You must have been reading a different thread than I was. elucidator got Pitted for his response in that thread. The only other thing I saw that could remotely have been sniping at you was admitted to be a misunderstanding.
I would suggest not being coy; why not put your answers in the OP? It might have made for a different thread.
lol, we should all get such pittings as 'luci did! That was the closest thing to an electronic blow job I’ve seen…hell, even I chimed in supporting him. 
My point wasn’t the sniping at me (there was some both in the thread and in 'luci’s ‘Pit’ thread)…but the total lack of interest in the subject. Ok, perhaps my thread on it was boring and I can’t write an OP to save my life…but there weren’t any other threads on it either because there just wasn’t interest in the subject…unlike the Plame thing. Now, we could debate the relative merrits of Plame vs a UN scandal in excess of $1.8 billion…but to me it shows…well, something.
I wasn’t being coy, I just lost interest in the thread due to the lack of interest given the subject. I probably will go back next week and answer the questions I raised but I doubt anyone will care.
-XT
I notice that you don’t include yourself among the “calm, reasonable” conservatives, so it may be that you do have an understanding of something after all, even if it is merely your own limitations.
And name calling?
Your first contribution to this thread was an accusation that “liberal concern for human rights seems to evaporate at the country’s border.” Sorry, but i find that just as offensive as being called names. Hell, even more so, because names are easy to shrug off, whereas accusations such as this tend to linger unless explicitly denied or refuted.
It might be partially true, as xtisme has suggested, that your statement is not really amenable to being proven with pieces of evidence. After all, if it is merely your feeling that “liberal concern for human rights seems to evaporate at the country’s border,” then that’s just what it is: your feeling.
Furthermore, xtisme has something of a point when he observes that it is hard to prove that something hasn’t been addressed frequently enough, or strongly enough. As historians are well aware, it’s hard to offer definitive proof based on absences in the historical record.
At the same time, however—and this is where i disagree most strongly with xtisme—when someone makes a claim based on insufficiencies and absences, that person should at least have the intellectual integrity to be willing to revisit his or her accusation if they are presented with evidence that shows that very thing they are claiming to be absent is, in fact, present in a multitude of cases.
Hell, in this very thread you’ve seen liberals and leftists declare openly that they condemn the Iranian President’s position on Israel. And there are literally thousands more examples, on this message board alone, of liberals and leftists who have expressed deep concern for human rights violations abroad, in both friendly and unfriendly countries. And the liberal and left-wing press has also taken up many of these causes, focusing on human rights abuses in a multitude of places around the world.
You are free to continue asserting that liberals don’t care about this sort of stuff, but even the most cursory glance at liberal arguments—on both a general and a more individual level—provides a multitude of examples that put lie to your assertion.
But hey, if that hair shirt fits, then by all means enjoy it.
Sure it is. There is much here I like; much here I admire; and much here I enjoy. Not just in the Pit, but in the board as a whole.
But the next time I need guidance for something I’m not looking for in the first place, you’ll be the first person I ask.
:rolleyes:
Actually, I agree with you here (which would mean that you don’t agree with yourself…I think )…when someone makes a claim based on insufficiencies and absences, that person SOULD be willing to revisit his or her accusation when presented with evidence. And be willing to re-evaluate their position and perhaps even step up and say they are wrong (or be strong enough to look inside and change their world view to accomidate new data).
I actually agreed in general with what you were saying to SA throughout this thread…I was just wanting to comment on the one part and then expound a bit on how the other side COULD see things in a different light. On this board at least. Personally I think there are good and valid reasons the focus on this board is where it is, and while sometimes I’d like to see things differently (like in the UN thing which I thought was important for non-Fox related reasons), in general I’m in accord with that focus.
-XT
So you want to remain in here; well, remember: when In Rome…
When come back, bring cite! 
:smack: :smack: :smack: This is what I’ve been trying to say to begin with. Opinions based on observations are open to challenge and they are open to debate; they are not open to definitive “proofs.”
I see. So in other words, even though you just acknowledged that definitive proofs can’t be furnished in such cases, one should still engage in a back-and-forth exchange of “evidence” in order to…what? If the evidence presented doesn’t lead to a definitive or proven result, what good is it? It’s simply an exchange of snippits of truth that accomplishes nothing.
This is one of the reasons for my aversion to calls for “cites” and “proofs” when no such thing exists. All it does is lead to argument over the cites themselves and it proves nothing.
I disagree with virtually everything you say in these last two paragraphs.
Yes, there are liberals and leftists that have condemned the Iranian president’s position. And there may be many other examples. But the voice of the left as a whole is largely silent about not only the Iranian president’s comments, but women’s rights and treatment throughout the Muslim world. It is largely silent about human rights abuses in the Middle East and just about everywhere else in the world where such abuses occur as part of everyday life.
To the degree that the liberal and left-wing press takes up the cause of women’s and human rights issues, it’s largely those alleged to be the result of U.S. action rather than the actions of other counties.
One gets the impression from the liberal media and liberal activity as it can be observed that to deny a woman an abortion is the height of injustice, and that to sexually assault a woman is about the most evil, reprehensible crime that can be commited, but then what is the response of the left in general to the way women are treated in a great many Muslim countries?
The response is as I said: Theirs is a different culture and we have no right to attempt to impose our way of life on them.
Another interesting aspect to this is that the left here seems to vilify religion in all its forms and appears to desire a country in which, if religion exists at all, it’s kept behind closed doors where no one has to be exposed to it in public, yet when it comes to other countries, and especially the Muslim ones that the left is fearful will suffer backlash from 9/11 and/or U.S. military action, a huge amount of respect is accorded, with admonishments yet again that their culture is sacrosanct and we have no right to interfere.
Well, are we talking about human beings or are we talking about citizens when we talk about human rights?
If beating, humiliating, sexually assaulting, and executing women for minor offenses is wrong, it’s wrong wherever it takes place and in whatever culture engages in it.
The impression where liberalism is concerned, is that human rights are a very big deal here within the United States, and elsewhere when the United States is involved, but only to the degree that the United States is the one perpetrating violations.
It truly does appear to this “compassionate conservative” that a great deal of action and verbiage is spent on human rights insofar as it concerns American citizens and American activity abroad, and that nowhere near the same amount of outrage is expressed, and nowhere near the agitation for change occurs, when it comes to other countries whose human rights activity is about as horrific as one could imagine.
Prior to the election I engaged in a lot of threads regarding the treatment of the Iraqi people by Hussein and his government, and the number of people dying on a regular basis as a result of his direct and indirect action. Where were the liberals then who are so concerned and outraged now over the innocent Iraqi lives being lost from American action? Why is it so horrible that 2,000 of our soldiers have been killed in order to free the Iraqi people from this murderous asshole, but you heard hardly a word about the people dying and being tortured because of Hussein?
One gets the impression, and it isn’t very difficult to arrive at, that the left only cares about human rights violations if it’s the U.S. or perhaps some country we’re supporting, and that other than that it’s not our concern. We have no right to meddle in other cultures.
I’m sure individual examples can be found and posted showing this or that person or organization has taken some sort of stand or reported this or that, but the overwhelming impression is that human rights abuses that would cause outrage here cause nary a ripple in the overall scheme of things if they’re going on in some other part of the world, and especially in the Muslim world.
It appears to me, based on what I’ve seen and heard, that there are several reasons for this. One, liberals are concerned about showing bias toward Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11. Two, liberals are fearful that we might become the world’s policeman and they think such a thing is wrong. Thus, they can’t become concerned with human rights violations in other countries because it might lead to action on the part of the U.S. to do something about it. And three, liberals fear that agitation against certain countries could lead to U.S. military action, which generally they oppose under any and all circumstances, despite their frequent claims now that the war in Afghanistan was the right thing to do. (I don’t recall many of them saying that at the time. What I do recall are claims that we have no right to invade a soverign nation in order to arrest somebody.)
So basically, what we have is a situation where human rights abuses are paramount to the left…unless it looks like we might do something about it.
Thus my comment about the left’s concern for human rights evaporating at the border.
Thank you for noticing, do you realize that many leftist organizations and human rights (confused as leftists by idiots like you) have complained for ages that the mainstream media barely touches on those items? Indeed it is largely silent, but because mainstream media can not make a buck out of it.
A lie, and if this were the thread on bias in the media you should notice now why it appears to be silent (hint: the left has very little access to the mainstream):
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=news
I wonder why the maintream liberal media did not told you
Lie, it was mostly liberals who complained that women’s rights were being set back in Iraq:
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/35/12767
A lie, at least in my case I already posted before that what the ME needs is essays by Bertram Russell to be dropped en masse over them.
It is clear the impresion comes because the corporate media is not bothering much with it.
Nice racket, the media that in reality is not liberal mentions very little of it, so you don’t see it.
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=news
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2002.nsf/mde/iraq?Open
Since you are deluded that the media is liberal, this is expected.
A lie too, I am on record on approving the Afganistan war and no did the majority of nations.
LIE. and there is no bias about it.
And to think that in a different thread you told **FinAgain ** that you would take into account his advise to change a little regarding comments like that, stinky liar you are.
Yours in this thread, however, are so stupid and so contradicted by all available evidence that they are barely even worth engaging. Nonetheless, i’ll give it a go.
But generalizations like yours need to be based in some sort of reality, not simply your own fantasies; when they are contradicted by example after example, and when all you have to offer is unsubstantiated generalizations, then you will rightly be ridiculed.
Bullshit. An absolute lie. Exactly what “voice of the left” do you speak of? Because, as i’ve said, hundred of leftists and liberals on these boards have shown on multiple occasions that they are concerned by such things, and the journals and magazines of the left/liberal end of the spectrum deals with such issues on a regular basis.
Let me make a leap of assumption here and speculate that you don’t spend much time reading left/liberal journals and magazines.
Again, bullshit. You are confusing “liberal and left-wing press” with “mainstream press.” It is true that the latter have often ignored these issues. But the former, generally, have not. And leftists and liberals have taken them to task for their silence. I know it feeds your sense of conservative persecution to believe that the mainstream media and leftists/liberals are all the same thing, but it’s just not the case.
Liberal and leftist publications have, over the years, shown themselves to be strong advocates of human rights issues in countries as diverse as China, Mexico, Russia, Israel, Cuba, Central America, Chile, Colombia, East Timor, Indonesia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Thailand, Somalia, india, and eastern Europe. Issuies covered include: suppression of free speech; the inequities of rape laws and the cultural emphasis on female guilt; mail-order brides; child and adult prostitution; corrupt legal systems and the execution of political prisoners; discrimination against homosexuals and religious minorities; barbaric forms of punishment (stoning; beheadings); enforced or slave labor system, often involving women and children; denial of education to women; female genital mutilation; murder of political and union organisers; and myriad other examples.
OK, this is something that is amenable to a call for proof. Show me some examples of this attitude. Show me some media stories where leftists or liberals argue that we can’t criticize the actions of a different culture.
More importantly, show me where such arguments appear and could be construed as representative of mainstream (rather than fringe) liberal or leftist thought.
Furthermore, you are confusing two issues. Arguing that human rights abuses must end is not inconsistent with arguing that we should not impose our way of life on other societies. One can quite easily call for the end to human rights abuses—such as female genital mutilation or denying women access to education—without arguing that we need to push Western values and practices wholesale onto the people under discussion. Your either/or dichotomy is representative of the lack of depth and sophistication that characterizes the rest of your argument.
By the way, as i asked earlier, where were all the conservatives concerned about the rights of women under the Taliban before the events of September 11? This issue only made it onto the conservative agenda when America had decided that the Afghanistan was going to be invaded. Hell, half of America, liberal and conservative,couldn’t even have told you who the Taliban was until this time.
Again, bullshit.
Asking that religion be kept away from the realm of state action is not the same as arguing that it be kept behind closed doors and away from the public sphere altogether. Just because i don’t want the Ten Commandments in my courthouses doesn’t mean that i oppose public displays of religion by free people in society, or that i question the right of religious folks to their beliefs and their customs and rituals.
Furthermore, when people call for greater sensitivity to Muslim cultures overseas, it is usually in response to ridiculous statements that, like your own, overgeneralize and demonstrate an unwillingness to examine problems on a case-by-case basis. Instead, we have the Idiot-in-Chief making broad brush accusations against Islam, and even calling for a Crusade, ferchrissakes. As i’ve already said, many leftist and liberal activists were calling for greater attention to the atrocities of the Taliban well before 9/11, and were doing so in a way that emphasized the human rights violations of the regime. But they also emphasized that the Taliban was not the only representative of Islam in the world, and that the actions of the Taliban did not represent all Muslims, something that you and your ilk sometimes like to ignore.
Find me a single liberal who disagrees with this observation. Go on.
Crap. Just because you keep saying it won’t make it true.
I’m glad you know enough to put that term in quotation marks, given how illusory it has proven to be.
Furthermore, while i believe that agitation against oppression and human rights violations anywhere is a good thing, the fact remains that the people of the United States—liberals and conservatives—tend to focus most on the things over which they have some direct control. If i tell my elected representative that i don’t like US foreign policy, at least there’s a slim chance that this viewpoint might actually make a difference in how policy is conducted, especially if you multiply my own voice by hundreds or thousands or millions of other Americans. But if i say the same thing to an Iranian mullah, what incentive does he have to pay any attention to me? I can’t, after all, vote the Iranian out of office.
If you think that liberals were unconcerned by Hussein’s depravities, you’re wrong. Many of them shared exactly the same outrage that you claim all for yourself. Again, just because you say that liberals ignored the issue doesn’t make it true. Also, as i’ve already observed in this thread, leftists and liberals were complaining about Saddam back when your guys were shaking hands with him and selling him weapons. Where were you then? Were you calling for his head back in the mid-1980s?
Again, you confuse two separate issues. It is perfectly possible to argue against human rights violations abroad, on the one hand, and still oppose the type of gung-ho interventionism that characterizes the current Administration, on the other. It’s also interesting that you seem to be such a booster of intervening in the human rights abuses of other countries, and yet seem to have no time for the one organization that can attempt such intervention with the imprimatur of the international community, and without being seen as a self-interested bully—the United Nations.
I seem to remember from previous threads that you’re a bit older than me, and that you’ve been around for a while.
Just out of interest, would you have supported US intervention to quell human rights abuses in, say, Batista’s Cuba, or Pinochet’s Chile, or Central America under dictators like Rios Montt in Guatemala or Somoza in Nicaragua? What about Burma/Myanmar under SLORC? Or Indonesia and East Timor under Suharto? What about South Africa and its Apartheid regime—was that a system of human rights abuses worthy of military action? How about the abuse of women in Saudi Arabia? Should this be the next country that the US invades? Or do the human rights abuses have to occur in non-allied countries for conservatives to be concerned about them?
And on preview i see that GIGObuster has made some similar points, with cites and everything.
Wow, I was going to respond to that stinker of a post left behind by Starving Artist, but it seems mhendo and GIGObuster have done an excellent job already. Starving Artist, your view of liberals is so skewed and so far removed from reality that I can’t even fathom what goes on in your head. Every single assertion you made is 100% dead wrong. It’s so far off base as to be insulting.
Rarely have I had a chance to see cognitive dissonance in such magnificent force and fury.
Definitely a liberal agent in disguise that is making us looks good. 
Starving Artist really needs to look his Nutrition chart:
Good, the perfect liberal patsy!
[sub]Thanks to WinAce for allowing direct link![/sub]
Or was it more like these leftist support demonstration:
eenie meenie
minee mo
catch a
Jew
by
the toe
etc.
Or perhaps it was the support from the liberal torchbearer Cindy “my son joined the army to protect America, not Israel” Sheehan.
I don’t know why, but it is a fact that many leftist groups have taken sides for the Palestinians and some to the extend of cheering on Palestinian terrorists and calling on the destruction of Israel.
Anyway old farting liberals on western universities have nothing to do with Iran and their brilliant president. And as it happens the president Mahmoud “fucked in the ass by a donkey” Ahmadinejad is just out with his highly vaunted financial stimulus package. “if we were permitted to hang two or three persons, the problems with the stock exchange would be solved for ever”. http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4208
http://users.rcn.com/rostmd/winace/pics/shifting_goalposts.jpg
http://users.rcn.com/rostmd/winace/pics/strawman.jpg
Exactly, back in Berkeley when I was working there, I used to bash the heads (in debates) of idiots that had solutions like that.
By the way, you are also need more paint for that broad brush of yours.
Rune:
Starving Artist was speaking in generalities about liberals as a whole and I responded to him with liberals as a whole in mind. No group can be expressely defined by those on its extreme fringes, and that’s exactly what I feel Starving Artist has been attempting to do. When I said he was “100% dead wrong” I meant that he was wrong about painting the liberal picture with such a broad brush.
Taking leftist extremists who call for the destruction of the Jewish state and ascribing their beliefs to liberals as a whole is disingenuous. That would similar to me taking extremists on the far right who advocate the destruction of Palestine and ascribing their beliefs to conservatives as a whole. It’s obvious there will be nutters in any significant group of people. If you’d like, I’m sure I could find a half dozen neo-nazi cites to paint the right wing as a whole with… but I’d rather not continue this moronic game.
And in case anyone miss it, **Rune ** collapsed into a Mega-Godwin with his second link.
duh… Go find some better pictures would you.
Supposedly this is a discussion about Iran. But since someone insisted on involving the liberal fringes, I at least thought it should be liberal fringes in general and not just the liberal fringe on this board. This insufferable incestuous SDMB obsession with what goes on and who said what on SDMB to the exclusion of the world outside always bored the fuck out of me. But sure, go back to examining your navel if you must.
It is not an obsession, it is a way to find that only an idiot would think is a good idea to equate Nazi images to liberals that are in favor of human rights, or you forgot what we were talking about lately?
Melon Farmer. :wally
Well it’s an old discussion already had several times before on SDMB. Not that it has much to do with Iran, but for some obscure reason liberal demonstrations against near any subject, if large enough, must always include the ritualistic denunciation if Israel – as well as all kinds of other lunatics. Some people think the moderate left is not doing enough to gainsay their fringe elements, even sometimes embracing them. That does not mean all liberals agree with them. But personally I’d never be caught dead in a demonstration with Nazi-swine who called for the murder of all Jews, and I can’t for the life of me understand why liberals tolerate these racist pigs in their midst saying the same things.
Here from Bush’s visit to Canada:
http://www.amalgamatedlampblack.com/images/protest/1000-1130/2004-11-30_1000-1130_013.JPG
http://www.amalgamatedlampblack.com/images/protest/1000-1130/2004-11-30_1000-1130_006.JPG
But it’s an old discussion.
