I took that “both of you” comment to mean that there were so few admitted “conservatives” on this board that there might only be 2. I didn’t see it aimed at me. And of course I don’t consider myself a conservative, although I’m gettting more and more used to being called one around here. For what it’s worth, many of friends, who are real conservatives, like to call me a bleeding heart liberal (because of my position on the Iraq War, the death penalty, SSM, abortion, and the like). I guess it’s all relative. I have to say that with Bush in the White House, I feel a lot more kinship with “liberals” than I do with “conservatives”.
My final thought here is that I have a lot of disagreements with standard liberal positions on economic issues, and as the consensus around Iraq being a bad idea has gelled, I find that, since the debate is getting on to more normal things, those disagreements are coming out more.
But as I agree with modern liberalism on civil liberties and foreign policy, and my economic disagreements are not really all that big a thing, I figure that calling myself a liberal is the most accurate and honest way to characterize myself.
The biggest dividing line to me is unions. I don’t have a lot of hostility towards unions, and I’ve always found that if you want to figure out whether a person is or isn’t on the left side of the ledger, asking them what they think about unions is a good way to find out. If you’re at least neutral, it means you don’t see anything wrong in collective action. If you’re hostile, it means you do, and it further means, to me at least, that you may say you’re all for people aggressively pursuing their own interests, but you don’t really mean it, as unions are the vehicle for labor to aggressively pursue its interests against both capital and government. To me, looking at the history of the US, its post WWII prosperity was built on the strength of its unions, which took the fruits of 150 years of expansion and finally managed to distribute it to the great mass of the American people, resulting in a massive explosion of new industries, from white goods to cheap furniture (Formica! Doesn’t anyone remember formica?) to automobiles to housing, to feed the demand created by that distribution.
Conservatives, needless to say, don’t quite see it the way I do.
I think unions are an important part of the free market system. When they cozy up to government, though, they’re just as bad as big business doing the same.
I think the post WWII prosperity of the US had more to do with the weakness of the other industrial powers due to WWII, when we were the only industrialized country untouched by that war (except maybe Australia). We had little competition until those countries had recovered fully in the 60s and then when the Asians economies roared in the 70s and onward. GM didn’t have to worry about competing with Toyota and Honda in the 50s and the 60s.
Of course, you can link to an example or two of such, can’t you?
Wrong. You’ve had that explained to you before.
The basis for war isn’t that big a deal?
Yes, there was indeed an intentional effort to make the intelligence capability of the US provide the rationalization for the war. But you haven’t howled about that one bit, have you?
And the commission stating that they had everything they wanted. But that hasn’t sunk in at all, has it?
[quoteIs 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.[/quote]
As anyone who tries to present a hypothetical tu quoque *should * be.
Not if your position is sound. If it isn’t, sure, you can expect a lot of people telling you so and few supporting you. That has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the quality of one’s facts and reasoning.
If your argument has been defeated as you say, then why *do * you persist in repeating it?
There’s a cure for that. Try basing your arguments on fact and reasoning your way to conclusions. You get derided every time for trying to cherrypick to rationalize your cherished ideologies and sheer partisanships - as you should be.
Show us an example of one of your “devastating rebuttals”, then.
Because it isn’t sniping. Your being told you’re wrong, and how, and why, is just that. Not sniping. Again, if you have an actual example to offer, let’s have it. Or you can simply continue to whine about reality’s persistent refusal to conform to your preferred view of it, and other’s inexplicable failure to recognize your true genius, as you have done at great length here.
I think you’ll find them well *overrepresented * here already, compared to the greater population of any country you can find.
Oh, I dunno. About half a dozen libertarians, roughly 2,000 particpants, seems about right. For the population at large, not a campus Mensa meeting.
Looks like Mr. Moto is back. I think he qualifies as a pretty mainstream American conservative. I guess we’ve got 3 now. 