[QUOTE=gum]
I do believe in freedom, peace and happiness for ALL people.
Including non-muslims. [infidels, kaffirs, or what have you]
[/QUOTE]
Clarification, please. Do you, in fact, include Muslims in that?
I just want to see you post it explicitly.
Or not. Suit yourself.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
A lot more depends on *what * they’re shouting. If it’s on the order of “But Clinton got a blowjob!”, you’re right, that’s actually an affirmation of sorts.
[/QUOTE]
Has anyone here ever actually made that argument, or is that just your interpretation of it?
To expand on a throwaway comment I made earlier, I do see times when a lot of liberal posters post nothing but sycophantic remarks, and that’s whenever Airman Doors denounces something the administration has done.
I have nothing against Airman Doors; it’s those posters who fall all over themselves praising him in nearly every such thread for Seeing The Light. Through no fault of his own, he’s constantly held up by board liberals in much the same way Zell Miller is held up by conservatives; a pet (conservative|liberal) whose name is trotted out to lend credibility to (liberal|conservative) positions.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, or perhaps (more likely) I’m not adequately expressing what disturbs me about several posters’ attitudes toward Airman Doors, but it does happen pretty regularly and is not something I like to see.
[QUOTE=gum]
IMHO ** Tomndeb** is an old man who’s desperately trying to look young by puking on everything President Bush and his cronies are doing.
[/quote]
“Young”? And, here, I thought I had been emulating the gentlemen who are about 30 years older than I am, David and Louis. (Leaving aside, for the moment, that I have never “puked” on Bush or his cronies, having even defended them on a few occasions when the attacks on them were more partisan than reasoned.)
[QUOTE=gum]
He’s critical of his own religion, so much so, that he’s willing to be tolerant towards intolerant, xenofobic, female-hostile anti-Semitic and anti-gay religions.
[/QUOTE]
Well, as long as the leader of my church is able to look for ways to converse with Islam (or with individual Muslims), it would not appear that my “tolerance” is either all that terrible a thing or all that outside my religion.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
Further, isn’t it ironic that in the midst of complaining about a liberal horde mentality that spawns sycophantic posts, so many arguing conservative positions wish only to ditto what Jodi said?
[/QUOTE]
I feel the need to reply to this, since I am far from a conservative anything. I agree with Jodi’s point though–there comes a time when you have stated your POV and either explained, or tried to and you are either not being listened to, heard or understood. At such times, it is best to walk away, as she states.
You are correct in this. Frankly, if 900 people were to tell me I was wrong about something, it would give me much food for thought. That has never happened here or in RL (I don’t know 900 people). But at times like those referred to, peer pressure, defensiveness, and crowd mentality all come into play. People hate to lose face; the Pit is the place where some are determined that those who do not share their POV will do nothing but. We have had some threads (there was a rape one a few years ago) where people stopped attacking and started to listen and talk–it was a minor miracle.
I do wish people would get past the notion that actually listening to or hearing what is said implies or means that one agrees with what one has heard or listened to.
It doesn’t.
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
I feel the need to reply to this, since I am far from a conservative anything. I agree with Jodi’s point though–there comes a time when you have stated your POV and either explained, or tried to and you are either not being listened to, heard or understood. At such times, it is best to walk away, as she states.
[/quote]
I don’t disagree at all.
[/quote]
I don’t disagree with this at all. As your formulation might imply, it has nothing to do with dealing with 900 other people or 1 person. My objection is simply to the idea that there is some meaningful number of times that a conservative comes up against 899 sycophants here at the SDMB. I’m sure it’s impossible to parse out how much of this comes from actually experiencing 899 sycophants, or experiencing occasions of simply being unable to respond well to a point (or several points) made by a few others. I’m sure that the latter has happened on many occasions here. Witness duffer’s recent pit thread about bipartisanship and unity and the new Democratic majorities. I’m fairly confident he would claim that he was set upon by a vast gang of lickspittles, but any reasonable outsider might observe that he simply never supported his original premise that Democrats ran on promises of bipartisanship.
If people had this impression, you are correct that they should abandon it immediately. Perhaps we should include a preable of reflection at the beginning of every post followed by nothing but “I statements”.
“I hear you saying … I feel…” 
[QUOTE=Jodi]
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any post where I’ve even attempted to “portray” myself anything like this.
[/QUOTE]
Too bad – could be quite a hot visual.
Ooh! It could be a Pit rule and we could watch the Mods’ heads explode! I like it.
Frankly, I have sensed a certain “we are the victims” tone about many conservative posters’ posts and in the news in general–it seems to either be “we are (not just) right, but godamned righteously right” coupled with the “you just don’t understand” whining and/or the more sophisticated, but no less annoying, weary shrugs of unheeded prophets, but that’s another thread…And to be fair, the left side has its own tics.
Crap-my post refers to Hentor’s suggestion of “I” statements, not Errol Flynn.
I said you’d be hard pressed to find any post. IRL, I can buckle a swash with the best of 'em. You should also see me snap a whipper – red hot, baby. 
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
<snip>You are correct in this. Frankly, if 900 people were to tell me I was wrong about something, it would give me much food for thought. That has never happened here or in RL (I don’t know 900 people). But at times like those referred to, peer pressure, defensiveness, and crowd mentality all come into play. People hate to lose face; the Pit is the place where some are determined that those who do not share their POV will do nothing but. We have had some threads (there was a rape one a few years ago) where people stopped attacking and started to listen and talk–it was a minor miracle.
I do wish people would get past the notion that actually listening to or hearing what is said implies or means that one agrees with what one has heard or listened to.
It doesn’t.
[/QUOTE]
OK. You go to a Klan rally and listen to hundreds of people spouting about the mongrelization of races and the great Zionist agenda and it will give you food for thought??? How weak are your convictions?
Not to sound like a Jodi sycophant, but she has clearly and succinctly stated a view that I believe. This board does have a major leftward tilt on the American political spectrum. No, it is not on par with Kos or Huffington but it is not balanced by any stretch of the imagination.
I seem to remember member polls showing a greater percentage of atheists here than in the general RL population. Similar results came up on polls about sexual orientation (more GLBT than in RL), abortion (more pro-choice), immigration (more for amnesty for illegal immigrants) and social services (more support of greater government role). All of these are considered “liberal” or “left” views in America.
Is it surprising, then, that when a group of people who are usually in a minority role are now in a majority position that they might revel in their power? A chance to step on the people/groups that have “oppressed” them in the past?
As a slight side note, why is hate speech against minorities a mod worthy offence but hate speech against a political view not?
Because minorities are people and political views are just that, views?
I didn’t realize there were concrete operationalists in this thread. I was referring to rational people who have entered into a discussion about any topic at hand.
Having never been to a KKK rally, I couldn’t say how many attend. Certainly if there were 900 of them, I would disagree with all and hold to that.
Is that clear enough?
RE the pro-choice being liberal. I think you’ll find many a Republican who is pro-choice, as is most of America. Along with that, there are many liberals who profess to be Christians, just as there many conservatives who are atheists…
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Having never been to a KKK rally, I couldn’t say how many attend. Certainly if there were 900 of them, I would disagree with all and hold to that.
Is that clear enough?
[/QUOTE]
Please if you ever find yourself at a KKK rally by yourself, please disagree very quietly, slowly back out, and get far, far away. Nasty bunch of SOBs, never approach without larger numbers or police around.
Excellent point; fiscal conservative, moderate republicans and Libertarians quite often are against abortions but still pro-choice. These groups usually like to let people make their own decisions. It is usually only the religious conservatives that are near 100% against abortion.
Jim
[QUOTE=erie774]
Is it surprising, then, that when a group of people who are usually in a minority role are now in a majority position that they might revel in their power? A chance to step on the people/groups that have “oppressed” them in the past?
[/QUOTE]
I would modify this to observe that it is not surprising that some few members of any group will make silly crowing noises when they appear to have “won” or “scored.” While I found the claims of a few lefties that Bush was doomed, prior to the 2004 election, to be little more than wishful thinking, there were certainly any number of righties (including some generally more sober members) who made unseemly crowing noises follwing that election.
There are several members on both ends of the political spectrum who would be banned immediately if we enforced a “Don’t be a Twit” rule half as rigorously as we attempt to enforce the “Don’t be a Jerk” rule. I suspect that the simple demographics of the board–more left-leaners than right-leaners–indicates that there will be a greater number of twits on the left than the right, but the degree and depth of twitness is pretty much equal among the indiviuals who demonstrate that characterisitc. A lefty twit is not more of a twit than a righty twit, there are simply a greater number of silly people in that category–just as there are more serious lefties than righties, although any individual lefty or righty is not necessarily more “serious” than any individual on the other side.
Beyond that, of course, is the fact that the whole “left vs right” spectrum is far too complex on this board to be a genuine guide to evaluating posts or posters. A lot of the “left vs right” claims are based on “Democrat vs Republican” or “theist vs atheist” or “liberal vs conservative.” However, the majority of posters (although not necessarily those who grab the most attention) do not fit neatly into the little boxes that would make our sorting easier. For one thing, we have a large number of libertarians who are likely to show up on either the left/liberal or right/conservative side of an issue–depending on the issue. There are many fiscal conservative/small government adherents who also want the government to stay out of deciding who should marry whom or who should even sleep with whom. From simplistic American politics, they would appear to be schizophrenic, yet they make strong cases for their well-considered opinions, here. There are several “conservative” (or even “Republican”) posters who have opposed the Iraq war from the outset. There are several “religiously conservative” posters who favor unrestricted abortion rights.
With the U.S. two-party system, a lot of posters get into the habit of binary thought through which we draw an arbitrary “left/right” line, but an examination of each poster, individually, would demonstrate that persons who are specifically “left” or “right” are a tiny minority on this board.
(I would almost be willing to observe that the vast majority of posters who make an issue of the “left/right” divide are among the tiny few who are disproportionately loud–and who tend to fall into the “twit” category. Although, even here there are probably a few exceptions.)
[QUOTE=erie774]
As a slight side note, why is hate speech against minorities a mod worthy offence but hate speech against a political view not?
[/QUOTE]
Because you can’t choose or disavow minority status; it is simply something that you “are” and should not be placed in a position to have to defend. It is fundamentally unfair to criticize people for things they have no control over. A political POV – any POV – is assumably voluntarily adopted and may be as freely criticized as an other mindset you freely adopt.
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Please if you ever find yourself at a KKK rally by yourself, please disagree very quietly, slowly back out, and get far, far away. Nasty bunch of SOBs, never approach without larger numbers or police around.
[/QUOTE]
Nah-I’ll kick ass and take names. Wanna join me? 
And as usual, Tomndeb said what I was trying to say, but more cogently and clearly.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
Because you can’t choose or disavow minority status; it is simply something that you “are” and should not be placed in a position to have to defend. It is fundamentally unfair to criticize people for things they have no control over. A political POV – any POV – is assumably voluntarily adopted and may be as freely criticized as an other mindset you freely adopt.
[/QUOTE]
If you “voluntarily adopted” a belief in Judaism, could I then make anti-Semitic remarks? If you had been happily married for a long time and then discovered that you were turned on by someone of the same gender, could I then get away with anti-gay comments? On the other side, there are many people considered “minorities” by basis of their skin color but disavow that label and refuse to accept quota based affirmative action.
Hate speech is hate speech. If I call someone a pin-headed, syphilitic, mother-humping liberal then I’m spouting hate speech. If I call someone else a racist, homophobic, neo-Nazi conservative then I’m spouting hate speech.
You can challenge an opinion. You can debate a belief. You can request facts, cites, figures and data. But to make personal attacks is wrong. No matter which side makes it.
If someone IS a racist, it isn’t hateful to call them a racist. If some IS homophobic, it isn’t hateful to call them homophobic. If someone IS a neo-Nazi it isn’t hateful to call them a neo-Nazi. If someone IS a socialist, it isn’t hateful to call them a socialist.
You aren’t allowed to call anyone pin-headed, or syphlitic, or whatever just because they have a different political philosophy. Any more than you can do so because someone is of a different race. Personal insults aren’t allowed.
You are free to say you don’t like people of a particular race, or gender, or sexual preference, you just can’t insult people of that race. Racists aren’t banned, just people who make racist insults. Polite racists, polite homophobes, polite theists, or polite socialists are free to say whatever they like.
[QUOTE=erie774]
If you “voluntarily adopted” a belief in Judaism, could I then make anti-Semitic remarks?
[/quote]
Well, that strikes me as a gray area, in that I’m not sure what you mean by “anti-Semitic.” If you mean, could you make insulting remarks about my religion, I’d probably say “yes.” But if you mean insulting remarks about “the dirty Jews,” encompassing the ethnicity of Judaism, then I’d say “no.”
No, unless you’d like to assume the argument that a person “chooses” to be “turned on” by someone of the same gender. I wouldn’t go there, if I were you.
What does that have to do with insulting them based on their actual or perceived minority status. You may know a guy who is half black and half white, who decides that he is going to culturally identify as a white man, not a black man – which, frankly, good luck with that in our society – but he still may not appreciate being called the N-word.
Well, that depends on how you’re defining hate-speech. The problem with defining it broadly, and then proscribing it based on that definition, is that you drag too much speech into your net. If anyone can be silenced on any topic if they are “hateful” in voicing their opinion – and who decides that? What’s the line between garden-variety insulting or offensive and hateful? – then you’re shutting an awful lot of people up. I’m not generally in favor of chilling discourse by muzzling people – even people who are offensive. I say, let them stand up and be recognized for what they are.
The problem with this is that we should; allow some degree of personal attacks in the name of fostering discourse and furthering dialogue. People who are offensive, racist, homophobic, whatever, do not become less so if you muzzle them. Instead of being expected to make their arguments in the broad light of day and defend them, they sit in the corners, commiserating with each other on how they have been silenced and how their position must be both correct and powerful, else they would not have been prevented from airing it.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m all in favor of civilized discourse. I basically don’t talk to people who can’t keep a civil tongue in their head, because life’s too short to stand in a shitstorm, you know? But I do think there’s a point at which you risk elevating civility over the public airing of ideas, and must as I dislike gratuitious offensiveness, I think as a society we are better served by putting up with some of it so that the rest of us can keep talking too.
My issue is with the people painting conservatives with the broad brush of fascist, homophobe, racist, blah, blah, blah. Same with the other side spewing venom that all liberals are tree hugging wimps who want a nanny state that will do everything for people except wipe their asses.
If some wants to tell me that my opinions are lame and unfounded and that I appear to have the intellectual ability of a lobotomized amoeba with the debate skills of Lindsay Lohan, I have no problem with it. They can insult me at a personal level, question my ancestry and cast aspersions upon the size of my genitals (I realize, of course, that I have just left myself open to tons of “witty” posts). But when you insult a group as a whole with stereotypes then you are not engaging in a debate or discussion. You are merely reducing yourself to a variation of a schoolyard bully, name-calling and insulting a group. It is no longer an intellectual discussion; it has now devolved into taunts and aspersions. I believe that is commonly referred to as “prejudice”.