Again, this misses that even if that was the case Republicans knew it was a way forward:
Vidor, TX is the most well known modern sundown town. I grew up in LA and have been through Vidor dozens of times. It’s ~99.9% non-black in one of the blackest parts of the countries (east TX/west LA). Multiple attempts to integrate the town, as recently as the last decade or two, have failed (black families move in and then move out weeks/months later).
That doesn’t happen by coincidence.
Some polling on beliefs about black people by Republican and Democratic leaning voters.
26% of Republicans would be opposed to a family member marrying a black person, as compared to 12% of Democrats. It’s a shame either number is so high, and I don’t see any possible explanation for this aside from racism.
As best I can tell, the evidence for liberalism equaling fascism ranges from “duh, yeah!” to “prove it don’t!”
Not really. Lieberman wasn’t very conservative on most issues. He was a foreign policy hawk, which left him out of place in a party that was becoming more dovish as a result of their opposition to Bush’s Iraq policy, he generally supported the death penalty, and he was pro free trade (which, I have no idea any more if that’s a left or right wing position), but he was pro-choice, pro gay rights, pro unions, fought to protect Social Security and Medicare, argued against cutting taxes on the rich, and supported gun control.
I mean, here’s his “On the Issues” page, summarizing his positions. I don’t know if he was a die-hard liberal, but I’m not seeing a lot outside of the 1990s-2000s Democratic mainstream, other than his support for the Iraq war. He was probably more liberal than Bill Clinton or Al Gore.
…which, to the extent this is correct, is due to the efforts of liberals.
Obvious if you squint and look at it in a dim light. Meanwhile, let’s look at the Republican bills in 18 states to suppress public protests. I think that pings a little higher on the obviousness scale for fascism.
Oh I know there were many people who got overly excited about Obama. I just think the examples you chose were extremely poor and, it’s worth noting, did nothing to demonstrate that Obama was cultivating that reaction unlike Trump (about whose followers you seem to have developed an odd sort of amnesia).
Apart from the fact that, as pointed out, the bill already drew substantially from a previous Republican bill, how many “technical issue amendments” did the GOP include in any of their healthcare bills? How many conversations and meetings did they have with their Democratic counterparts? How many days of discussion on the floor did they have? And since you’ve admitted that the Democrats did include “a couple” of substantial amendments, how many did the Republicans even briefly consider from the other side of the aisle? So remind me again which side refuses to be bipartisan?
I realize that this “liberals are the real fascists” meme is currently making the rounds of the right-wing media websites so I’m not surprised to see it appearing and there, much in the same way that initial opponents of PPACA all strangely began describing it in the same language at the same time (does the phrase “rammed down our throats” ring a bell?). Unfortunately it doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny…but then it doesn’t really have to, does it?
I think you nailed it. This is effectively a smear campaign against liberals. When liberals say they want responsible environmental policy or that people ought to be free to conduct themselves according to their conscious, conservatives want to point at them and claim “what liberals really want is Stalinist labor camps!”
I’m hoping the puddleglum might chime in here to respond to my query from last week.
Optimist…
It depends what kind of ‘liberal’ we’re talking about. Since you mentioned Locke, I assume you’re talking about classical Liberalism. The modern inheritors of that philosophy are conservatives and libertarians - not liberals. To the extent that liberals are in bed with progressivism, they are the antithesis of Classical Liberalism, which is based on the inherent right of people to live freely and to follow a path in life of their own choosing.
Progressives support hate speech laws. Progressives are turning campuses into political indoctrination camps. Progressives think Orwell’s “1984” is a how-to guide. Most of them are socialists, and a number of them are Marxists. They believe in putting people into collective groups and then pitting those groups against each other for political gain.
As for Communists vs Fascists, they are a lot closer in outlook than you might think. The main split in the early 20th century was being international socialism and national socialism, which became Naziism and other forms of fascism. Hitler was a socialist - he just believed that the benefits of socialism were only for Aryan Germans and not for the ‘mongrel races’. But if you were a ‘proper’ German, Hitler promised you the same things progressives today want: Free higher education (with compulsory teaching of ‘politically correct’ ideas), social assistance, abolishment of ‘non-work’ income (investments, etc), a generous old-age pension, state takeover of private land for the ‘common good’, maternity benefits, ending juvenile employment, etc.
That could be the Democratic party platform today, except his 25-point plan was also shot through with racism and crazy German nationalism. It was also very similar to what the Communists were promising, except that they want to expand Communism to all countries while the Nazis felt that National Socialism should be only for ‘proper’ Germans and that it would strengthen Germany and help it conquer the world.
When Stalin and Hitler agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact, leftists in the United States had no problem embracing fascism. The American isolationist movement actively tried to stop the U.S. from fighting Germany. it wasn’t until Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back that leftists and progressives in the U.S. suddenly discovered how horrible Hitler was.
Complete and utter nonsense.
A modern liberal is someone who has applied the principles of “classical liberalism” in light of what we know now (that we didn’t 250 years ago) about how societies work.
That’s…exactly what progressivism is, actually.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so eager to show off how uninformed they are, how little thought they’ve bothered to put into their worldview. In a way, it’s impressive.
If you can manage to come up with something coherent and reality-based, I’ll respond more substantively.
Well, that was really silly. :). But to deal with a Gish gallop of points one should point at one item: in this case that last bit.
In reality most of the leftists that supported Stalin became disillusioned by that treaty, there is even a name for that item:
I have no idea why one would think that most leftists or liberals would not be willing to fight against the fascists still (and also think then that Stalin and his communists were not to be trusted). Of course, in the USA there was the “America First” (sounds familiar, I may remember where did I hear that recently… ) movement lead by Charles Lindberg that was isolationist and actively tried to stop the U.S. from fighting Germany, but while the movement did include a wide range of supporters, Lindberg was an anti-Semite and a fascist sympathizer.
Now that is what I call comedy. Did you source that from Marvel or DC?
Spotted on t’Internet recently:
It doesn’t surprise me that conservatives think progressives want to turn schools into “political indoctrination camps” since that’s what conservatives have been trying to do for decades - Bible classes, creationism/ID in science classes, historical revisionism in textbooks, book bannings, etc. The ACLU is kept quite busy by the efforts of the right to impose their worldview on students. The evidence that the left is trying to do the same is far, far weaker.
(It does surprise me, however, that a professor would use such a blatant dangling participle. The perils of tweeting, I guess.)
It’s a gerund, not a participle.
In English, the forms are usually the same, but the difference is in usage. A gerund functions as a noun, a participle as an adjective. In this case, “readings” is clearly serving as a noun, as the object of “do.”
True - I have high hopes that today is the day when puddleglum clarifies this statement:
It’s not obvious to me. What dem legislation are you referencing?
Thanks!
That must be why McCain seriously considered Lieberman as his VP running mate for 2008 and why Lieberman gave a keynote speech on the opening night of the republican national convention and supported McCain over Obama and Clinton.
Don’t forget Lieberman also seriously sabotaged Obamacare.
Whatever he might have been changed towards the end.
Obviously, he is referring to affirmative action which, in his view, causes problems by elevating minorities by dint of their minority to supra-Peter-principle positions, pushing deserving normal people out of the way. Or, that the right to be a pervert outweighs the right to love god. Stuff that any normal person can clearly see is ridiculously out of balance.
I hate when people do that. Hey, wanna join together and stop them?
Having read your post, one might also note that gerunds can have a function similar to a subordinative conjunction.