You need to begin and end every post with the ritual denunciation of Bush. This will exorcise the demons from your thread, and prevent hijacks.
Try something like this:
“Given that Bush is a lying, scheming scumbag who deserves to be kicked out of office and thrown into prison where he will be repeatedly sodomized by German Shepherds, I would like to debate the pros and cons of the designated hitter rule in major-league baseball.”
Give it a try.
Regards,
Shodan
Now that you mention it, I’d pretty much forgotten about the Sammy Sosa debacle…
Huh?
“I disagree, on the grounds that this would be a clear case of animal cruelty. I might, however, be persuaded to allow German Shepherds to act as designated hitters.” Whee, this is fun! Can I borrow some more of that straw, Shodan? It looks like you’ve got an endless supply.
Back to the OP: I’m confused by one thing in particular. You (Max_Castle) talk about debating with “liberals”. Then you (seem to) define liberals as those who follow
Then you agree with that definition.
So does that mean you consider yourself to be a “liberal”? Or are you using some other definition to describe the “liberals” with whom you’ve been debating, and if so could you tell us what it is?
Um, dude, I think you’re a liberal. Of course, on this many issues, you’re not going to find universal perfect agreement. The Left is not that monolithic. But you’d be right at home in the Democratic Party.
Now, this says little about how “left” you are, but I notice I find many of your opinions unobjectionable, but I disagree with you on the following points:[ul]
[li]A well trained, professional military with lots of high-tech weaponry is essential to protect a nation’s interests[/li]Well, OK, when you put it that way, but I’m unsure what you think our nation’s interests are, if you think we need to have bigger bombs than anyone else.
[li]The government should not endorse or support any religious beliefs at all, ever[/li]How do you define this? Is conscience a religious belief? Is humanism a religion? Conservationism?
[li]Pacifism and egalitarianism are hopelessly naïve beliefs[/li]Well, pacifism, sure. But as an egalitarian I take exception.
[li]Drugs (including tobacco and alcohol), gambling, and prostitution should all be legal and regulated[/li]I actually am opposed to professional gambling houses, also to legal prostitution. But disagreeing with me about that won’t kick you out of the “liberal” camp.
[li]Persons or corporations who engage in the business of providing dangerous or deadly goods or services should not be held responsible for any negative effects of the same, as long as they make a full disclosure of the dangers involved[/li]It depends on the service. The way you phrase this might protect conspirators to commit murder, like the middleman who provides the “service” of procuring a hitman. Rethink that principle.
[li]The government should subsidize a basic health care plan for all citizens[/li]Debatable. Not that being liberal requires any given opinion on this.
[li]The government should not protect corporations or industries that unprofitable or unable to compete in a fair market[/li]The supposed justice of free market is a convenient excuse for people who want to shaft their neighbors.
[li]The vast majority of the news media is biased towards the policies and politicians of the Democratic Party, and anyone who denies this is being disingenuous[/li]Well, maybe I’m just ingenuous. Funny thing though, on the left they say the mainstream media is biased toward conservatives & big business. Maybe they’re (gasp) moderate?
[li]Hatred of anyone who holds a different viewpoint is not constructive and is a first step towards fascism[/li]OK, you’re mostly right there. But understand, it is not only our own hatred we must fight against, but the other’s hatred. And to abhor hatred is to hate the hater’s hating.
[/ul]And then you said,
which is funny, because the left is no more that way than the right. There are “cores” of rash adolescents & arrested adolescents in both. Don’t judge the entire side by our less thoughtful advocates.
Indeed. (Although some argue that it was too little, too late.)
Right, as the demonstrated, for example, in 2000 when they immediately dismissed deceptive claims about Gore exaggerating but immediately took Cheney to task for making the ridiculous claim in his debate against Lieberman that “the government had nothing to do with” his enviable financial situation even though there is plenty of evidence that Cheney landed his job at Halliburton largely on the basis of the connections he had made while in government and did indeed preside over them markedly increasing the contracts they got from the government.
Oh wait, sorry, that only happened in my dreams.
And, as they demonstrated once again in 2003 when they were being very skeptical of Administration claims in the lead-up to the Iraq war and they never misrepresented the circumstances under which the inspectors left Iraq back in 1998.
Oh wait, sorry, I was in dreamland again.
Well, I agree that the Democrats abdicated their responsibility here to some degree. The fact is that the only ones among us who came close to the truth on Saddam’s WMD were those to the left of the Democrats. You pretty much got closest to the truth if you relied on what you read in The Nation which is the real “liberal media”.
But as a matter of fact, the Dems were quite split on the vote to give Bush the authority in Iraq. In fact, in the House, more Democrats voted against it than for it. And, it should be noted that some, if not most, of the Democrats (including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to name just two prominent ones) who voted to give Bush that authority did so because he was saying it was necessary in order for him to be able to exert pressure on Iraq to let the inspectors in and come clean on the WMDs issue. The Liar-in-Chief also claimed that he would go to war only as a last resort.
Here and here are the actual numbers for the Democrats on the vote in October 2002 to grant Bush “war powers” in Iraq:
My guess is that the number who voted for it was also inflated somewhat from what it would have been because of the proximity of the election. I’ll agree with those who argue that it was not very honorable (but not unsurprising) for some Democrats to vote against their conscience here for political reasons. But, it was even more shameful for the Bush Administration to play that whole election year ploy with the Iraq war.
My apologies in my first post here for not making it clear that the latter two quotes were from Max Castle, and not Marley23 as the first one was.
Glee, you can also add Jesus to the list of Gandi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Nelson Mandela. I think a turn-the-other-cheek ethic qualifies as pacifist.
Regarding liberalism (modern American style) in journalism, the Pew Research Center and the Committee of Concerned Journalists conducted a survey of 547 “media professionals” and reported findings in May, 2004 that people identified themselves as follows:
The General Public
Liberal: 20%
Conservative: 33%
National Media
Liberal: 34%
Conservative: 7%
Local Media
Liberal: 23%
Conservative: 12%
Internet Media
Liberal: 27%
Conservative: 13%
I should note that the General Public numbers were from a separate Pew poll.
Given the utter lack of any dependable definition of the terms “liberal” and “conservative”, I’m hard pressed to divine your point. It would be like taking a survey of Jewish people, and operating on the presumption that hyper-observant Hasidic types are fundamentally similar to non-observant nominal Jews.
The terms have no meaning, poll numbers based upon them have abstract insignificance.
I was a little nervous about bringing religion in - but of course you’re correct.
And how about those UK suffragettes going pacifically for the vote after the 1st World War…
I read some your thoughts and philosophies. You can borrow my limo anytime. 
Peace,
mangeorge
Jeez, way to many posts to respond to each one individually like I’d hoped to do. I’ll pick and choose some points to respond to:
Have I called anyone names or given any indication that that’s my intention? That you would think this seems to lend creadance to my point that liberals automatically take a negative view towards anyone who holds different views.
I’m sorry if my OP came across as a little harsh; it was kind of late when I wrote it. But I’d really like to understand how liberals think. I’d like to think that I could call myself a liberal without signing my own death warrant. It seems blindingly obvious to me that there is a large subset of liberals who feel that anyone who doesn’t toe the party line shouldn’t be allowed a voice in public debate and the formation of public policy, and should probably be locked up to prevent the spread of their ignorant reactionary views.
But they have posted their opinions in other threads. It is not like I’m just making this up out of thin air. If you read any of the political threads in GD, you’ll see the attitudes I’m talking about on a regular basis.
Because I’d like to believe that people are basically good, which is another point that liberals seem to disagree with me on. I’d really like to believe that liberals aren’t intent on persecuting people because of their beliefs (not because they are afraid, I never said that). I have considerable evidence that they are. Please prove to me they are not.
Okay, how’s this question: “why is it that whenever someone posts in a thread expressing a non-liberal opinion, there is an immediate dogpile from liberal posters characterizing the first poster as a stereotypical right-wing conservative? Doesn’t this seem to indicate a high level of intolerance among liberals? And since liberals claim to be tolerant, doesn’t the lack of tolerance that they display on a regular basis seem to indicate a degree of hypocracy?”
Ugh, I’ve been trying to sort through your 7500+ posts but I don’t have all week. The thread where you attacked me about a year ago seems to have disappeared. Here’s one that seems to indicate what I’m talking about, but I’d have to read through duffer’s post to really know if you were unfair or not. Just randomly throwing Reagan into the debate seems a little suspect to me, though.
Actually, I haven’t made any of those assumptions. In fact, I would be inclined to assume the opposite.
If that’s true, then why do you call yourself a liberal? Aren’t you at all bothered that if you expressed your true views you would most likely be decried as a reactionary?
Try reading some GD threads every now and then.
Ah, condensation, the greatest weapon in a master debater’s arsenal
When and where? Or are you just assuming that I am because I don’t hold exactally the same views as you? I’m all for criticising both Bush and Kerry. There is certainly plenty to criticise both on.
Of course, and like I’ve said I was just trying to give a general impression of what I believe. I included points like “reasonable environment protection” to counter the common argument that anyone who’s not a liberal doesn’t care about the environment. And so forth with other points.
No, I don’t. if fact I said:
We must be reading different news. I seem to remeber a lot of downplaying of Clinton’s sexual scandals (not that I really care or want to know what he did with his penis). I agree that in the last couple of years the media has been pretty soft on Bush, but if we look at the last 30 years or so, there has been a noticable bias towards Democratic politicians and policies. If you want to talk about the Swift boat crowd, that’s another debate.
Neither, really. The average conservative seems to be a little more open to different viewpoints than the average liberal, but that’s just my perception based on people I’ve known.
I’d have trouble disagreeing with anything you said, but as I’ve indicated, I was trying to give a general impression of my views, not write a manifesto.
But this one leaped out at me:
Advocating legalization of drugs is not the same as encouraging others to take drugs illegally. At least I think that’s what you’re getting at; I had to reread that about a half-dezen times before it made any sense at all.
All the polls I have seen show Bush in the lead. In spite of their bias (which I agree has been lessened of late), the media aren’t going to be blatantly false. A bias is just that - a bias - a spin added to certain stories to guide their audience into agreeing with the viewpoint they consider correct.
Explain please.
Ugh, you really want me to wade through all that dreck? Do you not read GD much? Here goes:
In this thread, Excalibre was, to put it nicely, extremely critical of me for not being as big of a fan of Michael Moore as him. He proceeded to make all sorts of unwarrented and unreasonable characterizations about me. I gave him the opportunity to back down quietly, but instead he stepped up his attacks and then disappeared after I had countered them all.
In this thread, rjung, GaWd and a few others decided that since I was of the opinion that liberals try to shut down disent, I must be a party-line hugging Republican. Hypocracy, anyone?
Those are just the two most recent threads I have tried to participate in. I could come up with others, including lots that I never posted in, but I haven’t got all day.
Explain please. I have always been under the impression that liberals believed people to be inherently evil. Hence the need for a large, oppressive government to keep people in line.
Stereotypes, yes, of course. Ludicrous? Apparantly not.
Ah, the ad hominum. Yet another tool in the arsenal of the master debator.
I was speaking mostly about the SDMB. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Michael Moore. Al Franken.
Of course it’s a meaningless platitude. did I ever say it wasn’t?
No, I mean planes, helicopters, artillery, etc. You know, all the equipment used in convential warfare. And while every nation has a right to defend itself, North Korea and Iran are dictatorships, and therefore not legitimate nations.
Tell it to the guy who got ran over by a tank in Tianamin Square. Tell it to all the millions of people who died under oppressive regimes such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Gahndi succedded because the British realized they couldn’t keep a nation of millions under their thumb for much longer. If they hadn’t granted India it’s independence, there most likely would have been a long, bloody war.
MLK succedded because the general population was becoming more aware of the raw deal that minorities were receiving. Social change was coming soon, he just helped hurry it along.
Ditto for Mandela.
But anyways, that has nothing to do with my statement that “Pacifism and egalitarianism are hopelessly naïve beliefs.” Pacifism means rejecting war outright, under any circumstances. Egalitarianism means ignoring real differences between individuals and enforcing a completely nonsensical ideal of “equality” on a populace. I don’t see how any of your examples apply to either of these ideals.
My point was that definition does not seem to describe liberals at all, but it does describe me.
Ugh, I can’t keep this up much longer. I need a break…
[…shrug…] Those polled apparently understood what was meant. And I’d wager that the people who are asking the questions and making the assertions here understand what is meant. And unless you do not use the terms yourself, you understand what they mean as well.
Have you looked at anything by Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh? I’ll put our “fanatical ideologues” up against the right-wing’s any day!
From that article that you cite:
And, in fact, this is in rough agreement with what the liberal media watchdog group FAIR found in surveying journalists, namely that they tend to be left of the public on social issues but right of the public on economic ones. The left-of-center on social issues is not in fact that surprising since I think that views on such issues tend to correlate quite strongly with educational level and with urban vs. rural living and journalists probably tend to be fairly well educated and urban relative to the general public.
And, it is not unlike this message board…The liberal and libertarian ends of the spectrum are well-represented but the religious right views are almost completely absent.
Yes, I noticed that from the article, and I’m glad you brought it up. It seems to be a common misconception that libertarians identify more with the right than with the left. But as I’ve said before, they both seem to be two hands on the same ogre — one can’t stay out of my pocket, and the other can’t stay off my zipper.
Well, that “misconception” has been spread by libertarians themselves since IMHO they seem more often to worry about their wallet than their zipper when push-comes-to-shove in the voting booth or in terms of their general influence on the political scene (although some of you have shown a growing disgust for Bush, finally). I know that Cato does, for example, get into issues of drug legalization and such but they seem to spend a lot more of their resources on the economic issues.
I think part of the reason for this, by they way, is the funding from these various libertarian think-tanks like Cato comes largely from corporations or a few wealthy conservative oilmen who really care much more about the economics issues than the civil libertarian ones (to put it mildly…some probably don’t give a flying crap about civil liberties issues). If you want people to identify libertarianism more with the civil liberties issues, you might need to work harder to avoid libertarianism getting hijacked by these folks.