Most of that goes to what I said about Limbaugh. It’s part of the fight-fire-with-fire mindset that has slowly come to predominate in right-wing politics.
You might note that there was very little of that kind of talk on the public stage prior to the late sixties.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Fucking hippies ruin everything!
Fucking board won’t let me make an all-caps post!
So the statement should really be “Once upon a time (back in the misty golden age that probably existed only in Starving Artist’s imagination) conservatives think used to think liberals had bad ideas; but liberals thought conservatives were bad people.”
More seriously–if (arguably*) both sides are clearly doing a thing that is harmful to the tone of political discourse, how is it helping to restore civility to make the–obviously false–claim that only one side is doing that thing?
*Without even trying to make the argument that the statement is not just wrong in the “both sides do it” sense, but is actually precisely backwards, and that it’s the liberals who have always tended to think that if they could just explain themselves a little better people on the right–those basically good-hearted guys who just need to be reached out to and taught–would understand and agree with them, while conservatives have always tended to suspect those on the left of moral turpitude.
Eh, I dunno, I kinda enjoyed fucking hippies.
Echoing my appreciation – what’s sauce for the goose, and all that.
Although it was in jest, and SA took it as such, if he got warned for it and I got a pass, that would not have been right. Sorry for having raised this side issue, but I’m for fairness and equal treatment, including to my opponents in a debate.
And so, I believe, is SA.
No, it’s still that way. You were speaking of a handful of quotes made by a handful of conservative public figures. My response was in regard to what they said and their motives in saying it.
But when I talk about conservatives thinking liberals have bad ideas vs. liberals thinking conservatives are bad people, I’m talking about average, everyday people that you meet in the course of everyday life.
Like I said, take a look at this board. Look at how the conservatives speak of liberals and how they frame their arguments vs. how the board’s liberal members talk to the conservatives and frame their arguments.
An English-reading alien who landed here and suddenly found himself reading Straight Dope would think that one side was wrong (or wrongheaded) and that the other side was populated by nothing but liars and morons and greedy, selfish assholes who want to see poor people dying in the streets by the tens of thousands.
Similarly, there is no doubt in my mind that if a man-in-the-street survey were taken of politically opinionated Americans and you could get honest answers, the overwhelming majority of conservatives would say they think things like government health care, welfare, Social Security, etc. were bad ideas and either unworkable, poorly administered, cost-inefficent and/or just a plain bad idea because the government properly should have no role in protecting people from the vicissitudes of life and/or in taking money away from one group of people who have earned in in order to do that protecting of people from the vicissitudes of life. He would say that he believes that the more the government protects and provides for you, the more control it has over his life and that he doesn’t want the government telling people how to live their lives or what they can or can’t have.
In other words, he will tell the surveyor what he thinks is wrong with liberal goals and the liberal way of thinking.
On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that the liberal man-on-the-street would indicate that the things he favors are so obviously the right and caring and the proper things to do that anyone who disagreed would have to be either mentally deficient or an asshole. He would talk about how conservatives are uptight prudes who want to tell everyone else how to live; that they are greedy, selfish assholes who only want money and to hell with everyone else; that they are dull, mouth-breathing cretins who lack the mental capacity for compassionate thought; and they would present themselves as being ‘enlighted’, ‘evolved’ and/or ‘progressive’ when compared to their conservative counterparts. (Even the term ‘progressive’ is superior and condescending – “Look at us! We not only favor ‘progress’, but we’re the ones who define it, too. And those assholes over there? They’re stuck in the past and too stupid to realize this isn’t the 1950s anymore. And besides there was racism then, which of course we lay at their feet too, notwithstanding the fact that is was prevalent throughout the coutry’s entire history and widespread throughout the entire population.”)
So you see, there is a vast discrepancy between the way most conservatives and most liberals view both themselves and each other, and in the way they express their concerns and frustrations over the way things in the country are going.
And again, this board itself is a prime example of what I’m talking about, on both sides.
And on preview, thanks, Polycarp. I am indeed. 
So did I. 
I just don’t think they should be running things. 
Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party’s most recent Vice Presidential candidate are not representative of true conservativism. Neither are Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck. Of course the entire Religious Right aren’t real conservatives, either.
The Freepers and the “tea-baggers” and the people who call in to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the people who buy Ann Coulter’s books aren’t representative of the ordinary, salt-of-the-earth conservative “man on the street”. No one–public figure or regular guy blowing off steam–who has ever compared the Democrats or the liberals to Hitler is a true conservative. Anyone who has ever talked about “liberal fascism” is not a true conservative. Alternatively, “liberal fascism” and comparisons of Democrats to Hitler are simply dispassionate analyses of the political ideas of liberals. (Whereas all those leftist hippies and anti-globalism protestors who rant about “Republican fascists” are, of course, just spewing hate speech.) The majority of Republican voters who aren’t sure Obama is a native-born citizen (or who flat-out believe he isn’t) are just disagreeing with his ideas.
Again, you are talking about relative minorities of the conservative populace. Ideologically, this country self-identifies as at least 40% of the population, and given Obama, despite the Iraq war, the economy and the non-stop Bush-and-conservative-bashing that has gone on for most of the last eight years, still won by only 8 percentage points, and McCain, a weak and poorly regarded candidate by many Republicans, still garnered 58,000,000 votes.
So I think it’s probably not outside the realm of likelihood that at least, at least, 65 to 70 million people in this country hold conservative political opinions, and very likely the total is significantly higher than that.
And so you take a handful of nationally known Republican figures and their audiences – who, it must be remembered, do not necessarily swallow whole everything they say (for example, I get a kick out of Ann Coulter and read her column occasionally but I agree with very little of what she ever has to say. Prior to his Chelsea gag, I listened to Rush Limbaugh regularly and yet I was far from in lockstep with everything or even most of what he had to say. And I’m sure the same is true of Limbaugh’s current listeners, Hannity’s, Beck’s, etc.) – and extrapolate from that that the country’s conservative population is in lockstep with them, and I contend that that is simply not so.
And yet almost all of the tighty-righty, Neanderthal, greedy, selfish, racist, homophobe, uptight-squaresville-man insults and dialog I’ve heard over the last 40 years has come from mainstream, everyday liberal members of society (with honorable mention going to Hollywood (the same Hollywood that is now rallying around to support the buggerer of a 13-year-old child) for helping to get the message out.
So no, your recital of miscreancy on the part of a handful of conservative commentators, who are like I said primarily engaged in the strategy of fighting 40-year-old liberal fire with fire of their own, fails completely to persuade me that even a significant percentage of conservatives behave like the people you cite, let alone that a majority does. You have to remember that I travel in conservative circles and many of the people who know me know of my political orientation, and I speak from first hand experience when I say that I know how conservatives act and what they say when it comes to liberals, and it’s nothing like what liberals have to say about conservatives. Again, we talk about how bad and harmful your ideas are, while you talk about what stupid, greedy, selfish, evil, uptight assholes we are. Outside of media outlets there’s really no comparison.
Is anybody left, besides three rather mangy cows and a dachshund named Colin?
It’s all well and good to say that someone is not a true conservative after they’ve already served two full terms. I’m looking for any sign that the Republicans will learn from the past and nominate true conservatives in the upcoming election cycles, and I haven’t seen it yet.
The vaunted Reagan landslide of 1980 was by 9.7 percentage points. I had no idea the difference between “only” and “landslide” was less than two percent.
Leaving aside for the moment whether your observations are accurate, it’s quite unfair to compare the comments of conservatives in private to the observations of liberals that make themselves noticed above the background din in public.
You’re using the phrase “so you see” as if you’ve demonstrated something, as opposed to simply throwing out some "probably"s which are heavily influenced by your own bias. What you describe as happening if you were to sample people from both ends of the spectrum strikes me as ludicrous. Every day I hear both sides making ridiculous attacks on the other, and from the right, it’s not just high-profile mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, et al. It’s people I know who accuse liberals of being anti-american, communist, stupid, whiny, etc, and people I know who accuse conservatives of being greedy, callous, classist, racist, etc.
You’re right to say the level of discourse sucks. You’re absolutely, completely, 100% delusional if you really believe it’s worse from the left than from the right.
(missed the edit window)
ETA: I opened this thread tonight because I’m currently battling my god-damned insurance company to cover my wife’s seven thousand dollar bill for a fucking epidural during her pregnancy. Seven thousand dollars. No, that’s not for the entire delivery – I can’t wait to see the grand total – that’s just for the pain meds. Furthermore, my new baby has now racked up a dozen or so doctor bills since being born, all for pretty routine stuff. Not once has my god-damned insurance company actually paid a claim without being harrassed about it. This has always been my experience with insurance companies: reject the claim and wait for the patient to raise a fuss. I am writing my senators and asking them to propose an amendment to the UHC bill which will establish death panels for the fucking insurance company administrators.
To rant a little further: the insurance companies have picked two fabulous reasons for rejecting our claims recently:
Preexisting condition. For a pregnancy-related doctor visit. On insurance my wife has been covered by for over a year.
“Our records indicate you have primary insurance coverage from another company.” Addressed to an infant. An infant who has never had insurance coverage from another company. We called them and corrected their misconceptions, but that didn’t stop them from rejecting the next set of claims for the exact same reason.
YOU ARE KLEERLY JUST A CHEEZ-EATIN’ SO-SHALL-IST
How dare you even comment on a system you can’t even understand. It’s called Freedom. It’s called Choice. You only WISH you had what the “Home Of The Brave” has. Suck it, Euro-Fuck!
Well, all I can say is you haven’t heard me talking about a Reagan landslide in 1980. Besides, “landslide” can mean different things. There can be an electoral vote landslide, a state-count landslide, and a voter landslide. It’s possible that if you’ve heard of a Reagan landslide that it referred to something other than vote count. For example, Reagan won every state but Minnesota in '84, and only lost to Minnesota’s favorite son Mondale by only 3,800 votes. However, it’s possible that you may have heard the term “landslide” applied to Reagan’s victory over Mondale in that same '84 election, where his margin of victory was 18.2 percent. Cite
Where did I say that? The unrelenting din of liberalism everywhere it can be found for the last forty years supports my contention of their view of conservatives. This very board could be the poster child of it. Look at how liberal posters here characterize conservatives. They aren’t a minority making themselves heard over the background din in public. They are simply expressing viewpoints that they have been led or encouraged to adopt by the way political discourse in this country has gone since the late sixties. Prior to that time, political debate between the two factions was much more civil and polite. Sure, it could be biting and unpleasant at times (JFK: “I wonder if the American people realize that I’m the only thing standing between Richard Nixon and the White House” :D), but the name-calling, character assassination and hatred that exists now was seldom seen prior to that time.
How many times have you heard it said that someone wishes we could have polite and informative political debates along the line of Bill Buckley’s Firing Line or news presentations such as Mike Wallace’s polite and respectful hour-long interview with Ayn Rand? The changes in society that began in the late sixties, such as the “Fuck you, LBJ…how many kids did you kill today?” taunt that I posted upthread, are the very reason that polite and reasoned discourse has become impossible today, and the country is not better off as a result.
Not fair. It’s Enduring, see? It’s the gift that keeps on giving! That means we have to keep on paying too, but Allah knows it’s worth it!
I have. I demonstrated the reasons for saying the things I’ve said. 
And do you deny that there is a vast discrepancy between the way most conservatives and most liberals view both themselves and each other? Or in the way they express their concerns and frustrations over the way things in the country are going? If so, how do you explain the behavior of this board’s conservatives, which is in line with what I’ve claimed, vs. the behavior of its liberals, whose behavior is also in line with what I’ve claimed? This way people behave on this board, although its liberals tend to be a little more extreme than those in mainstream society, is a pretty good microcosm of society at large.
Currently and on the public stage, I would agree. It’s the fighting-fire-with-fire thing that I mentioned above. But I would argue quite strongly that conservatives in mainstream society are nowhere near as hateful and insulting and condemning of liberals as liberals are of conservatives, for the reasons I’ve mentioned several times upthread.
How can we disprove your observation? The conservative base is made up of people who think Iraq was behind 9/11, who think Obama should be killed, and people who protested Bush policies are treasonous. We’re not talking about the few conservative intellectuals who very well may hold intelligent and thoughtful views - we’re talking about this guy.
There is no comparison I’ve ever seen in my lifetime for the level of hatred that the average self-identified conservative currently displays.
The fight for freedom is always enduring. From outside the country and within, people are always wanting to take away our freedoms. Some do it because they are jealous; some do it because they are resentful; some do it because they want what we have; some do it because they don’t want us to have what we have; and some do it because they think that by taking away our freedoms we will be more secure.
But as William F. Buckley so presciently said, “The government can’t do anything for you except as in proportion to what it can do to you.”
People say that the government should protect peoples’ health so they don’t go bankrupt paying for their own health care. What other vicissitudes of life should the government protect us from then? Losing our jobs? Our houses, if we can’t make the payments? Our cars, because we can’t afford the payments or upkeep? Having nowhere to live? No food? What about recreation and entertainment? People have a right not to have to live lives devoid of these basic enjoyments that make life worth living, right?
The only way that the government can provide everyone with housing and cars and food and clothing and health care and entertainment and an income is if the government controls everything and everyone, and that system has failed miserably and doomed its populace to deprivation, misery and oppression every single time it has been tried.
Our system provides by far the greatest rewards for the greatest number of people, and even those who don’t get much in the way of rewards still have the opportunity to earn them and change their way of living, as is demonstrated by certain members of this board who came from hard-scrabble backgrounds and through effort, discipline and study now find themselves living quite comfortable and well-paid lives as professionals in their respective fields.
Yet there are those who look at the glass of the American economy and want to drain it because it is only 85% full. “What about the other 15%”, they cry! “The American system sucks because the glass isn’t 100% full and it never can be! So, tell ya what – let’s replace it with a system where the glass is only 30% as big but 100% full. Yeah, that’s the ticket! That way nobody will have more than anybody else. It will be paradise.”
Uh, yeah, except that everyone lives in tiny little apartments or tiny little houses and, if they even have a car to drive, it will be a tiny, shitty little thing. And they’ll have to stand inline for hours to get their government-provided rations of bread. And they’ll wait for months for heart surgery because every. other. possible. alternative. will be tried first because it’s cheaper. And if they die in the meantime? “Well, hell…we’re doing the best we can, and besides it’s better than capitalism! Under that system, rich people get heart operations. No such bullshit as that going on here…eh, comrade? What’s that about the party’s leaders? Uh, no…they don’t get preferential treatment. But I’d be careful talking like that if I were you. I’d hate to see anything happen to you and your family, and such irresponsible talk can have serious consequences, you know.”
I say let’s work on developing ways of boosting the economy and creating opportunities so that the 15% of have-nots can join the rest of society, rather than trying to drag the rest of society down to the point that everyone gets the same, whether they earn it or not. Life isn’t fair and it isn’t equitable and it never will be no matter how hard you try to pound the square peg of fairness into the round hole of reality, and when you try to make things fair you only create different types of unfairness.
