Michael Moore isn’t any more looney than Rush Limbaugh, and he has a much smaller audience. And who exactly are you talking about, who supports Ayers? I’m not aware of any type of widespread support for the man’s political craziness. Ayers himself was active in organizations that conducted terrorism, but I won’t claim his kind any more than I’ll ask your kind to claim abortion clinic bombers and people who commit violent race crimes. Those are all extreme fringe groups who are NOT part of the mainstream party.
The difference with fundiepublicans is that they’re a significant, maybe even majority section of the Republican party. These are not fringe groups. They are more “republican” than you are, if we’re measuring standards like influence over legislation and the courts, membership numbers, and campaign donations.
Not to tangent this into a same-sex marriage discussion, but:
No, you’re completely wrong. Just saying something doesn’t make it true. You do not in fact need to explain the function of marriage is in order to allow same sex marriage. That is a stupid stipulation that you’re putting on it because your point of view is morally bankrupt and utterly without merit.
Really? Why? Do you assume that societies and cultures just evolve institutions for no reason at all? Pretty much every human society has marriage in some form, but you arbitrarily insist that marriage doesn’t have to serve a function? :rolleyes:
No, you would have to demonstrate that same-sex marriages are at least as stable as normal marriages, and you would also have to demonstrate that same-sex marriages are conducive to raising children.
Marriage, among other things, is about society perpetuating itself into the future. It is only secondarily about rights. It does not exist to provide you with tax break, financial advantages, property rights and other perks just because you happen to have a sexual relationship with someone else.
If rights don’t serve a purpose, why do people have them then?
So anyone can arbitrarily insist that something he wants is a right, and the rest of us must respect his newfound claim?
I think you need to be a lot more clear on what a “right” is supposed to be and why the rest of us have an undeniable moral obligation to respect your “rights.” You don’t seem to have a very good grasp of the concept.
They happily embrace the label “religious consevatives” which is pretty much the same thing.
I’m mainly talking about the Bible and the Pope. But there was certainly a lot of conservative groupthink in the wake of 9/11. There was very little opposition on the Right to the Iraq war, or criticism of Bush in general on the Right. And there are legions of Limbaugh “Dittoheads” and Fox news viewers who dutifully repeat the talking point du jour.
We’re talking generalities here, not absolutes. Colin Powel isn’t much of a conservative. Conservatives staying home on not voting for McCain reinforces my point. “Maverick” McCain wasn’t sufficiently steeped in Religious Right ideology, and yet he knew he had to try to kowtow to it. Sarah Palin became popular because she was seen as “one of us”. I don’t know what’s in Huckabee’s book, but he’s an out-and-out biblical fundamentalist.
OTOH, we have the cadidacy of Ralph Nader, the 9% approval rating of the Peolisi-led Congress–lotta liberals there, and plenty more example where those came from.
When have I ever repeated something I heard on Air America? I only listened when Al Franken was on, because he agreed with me.
Here’s my book, SQUEAKY WHEELS. It’s an excercise in thinking for one’s self.
Well…yeah. That’s kind of how rights work. If you want to deny someone the right to do something, you have to provide a reason why.
Why do you insist on making gays justify their right to marry, but not anyone else? Celebrities don’t have to petition congress to get the right to marry in a hetero relationship, even though their marriages tend to fall apart spectacularly. Convicted drug offenders can get married in 30 minutes. For that matter, convicted sex crime offenders have the right to marry. Convicted child molesters have the right to marry. But you’re telling me gays shouldn’t get married because they can’t prove they make at least as good parents as heteros, even after you admit they can’t be proven to make worse parents?
Are you sure you know exactly why you oppose gay marriage? You’re reduced to arguing that people have to justify themselves to exercise simple rights. Nobody has to justify their preference for real butter and extra salt on their fatty and unhealthy food, because they just fucking FEEL LIKE IT. People are allowed to do what they want, where they want, whenever and however they want to do, because they feel like it. The only time those rights should be limited is when they can be shown to infringe on other people or cause a safety hazard. Are homosexual relationships causing any of those problems? Would homosexual marriage cause those problems?
Can we please agree that Liberal does not automatically translate to atheist/agnostic? There are plenty of religious liberals. The Democratic party recognized that this year and it’s my opinion that it helped them bring in the centrist vote. It is not necessary to be fundamentalist in order to be religious and it is not necessary to shove that religious agenda down the throats of others in order to have a political voice. The Republican party will likely start moving toward that religious but not frothing center by the next election cycle. At least they will if they’re smart.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled finger pointing contest.
The West will fall in flames as the hordes of non-American barbarians rush into the moral vacuum in order marry the same sex and abort the children of the conquered Yankees.
Look, I have an absolute right to worship William Ayers, pray to Bernadine Dorhn, and make small animal sacrifices to Saul Alinsky (especially if they are wascally wabbits) OK?
Would you mind pointing out to us where in the Democratic Party platform same sex marriage is supported - or socialism or Ward Churchill? Or where any of these people you mention have veto power over Democratic candidates - or any influence at all?
There have been plenty of Democratic candidates across the country who are anti-choice. So this is not a litmus test. On the Republican side, as we saw, some very well qualified candidates who McCain wanted got vetoed by the religious right in favor of Caribou Barbie, who met their ideological requirements.
No party is going to survive being seen as anti-religion, but if the Republicans keep allowing the extreme religious right to have veto power, the electorate is going to move away from them, like it did this year. Reagan is a great example of what they should be doing. While he gave the religious this warm, fuzzy feeling, he actually never did anything to support their goals, even when he was wildly popular.
The problem is that without support from the fundies it is hard for any Republican to be nominated. McCain did it since the religious right split their vote (and because the religious right candidates were pretty incompetent) and he had to both move to the right and agree to the Boreal Bimbo to satisfy them. I think it will get worse as moderate Republicans (like me) quit the party in disgust.
You’re not exactly refuting my point, which is that support for the right of gays to marry among non-conservatives is not the result of adherance to a biased ideology. Rather, it’s the product of a logical review of the facts. Gays say they can’t have functional romantic realtionships with members of the opposite sex, but can with fellow gays of the same sex. There’s no reason to doubt them, their relationships are clearly harmless, and discriminating them is clearly unfair.
No need to slap a funny-sounding ideological label–an “ism”–on that.
Just like the one I was responding to. You just made up the remarkable stupid concept that “Before you can justify same sex marriage, you need to explain what the function of marriage is supposed to be in the first place and how same sex marriage would serve that function.”
No you don’t. You are saying we do with no basis at all and it’s a stupid thing to suggest. Marriage is what we say it is. It isn’t magic or something rooted in physics. It’s a social institution and we can make whatever changes in it that society decides is okay.
Note that I´ve also stated that many Democrats are religious as well.
But we have things like wanting to have creationism taught, the already mentioned abortion issues and gay rights and we have to point to religion as the starting point for most of the fighting.
The thing is, it is not religion in and of itself that imposes policy, its politicians. Most Republicans would be against these issues and claim that “morality” has to do with the way they think.
“Morality” in that sense, is using reigion as a disguise.
Democrats can be religious be still have the common sense to not involve religion as a reason for defending or believing in an issue.
And no, I don´t agree that Democrats= Humanistic Atheists and that Republicans = Religious Moralist. I´m looking at the broader more general picture. There will be plenty of exceptions to both parties in terms of individual members and what they believe.
The difference being that Republicans self-identify as Christians, while few Democrats self-identify as secular humanists. It is a derogatory title created by the right to demonize their opposisiton. So it is meaningless to say Democratic policies couod not exist without secualr humanism, because they were never instituted to achieve those ends. Secular humanism exists only in the minds of the right wing.
Secular humanism is a term coined quite some time ago by the people that follow it. It wasn’t made up by the right; it was made into an insult by the right, like liberal and socialist.
I agree, I was unclear. My point is, not many Democrats self identify as secular humanists, so it is unlikely Democratic ideals would perish without it.
Of course, the Democratic Party is full of raging loon atheists and Marxists with severe material envy. With one or two notable exceptions, like President-elect Obama — a Christian. Enjoy the insanity.