[quote=“fred smith”][quote]If the Coalition of the Willing were willing to have a clear, open debate about the pros and cons of taking sides in a religious war in the Middle East we wouldn’t be in this predicament were in now. As it is, the only debate they’re willing to have is why so many traitors to their cause continue to be so suspect and odious.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. . . . And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. . . . Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
– George Washington Farewell Address 1796[/quote]
Gosh. I wonder if you manage the rest of your life using the standards of 1796? Funny then that you are on this Internet thing that Gore invented before becoming an award-winning film-maker and Nobel scientist.[/quote]
I take it you’ve had it with the Constitution and Bill of Rights too. Washington’s Farewell Address to the Nation is read before the Senate every February on his birthday but none of the usual suspects show up any longer to face the misic. True to form they’re waiting for someone else to pull the plug on the annual ritual.
[quote=“Winston Smith”][quote=“MikeN”][quote]A week after the National Front came out on top in the first round of voting, France sent a far different message, with the party losing even in a northern region where its charismatic leader, Marine Le Pen, had been widely expected to win.
The projections also showed the National Front being defeated in another of its strongest areas, the south around Nice, where Ms. Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece, Marion Maréchal Le Pen, was on the ballot.[/quote] nytimes.com/2015/12/14/world … front.html
Maybe not quite yet.[/quote]
Rowland’s thesis is essentially correct though. Because the left isn’t sufficiently committed to religious warfare it’s just a matter of time and a few more domestic terrorist attacks before Western democracies are forced to embrace their dark sides and sell their souls for security. If, on the other hand, the left could be goaded into doing the dirty work then chickenhawks will be able to remain safely in the rear where they’re most comfortable.[/quote]
O, agree absolutely -that’s why I said “yet”- we’re still a couple of bomb blasts away.
Big Al won the Peace Prize. Only three actual scientists have won that award, though it’s been given to groups composed largely of scientists, and only one of those three for their actual scientific achievements. Linus Pauling won for campaigning against open-air nuclear weapons testing, and Andrei Sakharov for human rights. Norman Borlaug won for his contributions in biology to the Green Revolution.
I, er, hope that it was understood that I was being facetious. I also don’t believe that Al Gore invented the Internet nor do I view his involvement as having “created the conditions that led to the rise of the Internet.” In a similar vein, I am mockingly conflating his movie effort with his scientific understanding.
[quote]Here, the most important thing to remember is that those us who have signed up to the tolerant, liberal, mainstream consensus do stand for something. The trouble with being a centrist is that it’s easy to assume you don’t believe in much, compared to the inflamed passions on the wilder shores of the left and the the right. But actually we have loads that’s worth defending. Freedom of speech, for starters. Equality for everyone – including girls born in Tower Hamlets. Tolerance. The values of the Enlightenment. And so on. What’s more, these are the most important things: get them right and pretty much everything else follows.
Of course, if you say this, you’ll still get cast as ageing white dinosaur who needs to check his privilege. But it’s not you demanding a safe space where other people can’t speak and it’s not you trying to airbrush people out of history like Stalin’s photographers. It’s not you dressing authoritarianism in the clothes of righteousness. Rather it’s the 26-year old member of Momentum who wants to kick out a long-serving Labour MP and the student activist who is wondering which 300-year-old statue to target today.[/quote]
[quote]Today, however, we have a new, more virulent political correctness that terrorizes both liberals and conservatives, old-line Democrats and Republicans, alike. This form of political correctness is distinctly illiberal; indeed, it is not liberalism at all but Maoism circa the Cultural Revolution.
The extremist adherents of this new political correctness have essentially taken a flamethrower to the public space and annihilated its center. Topics in American life that once were the legitimate subjects of debate between liberals and conservative are now off-limits and lead to immediate attack by the cultural establishment if raised at all. Any incorrect position, any expression of the constitutional right to a different opinion, or even just a slip of the tongue can lead to public ostracism and the loss of a job. (Just ask Brendan Eich.) There is a huge vacuum left by this leftist attack on speech, and Trump is filling it.
[/quote]
Next time someone says “Have you no decency, sir?” remind him of this. Civility is dead. Alinsky killed it.
In real life there is still plenty of civility. This is just media nonsense. If you want to talk about people being brutalized for speaking their mind, then talk about activists, usually liberal, getting their asses kicked by the police. How has the left been so successful in shutting down their opponents yet cannot protest at a university about trade without getting pepper sprayed?
Trump appeals to those with an authoritarian mindset. That seems to be the best explanation I have heard. These people are partly aggrieved by the rise of liberal values, sure, but that’s their problem. Are the rest of us supposed to pretend that the alternative to gay rights is just another valued cultural expression? It isn’t. The debate is over because the other side had nothing but bigotry and remember before that they had the whole force of society, from the press to the police, on their side. And they used that over and over to truly brutalize and silence people they didn’t like.
The problem with writers like this is they take 1950’s values as a starting point and not just another set of values that changed over time.
This is true, but for conservatives it was always the case. Legitimate topics are rarely if ever intelligently debated by Republicans, at least they haven’t been in my lifetime. For liberals this is quite a new phenomenon that’s surfaced in the last 5 or 10 years. There’s a real battle these days between true liberals and the regressive liberal left that immediately shut down conversations whenever real topics come up. The two go to favorites these days are calling people Islamophobes for even suggesting that Islam poses a threat, or calling people racist who aren’t completely willing to ignore the shocking crime statistics among young black males. So yes it happens on both sides, but personally I’d rather live in a country full of regressive liberals than a country full of tea party types.
And this is the problem. When did disagreement with sacred cows become a lack of “intelligence.” You have asked and answered your own conundrum right here. Start listening to those who oppose your views because they may have a very good reason for having theirs. Take climate change for example. So much “surety” led to an awful lot of confused responses in the multiple iterations on that subject. And after all that, where are we with climate change today? certainly having a bit of trouble sustaining the policy prescriptions of the alarmists, no? or haven’t you been keeping up with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the EPA mandates for CO2?
I have no problem with people who oppose my views, and if they debate intelligently and base their opinions on actual facts and reason, I can always be persuaded to change my own views.
The problem with Republicans and regressive liberals on the left is they don’t use facts or reason to debate, they just shut shit down with idiotic accusations of “socialism” or “liberalism” or “racism” or “islamophobia” or whatever else they come up with. Anything and everything to avoid a reasoned argument.
Disagreeing with established facts is not “confused responses.” Not understanding the quantifiable science behind climate change is not opposing views. It actually falls directly in the category of unintelligent debate and the unreasoned responses we’re referring to. So yes that was a great example, unfortunately it’s not the example you were trying to make. It’s the perfect example of the republican side of things.
[quote]The power of these issues was evident in the British referendum Thursday evening as the votes were counted. The result in Sunderland — long a Labour stronghold, which voted 62 percent to “Leave” — was the first clear sign of the final outcome.
In the end, many of Labour’s traditional working-class strongholds in old industries across northern England voted for “Brexit.” (The last deep coal mine in the country closed last year in North Yorkshire, in northern England.)
“Remain” did better than the Labour Party normally does in the establishment-friendly, traditionally Conservative and more affluent countryside of southern England, let alone in the Conservative seats of London, but not by enough.
The same story unfolded in the recent Austrian elections. The far right won working-class areas that sided with the Social Democrats a decade earlier. Similar patterns show up in Denmark and Germany, with the center-left doing better in cosmopolitan metropolitan areas and with populists gaining in former leftist strongholds.
The result is familiar to Americans: an electorate split between the well-educated, diverse and cosmopolitan metropolitan areas connected to the global economy and the older, less educated, former industrial regions that haven’t benefited from globalization.
…
But in much the same way that immigration and nationalism proved to be more persuasive to the more secular European working class, European-style populism — now embodied by Donald Trump — could do additional damage to the Democrats in many parts of the United States.
[/quote]
That wasn’t really an apology. That was typical leftist typist (I hesitate to use the term journalist) snark. That’s why they’re increasingly becoming irrelevant, and it’s why they’re increasingly being called “the lying press”.
“I’m going to pretend that I’m sorry for calling you a dick, but I’m not really, I’m just saying that as a snarky intro for me to call someone else a dick.”
The take away messages for Mitt Romney are the following: 1) the left will conveniently use people like him as a tool when necessary, 2) despite still thinking that he’s a tool, 3) which is kind of okay because everyone else thinks he’s a tool also. Poor Mitt, I feel so sorry for him. I feel just awful about it.
Godwin’s Law of Unintended Consequences: Swindler and activist George Soros bemoans the situation he helped bring about…
Understand that when he speaks of an open society, he means the exact opposite. Disingenuous and Orwellian on countless levels. Go bugger yourself, George.
[quote]I’m not talking about any new-age magic. I’m talking about ordinary people doing ordinary things to turn Trump into an actual Hitler. For example, if protesters start getting violent, you could expect forceful reactions eventually. And that makes Trump look more like Hitler. I can think of dozens of ways the protesters could cause the thing they are trying to prevent. In other words, they can wish it into reality even though it is the very thing they are protesting.
In the 3rd dimension of persuasion, the protesters need to be proven right, and they will do whatever it takes to make that happen. So you might see the protesters inadvertently create the police state they fear.[/quote]
A moderate response won’t work. It’s never worked. And it’s not really The Donald’s style, anyway. But he does have a tendency to outmaneuver his enemies. Whatever he does, it will probably be something we never thought of. A crude crackdown is for lesser minds. This will be a clever crackdown.
Oh, and the miltant left has never been all that uncomfortable with a police state, so long as it’s on their side.
