Aren’t you perilously close to proving the bias of the board by offering the bias of the board as evidence?
If not obvious, that last post was directed towards Bricker
Now you can proudly hold your head high and scream from the mountaintops: "I am against child prostitution!!! . . .
[sub]They should be giving it away for free[/sub]
Some candy, at most.
Enjoy,
Steven
True enough. But it isn’t going to happen.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh my, another conservative martyr to the cause. Do we have to add another image to The Stations Of The NeoCon?
Are you seriously contending that the bias of this board is not clearly evident?
I am greatly encouraged by your ability to compromise. This gives me hope that someday, this board will become a haven for both the conservatives and the liberals. For both the religious and the atheist. For both the anti-child prostitution and the only-a-little-candy’s-worth-it people.
As will I
[RIGHT]Only the most foolish dogs who find their bedding infested with fleas stay put and scratch their skin raw. The wiser & more reasonable ones get up and move on to less annoying environs.
In honor of manhattan, I encourage all those people who will miss him – whether they always found themselves in accordance with his views or not – to ‘hang out the flag’ in message board format by:
Formatting all their posts for the next month to: Align Right[/RIGHT]
The right has not been for a long time.
Don’t forget the “I Support Manhattan” magnetic ribbon for your car.
It occurs to me that this little hijack, as amusing as it is for those who have the background to understand it, may be a bit skeevy for the casual viewer. I would not like to hijack your thread, which I think has some potential, so I’d like to apologize to anyone who read my contributions with confusion and/or revulsion. I assure you there is a long story which makes all the difference.
I’ll bow out now with an on-topic note. Manny I wish you the best. For what it’s worth, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong about many of the issues we disagreed about.
Enjoy,
Steven
The “bias of the board” is entirely dependent upon a subjective assignation of the “center”. In your case, you seem to hold that the “center” is just to the left of Calvin Coolidge.
Now, if you were to maintain that the theofacist god-goons are a legitimate segment of the “right”, their absence on these boards might be construed as reflecting a bias, their views are not, by and large, reflected. I will not pretend that I respect their arguments as worthy of debate. Nor will I pretend that their absence is a result of some intellectual bias, the Board is equally disdainful of flat-earthers, and for much the same reason.
The next time you point out anything of the sort would be the first time.
“So many people”? Who? Cite? Or another invented “fact” of the type this board is devoted to fighting?
If you have a good example to offer, even one, then feel free. But if you’d rather spend your time on childish invective instead, that makes *you * no different from manhattan or Shodan. I’ve asked them, others of your herein-demonstrated level of maturity, to put up or shut up, and I have no problem asking you. It would be gratifying to see anybody do so, but I never expect it.
Your OP was useless, even destructive, to this board and your followup so far has been even more so. No go ask your mommy for a bottle.
Given the laguage of the post by Ed Zotti, though it’s not stated explicity, my read is that Manny has decided to get the fuck out of Dodge. When he wrote “the board [isn’t] a comfortable place for politically conservative posters” (italics mine), I didn’t take it to mean the Science Advisory Board, but the SDMB in general. Thanking him for not only his contributions as a mod and to the SDSAB, but as a poster in general, and wrapping up with “wish him all the best” seems an awful lot like a goodbye to Manny’s presence in any capacity. Is this an ufair interpretation of the post?
Anyhow, I still think the “politically conservative” canard is a straw man born of an apparently prodigious persecution complex. As correctly stated in many posts above, about the only place a guy like Manny out to feel out of step is in a Bush Bashing thread. Otherwise, the SDMB affords a level of intelligent debate virtually absent in the rest of American society in any forum. I concur that for folks like Manny, getting your way apparently isn’t enough. You have to get your way, and have the people you shit on kiss your ass while you’re doing it.
Oh, please, don’t do this. The only thing more difficult to read would be typing backwards or in sanskrit. Align-right text in English has excrutiatingly limited uses and MB postings are not one of them.
I hope our conservative posters stick around (I’d like more, too, assuming they can debate well). Although when (;)) the Dems have a majority again there will be much more to bitch about on the conservative side and I think their numbers will flower somewhat.
How’s about we align for center and reasonableness? Y’know, there was a time on this board when talking was rated above melodrama and Being Correct. I’ll admit I’ve had my moments of the latter in the past, but I treasured this board for the former. Now it’s becoming harder and harder to have a thread without someone accusing someone else of having The Wrong/Evil Political Affiliation as though that actually scored some kind of point in the debate.
What ever happened to debating the issues rather than the person?
Whatever happened to building positions from the evidence rather than evidence from the position?
Ignorance is not fought by personal insults and useless demagoguery
Ignorance is fought by patience and thoughtfulness
Let’s listen and teach rather than plug up our ears and shout into our own hot air
Let’s fight for some common ground.
An example of what? Liberal posters who are sick of you? Well, I’m pretty liberal, and I think you’re a flaming asshole. Is that sufficient?
Here’s what I posted in LJ this morning:
*Admittedly, able conservative voices are way, way underrepresented in the debate fora on the SDMB. I blame that largely on two things: (1) the redefinition of American conservatism as G.W. Bushism, which is much more difficult to defend than the conservatism of five short years ago; and (2) pay-to-post, which cuts off the supply of new blood for all points in the spectrum. I strongly feel healthy debate depends on regular infusions of new voices, otherwise it’s just the same old people going at each other over the same old stuff, and getting very tired of one another. But it makes it harder in particular for the relative handful of posters holding up the minority POV, which is in this case the conservative POV.
But if on top of all of that, a particular minority voice is also one of the most belligerent and antagonistic voices on the board, of course the board won’t be a comfortable place for him. That he’s of the minority persuasion will amplify the hostility that redounds back at him, but it will not be the reason for the hostility.
No one can stop manny from scapegoating like this, but scapegoating it is. *
However (thanks to menocchio) I realized that there was another fundamental fact skewing the board’s politics left, at least from an American POV:
*because such a large chunk of American conservatism is theocratic conservatism, what you have left when you filter out the theocrats (via Cecil’s skeptical outlook) is a group that’s skewed left.
Suppose America’s got 45% Republicans or GOP-leaners, 45% Dems and Dem-leaners, and 10% in the middle, and the GOP 45% is 30% theocrats, and 15% other conservative types. What you have left after filtering out the theocrats is the remaining 70%: 45% Dems and Dem-leaners, 15% GOP and GOP-leaners, and 10% in the middle. *
That’s about all I have to say, for the time being.
Well these options are not mutually exclusive…so I will go for maybe.