I have entertained your argument and found it to be rubbish. Pretending to be a victim doesn’t earn you any points.
So conservatives/Republicans don’t feel welcome here because they don’t get to be exclusively closed minded?
The trouble is, that relevant points are rare. Instead we get 100 page threads about how same sex marriage will magically destroy the family.
Conservatives can’t win that argument because there are no rational arguments for it. Conservatives can’t win Global Warming arguments because the facts are against them. Conservatives can’t win immigration arguments because electrified fences aren’t practical.
If the conservative position is reasonable and the arguments are good, they have a fine chance of winning.
It is sad but true that much of current conservative thought is utter drivel. We used to be assured that the Republican party is the party of Big Ideas. What are these ideas?
Their economic ideas are not founded in any empirical basis, have been utter failures in reality, and seem to involve a desire to hold the prosperity of the country hostage. They can’t seem to even come to a consistent conclusion as to whether the sequester is good or bad or whether it is theirs or Obamas. Their last VP candidate was put forward as a policy wonk. In reality his budget plan was a joke founded upon magic numbers and a desire to hurt the poor.
Their previous VP candidate was Sarah Palin, for chrissake! She couldn’t even name a periodical she read.
Their current agenda is voting incessantl to undo Obamacare, without any proposal to address the health care problems. Otherwise, they are extremely focused on restricting abortion.
They are bereft of real ideas and show no ability to evaluate the merits behind anything from a scientific or empirical standpoint.
It’s not at all an unfair characterization.
Of course they are! What fun is fighting ignorance without somebody to kick around?!
Taggants in gunpowder?
I said “What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”.
This seems like such a silly issue to annoint as the pinnacle of reasoned conservative argument.
No more so than saying that ‘conservatives’ (on this board at least) feel that the pinnacle is same sex marriage, global warming or immigration.
I don’t think he wwas presenting it as the pinnacle of reasoned conservative argument-I think he was putting it forth as a reasonable conservative debate for which they have good evidence to back up their position.
This, here, is the problem, this cultural focus on discussion resulting in winners/losers. I tend to get the feeling, on most forums, that the RW leaners tend to be more intent on victory, while everyone else is interested in exchange of ideas. If the RWers get beaten down and made to feel unwelcome, it is most often not because of bias but because they tend to initially present their ideas in a way that begs for a hostile reaction (sometimes to the point of trollery).
Debate is a competitive sport. This boards is mostly not about competitive debate (except in some areas/threads) but discussion, exchange of ideas and learning stuff. For a few steadfast conservatives, ideas are carved in stone, learning stuff is anathema, hence SDMB is simply not a place for them to abide.
A person suggests in the pit that the NRA should be faulted for opposing taggants, but it turns out that 1) it is not clear whether the NRA has continued their prior opposition to taggants, and 2) it’s not clear that it would be cost effective to include taggants.
This is on par with marriage equality, immigration and global warming? Really?
You are missing the point. Bricker didn’t say that taggant were the ‘pinnacle of reasoned conservative argument’…YOU did. That’s YOUR strawman. Just like Lobohan’s low hanging fruit was his own strawman of top ‘conservative’ issues of supposed ‘conservatives’ on THIS BOARD. They are equal only in so far as they were equal strawmen, picked because they were either ridiculous overstatements or they were easy low hanging fruit.
Honestly, I see this thread as a good example as to why the board leans ‘Democrat’ (or left)…look at the pile on of anyone not conforming to the boards corporate culture, verse those from a lefty in rant mode (specifically, look at the pile on of Slypork verses the non-lefty response to Slithy Tove’s lefty rantage).
So why keep giving the excuse me single argument? Give me the home run ball! The taggant thing is stupid. It consisted of a difficulty citing the argument by the people advancing the argument, not some reasoned deconstruction by conservatives.
It’s not even a conservative/liberal argument excepting that any attack on the NRA must necessarily be opposed by conservatives.
Even if I assume that your description of that thread (which I didn’t read, as I have neither expertise about, nor interest in, that topic) is accurate, well, what’s your point? That there are times when the SDMB liberal consensus (and I agree that there is sometimes, although not always, enough of an agreement among most liberal posters in a thread that it’s reasonable to describe it as a consensus) is wrong? Well, duh.
So, again, you have disproved the extremely absolute statement that, as far as I know, no one made.
Hey, remember that other guy who said that every single last conservative poster on the board is a drooling idiot who has never ever even once said a single intelligent thing? Well, you know what? He’s wrong. Zing!
Well, again, I appreciate your having collected some data, but again must point out that the facts and figures that you collected argue strongly *against *any disproportionate rudeness to conservatives and instead provide support for the thesis of disproportionate rudeness by conservative posters.
What it illustrates really is how thin your skin must be that you consider "Obama should target Republican districts with the consequences of the sequester, “Give Me an Example of Conservative Political Fiction,” and the sort to be threads that you “could tell immediately that the OP was casting the group in question in a disparaging light.” Oh c’mon!
Again, no question there are liberal jerks, of knee and other varieties, here. But this poor picked on conservative story is not what I have seen and demonstrably false by the data you have offered up. By your presented data this board over represents conservatives acting badly more than liberals doing the same. By my experience they dish it out at least as much as they get it dished, significant since they are, allegedly, of smaller numbers.
Bricker, perhaps my request to you was missed. Please give an example of an argument that you consider “slam-dunk” for the Right, like Global Climate Change is “for the Left” that you are not seeing any liberals here acknowledging like you do on Climate Change.
Thank you.
He wasn’t replying to you, he was replying to Lobohan’s low hanging fruit argument. My WAG is he was doing it tongue in cheek…I certainly laughed when I read it. It was excellent ironic mockery, IMHO…least, that’s how I read it. Maybe he was serious though…you’d need to ask him.
So then why did you insinuate yourself into the matter?
I’m bored waiting for a flight and thought it would be fun to interject into the thread. Probably a similar reason to why you did, even though the comment wasn’t directed at you. 
No, I have an opinion. I’m not the one trying to defend a fellow partisan and then copping out with “sheesh, don’t ask me.”
I’m not now nor have I ever claimed to be a victim. Likewise, I have never said that conservatives are persecuting liberals. I am merely pointing out that conservatives appear to be routinely shouted down merely because they state opinions that are contrary to the left.
No, damn it! Neither side should be closed minded! If you want to convince me that my opinion is wrong calling me a racist, bigot, moron, fascist, Neanderthal, etc, is not going to endear you to me and not make me want to listen to you. All you commie, tree-hugging, welfare cheating liberals sucking off the government teat are all the same. 
Painting with a broad brush is wrong no matter who does it.
However, you are using the aforementioned broad brush.
While there are some conservatives against SSM, there are many who say it’s OK. While global warming/climate change (or whatever the flavor of the day is) is considered a slam-dunk for many (not all) liberals, there are still many people who are still not completely convinced because of continuing research and reports that come through putting findings in question. They are trying to keep an open mind. And immigration reform does not necessarily mean “electrified fences”. How about a more balanced consideration such as enforcing the laws that are already on the books, tightening our borders a little more (on north and south), looking into streamlining the immigration process so it doesn’t take so many years for people who come here legally, working on a better work visa program and so on?
You see, I would discuss with you what I believe and you can try to convince me of what you believe. But you aren’t willing to do that when you are already saying “(c)onservatives can’t win”. In other words, they are losers and why bother.
And here is where we have so many problems with our political system. We are stuck with a Republican party which has basically become an extremist party. They don’t listen to the people who are fiscal and defense conservatives but are socially moderate. The GOP thought having a woman on the ticket would be an offset for having a minority incumbent. Sarah Palin was the best they could find since they couldn’t get Condi Rice who would have been a double whammy (WOW! She’s a woman and she’s black! That’s two, two, two threats in one!) Ryan sounded so much better before he got on the national stage. Romney was an appeal to the religious right (even though those LDS are spooky and strange).
Where is a Libertarian party? If you asked most people who voted GOP last time they will tell you it wasn’t because they loved what the party stood for as a whole. They did it because they didn’t like the policies that were coming down from the White House. But, if they had an option that:
- Better fit their views and,
- Wasn’t a throw-away vote
they would gladly vote for that third party. Ross Perot, as bat-shit crazy as the man could sometimes be, energized America and made people really look outside the box. We need a dynamic, intelligent, rational and realistic Libertarian candidate to come forward. That would kill the GOP and also, I believe, make people look sideways at the Democrats.