How come it seems like all the protests that go about are for liberal causes? I am aware of a march in Washington that coincided with the Million Mom March that protested gun control, but no coverage was given to it…So do conservative-issue protests exist, but the media doesn’t give them coverage [perhaps because it doesn’t further their agenda…but that’s someone else’s thread]? Or does simply being “conservative” preclude public protests? Is there a big group of Republicans planning to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention? Or maybe it’s kind of like what Dopers are saying about rude Christians, that there’re more liberals and thus more liberal people inclined to demonstrate?
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Conservatives have so much money that it is rude to be on television.
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They shoot poor Democrats.
Take your pick.
Actually, I’m pretty sure the same gang of protestors hanging out in Philly this week will be out in LA in a few, too.
The protesters sure are liberal, but sadly, liberal does not equal Democrat anymore.
(Full disclosure: I’m a registered Democrat but political liberal who thinks Clinton sold out the left wing by becoming a moderate and selling out his liberal background.)
WOW.
Ah, don’t you think there is something to be said for a Centrist?
Have you ever heard of abortion clinics? Certain Artworks on display? How bout movies?
There are many conservitive protests. They just tend to protest differnt things.
I’m still thinking about this liberal background thing…My most memorable conversation with him when he was Governor was about the Cubans Castro let out. I mentioned that I was not worried about the Cubans here at Camp Chaffe doing anything, but I was afraid that rednecks would shoot some. He responded “I told him (President Carter) someone is going to start poping off your Cubans.”
??? The Governor of Arkansas said this to the President of the US?
But I digress. He has always seemed to me to be a centrist in that he will accept workable solutions from any political side. He has often been criticized (sp?) for this but it seems to me to be his best characteristic.
I can understand that someone would protest abortion clinics although I think that what a woman does with her body is her own business, but how can you protest art? How can you protest a movie? Forgive me, but that is stupid. If art offends you, don’t look at it. The Republican convention and Bushfest offends me, so I turned off the TV.
And if you don’t like Dr. Laura don’t listen. Protesting something you don’t like, even art, isn’t stupid at all. If you don’t protest how will anyone know you don’t like it?
Marc
Yes, there are protests against art and movies. Besides, the Southern Baptists are currently boycotting Disney. There also have been letter campaigns against shows like Married with Children.
If you pay attention to Vermont news, you should see plenty of conservative demonstrations over Civil Unions.
The media do cover conservative protests, from what I have seen.
In school there was this guy who was MEGA liberal…I mean, I’ve never known someone so liberal. He asserted that it was your moral obligation to protest things you disagree with, such as abortion and the death penalty and guns and everything. Obligation?
I suppose it’s pointless for me to point out that not all of the protesters at the RNC are from the left, and indeed that globalization and certain other economic issues are things which draw heated criticisms from both sides of the political spectrum, albeit for very different reasons. Equally pointless, I suppose, is the observation that Arianna Huffington is spearheading a good portion of the protests–though you never hear about her positions, or indeed the positions of most of the protesters, other than the moronically anarchist–and that Huffington has undergone a rather remarkable conversion from nouveau conservatism to progressive populism, lending certain social perspectives an outsider’s legitimacy much in the manner of Tocqueville or Myrdal.
Maybe the set of concerns that have arisen in the wake of recent developments–international economic liberalization unfettered by human rights restrictions, growing concentration of media ownership, corporate control of party politics, increasingly prohibitive debt owed by developing countries, wage stagnation in the midst of an economic boom–are more likely to spur members of the ideological left to protest…or to spur concerned citizens to join the ideological left, especially given the apparent concurrent on these issues on the center and the center-right. I dunno; call it pointless speculation. They’re all non-ideological issues anyway, right, IzzyR? 
The “concurrent” in that second paragraph, of course, should read “concurrence.”
And as far as a moral obligation to protest, Skwerl…I guess it depends on how you define protest. I think it’s your duty to dissent, certainly, if the issues are important to you, and to work to make your voice heard. I just think there are certain ways which are more effective than others–picket lines and masks and marches and things usually just reinforce the public perception of your cause as radical or illegitimate.
What’s burned me about the coverage of Seattle, D.C., and now Philadelphia is that it focuses almost exclusively on the violence being done by the demonstrators and (less often) the police. The vast majority of the protestors are non-violent, representing a tradition of peaceful civil disobedience which can be traced through Paine, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. Their points are being utterly subsumed by the rare protester-police violence and the concomitant violations of civil liberties. It’s really sad.
Yes… but that’s a liberal attidute. (not that it’s wrong) If you find a fetus an unborn human being, wouldn’t you protest it too? And if you believed christ the holiest of anything that is holy, would not you also protest your tax dollars funding a mintature jesus in a jar of piss? (come to thing of it, wouldn’t you protest that on the shere principle of taste?)
I’m not saying that what they protest is right or wrong. I’m not getting into that debate, I’m merely saying that Republicans do protest as much as and Democrat.
(please forgive my spelling, at the moment I’m drunk beyond belief and am too lazy to spell check.)
Ted said:
Hell, I don’t believe that christ was the holiest of anything that was holy, and I’m mad as hell that my tax dollars went to go fund that.
Gadarene sadi:
Well, given that that’s what the threads about, I don’t think it’s pointless at all.
As for marching and protesting- why should they? Those are the tools of those outside the system trying to grab the attention of those inside the system. For example, those who oppose the WTO- the Repubs and Dems are mostly ignoring the anti-WTO agenda; therefore, those who are anti-WTO feel a need to stage marches and protests to get their voices heard.
In contrast, most serious Republican issues are well-represented by a Congress which has shown itself to be both conservative and willing to act upon its conservsatism. Ergo, most Republicans feel well-represented by their government, and don’t feel a need to protest the government. Instead, they’ll picket and boycott big companies and museums and movies because they don’t feel that they and their issues are being taken seriously by those in charge of those institutions.
IMHO art is supposed to make me think about something, be it pretty or ugly.
Anyway, I’d rather have my tax money go to NASA.
When P J O’Rourke was asked why you never saw Repubilcans demonstrating in the street, his reply was, “We have jobs”.
…I forget who said this, but it rings true for me:(paraphrase)
“I do not protest to change the world, I protest to keep the world from changing me.”
No and no.
If I believed Jesus were the holiest, I wouldn’t imagine that anyone were capable of changing that, no matter how big a bucket of piss they had. But I wouldn’t draw attention to the piece either, if I were sincere and not looking to rouse a rabble.
The sheer taste of the matter? No. If you going to have the government funding any art at all (not an easy issue IMHO) you surely wouldn’t want them to be the arbiters of taste.
picmr
It’s because if you’re a protester, by definition, you’re also a liberal.
My suggestion: people who are conservative/Republicans tend to be less involved with government than liberals/Democrats. At the ages at which many liberal students and the like are protesting this or that issue, a conservative is more likely to be starting his own business/career, volunteering for some church program, or the like.
Hey Gadarene, what makes you think I’m even reading this thread?