A Harsh Critique Of Liberals
By a liberal. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, of all places, Sam Harris write about the head in the sand attitude of the majority of liberals. His assessment is brutal. He does not come up with this opinion out of thin air. Rather it is based on years of correspondence with people from every type of political bent. After he published a book entitled The End of Faith, he received letters and emails from all types of people. From this he concludes liberals are badly out of touch with the reality of the world.
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.
But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.
This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.
Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.
Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.
Harris is not at all happy with this situation. He fears that the public will come to realize that the religious right is the only group that understands the reality on the ground and has the ability to combat the situation. He is genuinely afraid that the liberals will fade away because they cannot deal with the world as it is as opposed to the world as they wish it to be. He may be right.
I'd say this one is a must read. For both sides of the political spectrum.
Other Links to this Post
-
Webloggin - Blog Archive » (Must See Video) - Plus, My Thank You Message to Rosie O’Donnell — September 18, 2006 @ 8:34 am
-
The Political Pit Bull — September 18, 2006 @ 1:17 pm
-
Freedoms Zone — September 18, 2006 @ 8:27 pm
By sarge, September 18, 2006 @ 7:35 am
I sent something over for you to post. Just a spur of the moment type of thing.
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 7:39 am
Ok, I’ll get into the mailbox.
By sarge, September 18, 2006 @ 8:07 am
“Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.” Wow, I can’t believe I’m reading this. Maybe there’s some hope yet.
By Neo, September 18, 2006 @ 10:55 am
death in defense of the faith is one thing but this is death in furtherance of the faith.
But is it faith at all ? Faith by the sword is not a belief. If it is devoid of belief, can it be a religion ?
By madmatt, September 18, 2006 @ 10:58 am
Unless mass conversions to islam take place you are simply talking out your a**….fundamental christianity is a much bigger threat in the US!
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 11:07 am
Gee, that makes you sound like you’re fully in control of your facilities.
By Guy, September 18, 2006 @ 11:30 am
He certainly makes some valid points. However, it looks as if his secondary agenda revolves around criticizism of the “religious right”. Being a member in good standing of the afore mentioned group, my red-neck ballcap has been knocked slightly askew. He seems to believe that all of us right wing religious nuts (those of us that believe in Christ’s literal return to earth) are going to hijack national foreign policy and “show them A-rabs a thing or two”. Of course, we all know that this take is completely ridiculous. Once again, the left attempts to convince us of the moral equivalency between Muslim Islamofascists and Evangelical Christians (…or am I being a bit paranoid?)
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 11:36 am
No, you’re right. He’s actually wrong on the religious right thing - I don’t think he’s wrong on the left losing it, though.
By Bubs, September 18, 2006 @ 12:05 pm
Harris is right on both counts. Harris is especially right when he mentions lefties needing to realize that fundamentalist Muslims are a bigger threat than Dick Cheney. Now, if only you and other conservatives would be able to recognize the multitude of bad roads that the Bush administration has taken us down, that’d be great.
I say that as a Christian, politically liberal, ex-military gun owner who works in law enforcement.
Mad Matt is either trolling to wind you up or just unbelievably naive if he really thinks Christians are a bigger threat here in the US. If he means what he posted, I apologize on behalf of patriotic liberals everywhere. Goofy statements like that make it easy for people like Cheney to do what they do.
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
I don’t agree with the administration on a number of things, actually.
By Micah, September 18, 2006 @ 12:48 pm
Speaking as what you would probably call a “liberal”, here is what worries me about the Christian Right:
1. I believe that our country is founded, first and foremost, on the belief that everybody has a right to liberty. I think that it is not possible to enjoy that right if you do not have a right to privacy, a right to freedom of speech, and a right to due process. The right, and the Christian right in particular, seems to believe that there should not be a right to privacy at all, or that it should be strictly curtailed. That frightens me.
2. The Christian right has many organizations dedicated to various forms of “moral” censorship, and since moral questions are often vague, giving the government increased censorship rights of that kind could easily be stretched beyond their original meaning to stifle free speech in general.
3. Our President represents himself as a member of the Christian right. He believes that he should be able to lock up anybody that he classifies as an “enemy combatant” for an arbitrarily long period of time with no trial. Even if you think our President always gets it right when he chooses an enemy combatant, the fact is that that doctrine allows him to lock up anybody he wants, merely by claiming that he has evidence, with no trial. Our government is designed to function so that nobody has that kind of power, even if you like them. Torture raises the same issue. If interrogation is a traumatic form of punishment in itself, anybody interrogated is punished without trial.
My ideal government would protect me from outside threats in a way consistent with good moral leadership, and would let me live my own life however the hell I wanted to unless it could PROVE I was doing some kind of harm.
So, my question for you guys is this:
Do you think we should have a right to due process, free speech, and privacy? Why should I have to choose between security and freedom? If neither of our parties really gives us what we want, why do we keep voting for them?
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
It was Al Gore and his wife who tried to get standards in place to impose government regulation of the music industry, Micah.
By Micah, September 18, 2006 @ 1:00 pm
I didn’t like them either, but that doesn’t address my concern. The right also calls for censorship, and they seem to have the votes to get it.
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 1:05 pm
It also sems to me that it was Harry Reid, et al who threatened ABC’s broadcast license if they aired The Path to 9/11.
You appear to be confusing calls for standards with actual censorship. There is a world of difference.
By Micah, September 18, 2006 @ 1:13 pm
I’m not sure there is so much difference. Who decides what the standards are? How do you make sure they aren’t too vague? I don’t want any religion dictating what can and cannot be broadcast. Not liberalism, and not Christianity.
That’s secondary to me, though. What about the right to trial? Surely, the ability to lock somebody up indefinitely without one is troubling, right? Isn’t there a certain potential for abuse of power there?
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 1:23 pm
Bush is trying to get standards in place for trials, isn’t he? You may not like the standards, but there were some in place even before the USSC decision. Now it is up to Congress to help define the standards. (See the Opinion Tribune from Saturday, I believe, for a description of the procedures that were in place). You might also want to read that piece to see how a fairly large amount of what has been written about Guantanamo Bay is just plain wrong.
There is almost nothing in government or in the world in general that does not have the potential for abuse.
By Bob, September 18, 2006 @ 1:29 pm
I can’t accept that just because there may be some liberals who don’t buy into the notion of an apocalyptic culture war between the West and the muslim world, that it’s tantamount to liberals being “out of the touch with the realities of the world.†Harris doesn’t say which liberals he’s been corresponding with, and in any case, it couldn’t be taken as a scientific survey of liberals’ attitudes. What we see among elected liberal officials seems to indicate a sincere desire to defeat terrorism and bolster homeland security. This doesn’t mean carte-blanche support for those prominent items on the Bush administration agenda—like invading Iraq or violating Constitutional rights—that have nothing to do with making us safer or fighting al Qaeda. It means supporting the sane and effective parts of the real war on terror, like invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and put al Qaeda on the run, capturing and killing terrorist wherever they can be found, going after funding for terrorist organizations, strengthining (more than the Bush administration has advocated) homeland security and working more constructively with our allies—rather than against them—to defeat terrorists.
Harris’s first paragraph is a scathing critique of the Bush administration’s policies. But in a classic example of cherry-picking only the information that (you think) supports the GOP agenda, you ignore all of that to focus on the bits that you can use to bash liberals. And as usual, these aren’t real liberals, but an imaginary species of straw men that you create so you don’t have to face “the realities of the world.â€
We need a realistic approach that focuses on real terrorist threats and homeland security. We don’t need wasteful and foolish adventures that only make things worse. We don’t need to demonize half of the population of this country by making up evidence to smear them as weak and anti-American. The intellectual dishonesty of the Republican Party—especially with respect to the Bush administration—is one of the biggest impediments to our success in fighting terrorism. The catastrophic evidence is everywhere to see, so don’t blame the liberals.
By Micah, September 18, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
I agree that there is nothing in the world that doesn’t have a potential for abuse. That is why it is so important to have strict limitations on our own government.
I wasn’t talking about Guantanamo. I was talking about Jose Padilla. His indictment took a really long time to come down, and if it hadn’t been for political pressure and pressure from the courts, I’m not certain it ever would have come. He’s probably not a good person, but what if the government is wrong about him? He’s been locked up for years, potentially for nothing at all.
By Robert, September 18, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
Gaius,
Re: Your reply at 1:23 pm.
You are right. That’s why we need a completely open government.
No secrets from the people you work for (that would be the citizens).
This will keep us from these types of abuses.
Doesn’t it say something about the present administration, when they are the most secrteive administration and have the most classified information outside the FOIA?
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 1:43 pm
Gee, Bob, any other misrepresentations? I included the scathing attack on Bush in the quoted text. I did not cherry-pick anything - I asked people to go read the whole thing.
By the way, you’re also over-using the concept of what a strawman argument is. There are none in my post.
Robert, that really is a tired talking point. It really boils down to whether or not you really believe we are at war or not. I daresay FDR had a great many more secrets while fighting a war.
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
People visiting becasue of the link from the Daou report should read the rules for posting comments (on the “About” page). I will delete comments that violate the rules.
By Bob, September 18, 2006 @ 2:06 pm
Gaius, your main point in posting the Harris comments was to claim that liberals don’t take the terrorism threat seriously, was it not? Rather than offer specific examples of who these liberals are, or what policies they advocate that dismiss the terrorist threat, you offer the comments as a blanket condemnation of “liberals.†It’s not a realistic picture of the attitudes of liberals, the vast majority of whom take the terrorist threat very seriously.
Your statement about “believing we are at war or not†is another typical insinuation that implies that liberals don’t think that there is a legitimate war against terrorism. Liberals, as you say, are “out of touch with reality,†right? You also apparently imply—without a trace of irony—that the religious right is in touch with reality. Is this the same religious right who thinks that the End of Days is nigh, or that George W. Bush was put in office by God?
I think it’s unfortunate that the right has turned against those on the left when we have so much in common at stake. Do you really believe that liberals—of all groups—have any desire to appease religious extremists in the muslim world? Do you think liberals aren’t cognizant of the threat that 9/11 represents, or that they don’t want to do anything to fight it? I think the real issue is that those on the right—those who supported the waste and foolishness of the Bush administration—are looking for someone else to blame for the fact that it’s all gone so badly. They should stop trying to scapegoat liberals for the Bush administration’s dishonesty and bad judgment, and then try to find a sane and realistic terrorism-fighting agenda that we could all get behind. Liberals are not the boogeymen here.
By Todd, September 18, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
About time a liberal had the guts to say what the rest of us realized a LOOONG time ago.
I hear the same, tired arguments brought out by the left regarding privacy rights, free speech, etc. The same group who put speech codes into place, quota systems, blocked the rights of parents to pull their children out of failing schools so they can have a chance at a good education, etc.
Liberals are completely out of touch with Americans, and we know it. They’re extremely hostile toward religious people (which make up a majority of this country), and we know it. They stifle religious freedom every chance they get, and then try to pass themselves off as champions of liberty. We aren’t buying it.
Poll after poll shows that Americans consider liberals weak on national defense. There’s a good reason for that. They are. Nobody trusts them to defend this country, and with good reason. They can’t. They don’t have the courage to make tough choices, they don’t have a spine to stand up to our true enemies, and they’re completely and utterly clueless about who our enemies truly are.
Madmatt, who is obviously just a lunatic troll, says that the Christian fundamentalists are more of a danger. Remind me, matty, how many hijackers on 9/11 were Christian fundamentalists? When artists make works denigrating Christianity (cow dung flung on a picture of the Virgin Mary, a rosary in a cup of urine, all paid for with public funding by the way), were those artists murdered? Oops. Those were the ones who made cartoons of Mohammed. Nope, those Christian fundies are dangerous because they *GASP* vote. We’d better take that right away this instant!
Liberalism is dying, as it should. Because in the real world, tough choices need to be made, and liberals don’t have the guts to make them.
By Bob, September 18, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
Todd, you claim that “Poll after poll shows that Americans consider liberals weak on national defense. There’s a good reason for that. They are. Nobody trusts them to defend this country, and with good reason.†And yet, using actual facts to address such a claim, we find instead that the Washington Post conducted a poll of 1,000 randomly selected Americans this past August, asking the questions:
“Which political party, the Democrats or the Republicans, do you trust to do a better job handling the U.S. campaign against terrorism?†Answer: Democrats 46%, Republicans 38%.
“Which political party, the Democrats or the Republicans, do you trust to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq?†Answer: Democrats 43%, Republicans 40%.
I welcome the opportunity to engage in an honest discussion of issues with people on the conservative side. But we have to sincerely try to be honest about the available facts. It should not be about demonizing the opposition using unfair or made-up items. The facts show that Americans currently favor Democrats on national defense issues. We should be looking for ways to unite all Americans in a sane and reasonable approach to national defense, not in taking cheap shots or using real-world issues to divide Americans and try to gain political advantage. It begins with being honest.
By MattM, September 18, 2006 @ 3:15 pm
Find any poll that shows how many conservatives think Saddam had WMDs or had a connection to Al Qaeda and then talk to me about who has their heads buried in the sand.
And by “dangerous” do you mean dangerous to life and limb or dangerous to America. Because I can make an easy argument that the religious right is more of a danger to our Constitution - which is what America is built on.
Terrorists can kill thousands of people, but they can’t kill America. However warrantless spying, torture of prisoners, lack of congressional oversight, the Patriot Act, etc can and are starting to destroy what America is supposed to be.
By Settembrini, September 18, 2006 @ 3:18 pm
I find it interesting that a conservative would look to Sam Harris as an authority, considering he wrote an entire book detailing the destructive nature of religion, including Christianity, and proposes the end of superstition as a basis not only for policy making, but also for everyday life. In essence, this is a man who believes you shouldn’t believe in your God.
But assuming your comfortable quoting an author with his perspective, this is hardly a major problem for liberals, faithful or godless. Liberals are generally suspect of all fundamentalists, Muslims included. We may complain more about Christian fundies, but that can be explained by proximity. There will never be a Muslim theocracy established in the United States. There very well could be a Christian one, if the evangelical movement continues to sweep the nation. To conclude that complaints about Christian fundamentalism reveal an acceptance of Muslim fundamentalism is a complete non sequitor. I, for one, will state for the record that the violent underpinnings of Muslim make it far more dangerous than Christianity with regard to world peace. I also think it happens to be have the most shakey mythological foundation, but in that category, no religion is on solid ground, as Harris himself plainly shows in his book.
As for the Todd’s comment that liberalism is moribund, polls show that the number of people identifying themselves as liberal is at a 14 year high (which is when AM radio turned “liberal” into a dirty word.) You can probably thank Bush for that.
By Gaius, September 18, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
What’s interesting here is that a lot of the commenters don’t see that they are proving Harris’ point exactly. But by all means, carry on.
By Daniel DiRito, September 18, 2006 @ 3:53 pm
Harris is correct to identify the threat posed by religious extremism. He did so with his book and he does so again in this article. The outstanding question is how to address these threats. Racial prejudice may not be perfectly analogous, but I think it offers some insight into the perils of unbridled extremist ideologies on both sides of a conflict. Our own Civil War points out the potential for ideology to lead to violent conflict. How we address religious extremism may well demonstrate what we did or didn’t learn from our own experience.
However, identifying the threat and crafting the solution are two distinct endeavors. Harris clearly identifies the threat but seems more inclined to then pivot and blame liberalism for our inability to confront the issue rather that offer any reasoned solutions. By acknowledging that liberalism is “generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity” and at the same time blaming it for not combating religious literalism is incongruent logic. In reality, liberalism clearly understands the dangers of religious literalism which is exactly why it promotes reasonability and tolerance. Further, that understanding is why liberals believe that the war in Iraq and the war on terror will ultimately require political solutions rather than an ever expanding military strategy.
As world population and a world economy continue to expand, our abilities to prevent the inherent racial, cultural, and religious clashes that come with proximity will become more challenging. Succumbing to the absolutism that accompanies any us/them equation is certain to trigger accelerated conflict. It is essential we refrain from adopting a broad brush strokes mentality. A reactionary strategy is nothing more than the fuel for escalation. In the end, it is individuals who define the differences upon which conflict is predicated…whether they be Islamist, Liberal, or otherwise. It will be the politics of leadership that will eventually bridge the divide.
Read more here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
By MattM, September 18, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
“And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.”
Funny, seeing as Bush today just gave a speech about literacy helping bring world peace.
NEW YORK (AP) - President Bush on Monday linked his push for democratic reform across the world with first lady Laura Bush’s call for governments to embrace literacy programs to improve lives.
“The simple act of teaching a child to read or an adult to read has the capacity to transform nations and yield the peace we all want,” the president said at the White House Conference on Global Literacy being hosted in New York by the first lady. “You can’t realize the blessings of liberty if you can’t read a ballot.”
By Todd, September 18, 2006 @ 4:03 pm
Ummm, Bob, can you read? Can you show me where I talked about Democrats? Didn’t think so. Typical liberal thinking, though. Not all Democrats are liberal. If the Democratic party wants to survive, it needs to isolate it’s fascist liberal wing, not let it take over the party.
Liberals are weak and spineless. It’s in their nature to be so. Moderate Democrats are not. They should take back their party.
And Settembrini, liberals are a marginalized group, and will continue to be so, as Americans continue to see them as the out-of touch lunatic fringe they really are.
By Bob, September 18, 2006 @ 5:37 pm
Todd, let’s be honest. In response to your unsupported claim that “Americans consider liberals weak on national defense,†I offered factual evidence from a Washington Post poll that showed that a majority of Americans trusted Democrats over Republicans on a couple of key national defense issues. You still offer no facts to support your original claim, but now make the quibbling assertion that Democrats are not the same as liberals. I’m a Democrat, and like most Democrats, I’m also a liberal. It seems arrogant and dishonest to try to define other peoples’ political beliefs for them. Why don’t you just leave it up to us liberals to define for ourselves who we are and what we believe?
If you insist on your invective about liberals being “weak and spineless,†fine. Just be honest about your views being in the minority, as the facts certainly demonstrate.
By Donna, September 18, 2006 @ 6:21 pm
Todd says ‘liberals are weak and spineless. It is their nature to be so.’ I guess I have to say that I dismiss anyone like Todd who makes blanket categorical statements like that because it shows a lack of mental strength and moral maturity.
I am a religious person and as I witness God’s creation, I notice that God created every snowflake to be unique from all other snowflakes, every leaf on every tree in the whole world is unique, every fingerprint different, and so forth It is only in the things that finite man can create that we find such utter sameness, as in factory produced products.
So Todd, when you try to label whole numbers of folks who were created as unique by God, you must want to replace God’s world with an illusion you manufactured in your brain.
By David A., September 18, 2006 @ 10:47 pm
Assuming Todd is American, I think he needs to do some homework. Even if only for this sentence: “The United States was founded on classical liberal republican principles.” Apparently, what he seems to think of when he thinks of “liberalism” sure ain’t liberalism.
By John Gillnitz, September 18, 2006 @ 11:31 pm
For every argument against head-in-the-sand liberals there are 10 against chicken-little-conservatives. Its funny how industrialized nations can faint behind their monocles from the barbaric behavior of Muslims living in third world conditions after the Western world’s behavior in similar conditions. The Inquisition wasn’t a nice tea party was it? Frankly I’m a lot more afraid of losing my retirement, getting sick and losing health insurance, or having my industry shipped off overseas then I am from some terrorist bogeyman. Our priorities should be framed from logic; not from those who profit from staged panic.
By johnd, September 19, 2006 @ 12:04 am
This doofus in the LA Times is worse than a chickenhawk republican. He actually believes the threat posed by a subgroup so backward and sociopathic is so great, he treats them as though could undo human society.
Newsflash: rapists, murderers, whack job survivalists, killer crack addicts etc. are born and bred daily in our midst of 300 Million US citizens. They don’t even need a religion to run up deathtolls exceeding a corpse a day in many US cities. There are 1.2 Billion muslims.
If 1 percent of 1 percent were bent on killing infidels so they could score the heavenly poontang, that would be what 120,000 nutzoids waking up every morning with their only goal for the day being killing infidels. School children have shown that killing unsuspecting US citizens in relatively small numbers is like ducks on a pond. One jihadist, one gun show, one highschool football, soccer, hockey game and you’re with Allah and all the chicks.
Take away the closet war for the sake of warmongers and candy ass fears of Amber Alert worshipping Mom’s who have no concept of statistics and probability and the threat of Islamist terrorism becomes what it is — one of the least likely ways an American will be killed or injured. Period.
Ooooh…. let’s all wake up to the scary fact that a bunch of backward religious fanatics in caves half way around the world have been told by some old sexually frustrated Mullah that they’ll get laid in heaven if they kill Americans as they kill themselves!
If one of them kills 30,000 Americans next I know what to do — Wage wars in other lands that kill a million of them! Pretty soon we’ll show those other Billion to shut up and live in poverty while we party for good!
I guess the fact that at least one of the 911 terror killers was the child of parents who died while the US shelled Beruit while the Israelis occuppied the country is lost on you “they hate our goodness” armchair warriors.
US soldiers raped and murdered an Iraqi girl awhile back. If some all powerful country’s forces occupied my town and my daughter suffered that fate, you can count me (and probably 100 or so of my closest friends) immediately in on that jihad stuff against that country.
Find the killers and bring them to justice. It’s not perfect, but it’s worked here in the USA going on 230 years.
By Tom, September 19, 2006 @ 12:30 am
I see this article as more of an indictment of the Religious Right than liberals. Afterall, Harris has already written them off as being as bad as the Islamic fundamentalist we are having to deal with now. Not surprising, then, that Gaius leaves out this paragraph from the article:
Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.
By Todd, September 19, 2006 @ 7:31 am
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
David, (edit). CLASSIC liberalism, which most closely resembles libertarianism, is NOT what liberalism is today. Not even close. For goodness sakes, the article even mentions this. Nice try. Might want to work on your reading comprehension skills. For a group that touts itself as being "intellectual," (edit).
By Todd, September 19, 2006 @ 7:33 am
And Donna, I dismiss people like you with these idealistic, pie-in-the-sky fantasies. Wake up and join the rest of us in the REAL world. You might be comfortable in your fantasy-land. I see the world as it really is.
By Todd, September 19, 2006 @ 9:05 am
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
Bob, (edit). You say "I’m a Democrat, and like most Democrats, I’m also a liberal." Hmm, according to Bruce Reed, President of the Democratic Leadership Council, 27% of Democrats identify themselves as liberal. I'd dare say he knows more about the party than you do. So, it would seem, MOST Democrats are not liberal. Seems you're pretty out of the loop, which is exactly what I was saying about liberals. They're completely out of touch. He goes on to say the following: "Liberals, energized by a newfound ability to raise money among people angry at Bush, hold too much power in the party and are leading it down a road that is not the mainstream of the nation. Liberals give the inaccurate impression that Democrats are not people of faith, opposed to traditional families and weak on national defense and security." So, seems the President of the DLC is saying exactly what I'm saying. You're out of touch.
Todd - warning - no personal attacks
By Bob, September 19, 2006 @ 10:28 am
Todd, can we please be honest and civil? First, I’m not interested in a name-calling contest with you. Beyond that, let’s focus on the big picture, and not on disingenuous semantic hair-splitting. Right-wingers are almost never interested in making distinctions within left-leaning political philosophies, happy to condemn them all as “liberals.†It’s the “L†word, after all, and Republicans apply the definition “liberally.†The one exception to this, it seems, is when they’ve painted themselves in a corner by making an unprovable assertion about which political party—the liberal one or the conservative one—Americans trust the most on national defense issues. Lacking any other way out, the hair-splitting seems to be nothing but a desperate attempt to wriggle out of having been proven wrong.
Yours is a fundamentally dishonest approach to political discourse. All you’re doing is name-calling and slander. You throw around assertions that you can’t prove, about liberals being “weak and spineless,†about Americans not trusting liberals (when the opposite is demonstrably true), about liberals being “marginalized,†etc. Virtually everything you’ve written so far is either completely empty invective, factually untrue, or wildly exaggerated. Basically it’s a bunch of B.S., and I suspect that even fellow conservatives recognize it as such.
You have a chance to have a frank and honest exchange with responsible fellow Americans who care just as much as you about the well-being of the country, even though their political philosophy may differ. You waste that opportunity by being so hateful and disrespectful. I’d like to think that responsible conservatives have more to offer than this.
By Gaius, September 19, 2006 @ 10:39 am
Apologies. I should have stopped the personal attacks and missed them. It was a busy morning.
By Bob, September 19, 2006 @ 10:54 am
Gaius, I just want to say thanks for providing this forum. I appreciate that you keep your boards open to all, and that you make an effort to encourage civil behavior. I’ve enjoyed mixing it up with you and your other posters. This should be what living in a democracy is all about, and if we occasionally get called an “idiot,†it’s a lot better than what might happen in other parts of the world, right?
So best wishes to you, Gaius, and even to you too, Todd. Have a good one!
By Todd, September 19, 2006 @ 11:02 am
First off, Bobby, I’m not a conservative. Second, please provide proof to back up your assertion that Americans “trust” liberals on national defense and security issues. I’ve got the President of the DLC backing me up. Who’ve you got? Nobody. As I said, the average American is able to seperate the idea of Democrats and liberals. Apparently, you cannot. I guess your brain just isn’t up to the challenge.
All along I have talked about liberals. YOU have tried to steer the discussion into a Republican/Democrat debate. Talk about intellectual dishonesty. The article is about the failure of liberals to connect to mainstream society. I have stayed on-topic the entire time. Quit your spin and stick to the topic at hand. America DOES NOT trust liberals when it comes to national security and defense. You have the President of the DLC saying they are damaging the Democratic Party because of this, and yet you continue to stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. If you want to do that, go ahead. Don’t be surprised when you get shut out at the ballot box year after year after year.
20% of this country considers themselves “liberal.” 40% consider themselves “conservative,” and then there is the rest of us, the 40% stuck in the middle. Liberals are a distinct minority in this country, and there’s a good reason why. People just don’t buy what you’re selling. Unless you’re willing to be honest about it, well, you’re not going to get very far in any “discussion” you might want to have, especially when you spin things and take it off-topic. Again, the topic is liberals, NOT Dems or Repubs. You can throw all of the polls about Dems and Repubs you can find at me. IT’S NOT WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!! I gave you info about liberals straight from the mouth of the President of the DLC, specifically in regards to their weakness of national security and defense issues.
As soon as you can find something to back your arguement that’s actually on-topic, please post it. Otherwise, YOU’RE the one making unsubstantiated claims. Intellectual honesty. Try it sometime.
By Robert, September 19, 2006 @ 12:23 pm
Gauis at 1:43 pm,
I don’t think we are at war.
Nations don’t give tax breaks (to the richest of their population) during wartime. Taxes are what pays for war.
Body bags come home during wartime. I still haven’t seen any on television or in my daily newspaper. have you?
Scrap metal drives, paper drives, gas rationing, and food rationing are often seen during wartime. I haven’t seen those in years.
Real wars aren’t fought on the cheap.
Nations often institute a draft during prolonged wars.
Wars have beginnings and endings.
Nope. I’m not sure what you call it, but this isn’t war.
By Gaius, September 19, 2006 @ 12:40 pm
This is not exactly the same kind of war as the first and second world wars. It is, nonetheless, war. Ask al Qaeda if they think it is.
As to the dead: Have you been to a funeral for a fallen soldier? I have. If you think you have a “right” to see pictures of the fallen, I assure you that you do not. When a soldier falls, he no longer belongs to the nation, but to his family. You have no right to intrude. If the family wishes, they can open the funeral to the public. But that is their choice and their right. Not yours.
By JD, September 19, 2006 @ 1:08 pm
Who IS strong on national defense? I seem to recall a day in which a handful of fanatics bypassed the most expensive military machine in history with a few objects from Home Depot.
Our military defense has become a spectacularly bloated Welfare Mom, but wait! The Republicans have a plan to save us. Spend even more money the same way.
And better yet, declare a war! A war unlike any other. And then fight the Cold War in the wrong country. We got those commies on the run now.
If Al Qaeda wanted us to react to 9/11 like imbeciles, Mission Accomplished.
A party that claims to be strong on national defense needs to make military decisions with military strategy. A party that claims to be “conservative” needs to make sure that military strategy is carried out without appalling financial waste.
I miss Richard Nixon.
A Liberal,
JD
By Robert, September 19, 2006 @ 1:12 pm
Thanks Gaius.
So, is this a war like “the war on drugs”?