I agree with Godfrey. Unless he’s being sarcastic, in which case I disagree with him.
How much are the tickets?
Give it up, taggert, it’s really, really old now.
I think it’s important to mention that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” in American politics flip-flopped some time around the Wilson era. Thomas Jefferson was a liberal, and Edmund Burke was a conservative, at least in their day.
Posted by taggert 8/7/02
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Look, give it a rest, man. Even Jonathan Swift didn’t advocate eating babies every last day of his life. Satire dulls its point if you never stop. You got the attention you wanted, so chill.
[Beavis]
Hur, hur, he said “pubic”, hur, hur…
[/Beavis]
Eh, for me it’s more a matter of just not giving a shit any more. I never believed he was serious (and FWIW, still don’t). But if he continues to insist that he is (over and over and over), I’m willing to take him at his word and just ignore him.
Which is actually what I was doing anyway. Once you’ve read a few of his posts, you pretty much get the gist of where he (or his assumed persona) is coming from, and it’s not really necessary to read any more.
Gaudere, you have a memory like a stapler hoarder.
Sly?? It seems to me the only reason anyone is taking him seriously is he has said, explicitly and repeatedly, “I am not a satirist.” Having to say, over and over, what amounts to “No, really guys, I am serious,” precludes subtle satire in my book.
[quoteJodi I heartily applaud any conservatism on this board, but really, you can’t claim to be a conservative just by claiming to be a “fiscal conservative” as everybody claims that. Hell, have you ever heard anyone claim to be a “fiscal liberal”? Nope. And claiming to be a fiscal conservative does not make one a Republican.[/quote]
Oh, sure I can. You don’t get to decide what labels I apply to myself, and you don’t get to decide whether those labels are accurate or not. You are not the arbiter of conservatism, and you are not entitled to hijack the term for your own (legitimate or faux) wacko views. And what makes one a Republican is registering as a Republican – they, like the Democrats, will basically take anyone who’s willing to associate with the party. My family has been Republican since the party has existed, and pretty prominently so, in our little corner of the world, and I am more of a true Lincoln Republican – and Reagan Republican, for that matter – than any reactionary fruitcake such as yourself.
And kindly refrain from engaging me in further conversation, unless you wish to open yourself up to further speculation on whether you are actually on the level, or are only ten pounds of shit in a a five-pound bag, disingenuously attempting to yank people’s chains.
The Orwell / Swift / Adams comment proves it. taggert is obviously no moron. Maybe he’s two suits short of a full deck, but no moron.
The sad part is that some leftward leaning people fell into the trap and engaged on the issues. C’mon people, conservatives are not doorstops. Some of them can actually think. Although, apparently Babar (Bob Barr) is not one of them.
Yes, that’s the point I was trying to make in my previous post. You said it better.
Once again, the Simpson’s provides the perfect illustration:
Jodi come on over here, :patting chair: I’m in the “liberal but not a fucking lunatic” section, which is, of course right next to the “conservative but not a fucking asshole” section. I expect **Fenris ** to join us momentarily, he can sit next to you.
I was going to order a nice white wine and baked brie w/fruit, but I expect the section to get quite crowded pretty quickly, so perhaps, a pitcher or two of beer? (each)?
RE: the OP. I pegged it from the get go, found it no more interesting now than I did then.
Um…this wouldn’t happen to be the same Thomas Jefferson who helped found our country, would it? When speaking of what this country was founded upon, I don’t think it amiss to take into account the people who were actually playing a key role.
Funny, I thought there was something about “religious freedom and/or tolerance” in there. Perhaps you got Constitution v.2.0
As far as the “no extramarital affairs,” I’m sorry, but you can’t write off Sally Hemmings as “oh, well he was a proto-Democrat (read: evil liberal scum wot don’t deserve to live), so that explains it.”
Hm. Smells like bullshit to me. If you weren’t in the bedrooms of every president since the eighteenth century, you have no way of knowing what their carnal habits were. The only president I’m sure didn’t screw around was Reagan–and that’s only because if he could get it up, he couldn’t remember what to do with it.
and
(bolding mine in both cases)
So…Let’s see if I’m clear on this. Republicans have “cryptic bookkeeping errors,” Democrats have “Unethical investment losses.” There’s so much spin there, it’s no wonder you’re ass-backwards. If you’re going to be a hypocrite, at least have the good sense not to do so in consecutive paragraphs.
Yup. No minimum wage. Who’s going to work for sweatshop wages? Especially after you build that wall on the Mexican border to keep them all out? Let’s see…which party is so wrapped up in big business that they look to other countries for a cheap labour force?
Are there any other trite bumper-sticker sayings you’d like to throw around while you’re at it? On second-thought, don’t bother–you’d probably come up with “God is my co-pilot” or some such glurge.
Yeah. Some of his best friends are black! :rolleyes:
Tell you what–why don’t we just get rid of every politician who isn’t a Conservative Republican. Then will you be happy? You fascist fuck.
[sub]For the record, I have no problems with Conservatism. I feel it has its place in an enlightened governmental system. I have a great deal of respect for many of the conservative dopers, whose arguments are intelligent and well-reasoned. Needless to say, taggert isn’t one of them.[/sub]
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by MaxTheVool *
(3) To be blunt, I disagree with almost everything you said. However, the fact that I can do so and politely debate you in a public forum without either of us being afraid that the secret police is going to come take us away is one of the primary things that makes this country great, and is worth pointing out and reveling in from time to time.
Well, the best thing about the FBI’s new powers are that they are secretly detaining traitors.
First of all, some of the founding fathers, at least, had lots of extramarital affairs. Thomas Jefferson fathered children with a slave, and Ben Franklin had gazillions of illegitimate children.
Umm. Got me on Franklin. He was one horny bastard. Maybe Clinton was one of his illegitimate descendants? But the Jefferson family still doesn’t agree with the Hemmings DNA stuff.
Secondly, and more importantly, I don’t know if it’s even remotely meaningful to say that the founding fathers were “conservative” in the same sense that the term is used today.
Agree completely, except as previously noted.
(And for that matter, your definition of conservatism as “knowing the difference between right and wrong, and making no bones about choosing right over wrong” is disingenuous at best.) For instance, one of the biggest single catalysts of the American Revolution was Common Sense by Thomas Paine, who was a radical by any standard and later went off to join the extremely radical French Revolution. And what were the political ideals that the Revolution stood for? No taxation without representation? How is that a “conservative” vs. a “liberal” ideal? And honestly, the basic idea of having a revolution, throwing off bonds, and forming a new nation is an idea of change and upheaval, which is certainly “liberal”, by the traditional definition.
No taxation without representation? That is the essence of conservatism in this country today. Why do you think that big corporations pay more in political donations than taxes? Because they believe taxes are bad and political donations good? Of course not. They pay no taxes because they realize that taxation does not get them political representation because everybody pays taxes. They give big political donations because that buys politicians: representation, pure and simple. It gets them the dollars people pay in taxes in the form of government contracts, etc. I understand that sounds cynical, but I do not intend it as satire, but rather truth.
You might also be surprised by the religious beliefs of the founding fathers. I’m not sure if any of them were athiests, but many of them were not really mainstream Christians, but were instead Deists of various sorts. However, that’s not an issue I know too much about.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Incidentally, “Deists” were what people like Jefferson called themselves who acknowledged that their was probably a God, but they couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to piss the public off. This was before the terms agnostic and athiest were coined.
(One final point: how on earth can you conflate “knowing the difference between right and wrong, and making no bones about choosing right over wrong” with slavery? Some of the founding fathers thought slavery was OK. So they didn’t know the difference. And others didn’t, but formed the US anyhow, so were willing to compromise with close-to-ultimate evil for political expedience.)
Umm, are you trying to get me to defend slavery here? Nice try. Both Washington and Jefferson thought it an abominable institution. I think that George Fitzhugh made a good argument that you could have conditions more immoral than slavery, but I don’t completely agree with it. I do admire the courage of his convictions however. I am more talking about the sort of inner voice that Plato attributed to Socrates.
I just plain disagree with this sentiment, but it’s not one that can be particularly debated. However, I’m sorry that you feel that I am making you less safe because my beliefs differ from yours.
**What’s the point of a debate if we don’t believe that the ideas we are advocating are superior to the ones we oppose? A nation, or peoples that are not prepared to defend themselves are not safe from those that would enslave them, either directly or economically. **
(a) even the most rabid conservative apologist would be hard-pressed to argue that W is a “great” president. He’s done a passable job in a really serious crisis, which is what people have mainly judged him on so far, and eventually history may judge him more kindly than I do right now, but you insult the founding fathers (and Great Presidents like Lincoln and FDR) by calling him “great”
Lincoln and FDR are beyond my ability (or anyone else’s) to insult. But if you look at polls of the public, they put Bush II right up there as a great President. Just one public’s opinion.
(b) I agree that in times of national crisis, unity can be important. However, there are degrees of crisis, and there are limits to what one can overlook in them. I would certainly not have been interested in hearing about possible minor scandals on 9/12/01. But that was a long time ago, and I see no reason to give Bush a free ride forever. I think we’re in agreement that there are times and places when some things are inappropriate. The fact that we might disagree about how long those times last, or how serious certain things are, doesn’t make me a traitor.
I didn’t say you personally were a traitor. I suggested that people who are not 100% behind the President were weakening our national resolve. Most conservative commentators agree with me here. So does Dick Cheney. You are with us or against us.
“useless facts”? What are they, pray tell?
Harken Oil transactions of more than 10 years ago. Stuff like that.
You claim that not only should the US now attack Baghdad, but that that choice is so clearly obvious that anyone who would debate it is, basically, a traitor, or at best a fool. Well, that argument is outside the scope of this post, but look back to my preamble… people in the US can disagree, and can express their opinions, and that’s the way it should be. And I disagree.
**I respect your disagreement, but I won’t fight for you to voice it when the time comes because I disagree. And let me tell you something about your liberal friends: they won’t either. How do I know this? Because most of them don’t even bother to vote. Most of them will be afraid that they will be next. Where are they now? Disagreeing with each other on what the exact facts are. **
OK, now you’re being flat out hypocritical. First of all, the amount of Clinton’s energy that he wasted, over the 8 years that he was in office, getting blow jobs is positively MINISCULE compared to the amount of his energy that was wasted defending himself against trumped up and ludicrous impeachment charges related to said blow jobs. Secondly, how can you criticize people for investigating possible shady financial dealings in Bush’s past, and then criticize Clinton for having to put effort into defending himself against people investigating possible shady financial dealings in his past? Or is it simply that the “war on terror” gives Bush a free pass?
Whitewater and Lewinsky were all that happened for eight years. All the time of the public was engaged in these awful scandals. Had Clinton been a great President, he would have moved on from the accusations like Bush has moved on from the accusations made against him. You don’t see the false accusations against Bush interrupting his agenda, do you?
Two other points:
(a) Clinton was “ultra liberal”? I guess that’s why Ralph Nader was so disgusted with the Clinton/Gore administration that he refused to throw his support behind them even when it would have clearly swung the election. You may disagree with Clinton all you like, but to call his administration “ultra liberal” is laughable. True ultra liberals want to hunt Clinton down for sport and kill him due to his centrism. You might argue that Clinton was slippery, stupid, politically motivated, or lots of other nasty words, but simply applying more and more insulting adjectives to him doesn’t make him “ultra liberal”
Nader is not an “ultra liberal”, but rather a socialist, a Students for Economic Democracy sleeper. Read Lenin and discover that it is a tactic to attack liberals to “enhance the contradictions” (A quote of Nader’s and Lenin’s.) to topple a capitalist regime. Nader is not a liberal at all, but a commie (socialist). Clinton was and is a liberal.
(b) Would you care to provide any evidence or cite at all that Clinton’s administration did a less effective job of dealing with terrorists than any other administration, before or since (pre 9/11 of course)? In fact, didn’t Clinton put more effort and budget into the fight against terror than GWBush did (before 9/11)? (Perhaps someone else can back me up on this or point out if I’m wrong)
Somilia, Embassy bombings, ship bombings, not taking out bin Laden when he had the chance per recent TIME article
So Liberalism is “the allowance of a wide variety of divergent ideas and permisiveness”? Wow, sounds a lot like another word that begins with “Liber”, but in which the “alism” is replaced by “ty”.
And “libertine” too. But conservatives view liberty as the freedom to do the right thing, not the wrong thing.
So just to be clear here, anyone who questions anything Bush does at all, ever, is an anti-America traitor? (And probably a Gay Commie Nazi Pagan?) All joking and sarcasm aside, this attitude really disturbs me. And, to be honest, I find it personally insulting. I wonder if there are any American soldiers out there in the field right now, defending you and me, who are less than fervent supporters of Bush? Are they traitors too?
The intent was not to personally insult you, but to point out that those that do not fully support the President in all policies during this time of war are undermining the war effort.
OK, you’re the president of a rogue state. You have finally managed to manufacture a nuclear weapon. You want to punish the “great satan”. Do you:
(a) also develop a rogue state ICBM to go with your rogue state warhead, despite the fact that a missile development program is both prohibitively expensive and very likely to call attention down on you, or
(b) put your nuke on a boat and sail into New York harbor. Or else, smuggle it in from Canada. Or something.
Or put it on a commercial airline in the cargo hold? I think that you are missing the point of the missile defense shield, which is to prevent one avenue of attack, not all avenues. It is a countermeasure to the growing power of China, not Iraq.
The missile defense shield is a JOKE. It was a bad idea for strategic purposes, 20 years ago, when it at least had some faint rationale. Now it’s immediately and obviously useless. Take all that money and give it to public schools, and our next generation of scientists will invent far better ways to defend us. Or heck, give it all to the CIA to hire more field agents.
I disagree about the priorities. The arms companies that put together these ideas need the contracts now so that they will be around 20 years from now when there is enough portable super-computing power to make the systems work. This is the exact point I made earlier about getting the tax dollars to the people who are paying for the representation though political donations, Lockheed, Boeing, General Dynamics, etc. We must convince China to spend equal amounts on counter-counter measures until the aggressive expansionists in China have been replaced by a younger generation of leaders more open to democracy.
What amuses me most in this thread (apart from Libertarian’s comment) is that some here are actually taken in by taggert’s protestations of innocence. His satire was effective at first, but as Gaudere pointed out, he’s blown it.
Give it a rest, guy.
Note to self
Jodi’s sexxxxxy when she’s angry! 
On topic: Looks like we have a new “One-Trick Pony”, sorry Esprix!
It looks transparent to me, but PLEASE don’t stop now. taggert, you owe me something to clean the spit off my monitor. The speed in which you can crank this stuff out is impressive. Tips hat, will only look on - eternally bemused - from now on
Certainly it is tempting sometimes to want to kick taggert’s ass, before remembering that deep down he is a pinko satirist.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t the Conservative Party in Britain been around somewhat longer than the U.S. of A.?
Yeah, I know it’s a nitpick. But I didn’t have anything else to add that hadn’t been better said by others. 