That’s cool, but would you mind including in your ratios all the frothing, not-looking-at-facts, shortsighted Libertarians? I’m just curious how you sort them out; I know you’re not including them automatically in the “objective thinker” category.
Daniel
Well, there’s only one of those, isn’t there? 
Not at all. In my experience, libertarians are almost as common as social progressives over in Great Debates. And far from all of them are objective clear-eyed thinkers.
Daniel
Welcome to the SDMB. 
Yes, they would. You are conservative, and refuse to roll over. They hate that.
Yes, you will get this a lot. It saves them the trouble of actually refuting what you say if they simply declare victory and have two or three of their fellows agree.
Some want to debate. Some simply want a circle-jerk, where everyone agrees with whoever is the most determinedly anti-Bush. If anyone refuses to play along, they try to start a pile-on.
I am sure some conservatives would like to do the same, but as you mention, there aren’t many of us here. And most of the conservative jerks have been driven away by the liberal jerks, using largely the tactics described above.
What’s wrong with it? He’s not liberal. Or, more accurately, he is not a Bush-basher. If he agrees not to vote for or support Bush, everything he does would become perfectly acceptable.
It is simply that conservatives on the SDMB have to accept a higher level of sniping, ad hominems, dishonest argumentation, and nitpicking, than do Bush-bashers. That’s just how it is.
General flow is to bait you until you respond in kind. Then they call for your banning. There are thoughtful and interesting liberals here, but there is also the rest of them. I doubt that is going to change.
Regards,
Shodan
Are you sure you want to be defending Milum here? There are intelligent conservatives on this board–yourself, Sam Stone, and even Starving Artist, I’d say. I would NOT include Milum in this number: he’s gotta be one of the stupidest posters I have ever seen around these parts, and I’m including the Grapist in that assessment.
Daniel
Starving_Artist, kindly point out the post where I called for your banning. I you cannot, please withdraw your claim that I have done so.
Also, please stop trying to claim that any objection I may have to your technique of spamming the board with Republican cheerleading is rooted in partisanship. As anyone who has been around here awhile can tell you, I object just as strongly to the spammish offerings of people like Reeder.
BTW, thanks for the name check. It’s nice to get a little appreciation now and then.
Ah, the familiar refrains of the “maligned conservative” song. It’s been nearly a week since I’ve heard it. It never does get tiresome. Did you know when it was released as a single, the flip side was “Ouch! Not so hard!”
It’s unfortunate that so often the “maligned conservative” is confounded with “the incredibly stupid line of reasoning,” because then it becomes so much harder to clearly see all the great and completely unfair maligning that we can achieve.
Of course, it becomes even more difficult to discern the more that there are conservatives maligning the poor conservatives here. What a conundrum. Hopefully someone will have an epiphany that resolves this paradox.
This board needs to continue to have people like Brutus, Sam Stone, Shodan, and Starving Artist on board. More often than not, I’m in disagreement with them, but having lucid conservatives who outline and explain their perspectives and engage with us in here gives me a better understanding of the thinking of those who do not provide those explanations. If the cost of making them feel that they can exist here, and participate on equal and fair terms in GD and Pit with folks who disagree with them and outnumber them, is to give a little extra leeway to folks like Milum and december and SallyStar (note the continuum), I’m in favor of that.
Milum, if you’re reading this: you’ll sway more people (not so much your immediate adversaries in any given politicized discussion, but the other folks reading the thread) if you put a bit more into showing you understand the perspectives of the people you’re going up against, can say it back to them in terms they would agree reflects their thinking, rather than just seeking the sarcastic putdown or the parody. That’s a lot more productive than just trying to piss off liberals and other people who don’t agree with you — not that I’m claiming that that’s your conscious intent, which would make the T word applicable, but even if it’s not and simply tends to be the general effect.
No, the problem is that **Milum ** doesn’t agree to anything - being rational, listening to the opposing argument, posting coherently, presenting actual debates in GD instead of schlock, etc.
I have to agree with you on this, based simply off of sheer numbers. The dog-pilee fares little chance of survival. I greatly admire the conservative dopers who are able to present well-constructed arguments, respond to valid points that they’ve obviously thought about, and do so versus a large opposing contingent. However, I can’t think of a single instance where any of those posters have come running to Milum’s defense. I’d guess it’s because **Milum ** insists on holding an indefensible position.
I was thinking about it, and I should make clear that there are conservatives here who do post reasonable and well-thought out ideas. I don’t think that they are set upon at all. I think that the foolish ones end up like chum in the water.
But props to pervert, for example, and his contributions to the thread entitled “Convince me to vote for Kerry” IIRC. He struck me as honestly interested in discussing issues and political positions, and it seemed to me to be a perfectly fine discussion.
Contrast that with “Hey gang! What do you think of the latest beheading!” The rest went on to accuse liberals of not caring that an American was beheaded, or at least not caring enough. What a super debate. Or, paraphrasing: “Bill Clinton’s book was poorly reviewed. Does this mean that liberals will now recognize what a bad guy he was? I won’t even read the book it is so boring!” What an intelligent discussion.
I still don’t know what’s so bad about “troll”. 
I mean, ouch. Gol dang, he called me a troll. I guess I’ll go home and blow my own brains out now, rather than face life wearing the scarlet T. Or maybe the ADL can help me with this vicious hate speech. Yeah! Such caustic, scabrous epithet’s have no place in public discourse! Troll indeed! Trolls are people too! We have rights, and feelings, and should be afforded common human dignity. We shall overcome…
Ayyyy-men! Ayyyyyy-men! Thank gawd almighty, we trolls are free at last!
I am, and have.
Again, a mischaracterization. What went on was the question of why outrage that would have tended to support the anti-terrorist war proponents wasn’t being expressed, given that so much outrage was expressed over the relatively minor (by comparison) occurrances that happened regarding the Iraqi prisoners. It was noted by some that this made the liberal contingent *appear *not to care, but it was never a serious contention of any conservative that I can recall.
Starving Artist, you seem like a smart guy and I’m going to level with you. I don’t want to see Milum banned. I love Milum. He is in many ways my favorite poster on the entire board. His recent warning have made me very nervous, and if he were actually banned I would be deeply depressed. However, you seem prepared to do the Marvel team up with him, so I feel compelled to warn you, and this has nothing to do with his politics. There are many intelligent and articulate conservative posters on the SDMB, like Sam Stone, Dewey Cheatum Undhowe, Brutus, Airman Doors, and so on, but Milum is not one of them.
Milum first came to my attention in a thread where he smugly lectured me on constitutional standing when I was a newly graduated lawyer working as a federal law clerk. This is roughly the equivalent of lecturing a whore on fellatio. Not only that, he was 100% demonstrably wrong. Since then he has lectured me and the other lawyers on the board, conservative and liberal alike, on many issues of law, including the Establisment Clause, Bills of Attainder, Ex Post Facto Laws, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and on and on and on, hilariously wrong every time. He has cited the freaking preamble to the Constitution as legal authority. He has smarmily lectured me on the constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness found in the freaking Declaration of Independence. Most people who were corrected by a gaggle of unanimous lawyers would knock it off, but Milum keeps at it like a champ, and I can say this much for him: he appears to know how to spell the word “law.” After that it goes sharply downhill. It’s not just the lawyers, either: he incorrectly corrects linguists on linguistics, Qadgop the Mercotan on medicine, ect. ad nasueum, with the same consdescending tone. He wisely stays out of the pit now because he knows if he does that here he’ll get his ass handed to him.
When confronted with evidence that he is unqusetionably full of shit, he will change the subject, tell a bizzare anecdote, or make an even more outrageously incorrect statement replete with multicolors and smileys. I hope they never, ever ban him. Most people youcan count on to be pretty rational, but Jesus Christ, you can never tell what that guy is going to say. It’s like trying to have an intelligent conversation at a dinner party while a crazed syphallitic monkey bounces screaming off the walls flinging shit all over everything. Sure, it’s annoying, but man, is it ever interesting!
Suffering a guilty conscience, are you? If you will go back and read my post you will see I made referrence to the (possible) banning sentiments as follows: “And by pretty much equating me with Milum, and since this is a thread in which an attempt is being made to ban Milum, I can only assume they would like to see me banned as well.” Note that I did not refer to you specifically anywhere.
Your accusation of smammish behavior notwithstanding, your point is noted.
You’re kidding, right?
Thank you for the compliment, and for your well-reasoned post. Your feelings about him and the possibilty of his being banned are exactly the same as mine when I first began to become aware of **Milum **a few days ago. Your very informative second paragraph notwithstanding, he is often on the same side of an issue (the war on terror, liberal spin, the perception of hypocrisy, etc.) that I am. I have found some of his postings to be hilarious, and whether or not he engages with people whose training makes them an expert in areas where he’s just winging it, I don’t think this type of behavior should qualify him to be expelled. These are the factors that cause me to team up with him in some threads and to defend him here. If someone were to challenge me in an area where I had professional training and contest points that were clearly incontestable, I would would be annoyed in the same way as you. But also like you, I wouldn’t feel compelled to call for his banning.
Well, you know what they say: “Misery loves company.” And there is always the temptation to join forces with someone who happens to be in agreement with you in a particular thread and who is being set upon by everyone else.
Of course, there are times when he does this when, in my opinion, he is right on. In these instances of course, I think he’s just this side of Jerry Seinfeld.
And the fact that this is so speaks very well of you.
I agree completely.
Nope. But how about a little exposition? Did I accuse you or not? Or were you in error in calling for my withdrawal of a statement I did not make?
Yes, you accused me of having a guilty conscience. Over what, I have no idea. No, I don’t have a guilty conscience. Yes, I believe you tried to imply that I was calling for your (and perhaps Milum’s) banning, for no other reason than you don’t like what I have to say to you, and leaving yourself weasel room should anyone call you on it.
Anyway, you really shouldn’t be wasting so much of your valuable advertising space replying to anything I might have to say. As you said, I’m “impotent and ineffective”, and thus not worth bothering with. In return, I will cease wasting yours, for now at least.
Well, if you continue to join milum in presenting this false view of the situation, you may continue to receive hostile reactions. In addition to the thousands of people who have been detained for up to 10 months or more, most of whom simply disappeared without any notification to their families that they had been taken, (much in the way that might have disappeared from their families in the days of Hussein)–and of whom the U.S. government concedes that 70% or more were innocent of any crimes, there are the hundreds who have been tortured and humiliated, and 7 - 30 Iraqis who were murdered in U.S. custody. The despicable murder of a single individual by a lawless group does not make seven (at least) murders, hundreds of tortures, and thousands of detentions by a formal government agency “minor (by comparison).”