Since when is being anti-Bush a position peculiar to the left? With 63% of the country expressing disapproval of how the President’s is doing his job, it seems to me that being anti-Bush is an overwhelmingly mainstream and centrist position.
Oh, yeah, there’s sound logical reasons behind opposition to birth control and support for celibacy, and for opposing gay marriage. The feast of pure reason, indeed.
What were Bush’s approval ratings at this week? 35% or 37%? The Dope might have an even lower rating than that, but it’s hard to call “anti-Bush” being out of the mainstream lately, though this board was generally anti-Bush even when Bush was at his highest approval ratings. I guess what I’m saying is, anti-Bush is a mainstream position right now, and wouldn’t really be shifting the board to the left.
No, that they get piled on and shouted down until they leave, as I mentioned.
It’s not a question of thin-skinnedness or intellectual rigor. Extremist positions of any stripe tend to be difficult to defend intellectually, but the “refutation” of extreme Right positions on the SDMB is not entirely intellectual. It is also a matter of repeated Pitting, sniping, nitpicking and deliberate misrepresentation, demanding cites that the sky is blue, the automatic assumption of bad faith, and the usual process of half a dozen posters firing off questions at once and then attacking the poster if he fails to write a thesis addressing every point.
You can’t really bring off the same process on extreme left positions, because there are not enough right-wing posters who are willing to use those tactics. The conservatives (myself excepted) tend to be fair-minded folks like Bricker or Mr. Moto. There are exceptions, of course, but that is the general tendency, IMO.
Well, sure - but I would hardly confine this only to positions on the extreme Right.
Regards,
Shodan
Or “Diebold rigged the election”, even. 
Regards,
Shodan
Of course; extremism carries certainty and dogmatism with it almost by default, however, I would still say that (in my experience), the far right has more of a tendency for dichotomous argument, perhaps because of its association with religious fundamentalism - which also has a tendency toward that property.
I support both of those, but to believe that there are no possible logical reasons to oppose either is silly, and proof of the close-mindedness that xtime is talking about.
You can make all kinds of social policy arguments against both. A common argument against gay marriage is that marriage is a powerful and valuable public institution, and that watering down its definition weakens it and makes marriage less stable, with the result of more children out of wedlock, more crime, more poverty, yada yada. You can debate this and maybe even shoot it down, but it’s a reasonable argument.
The same goes for birth control. If it promotes more sex, then you get more HIV, a weakening of values, sex takes on less importance so it tends to bind partners together less, which leads to more divorce, etc. Again, this argument may be refutable, but many people believe it.
If you are arguing that the far Right is more prone to fallacies of false dilemma than other extremists, I wouldn’t argue against you because I don’t know. I would merely say that extremists in general tend to group others into “those that agree with me 100%’” and “heretics”. I am thinking here of the fissiparation of Marxism into Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc., for example.
Put more simply, extremists think everyone else is an extremist.
Regards,
Shodan
When I start saying that I feel Diebold rigged the election because the Great Sky Fairy told me it did, then you can go after me on that point.
You make some good points; perhaps it’s just that I’m more immediately familiar with the right than the left.
Well, since no facts have been introduced to support the claim that Diebold rigged the election, just harebrained speculation and logic defying intuitive leaps, what exactly is the difference between making a claim based upon religious faith and one based upon partisan hysteria? Frankly, I can’t see a jot of difference between the two.
The president of Diebold is the Great Sky Fairy? You should have told us!
Regards,
Shodan
It tilts left, worse than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
…and everyone knows friend Clothahump is clearly a middle-of-the-spectrum moderate!
Who has ever come on this board advocating a ban on birth control? But it IS against the teaching of the Catholic Church (even if it’s largely ignored in the US), so one might as well say that Jews who keep Kosher can’t defend their behavior. In fact, no religious practices stand up to logical scrutiny. But banning birth control is a very, very fring idea. That simply is not representative of typical social conservative ideas.
By celibacy, I assume you mean abstinance for minors. No, there are no good arguments to defend the idea that minors should not engage in sex. :rolleyes:
Gay marriage? Again, it’s a religious thing. Most Americans oppose it, as do the vast majority of US Congressmen/women. One needn’t be a social conservative to oppose SSM, unless you want to call Kerry, Clinton, and Kennedy social conservatives.
I thought the Leaning Tower of Pisa tilted south… 
I think it tilts away from wherever you happen to view yourself. Certainly there is now a bumper crop of Bush-bashers, but that’s to be expected when he is the biggest game in town. I wasn’t here when Clinton was president, but presumably the anti-Clintonites were active then. The political story is always the incumbent, doubly so when said incumbent starts a war.
I agree with John Mace the the libertarian philosophy is grossly overrepresented here, I’d say by at least a power of ten. Other than that, I see a cadre of righties and lefties and a few moderates.
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about abstinance-only sex ed.
IMHO this board is Leftist even by British, if not European, standards. However, the Leftists are far more cohesive than those of the Right, so that makes the board seem even more skewed to the Left. It further seems to me that those on the Left are less respectful of the right (as opposed to Right) of others to hold positions with which the Left disagree. Just look at the denigration of Fox in the U.S., or the Daily Mail in the U.K. Where IMHO the board is neutral is on the Statist / Libertarian axis, with a few well-spoken outriders (hi, Liberal).
Jews aren’t trying to use government to force me to keep Kosher nor does them keeping Kosher affect me. As far as I am concerned they need not defend their behavior to me.