Goddamn it Otto, don’t quit on me now. If you want to play the part of the outraged queer, be my guest. Just don’t be surprised if that role relegates you to a caricature or a clown. You want to visit the idea of same sex marriage as a civil right? Fine. I’m actually right there with you. However, there are legitimate arguments to be made that it’s not, and these need to be addressed and shown wrong. “Civil rights” is the new racism. Transgendered folks would have you believe that sex change operations are a “civil right”. I saw a film clip of a black woman striking a cop and then screaming long and loud about how her “civil rights” were being infringed when she was arrested for assault. Hell, there are even middle class white folks who think that affirmative action violates their “civil rights”. Each of these claims must be judged on it’s own merits, and each one completely validates the statement I made: “every special interest group claims that it’s goals represent a civil right, and thus it deserves special treatment.” I said nothing about the specific issue of SSM there. True civil rights are not special treatment, but so many groups are clamoring for special treatment in the name of civil rights that the term civil rights is losing it’s meaning. You think gay marriage is a civil right? Fine. So do I. But make the case. Screaming “civil rights, civil rights, civil rights” is meaningless noise anymore. Attacking someone on your side of the issue because they raise a valid point that happens to sound like rhetoric from the homophobes without taking the time to parse what is actually being said is counterproductive. Not because I’m going to change my mind, but because it makes you look like an unreasonable, unthinking boob.
Actually Weirddave, I have some experience with this. When Portland, Oregon (briefly) had gay marriages I went there to do a Community College Journalism project. I was so deeply moved by what I saw that I wrote a lengthy opinion piece refuting every single anti-gay marriage argument I could find. My friend did a companion piece that described the actual experience while I dealt with the issue in a more general manner. The refuation is there as long as anyone is willing to listen. I doubt I’m the only one who’s done a thorough debunking of the anti-SSM argument. If you want to read what me and my friend wrote I might be able to scrounge it on my hard drive, or worst comes to worse I might even transcibe it from the hard copy if it’s going to an open mind.
My 15 month old son has 2 godfathers. They are a gay couple from New York who embody everything I want to empart to my son as how life should be lived, and how relationships and love work. Please bring your experience to print. It can only help.
This doesn’t make much sense. What I meant was, please share what you wrote. I have a whole whack of facts I generally use to oppose homophobes, but I’m sure there is stuff on your list I may not have thought of. I always appreciate getting more arrows in my quiver.
This has to be the most pathetic little stamping of the feet I’ve ever seen … and I used to teach preschool.
Thanks, though, for the biggest laugh I’ve had in weeks.
Can you give a for-instance of an influential liberal saying that?
I’m serious. I hear all this rhetoric being tossed around, but no substance.
I’m thinking that if the Dems have gotten so radical, where’s the impeachment resolutions? Why only 25 votes to filibuster Strip Search Sammy? I see precious little evidence that anybody’s hijacked the Dems; they don’t seem to have that much more fight in them than they did in 2002.
And in the past few years, that’s about the only issue I can remember your taking the liberal side of.
Explain this to me: you say you’re a conservative Democrat. You’re obviously unhappy with the way the Democratic Party is now. So there must’ve been some time in the past when the Democratic Party was more to your liking, and it moved but you didn’t. Right? Or at least there was some significant faction of the Democratic Party that spoke for you, once upon a time.
But I’m drawing a blank trying to figure out what that faction might’ve been. The Democratic Party’s always been economically at least as liberal as it is now. For seventy years, the Dems have supported unions, a minimum wage, worker protections, and stuff like that. The Dems are kinda sorta for moving towards universal health care now; in 1994, they were more strongly for it than they are now, and they would’ve gotten it back in the Nixon Administration, but they wanted too much at the time. The Dems have historically favored higher marginal tax rates than anything we’ve had lately. Where’s the ‘true’ Democratic Party that ever had anything remotely to do with your economics?
And your pro-gay stand - admirable though it is - has NOTHING in common with the conservative Dems of this or any other era. Support for gay rights, until only the past few years, was solely the province of so-called brie-and-chablis Dems, the ones who were supposedly alienating the blue-collar ‘Reagan Democrats.’
Where you stand on the issues really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with any form of initial-cap Democracy, past or present.
Maybe you’ve heard of the fallacy of the excluded middle.
Frank said that if all you can do with your own party is attack it, you really don’t belong in it. You seem to think the only alternative to attacking it all the time is to march in lockstep with it. Excluded middle. And pretty much a strawman as well, because it’s a hell of a lot easier to knock down ‘to be a Dem, you gotta march in lockstep’ than ‘if you’re a Dem, then you at least ought to agree with the Dems and be upset with the GOP some of the time.’
It’s funny how as much as I disagree with most of Weirddave’s politics, you’re the one who’s making me feel embarrassed to be a Democrat right now. You think because someone has the wrong politics, or the wrong party identifier on their voter card, they’re “a despicable, evil, horrid person”? You say that because Weirddave is not liberal enough for your taste, you long for the puerile satisfaction of snubbing him at a party? Christ, I don’t endorse the Republican propaganda that we Democrats ostracize anyone who has incorrect politics, but damn are you ever making their case for them, Frank.
See “middle, excluded: fallacy of.”
AFAICT, what Frank is saying (underneath the vitriol) is that you’d expect someone who calls themselves a Democrat to support at least some of the party’s agenda. Not the whole enchilada, but enough so that they wouldn’t be attacking their own party pretty much every time they turned around.
I think he’s got a pretty strong point there. If you’re a member of a voluntary organization, but pretty much everything they do grates on your nerves and rouses your indignation, then why stay a member?
You are correct, though I thought it was amidst the vitriol, not underneath it. Personally, if I called myself a Democrat but attacked only Democratic stances, and Democratic people, and Democratic institutions, I’d have to start to think maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a Democrat. Maybe that’s just me, there seems to be more than one person out there who thinks that’s just peachy.
Sorry for the delay in response.
To the first part, I disagree. As proof I stipulate the existence of the filibuster and of committee hearings. If you were right, then why bother with the confirmation process at all?
Second, the answer is yes. As I said, partisanship aside, these things are there for a good reason. Many times in history, the more conservative party held the more liberal party in check when they went too far off base. Balance of powers.
Sorry to disappoint you by not being as blindly partisan as you thought. Is that a projection on your part?
Given his upset over the Maryland legislative shenanigans, I know Weirddave’s outrage over this will be like unto the fires of ten million suns. It’s a story of how language protecting pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits over vaccines was snuck into a bill not even in a late night conference committee, but afterwards, then rushed to a final vote before dawn of the next day.
I think we need to fix the grade-school civics books’ sections on “how a bill becomes a law,” don’t’cha think?
Seems there’s already an active thread concerning the topic of my last post, and Weirddave is already posting in that thread. So any responses to my last post should go to the new thread, OK?
Nice of you to fail to note that I condemned what Frist did in that new thread. Selective quotes, misrepresentation of facts, grandstanding partisan dick waving…your MO never changes, does it RT?
Because the alternative to allowing the requisite supermajority to amend the constitution as they wish, even with an odious amendment, is to disenfranchise the supermajority. If the democracy is set up so that not even a supermajority can exercise their political power then how can we consider them self-governing?
Democracy guarantees that political power will be in the hands of the people, not that the people will use it wisely. It’s a terrible system, made workable only by the lack of less shitty alternatives.
Enjoy,
Steven
You didn’t. You condemned “the entire fucking U.S. Congress,” which has 535 people in it, which really doesn’t amount to a condemnation of any particular member.
Turning every disagreement into a sexual insult - your MO doesn’t change either.
Gotta admit, yours is pretty pathetic. Graduated seventh grade yet?
Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly it. That is 100%, absolutely, positively dead on the money. You know why? Because what is wrong here is the practice (used by both parties since time immortal) and not the partisan j’accuse that is all you’re good for.
It seems to me what’s wrong in this thread is the practice, as well. But your OP seems pretty focused on only calling out Democrats. Seems your bi-partisan outrage only crops up when its a Republican whose being accused of wrong doing.
Also, it’s “time immemorial,” not “time immortal.”
Then why, in this thread’s OP, did you condemn only the Democratic lawmakers, and not all “them fucking politicos” or however you might have phrased it.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner.
OK, so the partisan j’accuse isn’t what’s wrong here? Good to know you’ve come to your senses about one thing, at least.
But if this practice has been used by both parties since time ‘immortal’ :D, then like I said in the other thread:
Have fun with your Googling.