So, you support a more restrictive standard for free speech than that laid out by the first amendment? Because free speech rights aren’t dependent on being a citizen of this country.
If corporations don’t have first amendment rights, does that mean the government can tell Fox News what they are and are not allowed to broadcast? Also, I’m not sure how you’re defining “foreign parties.” If a group in the UK tries to publish a book in the US, can the government censor it, because they’re a “foreign group?” How many Americans have to join a “foreign group” before free speech protections start applying? Also, you said you didn’t want “anti-Semitic groups with ties to terrorists” to have free speech, but I don’t see “anti-Semitic” or “tied to terrorists” in the list of groups or situations where you think free speech doesn’t apply. Would it be legal, in your view, for the government to put limits on what the KKK is allowed to say?
Not the first time you’ve accused me of lying… hopefully it will be the last. Hopefully, like the last several times you did so, you’ll back off and apologize, presumably recognizing that we have fundamentally different assumptions about the world and politics that lead to our profoundly different world views.
If you don’t believe that I’m honestly trying to explain my beliefs, then there’s no point at all to any sort of discussion. I have indeed heard “bipartisan” used, many times, to indicate a bill that had support from some members of both parties. Nowadays, in our highly partisan environment, many or even most bills only get support from one party, so it is notable when a bill gets some votes from each side.
Here’s a relatively brief summary: In Dec 2018, the Republican-controlled Senate unanimously (zero opposition from either party!) passed an appropriations bill without wall funding. That’s a fully bipartisan (by your definition, no less!) funding bill, with over a billion for border security, passed without opposition from any Republican or Democrat in the Senate.
So there’s the first bipartisan funding bill. This was during the lame-duck House session, controlled by the Republicans until the new year… and the Republican-controlled House did nothing with that bill – they didn’t even allow a vote. They did nothing because Trump decided, at the last minute, that this bill needed wall funding, because Trump was being criticized by Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing entertainers. The House flailed and put together a last-minute bill with wall-funding, but the Republican-controlled Senate didn’t have enough support for it, and everyone went home for Christmas.
So the unanimous Senate funding bill, totally bipartisan, which would almost certainly have passed in the House had they allowed a vote, stalled, due to Trump having a media-induced tantrum.
In January, the Democrats took control of the House. They immediately voted on the unanimously-supported bipartisan Senate bill and passed it. So it’s a fact that the House voted on a bill that had previously had enormous bipartisan support by your own definition – no opposition from any Senate Republican or Democrat.
But because it was a new session, that bill had to go back to the Senate. And McConnell did nothing with it, even though the Senate had previously passed it unanimously. So it’s a fact that Democrats in Congress voted on a bipartisan funding bill, and it’s a fact that Republicans in the Senate blocked it.
These are facts. This is the real, accurate, factual history of the government shutdown at the beginning of this year.
If you still disagree, which of the assertions in the above paragraphs are you unclear on? It’s laid out pretty clearly in that Wikipedia article, among other places.
I don’t believe your understanding of the facts of the most recent government shutdown is accurate. Hopefully the above summary and link can help rectify that. Please feel free to ask questions about what you still aren’t clear about – I’d be happy to continue to help, as I’m sure others would as well.
The wall is not border security, it’s a pointless symbol of hatred.
“Bipartisan” can also mean the bill was designed to have, and would have had, strong support from wide swaths of both parties, if the rank and file membership of one weren’t being intimidated and threatened by its leaders if they strayed from reflexive oppositionism.
“Well, yes. Free expression is free expression. Individual anti-Semites have just as much a constitutional right to boycott Israeli products as individual racists have a constitutional right to refuse to patronize black-owned businesses. The fact that the Constitution protects such conduct doesn’t render it any less repugnant, and lest you doubt the underlying intention of Omar’s actions, she made it very clear in an interview with Al-Monitor that the resolution was an “opportunity for us to explain why it is we support a nonviolent movement, which is the BDS movement…”
“
In 2014 I co-authored a letter to the Westin Bonaventure hotel informing it that it would almost certainly be in violation of California nondiscrimination law if it went ahead with plans to host the American Studies Association’s annual meeting. The ASA had declared that it “endorses and will honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions,” which meant that it intended to bar Israeli “institutions and their representatives,” which include all individual Israeli academics “serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions (such as deans, rectors, presidents, etc.), or of the Israeli government,” from participating in the conference.
This declaration flatly violated California civil-rights statutes, which prohibit “business establishments” from discriminating against or boycotting any person on the basis of, among other things, their race, religion, or national origin. Under pressure, the ASA reversed course and declared that Israeli academics could attend its meeting.”
Sorry, who’s “they” here? I asked several questions, and I’m not sure which one you’re answering. Also, whichever one you are answering, do you want to respond to the other questions I asked?
Sorry again, I thought we were talking about freedom of speech, not freedom of association? Maybe we can go back to your comments about free speech before we jump subjects?
But they’re not calling for a boycott of Jews. They’re calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions. Israel ≠ Jewish. You can dislike Israeli policies and having nothing against Jewish people. Do you think if there is American Jewish business, “Kosher Foods” for a made up example, do you think they’d be boycotted?
No. We are getting far afield. The whole reason for this digression is Ilhan Omar being a radical anti semite, and a part of the Democratic Party which is unwilling to call her to task for her speech and behavior, being one example of the hypocrisy of this thread, which in juvenile fashion seems to attribute all bigotry to Republicans, indeed, saying they are founded on bigotry.
It’s an exercise in cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias I find astounding.
If you oppose people deciding what goes into their own body, you oppose bodily autonomy. The reason you have for opposing bodily autonomy is irrelevant when the question is whether you oppose it or not. This is what I mean about redefining words.
It’s interesting to me how real-world examples of conservative values in action get criticized as ‘pretty extreme’ when they’re brought up in a discussion. If the results of your laws are too disturbing for you to face, then maybe you should oppose those laws.
It isn’t. It’s a collection of cells with no developed central nervous system. It has no thoughts and can’t live without a host body. A fetus is not a human being. Period. Full stop. Pretending that it is to justify an attack on women’s bodily autonomy doesn’t change reality.
It’s the law in Alabama currently.
The whole scenario was law in the United States in many places until Roe vs Wade and is threatening to become law again with the latest round of conservative attacks on bodily autonomy. Pretending that it’s not a ‘mainstream conservative value’ when it’s the law that conservatives are actively trying to implement in this country is ignoring reality.
In other countries where people with similar beliefs are allows to pass laws against bodily autonomy, this sort of thing happens:
I am looking at the laws that conservatives are pushing for. You’re trying to say that the real world effects of the laws are too extreme to consider, and I disagree with the idea that we should ignore the terrible effects of laws just because those effects are terrible. Children forced to carry their rapist’s babies is mainstream conservative values in action.
I don’t Think you understood the part you quoted. You can’t Discriminate against people based on their race religion or National origins. This boycott is not just against products, but representatives of Israel and its institutions.
Granted. And I think the courts made the correct decision. I also don’t see how that makes them anti-semities. They’re not protesting Jews, they’re protesting Israel. One does not equal the other.
Scylla, did the sequence of events I described in post 583, in which the Democratic House passed a unanimous bipartisan Senate funding bill with border security, which Republicans then refused to act on, surprise you in any way? Or are you not at all interested in the factual sequence of events that we were in dispute over?
Oh. I thought we are being reasonable. I am generally in favor of body autonomy, but not an absolutist. By your definition, I oppose it. Ok.
Ok.
I just recently did a long thread on this. I am reluctantly pro-choice, but what you are attempting to argue by assertion is debatable.
Ok. They are one of two states that did not put a law on the books revoking parental rights for rapists who father a child as a result of rape. I hope they change that. But no, this is certainly not a mainstream conservative value.
I would not suggest that attempting to blow up a detention facility filled with immigrants is a mainstream liberal position. But it happened. Antifa calls that terrorist a martyr. The “squad” were all individually asked to denounce it, and none of them did.
How about I search for the worst things done by Democrats in association with the Democratic Party, or the worst consequences to come out of Democratic policy and I call that deliberate and representative of the party as a whole?
Do you think that would be wrong? Do you think I would be getting an accurate picture? Do you think it would be juvenile and demeaning and reflect poorly on me?
Okay. Can you at least explain what part of my post that was meant to be a response to? Because you seemed to be responding to some other person entirely.
Sure. I mean, other than the part where she didn’t actually say anything anti-Semitic, she got called to task for it by her party anyway, and not one single person in this thread has claimed that only Republicans are racist, I don’t see a single thing here to disagree with.
Yeah, after watching you attack Ilhan Omar while letting Trump skate on objectively far more racist rhetoric, repeated far more often, I think we’re all feeling a bit astounded.
I did not bother to examine it. Things like the “bipartisan” issue take up too much time, and are too frustrating. I did consider it disingenuous to the extent that I stopped considering what you posted next.
Then you missed the fact that the Democratic House passed a funding bill that had been passed on a unanimous bipartisan basis by the Senate. Doesn’t a unanimous vote in the Senate qualify as bipartisan?
And as a friendly aside, maybe you take this stuff much too personally. We’re just having a conversation here. Isn’t it possible that our disagreement is an honest one?
Also, even if we exclude the rather big violation of the principle of bodily autonomy contained in the anti-choice movement, can we at least concede that rape is a violation of bodily autonomy? If not, we’re getting to the point of absurdity. If we are, then even ignoring Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief’s comments, we have to look at these examples of respect for bodily autonomy:
“Well, bad weather is like rape: if it’s inevitable, you might as well relax and enjoy it.” — Clayton Williams, GOP Gubernatorial Candidate, March 24, 1990
“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” -Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock,
"If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”
-Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin
“What Todd Akin is talking about is when you’ve got a real, genuine rape. A case of forcible rape, a case of assault, where a woman has been violated against her will through the use of physical force where it is physically traumatic for her, under those circumstances, the woman’s body — because of the trauma that has been inflicted on her — it may interfere with the normal function processes of her body that lead to conception and pregnancy.” -American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, agreeing with the comment above and clearly stating that rape based on threats or through absuse of power or family position is not ‘legitimate rape’.
“When you enter into a marriage, you enter into a contract for all sorts of different things with your spouse. Why should we take it to a Class 2 felony and put a husband away who’s been a good husband for however many years … based off of something that was OK in a marriage up until that point?” -Arizona State Rep. Warde Nichols
“The facts show that people who are raped — who are truly raped — the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work and they don’t get pregnant.”
-North Carolina Rep. Henry Aldridge,
“There was an article about an 11-year-old girl who was gang raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students.” - Kathleen Passidomo
“Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. ” -Bill O’ Reilly
“I think that when you get married you have consented to sex. That’s what marriage is all about, I don’t know if maybe these girls missed sex ed.” Eagle Forum (A pro-life group) President Phyllis Schlafly
“If an individual has sex with their wife while she is unconscious, a prosecutor could then charge that spouse with rape, theoretically. That makes sense in a first date scenario, but to me, not where people have a history of years of sexual activity.” Rep Brian Greene
To an outsider such as myself, the Democrats are the conservative party in the USA, and the Republicans are the right wing populist party in the USA. Presently, racists, fascists, and the gender minority hating religious right are attracted to the Republican party and have been tolerated by the Republican party (with Trump leading the parade).
Aside from probably North Korea and China, the USA has the incarceration rate in the world, and the prison population is highly racialized. Not coincidentally, poverty in the USA is highly racialized. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have done enough to deal with these issues, so there is more than enough blame to go around, but at the end of the day, the party pushing get tough law and order rather than supporting efforts to improve the lives of marginalized communities tends to be Republican. By taking this approach, Republicans are preserving the status quo, which is a very sad state of affairs that has led to the USA no longer being considered to be a full democracy. You have to go back to Eisenhower for a Republican president who was a conservative that was not indifferent to the most egregious affronts to civil rights, although he was more reactive than proactive. Today the USA has a Republican president to is opposed to some civil rights.
Unfortunately, the USA’s phobia about social movement being communism has been holding the country back significantly. If the Republicans would stop ranting and actually take a serious look at the various highly successful socialized (single payor) health care systems throughout the world, they could greatly improve the health and longevity of the American populace, but they are so wrapped up in their beliefs – including their social movement phobia – that they are unwilling to achieve better health for all even when it would cost less than they are paying now. Note that inequalities in health care are often racialized.
So yeh, both Democratic and Republican parties are more conservative rather than social, with the Republican party attracting the bigots like flies to shit, and with elements of the Democratic party flirting with social movement but not making any headway, leaving the USA slipping when compared to the top two dozen democracies.
If mainstream conservatives are pushing for it to be the law, then I am going to call the expected result of their law is part of their values.
If the Democrats were attempting to pass laws to blow up detention facilities filled with immigrants, appointing supreme court justices who favor blowing up detention facilities filled with immigrants, and had historically blown up detention centers filled with immigrants, it would be similar. Are you asserting that there is such a history? Because I’m not aware of it. “Four people didn’t specifically denounce one thing” is not remotely similar.
On a first pass, it would be irrelevant to this thread as it’s not about Democrats in association with the Democratic party, so it would be wrong to post it on a thread specifically about conservative values and I would expect the mods to tell you to take it to another thread. On a second pass, it would be grossly inaccurate and not at all similar to what I posted because there isn’t a specific set of values associated with the Democrats the was conservatives have tied themselves into the Republicans, there are a wide variety of conflicting political value systems behind the democrats, while there is lockstep support of republicans from conservativtes. On a third pass, it would be grossly inaccurate because, as you said you’d be searching for “the worst things done by Democrats” and the one example you did provide was of a lone individual taking an action. What I’m discussing, in this case abortion, is a major policy goal of conservatives and the Republican party, one that they have consistently supported for decades, not a single incident by a single individual.