# Are you trying to discourage conservatives from staying at SDMB? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 9, 2007, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259 "2007-01-09T04:25:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/341 "2007-01-14T01:33:49Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] We have to. See my point #3 above. [/QUOTE] So you would agree that there is parity with regards to the number of conservative posts versus liberal posts? ---
**Author:** ![Scotticher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Scotticher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scotticher)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/342 "2007-01-14T01:37:14Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] Had that question been asked under the context of Whitewater, I think I would agree with you. Now that you know it was asked under the context of a sexual harassment case is your opinion different? [/QUOTE] Possibly. I am embarrassed if I lumped them together, which is possible since it was all happenening at the same time (or so it seemed to me, I guess) and I’ll have to rethink it. Thank you for your very civil response. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/343 "2007-01-14T01:38:41Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] Test this hypothesis, if you will. Look at this and the previous page of this thread (for a sample) and count up the unique posters who are clearly liberals versus clearly conservatives. Having done so, identify which ones are wingnuts of each stripe and get a ratio. [/QUOTE] OK. With the following caveats: 1. my post earlier on this thread where I noted that the simplistic left/right axis is a pretty dumb way to characterize the board, tainted, as it is, by the nature of the U.S. two-party system; 2. shaded by my having to wade through **GD** all the time, so that I may see someone as “left” or “right” based on religious discussions when they may be “right” or “left” (or libertarian, authoritarian, or anarchic) based on their political leanings on which they may post less frequently; 3. **mhendo** ’s correct objection that counting only posters who happen to have been drawn to read this specific thread–and then further prompted to post to it and 4. my use of the list of all posters on this thread rather than limiting it to the last two pages then I came up with 49 on the left, with 5 wingnuts (a bit less than 10:1) and 14 on the right with 2 wingnuts (7:1) with a few that I could not categorize (including 1 wingnut). From that i conclude exactly this: that based on my subjective evaluation of who is left and who is right plus my subjective evaluation of who is or is not a wingnut, as cautioned by the clearly statistically poor sampling of this thread, there is not a clear proportional overrepresentation by wingnuts in either “camp.” As the raw numbers show, **Sam Stone** has made an excellent point that even in a rather polite discussion, a 49:14 ratio of left to right posters is going to result in posters on the right having to respond to an overwhelming number of **posts** , (which does not mean more facts, but does indicate a potential reservoir of potential sources of facts or of opinions couched in different arguments that may need to be addressed in different ways). ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/344 "2007-01-14T01:45:36Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] 1. Cites are not treated fairly on both sides. A cite from _The Nation_, _Media Matters_, or any number of left wing periodicals or think-tanks are treated as gospel. Cites from _The Heritage Foundation_, _The Cato Instittute_, or other right-wing periodicals and think-tanks are treated as inherently flawed and not worth responding to. [/quote] I disagree strongly about this. For me, the key is what _type_ of evidence you expect me to draw from conservative sources. If it’s a matter of figures or straightforward reportage, i think a conservative source is often as good as a liberal source, and _vice versa_. If you expect me, however, to treat a conservative op-ed piece as a “cite” about what opinion i should hold, then i’m sorry but you’re going to be waiting a while. The _Wall Street Journal_ has the most idiotically juvenile conservative editorial position, but i’ll accept that paper as a source about the facts every day of the week. Same with the Cato Institute for that matter, an organization that i have relied on myself in the past and that i read with some regularity. Of course, that possibly wasn’t the best example for you to choose, because the libertarian folks at Cato would laugh just as hard at some of the Bush apologists on this board as the leftists and liberals do. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] 2. The axioms on each side are different, mostly due to pure partisanship, as are the perceptions of the severity of actions on the left vs the right. [/quote] I can’t respond to your specific example on this issue, because i was so tired of both of those stories that i couldn’t be bothered joining any of the debates about them. You are right that the axioms on each side are often different, and that perception of severity vary accordingly, but you still seem to be implying that this is somehow unfair, or that it makes the left worse than the right. Your own explanations insert your own axioms into each of these stories in order to make the left _seem_ more prone to such failures than the right, and you apparently expect us to accept this as a fair and reasonable evaluation of the situation. Your explanation suffers from the very same partisanship that you claim is such a problem. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] 3. Sheer numbers. [/quote] Your argument about numbers is probably right, and it would be right even if every poster on the board—both left and right—argued in good faith. It’s hard to debate a whole bunch of people, especially in a text-based medium where formulating a response takes time and where you have other things to do as well. In this situation, people on the minority side of any debate are always going to be in trouble. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] 4. Posters bail on the discussion with impunity and fade back into the crowd. This one annoys me to no end. You can post a devastating rebuttal to one of the gang’s arguments, and that person will simply fade away. The rest ignore it and continue on other things. But since I’m the only one on the other side, I can’t afford to ignore anything, lest I be accused of trying to dodge an argument. [/quote] Sorry, no sympathy here. I’ve had dozens of people bail on arguments before, and fail to respond to what i thought were extremely well thought out and coherent posts. If you think that only the leftists and liberals on this Board do that, then i submit that you’re suffering from tunnel vision. It’s another price to pay for the medium; i’ts easy to walk away with no consequences. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] 5. There is far more tolerance for idiocy and abrasiveness from the left - not by mods, but by other posters. So in the course of trying to have a civilized debate, I have to put up with drive-by sniping from the likes of **rjung** or **ElvisL1ves** , and they never seem to catch any grief for it. Certainly nowhere near as much as that leveled at, say, **Shodan** , who isn’t even in their league in terms of boorish behaviour. [/quote] Again, as i did with **Scylla** , i completely disagree with this statement. I’ve seen, i reckon, literally dozens, possibly hundreds of occasions, where a left poster has been taken to task by other leftists for a drive-by posting that added no substance to the debate. [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=5234472&highlight=dude#post5234472) is one occasion where i did it myself; i know i’ve done it at other times too, but that particular one was easy to search because i remembered using the term “dude” in the post. Also, you seem to be comparing the amount of times that we take leftists to task, versus the amount of time we take rightists to task. What you should be doing, in order to be fair, is comparing how often we take leftists to task with how often you and the other conservatives take rightists to task. We expect people to criticize wingnuts they disagree with; the issue here is who takes their _own_ wingnuts, and i’ve seen no evidence that conservatives are any better than liberals in this regard. As for the comment about **Shodan** , well, lets just say that we’re working from different axioms there. And there are conservatives worse than him on these Boards; funny how you didn’t bring up any of them. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/345 "2007-01-14T01:47:22Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] 3. Sheer numbers. Nothing you can do about this now. But it is extremely difficult to hold a debate when you are one against ten. I can post a message and go to work, and when I come home I’ll find that I’ve been rebutted, three people have joined the chorus on the rebuttal, a couple of high-fives have been shared, and the issue declared closed and my argument defeated. And often, when you try to respond, you get something like, “Are you STILL on about that? Posters X, Y, and Z already tore that argument to shreds, so I’m not even going to talk about it anymore.” It can be difficult even getting through the noise. Another effect is that five people will each take little nitpicking shots at different parts of your post, and these will be interspersed with drive-bys from the usual suspects. If you try to respond to every little nitpick, each one of those will in turn trigger multiple responses from people. And if you ignore even one of them, then no matter how good your other arguments were you’ll get, “I see you didn’t have an answer to poster so-and-so. You lose.” It just gets tiring. [/quote] Excellent point. I, for one, would welcome more smart conservatives. I rarely agree with the conservative viewpoint, but I’m happy to read intelligent argument. > [@](#): > > 1. There is far more tolerance for idiocy and abrasiveness from the left - not by mods, but by other posters. So in the course of trying to have a civilized debate, I have to put up with drive-by sniping from the likes of **rjung** or **ElvisL1ves** , and they never seem to catch any grief for it. Certainly nowhere near as much as that leveled at, say, **Shodan** , who isn’t even in their league in terms of boorish behaviour. This I don’t think is so excellent. **Bricker** went through a disgusted phase a few months ago, in which he brought this up a few times, and I thought about it, but I think we’re the same on both sides. I rarely give leftists grief, but then **Shodan** does not catch grief from the right, nor, even more egregiously, does **magellan01**. I think this one’s a draw. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/346 "2007-01-14T01:57:13Z")
[QUOTE=Scotticher] Possibly. I am embarrassed if I lumped them together, which is possible since it was all happenening at the same time (or so it seemed to me, I guess) and I’ll have to rethink it. [/quote] Don’t be embarassed. It was a long time ago, and it was confusing as it occured. Plus, most of us have a life which prevents us from following these things perfectly. > [@](#): > > Thank you for your very civil response. It is always a pleasure conversing with you. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/347 "2007-01-14T02:08:49Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] OK. With the following caveats: 1. my post earlier on this thread where I noted that the simplistic left/right axis is a pretty dumb way to characterize the board, tainted, as it is, by the nature of the U.S. two-party system; 2. shaded by my having to wade through **GD** all the time, so that I may see someone as “left” or “right” based on religious discussions when they may be “right” or “left” (or libertarian, authoritarian, or anarchic) based on their political leanings on which they may post less frequently; 3. **mhendo** ’s correct objection that counting only posters who happen to have been drawn to read this specific thread–and then further prompted to post to it and 4. my use of the list of all posters on this thread rather than limiting it to the last two pages [/quote] Fair enough, I understand we are not being rigorously scientific, we are simply doing an ad hoc calculation to see if it is suggestive. > [@](#): > > I came up with 49 on the left, with 5 wingnuts (a bit less than 10:1) > > and 14 on the right with 2 wingnuts (7:1) > > with a few that I could not categorize (including 1 wingnut). > > From that i conclude exactly this: that based on my subjective evaluation of who is left and who is right plus my subjective evaluation of who is or is not a wingnut, as cautioned by the clearly statistically poor sampling of this thread, there is not a clear proportional overrepresentation by wingnuts in either “camp.” Hmmm. I disagree. Your quick experiment shows a 10% wingnut factor for liberals and a 14% wingnut factor for conservatives. That’s a 40% difference. Had it been the other way around (as I’d predicted) I’d have considered it significant. > [@](#): > > As the raw numbers show, **Sam Stone** has made an excellent point that even in a rather polite discussion, a 49:14 ratio of left to right posters is going to result in posters on the right having to respond to an overwhelming number of **posts** , (which does not mean more facts, but does indicate a potential reservoir of potential sources of facts or of opinions couched in different arguments that may need to be addressed in different ways). Yes, that’s to be expected what with the conservatives’ work ethic versus the relative sloth of liberals. (heh, time was I could omit the smiley there and everyone would know I was joking) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/348 "2007-01-14T02:20:33Z")
Oh well, I have time now. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] Rather than add to the pointless debate about just how left the board is, or who is better behaved, let me just note some of the things that make it hard to be a conservative around here. Note that I’m not complaining about it - I’m free to go elsewhere if I don’t like it. But it’s useful to point out some of this stuff if for no other reason than as a point of reference: 1. Cites are not treated fairly on both sides. A cite from _The Nation_, _Media Matters_, or any number of left wing periodicals or think-tanks are treated as gospel. Cites from _The Heritage Foundation_, _The Cato Instittute_, or other right-wing periodicals and think-tanks are treated as inherently flawed and not worth responding to. [/quote] The Nation? I don’t pay them too much attention, Media Matters? the problem I do notice is that many times you miss that Media Matters do cite their points and even the video so one can later decide if they are fair or not. Heritage Foundation? Don’t pay them attention, The Cato Institute? It depends: [http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-464es.html](http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-464es.html) Why the United States Should Not Attack Iraq. (2002) [QUOTE=Sam Stone] 2. The axioms on each side are different, mostly due to pure partisanship, as are the perceptions of the severity of actions on the left vs the right. Contrast, for example, the debate about the Valerie Plame matter and the debate over the Sandy Berger document theft. The way I see it, the Plame affair was all about a guy with too big a mouth (Richard Armitage) giving the name of someone he shouldn’t have. But this person was not an active field agent, her occupation was already an open secret, and it really wasn’t that big a deal. Also, there was intentional effort to undermine the intelligence capability of the U.S. But you’d never know that from the howls of outrage on this board. [/QUOTE] Ahem, time was not kind to the “common knowledge” that Valerie Plame’s occupation was an open secret, if you bother you can see that even in the right wing media any reference for that common knowledge stops a couple of years ago, and when you go check it was affirmations by the Washington Times, Rush, Newsmax and others they never bother to tell you that Fitzgerald checked that and found there were no neighbors or others coming forward to confirm that “open secret”. What I said before remains: in the last 2 years I would have expected to have the names of the neighbors and friends outside the agency that knew of her cover and the case would be derailed for that reason as the right wing media was breathlessly telling their viewers, since it was not, Cheney will have to testify soon in that “no big deal” > [@](#): > > On the other hand, we have a former Clinton official actually stealing classified material that was actively being sought by a commission trying to shed some light on the most diffficult issue of our day - terrorism. Perhaps hiding evidence damning to his administration or to himself personally. Stuffing material down his pants and sneaking out with it. Yet on this board, it was treated with a yawn and a ‘who cares?’ Perhaps others, but I thought the Clinton official got what he deserved, the “who cares” attitude now is directed to the “this is new!!!” idea of the OP, it was not. > [@](#): > > 1. Sheer numbers. Nothing you can do about this now. But it is extremely difficult to hold a debate when you are one against ten. I can post a message and go to work, and when I come home I’ll find that I’ve been rebutted, three people have joined the chorus on the rebuttal, a couple of high-fives have been shared, and the issue declared closed and my argument defeated. And often, when you try to respond, you get something like, “Are you STILL on about that? Posters X, Y, and Z already tore that argument to shreds, so I’m not even going to talk about it anymore.” Meh, it happened to me before, who could have thought Bush in the last campaign was going to bail me out by godwinizing the discussion? > [@](#): > > 1. Posters bail on the discussion with impugnity and fade back into the crowd. This one annoys me to no end. You can post a devastating rebuttal to one of the gang’s arguments, and that person wil simply fade away. The rest ignore it and continue on other things. But since I’m the only one on the other side, I can’t afford to ignore anything, lest I be accused of trying to dodge an argument. I think \*\*Jody \*\* made a good point, some posters do think a post has to stand on its own, it could be that the posters also think they made a good point and there is no need to do a rebuttal of the rebuttal. > [@](#): > > 1. There is far more tolerance for idiocy and abrasiveness from the left - not by mods, but by other posters. So in the course of trying to have a civilized debate, I have to put up with drive-by sniping from the likes of **rjung** or **ElvisL1ves** , and they never seem to catch any grief for it. Certainly nowhere near as much as that leveled at, say, **Shodan** , who isn’t even in their league in terms of boorish behaviour. mmm, IMO I have seen drive-by sniping by all here but by Shodan too, but I have found \*\*Shodan \*\* to **be** boorish. > [@](#): > > That said, the board is what it is. I think the moderators do a great job. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best discussion board on the internet, and I’ve tried a lot of them. Do I wish there were more Libertarians/Conservatives here to provide balance? Sure. But even without them, this is still the place to be. And what’s the difference? The quality of the moderation. It’s simply the best there is. And **Tomndebb** is one of the best mods. So there. I could not agree more, just don’t forget that many jerkish elements from the left have been banned, some that even I was happy to see gone. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/349 "2007-01-14T02:50:29Z")
Its all about calibration and perspective. The environment has changed, and some here have not. When first I broached the sophisticated political analysis that Bush teh suxxor, was lying with every breath, so on and so forth… it was controversial, radical, extreme. Nowadays, not so much. And its not me that’s changed, its the environment. And all this gnashing of teeth (while, undeniably, music to my ears…) is just so much Bushwah, trying to pretend that the change on the board is somehow exceptional, some special circumstances must apply, they refuse to accept the thunderingly obvious: the people have changed. The center has moved leftward after years of post-9/11 hysteria (a hysteria fostered and encouraged by those very same politicians who benefited, who sold us suspicion in place of faith, and fear in place of courage…) And nowadays? I’m downright centrist these days! Imagine my surprise. ---
**Author:** ![Scotticher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Scotticher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scotticher)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/350 "2007-01-14T03:25:50Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] It is always a pleasure conversing with you. [/QUOTE] And with you as well. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/351 "2007-01-14T03:34:23Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Rather than add to the pointless debate about just how left the board is, or who is better behaved, let me just note some of the things that make it hard to be a conservative around here. Note that I’m not complaining about it - I’m free to go elsewhere if I don’t like it. But it’s useful to point out some of this stuff if for no other reason than as a point of reference: 1. Cites are not treated fairly on both sides. A cite from _The Nation_, _Media Matters_, or any number of left wing periodicals or think-tanks are treated as gospel. Cites from _The Heritage Foundation_, _The Cato Instittute_, or other right-wing periodicals and think-tanks are treated as inherently flawed and not worth responding to. 2. The axioms on each side are different, mostly due to pure partisanship, as are the perceptions of the severity of actions on the left vs the right. Contrast, for example, the debate about the Valerie Plame matter and the debate over the Sandy Berger document theft. The way I see it, the Plame affair was all about a guy with too big a mouth (Richard Armitage) giving the name of someone he shouldn’t have. But this person was not an active field agent, her occupation was already an open secret, and it really wasn’t that big a deal. Also, there was intentional effort to undermine the intelligence capability of the U.S. But you’d never know that from the howls of outrage on this board. On the other hand, we have a former Clinton official actually stealing classified material that was actively being sought by a commission trying to shed some light on the most diffficult issue of our day - terrorism. Perhaps hiding evidence damning to his administration or to himself personally. Stuffing material down his pants and sneaking out with it. Yet on this board, it was treated with a yawn and a ‘who cares?’ Furthermore, we’re treated to arguments like, ‘You can’t prove he took anything original, so it doesn’t matter.’ Would an argument that weak EVER fly around here if it had been a Republican operative? Is there anyone who doubts that if Berger had been a Republican politician stealing documents in a similar manner, and Plame had been outed by a Clinton official, those opinions would be reversed? It’s pure partisanship, but anyone who tries to present the opposite case generally gets ridiculed and shot down. 1. Sheer numbers. Nothing you can do about this now. But it is extremely difficult to hold a debate when you are one against ten. I can post a message and go to work, and when I come home I’ll find that I’ve been rebutted, three people have joined the chorus on the rebuttal, a couple of high-fives have been shared, and the issue declared closed and my argument defeated. And often, when you try to respond, you get something like, “Are you STILL on about that? Posters X, Y, and Z already tore that argument to shreds, so I’m not even going to talk about it anymore.” It can be difficult even getting through the noise. Another effect is that five people will each take little nitpicking shots at different parts of your post, and these will be interspersed with drive-bys from the usual suspects. If you try to respond to every little nitpick, each one of those will in turn trigger multiple responses from people. And if you ignore even one of them, then no matter how good your other arguments were you’ll get, “I see you didn’t have an answer to poster so-and-so. You lose.” It just gets tiring. 1. Posters bail on the discussion with impugnity and fade back into the crowd. This one annoys me to no end. You can post a devastating rebuttal to one of the gang’s arguments, and that person wil simply fade away. The rest ignore it and continue on other things. But since I’m the only one on the other side, I can’t afford to ignore anything, lest I be accused of trying to dodge an argument. 2. There is far more tolerance for idiocy and abrasiveness from the left - not by mods, but by other posters. So in the course of trying to have a civilized debate, I have to put up with drive-by sniping from the likes of **rjung** or **ElvisL1ves** , and they never seem to catch any grief for it. Certainly nowhere near as much as that leveled at, say, **Shodan** , who isn’t even in their league in terms of boorish behaviour. That said, the board is what it is. I think the moderators do a great job. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best discussion board on the internet, and I’ve tried a lot of them. Do I wish there were more Libertarians/Conservatives here to provide balance? Sure. But even without them, this is still the place to be. And what’s the difference? The quality of the moderation. It’s simply the best there is. And **Tomndebb** is one of the best mods. So there. [/QUOTE] The best analysis on the issue so far. One nitpick: The Cato Institute is not a right wing think tank. It is classically liberal with respect to economics and civil liberties. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/352 "2007-01-14T04:04:20Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Rather than add to the pointless debate about just how left the board is, or who is better behaved, let me just note some of the things that make it hard to be a conservative around here. Note that I’m not complaining about it - I’m free to go elsewhere if I don’t like it. But it’s useful to point out some of this stuff if for no other reason than as a point of reference: 1. Cites are not treated fairly on both sides. A cite from _The Nation_, _Media Matters_, or any number of left wing periodicals or think-tanks are treated as gospel. Cites from _The Heritage Foundation_, _The Cato Instittute_, or other right-wing periodicals and think-tanks are treated as inherently flawed and not worth responding to. 2. The axioms on each side are different, mostly due to pure partisanship, as are the perceptions of the severity of actions on the left vs the right. Contrast, for example, the debate about the Valerie Plame matter and the debate over the Sandy Berger document theft. The way I see it, the Plame affair was all about a guy with too big a mouth (Richard Armitage) giving the name of someone he shouldn’t have. But this person was not an active field agent, her occupation was already an open secret, and it really wasn’t that big a deal. Also, there was intentional effort to undermine the intelligence capability of the U.S. But you’d never know that from the howls of outrage on this board. On the other hand, we have a former Clinton official actually stealing classified material that was actively being sought by a commission trying to shed some light on the most diffficult issue of our day - terrorism. Perhaps hiding evidence damning to his administration or to himself personally. Stuffing material down his pants and sneaking out with it. Yet on this board, it was treated with a yawn and a ‘who cares?’ Furthermore, we’re treated to arguments like, ‘You can’t prove he took anything original, so it doesn’t matter.’ Would an argument that weak EVER fly around here if it had been a Republican operative? Is there anyone who doubts that if Berger had been a Republican politician stealing documents in a similar manner, and Plame had been outed by a Clinton official, those opinions would be reversed? It’s pure partisanship, but anyone who tries to present the opposite case generally gets ridiculed and shot down. 1. Sheer numbers. Nothing you can do about this now. But it is extremely difficult to hold a debate when you are one against ten. I can post a message and go to work, and when I come home I’ll find that I’ve been rebutted, three people have joined the chorus on the rebuttal, a couple of high-fives have been shared, and the issue declared closed and my argument defeated. And often, when you try to respond, you get something like, “Are you STILL on about that? Posters X, Y, and Z already tore that argument to shreds, so I’m not even going to talk about it anymore.” It can be difficult even getting through the noise. Another effect is that five people will each take little nitpicking shots at different parts of your post, and these will be interspersed with drive-bys from the usual suspects. If you try to respond to every little nitpick, each one of those will in turn trigger multiple responses from people. And if you ignore even one of them, then no matter how good your other arguments were you’ll get, “I see you didn’t have an answer to poster so-and-so. You lose.” It just gets tiring. 1. Posters bail on the discussion with impugnity and fade back into the crowd. This one annoys me to no end. You can post a devastating rebuttal to one of the gang’s arguments, and that person wil simply fade away. The rest ignore it and continue on other things. But since I’m the only one on the other side, I can’t afford to ignore anything, lest I be accused of trying to dodge an argument. 2. There is far more tolerance for idiocy and abrasiveness from the left - not by mods, but by other posters. So in the course of trying to have a civilized debate, I have to put up with drive-by sniping from the likes of **rjung** or **ElvisL1ves** , and they never seem to catch any grief for it. Certainly nowhere near as much as that leveled at, say, **Shodan** , who isn’t even in their league in terms of boorish behaviour. That said, the board is what it is. I think the moderators do a great job. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best discussion board on the internet, and I’ve tried a lot of them. Do I wish there were more Libertarians/Conservatives here to provide balance? Sure. But even without them, this is still the place to be. And what’s the difference? The quality of the moderation. It’s simply the best there is. And **Tomndebb** is one of the best mods. So there. [/QUOTE] What he said. ---
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/353 "2007-01-14T04:56:37Z")
I keep seeing this “classically liberal” stuff, both here and elsewhere on the Internet, posted by otherwise conservative posters who seem to want to make themselves different from ye standard cookie-cutter garden-variety Bill Buckley conservative. Yet, if one reads, for instance, the book “[The Strange Death of Liberal England](http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Liberal-England/dp/0804729301/sr=8-1/qid=1168750243/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-9105285-5086210?ie=UTF8&s=books)”, one finds that Lloyd George would fit quite well in today’s Democratic Party, and that the Liberal Party fell because it wasn’t as far left as Labor nor as far right as the Tories, which it seems to me is what would have happened to the Democrats if they had picked themselves up and moved themselves to England at that time. So, that being the case, exactly how far back do you have to go before you get to this elusive “classic” liberal? Just wondering. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/354 "2007-01-14T05:07:37Z")
A “Classical Liberal” is someone in the mold of Jefferson (minus the whole slave thing). Libertarian is the closest modern description, but a lot of us don’t much like the label because A) the actual Libertarian party is just as full of wingnuttery as the other ones and B) Libertarianism is slightly different than classical liberalism. Here’s a [Wikipedia definition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism) that’s pretty good: > [@](#): > > Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism and laissez-faire liberalism), is a doctrine stressing the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, constitutional limitations of government, the protection of civil liberties, an economic policy with heavy emphasis on free markets, and individual freedom from restraint as exemplified in the writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill. The qualification classical was applied in retrospect to distinguish early nineteenth-century liberalism from the “new liberalism” associated with Thomas Hill Green, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The “normative core” of classical liberalism is the idea that in an environment of laissez-faire, a spontaneous order or invisible hand market emerges that benefits the society. > > Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman are credited with a revival of classical liberalism in the 20th century after it fell out of favor beginning in the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century. Describes me perfectly. It in no way describes Democrats or Republicans, or even Libertarians of various stripes. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/355 "2007-01-14T05:14:42Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] Hmmm. I disagree. Your quick experiment shows a 10% wingnut factor for liberals and a 14% wingnut factor for conservatives. That’s a 40% difference. Had it been the other way around (as I’d predicted) I’d have considered it significant. [/QUOTE] Well, if you want to assert that the board is lopsided proportionally to favor right-wing wingnuts, who am I to gainsay you? However, I consider the sample too small for legitimate statistical analysis and I suspect that both my counts of "left’ and “right” as well as my identification of wingnuts would be challenged by any number of posters, so I am not about to make a claim that we can confidently assert that one side or the other is overloaded with kooks. I suspect that with the way that active board membership shifts from month to month (along with the penchant for _a few_ kooks to realize, themselves, that they have initially been over the top and to then calm themselves), that assuming a rough _proportional_ parity is a relatively safe conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/356 "2007-01-14T05:21:00Z")
What it mostly describes is people what have been dead for a long time. Compared to Francisco Franco, pretty darn radical. ---
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/357 "2007-01-14T05:25:14Z")
Erm, not to be too snarky, but I think that your claim that that describes you perfectly is just a bit disingenuous. There is no way, or at least no example in history that I can think of, of a nation with a large military also being one which recognizes “constitutional limitations of government, the protection of civil liberties, an economic policy with heavy emphasis on free markets, and individual freedom from restraint”. I’ve seen enough of what you write on these boards, anyway, to know that you have a large affection for things military. I, like most modern liberals, don’t. We consider the military a dangerous necessity, dangerous in the sense that no one’s liberty is safe where there is a large standing army under central government control present. In the good old days in the USA, armies were largely disbanded once their reason for being was done with, right up until Korea. No President since then has felt the necessity to actually get a declaration of war from Congress. So much for “constitutional limitations of government.” There’s a bit of a gap there. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/358 "2007-01-14T05:31:48Z")
And classical liberals believe that a legitimate role of government is to protect the citizenry from external aggression. Classical Liberalism isn’t a suicide pact or a pacifist philosophy in any way, shape or form. Of course having a large military is dangerous. It’s more dangerous to _not_ have one. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/359 "2007-01-14T05:48:16Z")
Personally, I welcome new conservative members. The right-wing cranks, that is, not the thoughtful ones. They are so much fun! The thoughtful people of any political stripe are just boring. ---
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2007, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259/360 "2007-01-14T05:51:21Z")
Having read enough of Smith, Bastiat, Mills, and our own George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, I’d say they would agree that government does exist to repel aggression, and strongly disagree that having a large military at all times is needed in order to do so. They would disagree because all of them, unless I read them wrong, considered a large military a large danger to liberty, and a large economic liability. For instance, Bastiat ([That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen](http://www.jim.com/seen.htm#Disba)): > [@](#): > > If we confine ourselves to this answer -“The hundred millions of men, and these hundred millions of money, are indispensable to the national security: it is a sacrifice; but without this sacrifice, France would be torn by factions, or invaded by some foreign power,” -I have nothing to object to this argument, which may be true or false in fact, but which theoretically contains nothing which militates against economy. The error begins when the sacrifice itself is said to be an advantage because it profits somebody. > … > A hundred thousand men, costing the tax-payers a hundred millions of money, live and bring to the purveyors as much as a hundred millions can supply. This is that which is seen. > But, a hundred millions taken from the pockets of the tax-payers, cease to maintain these taxpayers and the purveyors, as far as a hundred minions reach. This is that which is not seen. Now make your calculations. Cast up, and tell me what profit there is for the masses? …or George Washington, who knew a thing or two about repelling invasions ([Farewell Address](http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm)) : > [@](#): > > …what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. Nope, there’s a definite contradiction there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-trying-to-discourage-conservatives-from-staying-at-sdmb/387259.md?page=19)