My beef is that you are perhaps the only conservative non-hack we have around here anymore. Sure, you’re incendiary and such, but at least you are genuine. Bricker isn’t even that. And I just got fooled by his pseudo-intellectualism for too long.
You have no room in your mind to cast that doubt, there can be no shadow without light.
OK, thanks, I guess.
But you don’t seem to really be clearly stating what gets you so irked about Bricker’s post in that thread. Please explain it like I’ve never heard of Bricker or the SDMB or even the concept of an internet messageboard in general.
Gotta admit. though, guy’s got a great deal of rhetorical skill.
He just uses his skill for causes not worthy of intellect, fairness, and the advancement of the human condition. On a much smaller scale, I think of** Bricker** the way I think of Rove, Luntz, and Cheney (on days when they’ve sacrificed enough babies to resurrect him from his ancient crypt lying deep and forbidding in the fetid swamplands). A verbally skilled and politically savvy adversary who must be defeated.
Please. Light in your mind couldn’t penetrate the thick smokey overlayer or the seeds-and-stems underlayer.
Look. This is a left-friendly, right-unfriednly message board. It’s not going to change. I’ve lamented that many times, but the reality is that if it really bothers you, then you shouldn’t post here. Did I mention that it’s not going to change?
As for Bricker, I think he is without a doubt a net positive to this MB, even if I have made it abundantly clear that I detest his “gotcha” style and never ending need to root out “liberal hypocrisy”. Nobody is perfect.
I am not crazy. I play a crazy woman on the Internet.
But it’s also dedicated to fighting ignorance. And the lefty members of this board are very much ignorant about themselves. The original Bricker thread and the thread I linked to show this in sharp relief–it’s just night and day, anyone can see it.
Any claim the lefties have to being on the side of truth are absolutely shattered. They are all just “my guy is good, your guy is bad” political hacks.
Well, for what it’s worth (that is to say, very little)…
My conversations with Bricker have been educational as to the concept of layers of “scrutiny” (strict, intermediate, etc.) applied to American judicial rulings. It may seem duh-obvious to me (and, I would expect, any rational person) that the text and spirit of the 14th Amendment provides ample coverage for gay marriage, but there are procedures and standards in place and, frankly, trying to run a legal system on the basis of what is duh-obvious to a particular someone, or even a group of someones, is risky business.
That said, I tend to view him like a chemist working on biological weapons. It’s great that you’re putting your education to work, bub, but are you determinedly ignorant to the greater implications of what you’re doing? It takes a fair amount of effort, I expect, for Bricker to keep his wordview so limited. He’s got his little pond, and things makes sense to him there, and if somebody downstream is drowning… it’s not his concern. Pond! All is pond!
That anyone is particularly impressed by him, especially to the extent of feeling let down by supposedly uncharacteristic behaviour, somewhat bemuses me.
Do you in fact punish one daughter and ignore the same behavior from another daughter?
I don’t know how to clearly explain myself here, I suppose. Take my criticisms of Bricker or leave them. I just had an impression of him that he was “above the fray” when it came to partisan bickering and hackery, but now I clearly see that he isn’t. I’m not accusing him of fooling me, it’s not like Bricker tried to take me for a ride or hurt me in any way. So, again, this isn’t really an accusation so much against Bricker as it is an admission of stupidity on my own part.
His post irks me because of what I already said in there. He was suggesting we compare his union thread to the Pat Buchanan one, when the two threads were absolutely miles apart. I feel like I explained there why I thought he was off his rocker, and other posters have done a good job too. They aren’t even remotely the same sort of a thing.
You, however, pointed out an EXCELLENT example of liberal posters doing the same thing Bricker did, and nobody calling them out on it. Now, when I read the “Romney is keeping people prisoner at his freezing cold rally” thread, I rolled my eyes and laughed at the liberals who would believe such a thing. And I agree, that the people on this message board did not critically question it or treat the OP in that thread the same way as they treated Bricker. But I don’t even know who the OP of that thread was, and that’s the reason I didn’t bother to make a “I’m so disappointed in you” post there, like I did in Bricker’s. I didn’t know the OP, I didn’t hold the OP of that Romney thread to a high standard.
So, what I’m saying is that I just don’t hold Bricker to a high standard anymore, and I think it was foolish that I ever did. All he’s interested in is playing political “gotchas” and it’s tiring.
In other words: I’m not a liberal, and so I don’t deserve to be treated with fairness.
What’s fairer than good old-fashioned competition for hearts and minds?
Nope. And if you want me to adopt you, I’ll be more than happy to treat you as equally as I do my daughters. Do I really need to explain the difference between my family and an internet message board to you?
This is high praise of Bricker (i.e., that he helped you realize that). And it reflects well on you that you made that realization–the vast majority of the lefties here are still all caught up in what they think is fair (or “morally right,” etc. etc.), just like the average 5-year-old.
Well, by American standards, that is. Pretty much all of the board’s non-American regulars, as well as many of the American regulars, are closer to what corresponds to the “center” of politics elsewhere in the developed world than to the American political center, so that skews the whole place left.
Another factor is simply that a lot of popular Doper positions that are not necessarily intrinsically political (e.g., tolerance for/espousal of non-religious views; strong enthusiasm for modern science; general sex-positivity, including tolerance of commercial sex work and nontraditional sexual relationships; acceptance of homosexual and transgender identities; appreciation for technically complex statistical/quantitative models; etc.) are anathema to many on the American political right these days.
Moreover, I know it’s a simplistic cliche to say that “facts have a liberal bias”. But come on, we liberals weren’t the ones who came up with the line that the Romney campaign wasn’t going to be “dictated by fact checkers” or that a Republican Senator’s blatant error/falsehood “was not intended to be a factual statement”. In the current American political establishment, the antipathy to undesirable facts and the tolerance for blatantly non-factual rhetoric runs much deeper, or at least is much more readily visible, on the right side of the spectrum.
So, Doper attitudes tend to be less traditional and more fact-conscious. That right there is going to scare away a lot of modern right-wingers from the get-go, irrespective of what they think about optimum tax levels, the Second Amendment, or budget deficits.
That’s not lack of Doper “friendliness” causing that skew, AFAICT: that’s self-selection by a lot of people who are not very tolerant of non-traditional beliefs/lifestyles and/or not very comfortable with intellectual rigor. I agree that it’s indeed lamentable that we don’t have more of the sensible conservatives like you on this board, but I don’t think most of it is the board’s fault.
Thanks for spelling out your thoughts, but I think its this bit that I need more help with.
Which of those characteristics caused people to react calmly to the idea that Romney was holding people prisoner and vituperative lay to the idea that union crews rejected non-union help? Love of intellectual rigor?
See, this is my problem. If the Board were truly dominated by a love for intellectual rigor, I’d be fine. What I object to is the rigorous examination of one side and the lassitude when considering the other. It’s like Feynman’s description of the oil droplet experiment – when the numbers are far off, people look closely to find the laws; when the numbers are as expected, no one looks that hard.
Well, now, wait a sec… Bricker’s references to the various levels of scrutiny prompted me to research them myself (well, wiki them). My conversations with him had the effect of making me aware of something, but I’m not crediting him with teaching me.
Actually, he later on seemed to assume that I was the sort who thought legal decisions should be made with a court of elders or something, who would make on-the-spot rulings from their collective wisdom. I felt compelled to disabuse his misconception in a prompt and thorough manner, or at least try to, since I seem to recall he hinted at it later on, but that’s okay but who can keep track, really?