Gets Screwed and Who
Benefits. Their methods are identical (and reprehensible).
Second, your smarmy elitism is showing. You didn't get your butts kicked
because "The Bushies" (whoever that may be) demonized you... the
implication is that you were misrepresented and people fell for it -
i.e., The masses are stupid and you're not. Guess what - you lost
(repeatedly - and are continuing to lose ground) because a substantial
number of people *did* understand you and rejected your message out of
hand. I am not defending the Right, I'm laughing loudly at the Clueless
Left that keeps thinking they can win if they just improve their
message. In actual fact, the Left has to *change* its message and
methods if it ever wants to again be an effective voice.
family values, that we don't go to church, that we don't support the
second amendment, etc etc. Well that's a lot of crap. We are all for
I didn't say any of this, nor do I believe it. I believe the
*leadership* of the Left has been hijacked at the highest levels by
people like Dean, Clinton, Kennedy, et al, who are enemies of Liberty,
suspicious of their own country's values, deeply committed to the
freedoms/values of the 2% of nutcases in the culture who are not
"maintstream" to the detriment of the majority. Now, defending the
minority against majority oppression is one thing. But oppressing the
majority to serve the minority is stupid. I don't think people like
*you* on the Left particularly fall into this category, but the people
who speak for you - and for whom you vote - *do* embrace whacko politics
and thus you all keep losing - and its getting worse. Wait until the
mid-term elections hand Bush a bulletproof majority in the Senate ...
and you'll have no one but your own leadership to blame.
You guys think you represent the Everyman. Nonsense. The Everyman
Let me try again: I am not a Republican, I do not agree with much of
the Bush agenda. I am not one of "you guys". I just think the Left
(at the moment) is way worse than the Right. This may change in time.
And - whether you like it or not - a good part of the population (and
growning) perceives that Bush et al *are* more in touch with
Everyman than the *Left* is. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant -
perception is reality when it comes time to vote. The Left Leadership's
arrogance, condescension, and contempt for anyone outside the
narrow corridors of Drooly Academics and Upper Crust Elites continues
to cost it political traction because they simply do not get how
out of touch with Everyman they've become.
cares about leaving a decent legacy for their children. The Everyman
realizes that hard work deserves fair compensation, and that everyone
Another definition is required he "Fair" means whatever the speaker
decides. "Deserve" is a code word for the use of (government) force to
artificially undermine advantages individuals have due to their superior
work, luck, brains, or skill. "Unfair" is what you scream whenever the
social outcome of a given set of circumstances offends you. And you are
more than happy to be "unfair" to some people (usually anyone who has
more than you do) to be "fair" to other people (usually anyone who has
less than you do) so you can pat yourselves on the back with "your"
charity and compassion - when in reality it is little more than thinly
disguised theft.
In some vain hope that some small portion of Reason will resonate
with you - you "deserve" only two things: To be free of fraud and
to be free of force directed against you (or the threat of force).
You do not "deserve" to be successful, smart, good looking, rich,
happy, or important. And, no, you don't deserve "fairness" beyond
the aforementioned prohibitions against fraud/force/threat. The
*reason* this is true, is because beyond limiting f/f/t, any
government intervention in the lives of its citizens *always*
benefits one person (group) at the *expense* of another person (group).
ought to have a fair opportunity to prove their skills. The Everyman
will give his neighbor a hand if he's in a tight spot.
Yes he will - but you Lefties want to use the force of government
to *make* him do this for your Pet Cause Of The Moment. This
is both forceful and fraudulent, and is thus immoral.
On the other hand, you Bushies believe in a dog-eat-dog world where a
I dunno who you're talking to here. I am no "Bushie".
helping hand is a waste of "your" tax money on the welfare "bums." You
It's not a "helping hand" it's theft - and the Bushies practice it too.
Again (using small words and simple concepts) - it is not "charity"
or "good works" to *forcibly* remove wealth from one person and
give it to another. It is stealing. Something you should have learned
long ago in Sunday School/Temple/Mosque/Tee-Pee/... is wrong
in all cases.
believe in a world where it doesn't matter if you saddle the next
generation with a staggering debt, as long as your buddies get some tax
Oh how I love it when the Left starts to drool. It is *so* easy to
refute. Please turn in your tax preparation books to the back pages
where the division of Federal expenditures is documented. For fiscal
2004, just over 20% of the Fed budget went to military expenditures.
Around 60% went to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Programs, and Community
Development programs. Every single thing in this 60% is a form of theft,
outside the Constitutional mandate of government, extracted by force,
and, by definition, immoral. If you really cared about the "staggering
debt" as something more than a talking point, you and your ilk would
kick the entire behind of Congress and demand a return to Constitutional
Federalism, wherein the Federal government has its hands tied to do the
only thing its supposed to: Keep us free ... well, that, and run
the Post Office
SNIP
Pretty soon the country is going to wake up and realize that the
neo-cons aren't really representing the Everyman at all. And then
we'll see who gets the shellacking.
You're right - the necons don't represent Everyman - but they are far
less removed from Everyman than the Left - and that's why you're gonna
continue to lose power. They're really wrong about a lot of things,
and you guys are even worse. The cure for this is a serious
reclamation of Federalism, as I said. The Federal government ought to
be a minor part of every citizen's life - in taxation and in actual
presence. Until this is true, the Right is going to look bad, and the
Left is going to look worse.
No - he was arrogantly stupid. His failure to open his kimono to a
superpower making threats on his front porch was pure ego and hubris.
The invasion was entirely avoidable up until the last moment. Setting
aside the prudence of the war generally, I think Bush was sincere in
his willingness to stand down our military had SH cooperated as we
wished.
The "everyone knows that he had it coming to him anyway" reasoning.
No, it's the "Reality trumps Theory" line of reasoning. He refused to
cooperate with Reality (much like the political Left) and got his
nether regions handed to him (much like the political Left).
SNIP
I challenge you to find a Liberal that doesn't quickly agree that
Saddam Hussein is evil or a neo-con who will admit to any evilness
Ward Churchill leaps to mind. Teddy Kennedy is implictly in the same
Ward Churchill leaps to mind because he's all over Fox News and Clear
Channel. Without Fox and Clear Channel pushing the story, nobody would
even know who Ward Churchill is. But by airing Churchill every night,
That is *not* true. Churchill has offended the living crap out of
people in his own community having nothing to do with Right wing
broadcasters. For the record, I oppose all federal funding for
schools, but, if we fund anyone, then we have to fund everyone. The
attempt to silence this walking rectal parasite is wrong. He should
continue to be able to speak his mind freely for several reasons:
1) Government ought not to be in the business of choosing who does and
who does not get to speak.
2) The best way to get rid of lousy ideas is let those ideas be
loudly spoken. The more often, the better, so that people see
what a fraud the speaker is.
3) The more his ideas get spoken, the more people will realize what
kind of nonsense their tax dollars pay for, and the sooner we
can get the government out of the (fake) education business.
they can pump up their ratings and stoke conservative indignation as
well.
With 300 million people in the country you are bound to find an oddity
like Churchill. If you ask 100 people, you may even find one that
agrees with Churchill.
But you will probably find ten other people who
are eager to send those people off to Gitmo. I worry more about the ten
than I do about the one.
I'm shocked, just *shocked* at these last two paragraphs. As a self
avowed member of the Deeply Caring Left do you not see the conflict in
your statements above? On the one hand, you dismiss the Churchill affair
to nothing more than an attempt to "stoke conservative indignation", but
on the other you argue that very few people agree with him anyway. Where
(he says sweetly) is the *Liberal indignation* about Churchill's
outrageous statements, pray tell? Oh silly, me the man who compares the
workers in the Twin Towers to Eichman's minions is *far far* less
worrisome to you than people on this country's political (far) Right.
And you continue to be astounded by how rapidly you're losing political
clout in this nation?
Lots of liberals will freely admit that perjury about a blow-job
is perjury, even if it's not 'bad enough' to justify throwing the
President out of office. But try to find a neo-con that thinks
torturing prisoners is worth even appointing a special prosecutor.
They weren't "tortured" except in the lexicon of the Left. They were
*humiliated* and placed under *duress*. No permanent physical harm
came to any of them as best as I have read. And "they" in this case,
were
Are you serious? "Lexicon of the Left"? Here's just one example:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6988054/
In May of 2004 the Army had 33 active probes going on for the deaths of
a total of 32 detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004May21.html
OK Sparky, time for another history lesson. People out of uniform,
enaged in active combat during a time of war (active hostilities) are
legally considered *spies*. A uniformed army has (in most cases) the
right to *kill such people on the spot* without explanation, other than
to demonstrate their status as spies. The Geneva Conventions do not
apply. I would share your Oh-So-Sincere-Lefty-Outrage if the persons in
question had been uniformed soliders who were treated as described. But
they were not.
There may be practical reasons to avoid outright torture (because it is often
not effective) but there are no moral or legal reasons to avoid it. In
combat it is kill or be killed. If you have to push some spies around to
reduce the numbers of your comrades that are killed or maimed, so be it.
Also the argument against coercion on the grounds that we hope our own
POWs will be better treated, *really* doesn't apply here - while we were
embarassing the Poor Darlings, their fellow jihadists were *beheading*
our *non-combatant civilians*.
...
Lefties that lie, cheat, and steal are wrong too. They typically
do not engage in torture or murder though. That they leave to
No - they usually make nice with the people who *are* torturers and
murderers. As long ago as the FDR administration the US political Left
was openly in bed with avowed Communists. The KGB had people operating
in government with the tacit knowledge of the FDR folks (this is
documented in excruciating detail in "The Mitrokhin Archive").
Communism in its various 20th Century incarnations was responsible for
literally millions of deaths and many more cases of vast human rights
abuses ... but the Left was always in love with it in varying degrees.
The Left also has - at various times - been in love with the human
rights paradises in Cuba, North Viet Nam, Maoist China, ad infinitum,
ad nauseum. No, they don't actually *do* the torture and murder - they
(in some degree) enable the hitmen who do it ...
Similar arguments were used by the supporters of McCarthy to blacklist a
lot of good Americans. I think that as a country, we have a short
recollection of history.
I have a very *good* recollection of history - let's make sure you do.
Joe McCarthy was another walking rectal parasite. He was a grandstanding
drunk and a power hungry Congress Critter. However, two things turn out
to be true that are often overlooked when he is cited to try to make or
refute a point (as you do - we'll get to that in a moment):
First, he's often tarred with the brush of the House UnAmerican
Activities stuff that went after Hollywood. Since you're up on your
history, you'll know that this was almost entirely not the case. HUAC
was a *House* committee - McCarthy was in the *Senate*, and he was there
*after* HUAC was already in motion.
Secondly, McCarthy's primary concern was the inflitration of the US
*government* by Communist spies and sympathizers. It turns out *he was
largely right*. Mitrokhin, among others, (the former KGB insider who
defected to the West with a huge load of records in the late 1980s)
documents all manner of Communist infiltration of the US federal
government from FDR forward in many case with the knowledge of US
officials, especially during the FDR era. McCarthy's methods and motives
were awful, but his concerns and claims were more right than most people
realize.
Now, back to your silly little attempt to counter my point. It doesn't
matter who said what as regards to McCarthy or anyone else. If you make
common cause with murderers, you are an accessory to murder. This is
true whether it is the US government propping up South American
dictators, Jimmy Carter going to Cuba and remaining strangely silent
about that dictator's behavior (while publicly condemning the policies
of his own nation), Jane Fonda making squeaky noises with people trying
to kill her fellow citizens in Viet Nam, or .... well, you get the idea.
Now, both Right and Left administrations have been guilty about this sort
of thing over the years ... and it is reprehensible. But ... given that
it did happen, one is led to ask, "Whose bad guys were worse?" The
American Right has tended to prop up Bad Guys who were, whatever else
their sins, *pro-American*. The Left, by contrast, has cozied up to
leaders and movements that are *anti* American. Once again we see that
the Right is bad/awful/horrible/nasty/stupid sometimes, but the Left,
reliably, is worse ...
You Lefties are going to continue to lose ground to the Right for these
and many other reasons. One of the many reasons I have come to have such
irredeemable contempt for the Left is that it has (by its behavior and
stupidity) handed the keys of power to the Right for a very long time. I
prefer it when the Left and Right have about an equal division of power.
The more they fight, the less they get done, and Liberty flourishes when
government is in perpetual deadlock. Instead, we have the Drooling Left
ineptly fumbling around without a clue, without any identifiable
principles, defending the coarsest possible causes, inflaming the
mainstream voters, and generally conceding more and more power to the
Right. Now this particular Rightwing government doesn't worry me so
much. But in the long view, Rightwing governments are scary things.
Hitler and Mussolini both leap to mind as examples of the Right gone
Wrong.
The antidote for all this, in case you care, is to reclaim our
intellectual and philosophical heritage. If the Left wants to be relevant
again, it has to admit to itself that wealth redistribution, no matter
how noble the intention, is theft in every case. It has to embrace
Federalism and limited government. It needs to affirm the power of
Capitalism and competition as the sole honest vehicle by which people's
lives are made better (by themselves). In short, the modern "liberal"
movement, needs to abandon the bankrupt socialism that has crippled it
from FDR forward and instead become a *Classical Liberal* movement. We
Classical Liberals would welcome you and any real Conservatives back
into the fold that built this nation. Until that happens, the Left will
continue to lose ground, the Right will continue to gain power, and
Liberty will continue its path to permanent extinction.
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Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/