I wish I was that clever, alas I am not. I think it might be Olbermann but I’m not positive.
Googling, I see it attributed to Keith Olbermann.
True, because social conservatism actually exists. Fiscal conservatives exist in name only; give them power, and the so-called fiscal conservatives spend like crazy - on themselves, and their friends.
Well, he’s a little young to be responsible for slavery. As for the rest; why should anyone care? Willfully blind people who starve you to death for your own good are indistinguishable from the ones who do it for fun.
The problem with that argument is that the conservative side really is that bad. The history of conservatism really is a history of them fighting against everything good. IMHO, a major problem of the modern American left is an unwillingness to condemn even the most egregiously awful behavior of their opposite numbers; instead they bend over backwards trying to pretend that sociopaths, fanatics and sadists are reasonable people who can be compromised with. With the inevitable consequence that the sociopaths, fanatics and sadists trample all over them.
Well, as a non-Christian, I would have assumed the answer to the question ‘which teachings of Christ do Christians respect’, is ‘all of them’.
But, now that you’ve compelled me to examine it, I kinda like the idea of a religion where you can pick and choose which tenets you’ll adhere to. Very forward thinking. Do you know if there are any openings?
I would imagine that’s a fair assumption. The problem is that those teachings are not necessarily agreed upon by all Christians or indeed all persons. The very same line in the Bible can and is taken by some to mean one idea, and others another. I am sure that Bricker, the Pope, and the Phelpses would all happily say “I respect the teachings of Christ (or, at least, try to)”, but their interpretations of what those teachings actually are are likely to be quite different. And, likewise, they’re going to be different to what you or I would consider to be “Christian” behaviours.
To be clear, the point isn’t that Bricker et al all take exactly the same ideas from the Bible or whatever source, and simply choose which ones they like; Bricker elects to follows tenets 1 and 2, the Pope chooses 3 and 4, whereas you see 1-4 and castigate their picking and choosing. Everyone disagrees on what those tenets are. So it’s unreasonable to hold Bricker to your standards as a Christian.
Yes, as it happens. I declare that the tenets of “being human” are agreeing with Revenant. Since you don’t agree with me, yet declare yourself a human (I assume), you’re caught in a contradiction.
Or perhaps my interpretation of that tenet is different from yours - and you should not be judged by my standard, but by your own.
Oh, settle down, Francis.
There’s a difference between “wrong” and “evil”. **Bricker **is wrong, but he’s demonstrated none of the attributes you’ve described, and he’s actually quite liked 'round these parts.
He himself has derided the concept of picking and choosing which of Christ’s teachings to follow without any actual discomfort, while still professing to be Christian (there’s a recent post somewhere in GD, not looking right now). Surely that makes him fair game when he does exactly that.
Well, that’s not true. I have the power to spend the treasuries of two clubs and I am still extremely conservative about that money - even more than I am about my own. What you say may be true about fiscal conservatives who are in politics, but it isn’t true about all the others.
Do you really believe that? The idea that an approximate one half of this country fights against everything good? That there is nothing good about having a conservative outlook?
It most certainly would, if he was. But how do we know that what is doing* is* picking and choosing, and not simply following those tenets he believes do exist to the extent that he believes they should be put into practice?
It’s basically the difference between “I see this tenet, but I choose not to follow it” and “I disagree that this tenet says what you say it does”. The key is consistency between Bricker’s ideals, not between Bricker’s ideals and our interpretations of Christian ideals. Just because you or I might say, “That behaviour is unChristian in nature” doesn’t mean that **Bricker **sees things exactly the same way we do and just chooses to ignore it, no more than Bricker believing his ideals to be in accordance with Christian ideals means that we are picking and choosing what we think Christians follow in order to attack him.
(Diogenes had said that liberals are in favor of self reliance).
First of all, in agreement with many others, I do not think that Bricker is evil, or a white supremacist, or any of various idiotic and hyperbolic claims a SMALL number of very vocal posters have made.
But I do need to take issue with this disingenuous question. Let’s imagine the great scale of possible societies, as measured by their love of self reliance. On one extreme, you have a society in which every single person is provided with every possible need or want no matter what they do, and none of their decisions have any impact whatsoever. On the other extreme is some kind of super-extreme capitalism where if you can’t pay your rent some month you’re immediately evicted and all of your clothes are seized to pay the back rent, and then you can’t get a job because you don’t have any clothes, and you starve to death on the street, and no governmental organization cares at all.
I would not want to live in either society.
Now, you could probably make a convincing argument that the society that well-meaning thoughtful non-extreme liberals would most prefer is closer to the first extreme than the society that well-meaning thoughtful non-extreme conservatives envision. But saying that liberals don’t care about self reliance because they’re slightly further down a scale towards an extreme is like saying that conservatives hate the poor, or are racists, or want total control over women’s bodies, or any number of other positions you can get by taking things to extremes.
I think part of the reason you’re getting so much vitriol lately, Bricker, is that you keep being perceived as defending people who are on your side of the issue, but who, as far as we can tell from outside observation, really have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about or why they hold the position they have. The narrative on the left right now is that the masses on the right say what they say, and stake out the position they stake out, because Fox tells them to. I’m 100% sure that you do not get your opinions this way, and I’m also absolutely certain that this narrative is far from completely accurate; but I can’t shake the belief that there is a disturbing amount of truth to it, and that it’s something new in American society and politics.
This is scary as hell, and generates a lot of rage and worry and frustration, and you get caught in the cone of anger.
Yep. Just wait until November for another trampling. And then a couple years and change for an even bigger trampling. You idiots got your shot and nobody likes the only big piece of legislation you can’t quite seem to pass. Good job, guys. Hope you enjoy your trampling.
Not that I’m aware of. As I said, that’s pretty much the point; people join the conservative side of thing because they are the sort of people who wish to harm, oppress or exploit others.
Not that it matters much if there is “something good” about conservatives; there probably is somewhere, but you don’t need to be pure evil to be really, really bad. Maybe there’s some good thing somewhere that conservatives have supported; that doesn’t begin to make up the fact that they’ve been on the wrong side so consistently; from slavery to segregation to forbidding women the vote to trying to keep/make abortion illegal.
As somebody once said, “if the Nazis had an enlightened forestry policy, does that make up for everything else?”; what matters is the whole of the groups behavior. I see this a lot these days; people trying to defend the Right or religions with an argument that boils down to, “unless you show that they are pure evil, you shouldn’t criticize them!”
Der Trihs, if I may assume for one second that you are willing to listen to reason, I’d like to point out that you are still lumping in all kinds of people with different views and calling them all “conservatives.”
I, for example, would have opposed slavery, supported women’s suffrage, and worked to end segregation, and I’m a fiscal conservative.
how much more trite and nugatory can you get?
conservativism has extended far beyond the past 100 years of US politics. and it’s global historical track record ain’t so swell.
For example?
Oh, I don’t know…Inquisitions, Tsars, French Revolutions.
Didn’t expect that…
No one expects the Tsars!
Me neither luci. Seems friend RW is employing the “everyone I don’t like” definition of conservative.
I think the medieval church is fair game as conservative:
Religious dogma as law
Prayer in school
Militarily hawkish (crusades)
Against science
Pro torture
Would you care to substantively respond and make the case that Alexander III and Nicholas II were not “conservative” ?