A Robust Defense of the 2nd Amendment
[Guest post by JD]
Every once in a while you stumble across a link to a new website, and you’re not sure what to expect. The Left’s War on the 2nd Amendment continues apace. New York banned normal capacity magazines, and Colorado followed suit with Biden’s urging. Washington state had a proposal that would have allowed the police into homes to inspect weapons, something the sponsors apparently didn’t bother to read. They want “common sense” restrictions on an enumerated capital-R Right — restrictions that they would never dream of imposing on other Rights, whether enumerated or resulting from penumbras.
I ran across this one today, and his voice is a melody to my ears. I am quoting it in its entirety, because every time I tried to edit it down, or pull quotes, it felt incomplete. And since I know many times people don’t click on the links, I wanted you to see its original, full, sheer awesomeness.
Or, How I Learned To Stop Caring.
By way of introduction, I’d like to explain some of my former positions. Please do not reply and tell me why I’m wrong. That’s not relevant to this post. These WERE my positions, for right or wrong.
I used to believe women had a right to reproductive choice. As a male, I will obviously never have an abortion. I supported access because birth control is cheaper than abortions, abortions are cheaper than welfare, welfare is cheaper than jail. And I don’t believe the government is capable of legislating for every circumstance. Most of the time, a woman and her doctor will make a decision that works for the situation, and until a baby is an independent organism, it’s a parasite. This was also important to me because my wife was warned that a further pregnancy could kill her. That’s been surgically remedied and is no longer a problem.
I used to believe gays were entitled to relate as they wished, including marriage. What two people do together doesn’t affect me unless I’m one of them.
I used to believe it was wrong to treat people differently based on their skin color. Even if a few people fit a stereotype, millions of others do not.
I used to believe there should be a strong division between church and state, that any support of a religious entity using property of the state constituted endorsement and was wrong.
I used to believe people had a right to protest, campaign, rant and create non-violent incidents to express themselves and their positions. I also believed they had a right to publish as they chose. I believed they were entitled to burn the Flag in protest, to make a statement.
I have obviously been at odds with conservatives over these positions. There have been loud arguments, heated discussions and occasional insults.
~~~
I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. The Supreme Court agrees with me, which means that right is as valid as abortion, sexual privacy, protest and speech.
This should mean that strict scrutiny applies, meaning the government needs to prove the fabric of society itself is at risk before limiting it. Just as the Press has the right to broadcast troop movements it can see or acquire, regardless of casualties, I have the right to own weapons, regardless of how someone else may act. “Someone might get hurt” is an invalid excuse for restriction.
In fact, it’s easy enough to prove that freedom of the press HAS caused harm and even death to people, whether it’s troop movements, or the address of a person of interest.
The rights of gays to relate as they wish brings the risk of AIDS (60% of all cases are from gay relations, not drugs or medical contamination.)
It’s provable that if we required proof of need before awarding a driver’s license, we’d have less car accidents.
So, the argument that “guns kill people” is null and irrelevant to the discussion. Lots of things kill people. That’s not relevant to our civil rights.
Now, over this position, I’ve had at least 5 death threats (though of course, no “liberal” actually has the balls to attempt so).
I’ve twice been reported to Family Services on the grounds that I have guns in the house, which means I’m a danger to my kids (which complaints were laughed at, here in Indiana).
I’ve been accused of racism…because I own guns.
I’ve been accused of fascism…because I own guns.
I’ve been called a coward…no “real man” needs a gun to protect himself. This is a surprise to me as a veteran, who carried guns regularly for the purpose of protecting myself and others, but what do I know?
I’ve been called a “Fat, Fox News watching, McDonald’s munching, inbred, retarded, drooling redneck imbecile.”
I’ve been told I have a small penis.
I’ve been told I’m insane to “imagine fighting the government” by people with no military experience who also hate the government, sometimes for the same reasons.
I’ve had a date tell me I “seem so normal, for a gun nut.”
I’ve been called a “rightwinger.” Indeed. A gay/female/black/abortion/separation of church and state/free speech supporting rightwinger.
I’ve been told this right doesn’t exist, that if it exists I can’t “pretend” it’s more important than wage inequality for women, or gay marriage.
When the Heller Decision was decided in favor of gun ownership, I was told “I hope you all shoot yourselves with guns, because I can’t marry the man I love!” by an alleged friend.
There’s apparently a “Right to feel safe,” and my owning a gun destroys it, because I might shoot someone. However, if I say a gun makes me feel safe, I’m paranoid and insane.
I’ve been told I support “baby killers.”
I’ve been threatened with having my Wikipedia page vandalized, by someone who claimed he was more of a man than me.
I’ve been told I can’t be trusted. How can anyone know I won’t go on a shooting spree, because I own an “assault rifle”?
So much for liberal tolerance.
I didn’t realize I was so evil and hateful an individual I deserved to be treated in such fashion.
But when I look at the arguments, I think they may be correct:
“At the time the Constitution was written, the weapons in question were muskets.”
You know what? You’re right. And marriage was between one man and one woman. So what’s with gay marriage? No longer will I offer any moral support, oppose any online statements attacking it, speak out for it. They have the same right as anyone—to marry someone of the opposite gender. And given that all gays support raping little boys (just like all gun owners support shooting school kids), I don’t think I can support them. We should do things just the way they were done 220 years ago. That’s the liberal way.
“The Heller Decision was by an activist court. It doesn’t count.”
Indeed. Just like Roe v Wade was an activist decision. It doesn’t count.
“We’re not trying to take your guns away, just have reasonable limits. It’s a compromise.”
And some people want reasonable limits on abortion, like waiting periods, gestational time limits, ultrasound, etc. It’s a reasonable response to an activist court decision, and reasonable restrictions on a right, for public benefit. Don’t come whining about your right to murder babies, and I won’t come to you whining about my right to shoot school kids.
And no one is saying you can’t ride the bus. You just have to sit where people think is reasonable. No one is saying women can’t work. They just have to get paid what is reasonable for the work they do, allowing for the fact they’re going to leave the workplace and raise a family. It’s a compromise.
“Assault weapons are an extreme interpretation.”
True. And not allowing any religious emblems on government premises is an extreme interpretation. As long as they’re privately paid for, what’s it to you? No one is saying you can’t belong to the Christian church of your choice, just not to extreme groups, like atheists or Muslims. It would be paranoid to think anyone was trying to infringe on your legitimate right to be free from state religion, just like I’d be paranoid to think they wanted to take my guns. Quite a few states had official churches well into the 1800s. This is not an infringement on your freedom of religion.
“Given Sandy Hook, you have to make reasonable compromises.”
“We just want licensing and safe storage requirements so the wrong people don’t get guns.”
“Publicizing the information lets people make informed choices about who they live near.”
Accepted. In exchange, gay men should make reasonable compromises over Penn State. They will simply have to accept being registered and kept a safe distance from children. This isn’t a violation of their rights. It’s just common sense. The public has a right to know.
This should apply to protests, too. No reasonable person would object to being identified. They should welcome it—it means they can’t be wrongly maligned. All union members, blacks, gays and feminists should be signed in with ID before a march or gathering, just so we can track the real criminals to keep the rest safe.
“The country survived without assault weapons for 240 years.”
True (well, no, it was 135 years, depending on your definition of “assault weapon”). And it survived without women in combat even longer. The infantry’s trying to scare off women? Serves them right. Things were working just fine the way they were.
“This woman is being badly portrayed on the cover of a book.”
No, no, that’s an accurate portrayal, just like all military contractors are sociopathic mercenaries who torture people, all gun owners are moral cowards with Walter Mitty complexes and all gun dealers exist to make money from gangbangers. It’s silly to suggest one group is singled out for inaccurate portrayals when we know the other portrayals are spot on.
Yup. I’m taking you at your word. Want money? Don’t care. Want a petition signed? Call someone who who gives a shit. Want a link spread? Yawn. Women or gays or blacks or Hispanics don’t feel they’re being treated nicely? So what?
~~~
First they came for the blacks, and I spoke up because it was wrong, even though I’m not black.
Then they came for the gays, and I spoke up, even though I’m not gay.
Then they came for the Muslims, and I spoke up, because it was wrong, even though I’m an atheist.
When they came for illegal aliens, I spoke up, even though I’m a legal immigrant.
Then they came for the pornographers, rebels and dissenters and their speech and flag burning, and I spoke up, because rights are not only for the establishment.
Then they came for the gun owners, and you liberal shitbags threw me under the bus, even though I’d done nothing wrong. So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.
~~~
Or you can commit seppuku with a chainsaw. I really don’t care anymore. This is the end of my support for any liberal cause, because liberals have become anything but.
– JD
You are welcome
Comment by JD (b63a52) — 2/20/2013 @ 9:38 pm
That’ll leave a mark.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/20/2013 @ 9:46 pm
THAT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME!!!
Comment by reff (4dcda2) — 2/20/2013 @ 9:51 pm
i love guns and I like them to be widely dispersed and also I like gay marriage and I like them also to be widely dispersed is that wrong am i a bad person
No!
America is still a country where you’re free to define yourself in terms other than your little country’s tawdry squalid juvenile politics! Our cowardly inept and corrupt politicians, they want the best of stuff for us they say. But right now, they gotta do what’s right for them.
Because it’s their time.
Up there.
Down here it’s our time. It’s our time down here isn’t that right?
And that’s all over the second we ride up troy’s bucket.
Go away troy we don’t need your stupid bucket.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/20/2013 @ 10:02 pm
Did I mention how much I liked this?
Comment by JD (b63a52) — 2/20/2013 @ 10:15 pm
it sounds like he’s giving up Mr. JD
like his heart is growing cold and hard and shriveled up like dead baby-pimper piers morgan’s
he needs an anthem something bad and I got one to share with him
(it’s my old favorite one not a new one but it still does the trick in a pinch)
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/20/2013 @ 10:28 pm
i been playing it a lot lately
that and the floridageorgialinecd
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/20/2013 @ 10:31 pm
Mr. Feets – I’m tired of the gay marriage people telling me they’re the boss of me. They are not. Nobody put them in charge. I say take your Obama union thug scaremonger intimidation tactics home with you and if you want to change the law let’s talk about it and have a vote.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/20/2013 @ 11:04 pm
But that’s just me.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/20/2013 @ 11:05 pm
hey no labels dude
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/20/2013 @ 11:09 pm
So what’s with gay marriage?
Yea, it’s too limiting. Society must go well beyond that. It must accommodate people similar to the person described below. That’s why we truly — truly! — need to legalize not just same-sex marriages but multi-partner ones too. The reason? Because some dudes need both a wife and a husband, and, in turn, some chicks need both a husband and a wife.
It’s a matter of freedom of choice, baby!
Comment by Mark (25e2eb) — 2/20/2013 @ 11:28 pm
Well, I’m glad you got that out of your system.
I feel similarly many times, and just recently;
which is why I went shooting this afternoon.
Killed me a bunch of zombies and other assorted flotsam using a 100-yr old, bolt-action, Czarist assault weapon.
Kicks like a mule, and still shoots better than the shooter.
Molon Labe!
Comment by askeptic (2bb434) — 2/20/2013 @ 11:32 pm
A-Fucking-Men!
Comment by Bets (b0777f) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:13 am
Michael Z. Williamson writes some awesome SF. His Freehold series is a marvelous defense of Libertarianism.
Comment by Mark L (91163f) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:57 am
New York banned normal capacity magazines
In the name of Gaia and global warming it is the right thing to do to ban normal capacity magazines. Too many magazine pages are devoted to fluff and ads that simply waste paper. With fewer pages to fill, the pages must be filled with vital information important to the community and public service ads. The old, fat Capitalist magazines that made profit and exploited the environment should be regulated, downsized and made to…
Oh, wait. You meant another kind of magazine.
Comment by ErisGuy (76f8a7) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:06 am
So what’s with gay marriage?
Its too limiting. We in the science fiction community have been wearing our bi poly switch buttons with pride for years. And we demand society allow marriages that reflect our innate, fixed, untreatable, unchangeable sexual orientations.
We believe in the decriminalization of all genders. If someone believes that someone of another gender: homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, polysexual, sadist, masochist, pedophile, bestial, furry, etc. has injured her or him, that is what civil court is for. Get the state off our backs and out of our bedrooms.
Comment by ErisGuy (76f8a7) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:10 am
I want to memorize this.
Comment by Pious Agnostic (6ff605) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:36 am
As many comments on his site mention, he “failed” in the premise that he was going to “piss off everybody”…
if he’s not careful, people may start demanding he run as ben carson’s VP candidate
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:50 am
JD, you didn’t try hard enough, Williamson’s post would benefit greatly from a benevolent editing. Cut it down to say about 1/3 its current length and it gains the persuasive strength and focus brevity conveys. The rapier is always to be preferred to the bludgeon.
Comment by ropelight (cb52b3) — 2/21/2013 @ 6:57 am
Mad Mike is a cool dude.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/21/2013 @ 7:44 am
Actually, Democrats have excellent self-defense advice, the key to its effectiveness is to accessorize.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:52 am
Full, sheer awesomeness is right. Thank you.
I just bookmarked Williamson’s blog.
Comment by ThOR (0d3941) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:56 am
Thanks, JD. I needed that.
Comment by lyle (0fb201) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:26 am
Mad Mike scores again. When he comes nearby on a book-signing tour, he’s worth the trip. His remarks on Facebook are hilarious.
Comment by htom (412a17) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:25 am
“…and Freedom of the Press should be limited to quill pens and parchment and broadsides printed on moveable type printing presses.”
What I think of when I hear liberals arguing that the Founding Fathers couldn’t have foreseen modern weapons, so citizens technically are limited to muskets.
Comment by in_awe (7c859a) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:50 am
He’s not giving up, happyfeet. It’s clarifying and liberating to see the stark, simple reality of what matters and what doesn’t.
I don’t know what your polarizing issue is — mine is fiscal responsibility but maybe your issue is abortion, contraception or gay marriage. Whatever it is, once that issue is in the spotlight and it’s clear that the Democrats or the Republicans don’t care about it, then that Party and all the other issues melt into the background.
November 2012 was a defining election to me. It’s time to choose sides.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:52 am
Washington state had a proposal that would have allowed the police into homes to inspect weapons, something the sponsors apparently didn’t bother to read.
Actually, this is the third time that legislator tried this.
Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.
Comment by Rich Rostrom (553877) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:56 am
By the way, liberals have been at this point for a long time. That’s why so many of their voters vote Democratic every time, because Democrats support their favorite issue. Other issues don’t matter when you have so many single issue voters.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:57 am
YouR 11:57 was very simple but very profound, DRJ. Excellent observation., and very true.
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:14 pm
but the unifying principle is that we should honor all Americans for their right to pursue their happiness in their own way.
this little guy is giving up on that
But also I agree with you about the spendings being paramount.
But Team R has lost all credibility from a fiscal conservative perspective. Passing porky porky chris christie welfare bills will do that.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:16 pm
happyfeet,
This is exactly my point. Very few liberals who care about gay marriage (for instance) would vote for a Republican or stay home, because even when the Democratic nominee claims he is doesn’t support gay marriage — as Obama did for years — they still believe that the Democratic Party is a better friend on gay marriage than the GOP.
Even with establishment Republicans and RINOs, the GOP is a better friend to fiscal conservatives than the Democratic Party will ever be. Even if some Republicans sometimes disappoint us, you and I should be single issue GOP voters if we care about the economy, jobs, the deficit, and other fiscal issues. We should never stay home.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:20 pm
DRJ, when your single issue is receiving your tax-payer funded patronage from Uncle Sugar, it’s an easy coalition to keep together.
The unifying principle being “gimme, gimme, gimme!”
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:23 pm
Also, why is it giving up to decide what matters most to you and acting accordingly? Have liberals given up when they become single issue voters on the environment, immigration, or abortion? I think they have simply decided what matters to them and ignore the rest. I don’t agree with them but I don’t think that means they’ve given up. It means they’ve prioritized and they don’t care about the rest.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:23 pm
Steve57,
It took me a long time to get to this point. It was hard for me to understand single issue voters until after the last election, and then it was crystal clear — because I became one myself.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:25 pm
It is interesting how the Dems manage to get so many single issue voters falling in line when some of the interests are in opposition. For example, the idea of allowing illegal immigrants to come en masse and stay and work, flooding the labor market, would seem to be in conflict with the labor unions and their desire to drive wages up.
And the classic pro-dem for “women’s rights”, when the dems rounded the wagons to support the classic abuse of a woman, a powerful man using a defenseless youngster for sex. But then that segment of the “women’s rights” movement seems not so much interested in women being treated with dignity and respect, but women being willing to do what they want and not “get stuck” with the consequences (or the men involved getting stuck with the consequences of child support, either).
Once upon a time, way back in the 1970′s and 80′s, the public battle cry was “don’t be a single issue voter”, as in, “don’t vote against somebody just because they are pro-abortion“; now it is “by all means be a single issue voter, if the candidate is pro-life, vote against them”!!
It seems there is very little consistent reasoning, other than “we want the right to live by our whims and we don’t want anyone getting in the way”.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:28 pm
One other thing: I’ve always thought of the Democratic Party as a coalition of voters with very different priorities, and I believed that they would have problems when those priorities conflicted. But I was wrong. Democratic voters are committed to their particular issues but they are also committed to the idea that the Democratic Party is the only party that cares about those issues. Even when Democrats like Obama have to “disappoint” a constituency, it still benefits from the overall perception that they care more than Republicans.
Our job isn’t to show we care, too, because we will never care enough to overcome that bias. But we can instill in our voters the belief that the GOP cares more than the Democrats about responsible fiscal decisions, which means we care more about jobs and economic opportunities.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:30 pm
I became a single issue voter in 2000 (more or less). I vote against the person who does the most sociopathic lying to my face (even if via television). So far it has not put me in any conflict.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:32 pm
And I think caring about jobs will appeal to Hispanics.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:32 pm
Hispanics like entitlements but, in part, that’s because they know they will have a hard time getting jobs (usually because of their education levels) and the first laid off.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:33 pm
So, the interesting thing is that so many will think the dems care more about jobs, when they are doing so many things that stand in the way of job growth, including over-regulation which mainly benefit bureaucrats and control freaks, along with giving in to environmental extremists and open-border sentiments.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:37 pm
This seems like the antithesis of giving up to me, Happyfeet. He found his bridge too far, and is taking a stand.
Comment by JD (b63a52) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:39 pm
A problem is the degree that people are ruled by their feelings and impulse, and not by their thinking. Whether one believes in creation or evolution, all understand that people survive as well as they do because of their ability to think and problem solve. If they no longer think, they give up their one advantage.
Even an animal that is smart enough to avoid a trap instead of unthinkingly going for the bait demonstrates the superiority of thinking over desire and impulse.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:42 pm
Doc, you’re touching on what I was referring to in my earlier comment.
When you look at the leaders of the special interest groups, their main interest is getting special carve outs and tax money. It’s financial.
Frankly the only wages the union leadership are interested in are their own six figure salaries, not those of the rank and file. But I don’t think they see a conflict in this case.
They’ll just join the rest of the Dems in driving up the minimum wage. Nothing protects high union wages like pricing unskilled labor out of the market. And these people they want to legalize are overwhelmingly unskilled. So why not legalize them? They won’t be able to get jobs. And the jobless are dependent upon government. Or in other words the Democratic party.
They’ll get welfare, so the illegal immigration advocates will be happy. The unions will be happy because with millions of new Democratic voters they’ll get endless auto bailouts, and more speeches in which Obama demands stimulus spending in which we hire more union members. Shovel ready jobs, police, teachers, blah blah blah.
All of this largesse to sucked out of the private sector. Further driving the economy into the toilet. But then hey! Obama or his successor can then demand more stimulus spending.
This is how the machine works. As long as each cog gets greased.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:45 pm
My take on the original post is that he came to the realization that the liberal mindset was not so much controlled by noble motives as by an ultimately self-contradictory idea of giving everybody what they want, and when the group-think “what we want” conflicted with his priorities, the emptiness of it hit him like a ton of bricks.
But I know that is definitely reading into it what I want to interpret.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:48 pm
12. askeptic – sounds like a good day.
Comment by mg (31009b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:48 pm
I should mention that there’s no way they can keep fleecing and then skinning the taxpayer and leave them armed.
Oh, and I realize this isn’t really a gay marriage thread but I thought I’d point this out:
Obama considers intervening in gay marriage case
Does it surprise anyone that Obama lied when he considered this a state issue back when he announced he was for gay marriage when nobody believed he opposed it?
Gay marriage isn’t important to liberals for any other reason than it’s a means to destroy the concept of federalism. States will no longer be sovereign entities but merely administrative districts for the central government. That’s part of fundamentally transforming the country. To do that you can’t leave citizens armed, and you can’t leave states with a means to resist the program.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:53 pm
Frankly the only wages the union leadership are interested in are their own six figure salaries, not those of the rank and file.
Agreed, but the thousands in the unions go along.
Nothing protects high union wages like pricing unskilled labor out of the market. And these people they want to legalize are overwhelmingly unskilled. So why not legalize them? They won’t be able to get jobs.
A construction site down the street- the foreman is originally from Ireland, all of the workers doing concrete work, tradesmen level work, habla mas espanol y no ingles.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:53 pm
Doc @44, you’re not reading anything into it. Liberalism, i.e. socialism, is deliberately based upon greed and envy. Class warfare is an essential element.
It deliberately calls vice virtue, and virtue vice. Redistributing someone else’s wealth they can simultaneously call generosity and “self-interest.” When it’s in one’s own self-interest to be generous with someone else’s money that means you’re voting to steal it in part to benefit yourself.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:57 pm
Thank you, elissa #29.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:58 pm
sorry me and NG went to Chili John’s
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:59 pm
Does it surprise anyone that Obama lied
They all lied, including Hillary, when they said DOMA was unnecessary and a Constitutional Amendment was really unnecessary, as it was a state matter. They just wanted to delay the issue when there was a lot of momentum to keep a traditional marriage policy.
I would have voted for guiliani, because even though he is not what I agree with on gay issues and abortion, I believed what he said (rightly or wrongly to believe it) about his not using his position to forward his views and would appoint SCOTUS in a origininal intent mode.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:59 pm
37. Words to live by.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:01 pm
I used to think this but I’m not so sure anymore. I think single issue voters are ruled by the conviction that one Party is more reliable than the other on that issue.
Frankly, I think most of us would agree that Democrats are more reliable when it comes to things people who describe themselves in favor of environmental issues or pro-choice or gay rights. I think most would agree that Republicans are more reliable on issues like pro-life, traditional marriage and free markets. That isn’t in dispute, is it?
Once you get to the point where the issue that matters to you is as clear as it is to Mad Mike — where you are a single issue voter — then the choice is easy and it’s not about feelings.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:04 pm
DRJ – I disagree on environmental issues. So much of what they propose does nothing to actually help the environment, and often times, would cause more net harm.
Comment by JD (b63a52) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:08 pm
This seems like the antithesis of giving up to me, Happyfeet.
also
Also, why is it giving up to decide what matters most to you and acting accordingly?
there are different kinds of giving up
this guy is giving up on the unifying principle that we should honor all Americans for their right to pursue their happiness in their own way – for him that means having guns at hand for other people it means having abortions or getting gay married and for other people it means drinking some tasty DMAA killpowder and having a productive day
you can’t ever give up on the idea of america being a place where people are free to live their lives how they see fit you just can’t – at the end of the day this is the only idea what can unite this big messy wonderful country in any meaningful way
but you *can* give up on politics you can give up on the increasingly nakedly-fascist food stamp party or you can give up on the Republican party with their ridiculous litmus tests for social issues and their extraordinary lack of discipline on fiscal issues
but you can’t ever give up on freedom and liberty and america and americans
you can’t say when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.
That is not America.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:10 pm
Mr. JD would you release my comment I accidentally quoted a nono word from the post
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:11 pm
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 12:57 pm
We agree on that (though I would make a different emphasis), but I’m not sure Williamson would see it that way, which is what I was trying to say.
I actually think there is much in the “liberal mindset” that is good, or at least can be good. People don’t want to see people suffer, don’t want to see people treated meanly, etc., etc., and all of that is good and generous and kind-hearted. The problem, I think and as I’ve said before, begins with the delusion that the world is “perfectable”, that utopia and eliminating suffering is possible, so “just do it”. In this effort, the idea that you are taking from some people what you have no right to take, in order to give it to other people who you (and who are you to decide?) think are more deserving gets lost and hidden in the “give their fair share” rhetoric. Yes, at some point those who are putting themselves in charge, and putting themselves above the masses, are wicked and evil.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:11 pm
thank you!
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:13 pm
but you can’t ever give up on freedom and liberty and america and americans
He isn’t. He did not arrive at his decision in a vacuum. He outlined several factors, very personal, that led him there.
Comment by JD (b63a52) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:15 pm
you can’t say when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.
except for certain values of propaganda slut
cause of that’s just treason plain and simple
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:15 pm
You mean like the members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union went along with the leadership and went on strike at Hostess? The union boss Frank Hurt still has his job. And he probably thinks he has increased clout because if you recall he put out a statement saying the union knew it was likely Hostess would go under if they struck. “Nice business you have there; it’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”
So he put 18,000 people out of work right before Christmas, using them as cannon fodder to increase his stature.
Are you implying there’s a non-union construction site down the street? In Philly? I don’t believe it.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:17 pm
JD,
I’m saying people who consider themselves single issue environmental voters are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party because that’s the Party that has an environmental agenda. I’m not saying it’s a good or smart agenda. Republicans tend to look at environmental issues in a more nuanced way, because we tend to consider things like the impact on the economy.
Of course, both sides think they have science on their side. I happen to think many of the scientific aspects of most environmental issues are not clear cut, but I’m sure most liberals would disagree.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:19 pm
Once again we are seeing the disconnect between “our leaders” (The Ruling Class, composed of both parties but primarily Democrats),
and “the silent majority” (The Country Class, composed mostly of non-Democrats).
Angelo Codevilla writes about this once more in Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/02/20/as-country-club-republicans-link-up-with-the-democratic-ruling-class-millions-of-voters-are-orphaned/
, and reading between the lines, indicates that the GOP may be going the way of the Whigs.
Some of us, the ones who feel that like Reagan vis-a-vis the Democrat Party, the Party has left us, feel that it can’t happen soon enough.
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:21 pm
happyfeet,
Is it American for me to defend someone else’s rights and values when they won’t defend mine?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:23 pm
A one-sided value system is what’s not American.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:23 pm
well it’s a dark dark path he went down Mr. JD
he is feeling very unempowered and alienated I think
even if he is ashamed of America like Mr. Limbaugh and myself and many others, Team Liberty still needs him and he has a Duty to answer the call and that means exercising his freedoms unabashedly while honoring the right of others to do the same he has a Duty to be a sheep among the wolves there standing tall
even if sometimes sheeps get eated
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:24 pm
Is it American for me to defend someone else’s rights and values when they won’t defend mine?
omg that’s the most americanest thing there is
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:25 pm
I agree DRJ that people may think one party is more reliable than another on given issues, but I suggest that what they think is based more on percetion and feeling than analytic thinking.
I want my children to have national parks and clean air and clean water too, but I don’t think the dems are really any more interested in that than repubs, they are just more interested in doing things that have the appearance of being meaningful to irrational zealots.
One may think the dems are more interested in a “kind” society because they are pro-gay marriage. I think I’m interested in a “kind” society because I know that legalizing one opinion of behavior as opposed to another opinion of behavior does not lead to a kinder society, but one with more strife. Trying to change thousands of years of the experience of billions of people as to what is “normal” or not about marriage because a few hundred elected officials in DC or even a fewer number of judges say so is misguided, I think. Certainly world wide, there are a billion or so Muslims who only see it as an affront and invitation to “kill the infidel”. As a conservative Bible-believing Christian all I want is for gays not to be persecuted and not to be called a “homophobe” because of an intellectual disagreement. I think the gays are much better off with me in charge than people who make apologies for Hassan and cover-up ritual beheadings in NJ.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:25 pm
Yesterday on another site some serious and sober Republicans were commiserating and throwing out ideas about how to win elections and were looking at social media, fronting younger more charismatic leaders and right leaning pundits, better gotv efforts using technology targeting and incentives, more focused message management and broad coordinated placement week to week, etc. etc. A “helpful” Democrat piped in with this analysis:
(xxxx) is on the right track but the national GOP platform is the real problem. Let’s review how the 2012 version came across:
If you’re a woman, we will take away your reproductive rights.
If you’re gay, we will take away your civil rights.
If you’re a senior, we will take away your Social Security and Medicare.
If you’re foriegn born, we will take away your path to citizenship.
If you’re a poor college student, we will take away your access to education.
If you’re middle class, we will take away some of your income (someone has to pay for the tax cuts for the Romneys of the world).
Obviously, for those of us who know better, every single one of those points is competely bogus or at least devoid of nuance. But in thinking about it overnight I fear he was correct that this is what a lot of Independents/Dems/Obama voters do think about the GOP, because this is exactly what they’ve been fed over and over and over again by lefty blogs, push pull polls, OFA emails, and Harry Reid (with cover and “legitimacy” for those lies provided by way too many in the ignorant media rabble).
It’s a big problem. If I didn’t know better and thought the above list is actually what Republicans believe and are coldly working to achieve–I wouldn’t want to vote R either.
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:28 pm
Are you implying there’s a non-union construction site down the street? In Philly? I don’t believe it.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:17 pm
It is actually across the street in Cheltenham Township…besides, philly is a big place, lots of small time residential stuff gets done by apparently “unoffical” folk. As I speak some Spanish, I get to practice with people from Mexico, Guatamala, Honduras, etc.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:41 pm
One of the interesting young R congressmen from my state is Adam Kinzinger. He spoke at the Lincoln day dinner:
“We need to be upset about what’s going on in Washington. We need to be upset about what’s going on in Illinois. But we have to do it in a way that’s not about dividing our country. Ronald Reagan won in 1980 not because he stood on national TV and screamed at Jimmy Carter, talked about how terrible everything was and tried to scare the American people. He won because he had a vision of the America he wanted to live in and the America that he believed could exist under his leadership,” Kinzinger said.
…
Thirty-eight percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans (in IL it’s more like 22.3%), which means that …if we want to be a minority party forever, we’re on the right track. If we want to win national elections, we need to take 13 percent and switch them from the ‘I don’t call myself a Republican’ column to ‘You know what? I’m going to be a Republican today.’ We’ll do that by talking about the optimistic hope for our future,” Kinzinger said.
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:41 pm
67.Is it American for me to defend someone else’s rights and values when they won’t defend mine?
omg that’s the most americanest thing there is
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:25 pm
feets, it may be American to defend the rights of someone you disagree with, but if you defend the rights of someone who doesn’t defend yours, what you get is a different country than the one you started with, and one much less noble, because all who fought for others are gone, and those who wouldn’t fight for others are the ones left.
Social contracts need to go both ways, or they are not contracts
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:46 pm
elissa, the fact is nearly every one of those “rights” isn’t a right but a demand upon third party to work to give you something.
Of course, those aren’t what Conservatives believe, but liberals do believe they have a right to someone else’s cash if to pay for some bennie they really want.
And I think that’s what’s behind the tone of this 2nd Amendment defense. Abortion and contraception isn’t a right, and it certainly is a basis to force someone to provide it for you.
Gay marriage isn’t a civil right.
Social Security and Medicare aren’t rights; they’re wealth transfers from those working to those no longer working who receive welfare benefits far in excess of anything they paid in.
The foreign born thing is stupid as the only people who are threatened to have their path to citizenship taken away these days are those who arrive here legally. But certainly citizenship isn’t a right.
Apparently not subsidizing someone’s education is denying them access; no one has heard of working through college these days. Because of course you have a right to that third party’s money.
And he fact that the Romneys of the world pay far more of their fair share of the taxes won’t stop this “helpful” Democrat from claiming if you don’t raise them further on them you’re “giving” them a cut.
And why not; the “helpful” Democrats always think that the money is really theirs so if they’re not taking as much as they can they’re “giving” the wealthy something.
You can not stay truly free in a country where fabricated rights create more wards of the state demanding more and more from the productive.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:57 pm
Wasn’t it Goldwater (AuH2O-64) who said
“I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it!”
The problem with those on the Left, is that they do not feel that they need to reciprocate.
And that is the game changer.
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:58 pm
Elissa – it is an abject failure of Team R to be as passive as they are in the face of such asshattery.
Comment by JD (a603bd) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:58 pm
Mr. Dr. the same Catholic Charities what are whining about how offering insurance for contraception and abortion to their employees infringes their religious liberties are ALL IN when it comes to taking away your right to own a firearm – to say nothing of their prior support for the other coercive aspects of obamacare.
You can enjoy watching them choke on their hypocrisy and that’s fine, but at the end of the day the principle is that our fascist monstrosity of a government shouldn’t be dictating the terms on which anyone is insured – or whether they have to be insured at all.
And that is why you stand up.
Defending the rights of others is inextricable from defending your own, even if other people are of poor character and hypocritical and such.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 1:59 pm
MD,
Don’t we all think we are being reasonable and people who disagree with us are being emotional? I tend to think we just reason in different ways and/or start with different assumptions.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:03 pm
As MD says, that’s a one-sided social contract. So much for the notion of everyone being equal.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:04 pm
I’ve twice been reported to Family Services on the grounds that I have guns in the house, which means I’m a danger to my kids (which complaints were laughed at, here in Indiana).
I’ve been accused of racism…because I own guns.
I’ve been accused of fascism…because I own guns.
I’ve been called a coward..
Yes, but did they call the Enterprise a “garbage scow”?
Comment by furious_a (3a3354) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:04 pm
I think you are confusing the rights with equality. We need both, but you are only recognizing the rights without the equality.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:06 pm
I think I’d rather phrase it as, why should I defend some fabricated “right” that isn’t in the Constitution when they only made it up to deprive me of the rights that are?
Sure, there’s a First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion but what does that compare to a woman’s reproductive rights? Besides, according to this administration they’re not prohibiting the “free exercise” of religion because that only means you can pick your favorite church on Sunday if you choose to go. the “free exercise thereof” in reference of religion does not mean you can live by its tenets, especially when it conflicts with Sandra Fluke’s need to have someone subsidize her massive recreational sex bill.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:06 pm
equality under the law in david gregory’s america
ain’t really on the table anymore
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:07 pm
The problem, happyfeet, is that the people the author was adressing are about to put the author on the train over the issue of guns.
He’s not saying he’s giving up on the concept of freedom, he’s saying that he’s just not going to fight along side them anymore.
Comment by Chuck Bartowski (11fb31) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:10 pm
well if they’re trying to put him on the train he should shoot them with his gun I think Mr. Bartowski
this would be a Moment Of Clarity for all concerned
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:16 pm
I’ve twice been reported to Family Services on the grounds that I have guns in the house, which means I’m a danger to my kids (which complaints were laughed at, here in Indiana)
I hope Mike said “hi” to Brett, given that that sounds like the Kimberlin Crime Family in action.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:23 pm
happyfeet, you are completely missing Mad Mike’s point.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:25 pm
Steve57–I doubt I could have been more clear @69 that the “helpful democrat’s” list was utterly false and we all know it-which is why I didn’t bother to fisk it line by line . Still, whether these are “rights” or “wants” that are being mischaracterized and lied about by the left is almost immaterial to any discussion if it happens to be what many current voters do believe about the GOP and are voting either for or against. Refuting these falsehoods eloquently on a blog with many kindred spirits (as you have done here) hardly addresses the larger problem with all those who are ignorant of the law and are not kindred spirits. Does anybody have any good ideas on how to reach some of them? The 2012 R campaigns clearly did not succeed.
You will note that the “helpful democrat” of my story was quite careful to say that’s the message that “came across”–not that the message was true.
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:29 pm
elissa,
I think a lot of voters believe that about the GOP and individual Republicans. What we’ve failed to do is tell them why we think these are bad ideas, but it’s not like the information isn’t out there. Some voters simply don’t want to hear another point of view because they’ve already made up their minds, either from peer pressure or a pre-existing mindset. Unfortunately, voters who are open to other views are fed a steady diet of progressive PR by the media and pop culture. That’s what we need to counteract.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:41 pm
“but you can’t ever give up on freedom and liberty and america and americans”
Mr. Feets – LOL. That is exactly what Mr. Empty Suit Greasy Azzed Socialist Blameshifter and you are asking us to do because we will have an omnipotent federal bureaucracy with absolute moral authority making all our important life choices for us because we should not have the freedom to make wrong choices on our own, or so the theory goes. Just surrender to the tyranny of moral relativism and the state and you will be free to pursue whatever happiness and liberty remains in your life, sort of like Cuba or North Korea. What could go wrong?
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/21/2013 @ 2:47 pm
That’s pretty much what he did with his blog post, feets.
Comment by Chuck Bartowski (11fb31) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:10 pm
happyfeet,
I’m no philosopher but let’s assume you’re correct that Americans have an obligation to recognize other citizen’s rights, even if they intentionally don’t reciprocate. Do you view American government as ruling based on a social contract, i.e., that government rules based on the consent of the governed? If not, what is your theory of what gives the American government power over its citizens?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:14 pm
Have you heard this Rush Limbaugh statement, happyfeet? Is this what you mean by giving up on America?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:27 pm
We’re certainly in the ‘Crazy Years’, the right to self defense, the right to your own property, (re Kelo, and the EPA) those are under assault, through
the AGW myth, the President says your own labor isn’t yours, and that’s not considered the crazy
thing,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:29 pm
I’m still of a mind that we need a drastic reduction in the number of POVs to sort out this mess.
Naw, I don’t wanna go first.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:31 pm
I used to vote because of my belief in this country.
Then I started voting because I despise liberalism.
Now I’m done voting because the collectivists have taken over the republican party.
Comment by mg (31009b) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:45 pm
Some voters simply don’t want to hear another point of view because they’ve already made up their minds
DRJ, it goes back to the basic conflict between The Right and The Left:
Conservatives believe that The Left is wrong;
The Left believes that Conservatives are evil!
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:51 pm
And Rush was right – this argument has been going on since the onset of The Great Society, and they use the same BS talking points today that they used then, and they’re no more truthful today.
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:56 pm
elissa, you are correct, there are many kindred spirits. But even here I find there are people who don’t realize that what many of those things Mr. Williamson says he no longer cares about are not rights.
As for the other people we need to reach, I really don’t know what will work. I would probably start by pointing out to Mr. “helpful” Democrat that none of those “Romney tax cuts” are going to cost the middle class as much as ObamaCare. As the IRS has discovered the least expensive “Bronze” plan will cost $20k/yr. And it’s that expensive because it needs to cover all those people on Medicaid. Providers lose more on Medicaid patients than they do the uninsured, and thanks to Obamacare the middle class will have to pay more to cover the shortfall as providers overcharge those with insurance to do so.
Obama is taking a lot more of the middle class’ income then Romney ever would.
Then I’d probably point out that the title of what may be the definitive book on Thomas Jefferson and slavery is titled “Those who labor for my happiness” : slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
Even plantation slaves didn’t labor all the time for their masters. They did work some of the time such as tending kitchen gardens for themselves.
So now we’re just talking percentages. How much time would Mr. “Helpful” Democrat demand others labor for his happiness? To provide him with all the welfare benefits such as free school, free healthcare, Social Security, and Medicaid or Medicare and who knows what else would make him happy. 30% of the time as was the case in 2012 or 90% of the time as was the case in the antebellum south.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 3:59 pm
DRJ my theory is that government governs best what governs least.
By this standard we have a remarkably crappy government.
But um. Beyond that I just think Angry Bob up there in the post is on the wrong track, and for why I think that mostly I just keep going back to this.
I think there’s a way forward demarcated here. Believe me I would love to let it all burn cause fire is pretty and America is so contemptible and ghetto lately. But a lot of normal regular old people would get hurt doing it that way.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:23 pm
i probably meant delineated huh
it’s almost time to dose myself with the DMAA killpowder I think
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:25 pm
#72 MD. That was very well said,sir.
#76, happyfeet. I am not sure how you got there, sir. I see no hypocrisy in your example.
Catholic leaders are obliged to resist any efforts to coerce an illicit action from the faithful. The fact that religious liberty is an enumerated right in the USC is incidental to the defense of faith and morals. It is the requirement of paying for an illicit act that is at the heart of the issue for all christians, not just Catholics.
If there was no religious right in the USC, Catholic leaders would still object and resist the unjust HHR mandate. Indeed, as you point out, they are defending everyone’s right, not just their own.
Moreover, there is no obligation for Catholic leaders to defend the second amendment or any other part of the USC – they have taken no oath to do so. Since it is neither a question of faith nor a question of morals, all christians are free to take differing positions regarding gun control.
I, as a faithful Catholic, am free to disagree with the letter sent to Congress by Faiths United. I do disagree with it. The second item they propose is, in my opinion, just plain wrong.
The hypocrisy exists elsewhere, my friend. Prolly amongst those that have taken an oath to defend the USC.
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:40 pm
99. Every dog has its day. Maybe its the Libertarians’ turn? We could do worse.
Anyway I’ll bet I haven’t voted for my last Republican.
Michele will run for something.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:41 pm
92. For me it was Nov. 6th, say 10 PM.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:47 pm
Mr. feets, since they don’t share your conservative values many of them will pursue happiness in ways that will convince the majority of the electorate that people must be controlled. For their own good. Plus it’s costing everyone else money.
“If it feels good do it” has led to more government intervention, not less.
Which brings us back to the gun control issue.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:52 pm
101. I’m certain most of us will soon be obliged to defy our government(s), and this time without expecting to escape the consequences.
I don’t know about ‘end times’ but tribulation is certainly on the threshold, even if limited to Israel by definition.
“All nations will be blessed because of you, and will bless themselves in blessing you.”
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 4:56 pm
i think y’all are overthinking it Mr. felipe and Mr. Steve
it’s good to stand up for people what are pursuing freedoms from leviathan
not cause they’ll stand up for you, but cause it’s just a good idea to never miss a chance to bop leviathan on the nose really hard with a rolled-up newspaper and say BAD LEVIATHAN BAD
otherwise leviathan piddles on the rug and drinks out of the toilet
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:10 pm
Probably. Wonder what sort of experimental conditions he has in mind.
However not only licensed people drive, and certainly not only licensed drivers cause collisions.
That passage seems an odd assertion to me, and appears to imply somebody should be able to deny others’ liberty by simply questioning the legitimacy of their needs.
Somehow, this seems to remind me of another current debate going on.
Comment by tek (1c5b2a) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:26 pm
Mr. feets @106, I’m not overthinking it. I’m just pointing out that libertarianism and nation of Lindsey Lohans don’t mix.
When it’s assumed people won’t control themselves, then they’ll demand someone control them. Which is where we are.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:32 pm
No one’s jokes makes me laugh like your jokes do, Mr. feets. You have a gift for levity that this blog’s comment section greatly benefits from. Thank you.
I do not believe Mr. Steve is overthinking anything. Just sayin’
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:33 pm
You are too fast for me!
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:34 pm
but we’re not a nation of Lindsay Lohans that is hyperbole
besides we’re not even a nation anymore we’re just an extended food stamp distribution network
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:35 pm
hf,
Our system isn’t based on “let me do what I want.” It’s based on balancing rights and responsibilities — it’s based on limits — because we know not everyone can do what they want.
You don’t want the government to tell you who can and who can’t be married, but should we let people marry whoever they want — no matter how young they are? Or how many people they want to marry?
You don’t want the government to tell you what guns you can buy, but should we let felons and people declared mentally ill to have guns?
It’s all well and good to argue that we should abandon social issues but people care about them and they want some limits. Further, there’s a libertarian option on the ballot in virtually every election and people don’t vote for it.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:39 pm
A new lapel button that says:
Get food stamps. Ask me how.
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:40 pm
But I definitely agree that Republicans would do well to remember that small government solutions work better than big government solutions.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:41 pm
“otherwise leviathan piddles on the rug and drinks out of the toilet”
Mr. Feets – Other people, they say they gotta holla at Mr. Leviatan to throw down with some free wacker wrappers cuz they gotta get their freak on for the liberties and happiness.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:45 pm
Does anyone really think most Americans have decided they like liberalism? I still think Americans have told us they like Barack Obama, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they like liberalism.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:46 pm
hyperbole? These gun-control freaks are demanding the names and addresses of gun owners be made public so people can decide not to live there cuz they won’t feel safe knowing the guy five doors down has a gun.
Just as they wouldn’t feel safe knowing there was a sex offender in that house. Or LiLo knowing she has a case of vodka in the house and a Porsche in the garage.
Because you just never know when any of them will go off their nut.
Actually the LiLo comparison is probably most apt. Just like we all know “demon rum” makes people do bad things (and didn’t prohibition work out so well) the gun is the cause of crime. It’s the modern version of “the devil made him do it.”
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:49 pm
OK, JD, this is how I would edit it down.
1. remove the following:
Yup. I’m taking you at your word. Want money? Don’t care. Want a petition signed? Call someone who who gives a shit. Want a link spread? Yawn. Women or gays or blacks or Hispanics don’t feel they’re being treated nicely? So what?
2. Change:
So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.
To:
So when they come to throw you under the bus, don’t count on my saving you.
The “Yup” graph damages much of the sympathy won by the merits of the previous arguments.
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:53 pm
Yes. that’s like those roving bans of SUV’s that were running people down in the late 90s and the early 00s
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:53 pm
Lemme see.
School of fish.
Murder of crows.
Bans of SUVs.
Sounds right.
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 5:59 pm
ok you have a good point about limits but most of the limitings can and should happen at the state level I think
Mr. daley president food stamp has demonstrated a great gift for exposing so many of our fellow americans to where we can see them for the greedy slutty stupid petty creatures they are. It’s really horrifying and saddening. And demoralizing.
He does it on purpose.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 6:11 pm
Mr. 57 the gun control freaks are just as fascist as the Mothers Against Drunk Driving freaks.
Which, that is pretty scary damn fascist.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/21/2013 @ 6:14 pm
He’s been working at this for nearly twenty years, at the Joyce Foundation, he helped underwrite most of that gun control propaganda, he opened up the subprime path, with the suit against Citigroup,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/21/2013 @ 6:15 pm
I don’t think the majority of people necessarily like liberalism, and I don’t think a majority of people even like Obama. They like what Obama says, and they like what they think Obama stands for. And since the majority of the “passive press” doesn’t point out how what he says and does are two different things, they don’t know any better.
Really, it shouldn’t be any harder than to point out that the senate and the president haven’t agreed on a budget between themselves to show that they have no serious intention of even achieving the minimum of responsible government.
As far as the previous point about do we not all think we have reasoned thinking? My idea of reasoned thinking is that one follows out the consequences and ramifications of what one thinks, and sees if that is what they expected and want to live with.
By all means people start out with differing assumptions and perspectives. But I think too often people don’t think about what their assumptions are, or what the consequences of their beliefs will be.
For one example take the Vietnam War. Many anti-war protestors claimed that it was the US causing the strife and if we would just get out everything would be fine. I think people had legitimate questions as to how we got involved, what were our appropriate responsibilities and goals, what tactics were reasonable, etc., but for the most part it was portrayed as “America, love it or leave it” vs “America is the great oppressor, burn the flag”.
The same with Iraq. I think there are a lot of legitimate questions about whether we should have gone into Iraq and if so how. But once the issue is falsely framed as “Bush lied and people died” and “are you for or against bushitler” there isn’t much room for thoughtful discussion.
It’s all Alinsky/lucifer/devil playbook- don’t discuss actual merits of a position, “demonize” your opponent. People may think they are using reason, but is it really reasonable to believe, as nancy pelosi says, that many of us just don’t care about having clean air or water, or whether children go to bed hungry?
On the other hand, it wouldn’t seem very reasonable to say that the media and the president are lying to us all of the time.
the only solution is to do the best one can at finding facts and not simply going by assumptions and beliefs.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/21/2013 @ 7:55 pm
Mr. Feets – How do I avoid drinking or showering in the corpse water on my next trip to Los Angeles? Forget the DMAA geranium kill powder. Say no to corpse water.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:05 pm
you live in Chicago you had that boy die up top the intercontinental just a couple months ago
but yeah we get floaters for some reason
you just have to carry a vial of bleach with you really
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:09 pm
I really needed to read this today. Thanks.
Comment by WarEagle82 (2b7355) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:13 pm
I dont know DRJ, when you and I went to school, we took civics, opened the morning with the pledge of allegience, went to youth group, played sports.
Now kids learn about ficticious facts in black history month, learn that we stole the west from the mexicans, polluted the earth, youth group is bad, Jesus is indocrination and sports are where everyone is a winner
Comment by EPWJ (bdd0a6) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:13 pm
That’s corps water, Daley.
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:15 pm
That’s probably true of the under-30 group, EPWJ, although I hope some may rethink what they were taught after a dose of reality.
Comment by DRJ (8b9d41) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:19 pm
I will ask some students to recite the pledge of allegience. I’ll let you know how many know it.
Comment by felipe (3243af) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:19 pm
Of course, there is an irony in Obama’s support or dissent about Iraq, he opposed it in 2002; then when was Senator for the first two years, he voted for the funding, because of one of his patron’s investments, and then he voted against it, the last two years, when the deal fell through,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:25 pm
Does anyone really think most Americans have decided they like liberalism? I still think Americans have told us they like Barack Obama, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they like liberalism.
Beyond EPWJ’s comments — which point out part of the problem (and, btw, public-school textbooks in California now must emphasize famous GLBT people throughout history) — I think human nature in general, throughout the world, has to be scrutinized. Regrettably, I don’t think the nature of Americans is necessarily all that different from the nature of many peoples elsewhere, certainly in the 21st century.
I see the socio-political anomie and decline (and various forms of corruption) in Europe and places like Mexico and Argentina, and I believe we’re merely running parallel with those societies. So it’s just a matter of whether our soft-headed liberalism precedes or follows what’s evident elsewhere by X or Y number of years or, at most, by X or Y number of decades.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:29 pm
i didn’t think people like liberalism I think they’re disgusted with the Republican party to where larges swathes of people don’t even take it remotely seriously anymore
it’s not like it’s option b
it’s just not an option
this is what has happened through akinisms large and small
through akinisms and mourdockisms and joe walshisms and palinisms and philip gingreyisms
and whatever that weirdo romney hedge fund boy scout tabernacle choir boys from brazil campaign was about
and bachmannisms and someone just needs to buy rick perry a pacifier
plus you have your phony lying obamawhore republicans like the colin powell and the weirdo pansy from utah and joe scarborough and michael steele
plus you have porky porky chris christie actively kneecapping your nominee while sticking his tongue up food stamp’s fundament for spare change
PLUS you have a lot of backasswards 700 clubber social positions RIGHT THERE IN YOUR PLATFORM WHERE EBBYONE CAN SEE
plus fox news is not your friend it has its own agenda
remember on election night when all the fox propaganda whores suddenly shut up about porky porky’s role in obama’s victory?
I sure do it was like someone flipped a switch
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:39 pm
[mimes flipping a switch]
yup that’s what it was like
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:45 pm
I agree, AND THAT DOSE is oh so occuring right now in the job market!
Comment by EPWJ (bdd0a6) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:48 pm
happyfeet, you need to come out of the ideological closet. You’re more sympathetic with liberalism — in its various forms or guises — than you care to admit.
BTW, I think people who leaned left several decades ago were one thing (eg, around the time when parts of Europe, no less, in the name of nationalism would declare war on one another, or when legislation in the US to ban lynching was controversial). For people to have similar sentiments today is a totally different matter.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:49 pm
AND THAT DOSE is oh so occuring right now in the job market!
But consider the ongoing example of France. Even though the unemployment rate among the youth in that society is extremely high — and unemployment has been consistently high for a few decades (at least by US standards) — that demographic in large numbers (of course, along with other age groups) elected a flat-out Socialist to their presidency last year.
Stupid is as stupid does—and it generally leans left, no matter what.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:55 pm
nonono I’m a very staunch conservative
we have to shrink the government and let freedom ring and we have to stop electing fascist soros pigs like food stamp and we have to abjure the propaganda sluts
also we have to make the energies bubble up bubble up from the bottom of the sea and from the shales and from below the tundras
also we have to trade trade trade and we have to cut regulations everywhere even some that people like
we have to reform the tax code and make it simpler and flatter and fairer and we don’t need to tax capital gains at all because that’s dumb
we also need to support community colleges as a counterweight to America’s disgustingly fascist university system (except for some stem programs)
also we need to divorce the fascist American Bar Association from any role in selecting judges
also we need to legalize the marijuana and begin to roll back our pitiful little country’s burgeoning police state and all the piggy piggy parasitic first responder pension whores that adhere to it
also we need to get rid of ethanol subsidies given how much petrochemical abundance we have – that money is far better spent studying coal-to-liquids conversion if we want to have a back-pocket energy source for emergencies
also we need to reform the entitlements and also we need to repudiate and deprogram food stamp and all who adhere to his fascist cult of personality
also we need to take states rights far far far more seriously than we do
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 8:59 pm
Ordinarily I might give worries about social decay arising from wholesale implementation of a laissez faire regime cum Amsterdam, Libertarianism taken to its logical ends.
Unfortunately the times surrounding election 2016 render this treatment of halitosis or a hang nail.
A Libertarian’s likely comportment in exercise of martial law isn’t something I’ve given deep thought to but in a period of global conflagration it seems a benign gambit.
As Dr. Reynolds, libertarian, sometimes opines, ‘In the future everything will be illegal.’ I might prefer a secured whip during world war.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:14 pm
might give heed to
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:16 pm
Soros pig, is all about legalizing marijuana, while making carbs specially transfats, fossil fuels, firearms, verboten, why do you think they sunk Bork and tried to do the same to Thomas,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:16 pm
nonono I’m a very staunch conservative
Perhaps in certain economic areas, but not overall. BTW, I’m not dogging you about your ideological biases to be negative, but because I’m trying to be accurately descriptive.
I’m not sure if there are many people out there who are a flip side version of you, or those who are socially, culturally conservative, but economically very liberal. However, I’m aware that in the history of Communism in the Soviet Union and Red China, humans who were the ultimate examples of economic ultra-liberals (or ultra-ultra-liberals) also could be notoriously prudish about cultural issues.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:24 pm
The dose of reality many are getting, unfortunately, is that on liberalism’s animal farm some pigs are more equal than others.
California Dept. of Transportation: ‘Be Sure to Black Out the ‘United States’ and [the] Motto’
Just so you know, the bureaucracy isn’t senseless. When they don’t want you to build something the unaccountable bureaucrats can throw up endless roadblocks. Some of them actually illegal, but since they’re not personally responsible go ahead. It’ll just cost the plaintiff thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, and possibly years. It won’t cost the bureaucrats a dime or a minute of their time.
But on the other hand they (as well as city and county planning commissions, and the California Coastal Commission if you’re doing a project in the coastal zone) can approve the project with minimal delay if they want to.
Which treatment do you think the people who built that shrine to Castro and Che Guevara et al got?
All in all liberalism and it’s administrative regulatory state isn’t so bad if you the more equal pig. And on the receiving end of the wealth transfer.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:24 pm
*but since they’re not personally responsible go ahead and sue (a civil suit almost always the only remedy the law provides).*
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:28 pm
Woudnt count France out, Mark, yes they are classic liberals but there is a strong core of hard working innovative and aggressive business class. Renault has reinvented itself and is making strong inroads, they are thinking of relaunching their own Aircraft company to make passenger jets as Dassault is essentailly Airbus.
France will always have Paris, but then again there is the rest of france
Comment by EPWJ (bdd0a6) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:32 pm
Whether you agree with him or not I think you were very condescending to happyfeet just above. Maybe you’re the one with the worrisome biases, Mark. Maybe your litmus test for conservatives is the one that’s askww.
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:34 pm
This just in:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2013/02/no-one-show-joe-salazar-one-chart-that.html
Yeah, all that talk about a magnet for disaffected ‘fornians, I don’t hear it either.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:43 pm
France will always have Paris, but then again there is the rest of france
When I find myself becoming overly conscious of the role and influence of politics and government — and how that shapes humans and places — I remind myself about the dynamics of people voting with their feet. And how that form of “voting” can make or unmake whole societies or communities. For example, San Francisco and Detroit are both leftwing-loony piles, but one is truly a debacle, the other one isn’t. Maybe that’s why I’m never totally sure if I’m being overly optimistic or cynical about how things will fare in the long run.
Maybe your litmus test for conservatives is the one that’s askww.
Elissa, I don’t know why you say that when happyfeet routinely and regularly expresses unhappiness, if not flat-out disdain, towards socio-cultural conservatism and conservatives. If that isn’t a reflection of left-leaning impulses, than what is it? BTW, most people have bits and pieces of biases, spanning from left to right, so just about all of us can identify leftism or rightism, in ourselves or others. For example, happyfeet is a big supporter of same-sex marriage (ie, his left side), while he often uses the word “gay” disparagingly (ie, his right side).
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:49 pm
It couldn’t happen here:
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/bracken-democide/
We’re all civilized.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:50 pm
== happyfeet routinely and regularly expresses unhappiness, if not flat-out disdain, towards socio-cultural conservatism and conservatives. If that isn’t a reflection of left-leaning impulses, than what is it? ==
Oh, I dunno. Maybe its being a Goldwater Conservative?
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 9:59 pm
151. I candidly admit, before God and my fellow man, I’m not picking up Feets’ web of interconnected, contigent belief.
I continue to be surprised.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:04 pm
Funny, I vaguely recall the business cycle lasting several years at a blow:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-21/global-leading-indicator-shows-slowdown-dead-ahead
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:24 pm
thank you Elissa I don’t…
the tent is very confining at times
that is a quote from the internet, and republicans what don’t care if gay people get married or if sally peterson in utica has an abortion are NOT represented in america
flat-out disdain, towards socio-cultural conservatism and conservatives
busted
yup you busted me
while in real life I’m a lot more sympathetic to socons being related to them and growed up with them and such… you can’t anymore pretend like it’s ok for people to hijack the party as pompously as the socons have and still get the point across that NO it’s not ok and why?
first of all they’re VERY you give an inch they take a mile about crap
but also because it’s a big reason why Team R loser candidates keep losing and me and mine get treated to heaping piles of fascism
logic and empirical observation dictates the reluctant conclusion that your visible akins and mourdocks are but the tip of an insidious iceberg of fail
and that is not cool it’s actually a from of fraud
so I am done… in this way I’m like Angry Bob up there
I won’t vote for lifeydoodles anymore
roobs you are on your own
susan b anthony crotchsniffer paul ryan you are on your own
your theological angst is sooooo not my problem and sorry the truth is I know FAR more about your religious beliefs than is decent
have a little dignity you over-sharing losers
how much do I know about Hillary’s religious beliefs?
not a goddamn thing and that’s one of the only attractive things about that trashy fascist may I say cooze
we have real problems here in this sad little country
grow up lifeydoodles nobody thinks you’re remotely cute anymore what isn’t named duggar and I tell you another thing
Reagan is dead and rotted
he’s a mouldering corpse and so is his vaunted three-legged stool
moveon.org people
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:25 pm
a *form* of fraud I mean
wow that was kinda long sorry about that
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:26 pm
Oh, I dunno. Maybe its being a Goldwater Conservative?
Actually, that label (or the politician it’s named for) is a reflection of the various biases, leftwing ones included, that most people have. Liberal impulses, by the way, are the origins of some of the biggest blunders of Republican-, right-leaning politicians, including Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes, Nixon (of course) and Herbert Hoover.
By contrast, one of the singular exemplary decisions associated with left-leaning John F. Kennedy can be traced to his conservative impulses, when he promoted the idea of reducing tax rates. But that guy sure was an ultra-liberal socially, with recent revelations indicating he could be as bad, if not worst, than any lurid novel might make him out to be. ABC News interviewed a woman last year who (when still college-age) was a regular visitor to the West Wing during the early 1960s. She described a moment when she, JFK and his major adviser were hanging out at the White House indoor swimming pool and was asked by JFK to perform oral sex on his adviser, with his wanting to stick around and watch.
One can only imagine what’s going on in private with the current occupant of the White House, who in far more ways is super liberal (economically and culturally) even by the standards of the 2010s compared with JFK of the late 1950s, early 1960s.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:43 pm
Relatives, can’t live with them, not ‘effin here for starters without them.
I’d regale y’all with stories about loud, drunken, boorish, obsessive Packer fans, but you’d hate me in the morning.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:43 pm
um… happyfeet….
wow…..just…..wow
just on aside note Romney wasnt a Republican nor a conservatibe
just sayin
Comment by EPWJ (bdd0a6) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:48 pm
and I will never look a saffron scented cupcakes in the same light again,,,
its just not the same anymore
Comment by EPWJ (bdd0a6) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:50 pm
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
“God is no respecter of men”
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:51 pm
gary
why did God make Packer fans?
cause he already created the homeless..
Comment by EPWJ (bdd0a6) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:52 pm
but also because it’s a big reason why Team R loser candidates keep losing and me and mine get treated to heaping piles of fascism
But that reminds me of various pundits, from the left and right, who have mused for awhile that a major reason a large percentage of Latino voters are leaning left is because the Republican Party and many conservative pols are perceived as being anti-illegal-immigrant. Okay, if that’s the case, then how do those same pundits explain all the mindless, one-party-forever leftism in Mexico? Is that due to anti-immigration positions taken by certain non-liberal politicians throughout Mexico?
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:53 pm
159. I feel so coarse, so vulgar, chocolate chocolate chip for me, Texas-sized.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/21/2013 @ 10:58 pm
Oh good allah, Mark. Now you’re calling freedom lover Barry Goldwater–Mr. Conservative– a closet lefty? And you somehow managed to put him into the same paragraphs with JFK’s getting/watching blowjobs? What is the matter with you that all you can see about people are their supposed “impulses” and “biases” and sex lives? Regardless of your intentions– (although it’s often unlear what they actually are)–it’s starting to get downright creepy if you ask me. Maybe you might reconsider your apparent assumption that you are the only one who can sniff out a true conservative and that it is somehow your duty to do so.
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:02 pm
happyfeet- your non vote in the last election, lazy or too busy?
Comment by mg (31009b) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:04 pm
i honestly thought Romney couldn’t lose Mr. mg
and plus I live in california
I did send for an absentee ballot but it didn’t come in time
so anyway I had a short window to get out and see america before my new job started and I had to git going before the weather turned
I went to america’s oldest city st. augustine for to watch Romney win and see america repudiate fascism
um
then I went to disneywhirl and rode every last damn ride
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:09 pm
I have no problems with Mr. Feets. He is welcome to drink my corpse water any time.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:14 pm
corpse water!
mmmm!
tastes like…
food stamps!
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:16 pm
happyfeet- wish I could have seen the U.S.A. in a chevrolet.
I don’t think voting matters anymore, with only dems and the gop to choose from.
Comment by mg (31009b) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:23 pm
OOh, the hotel with the deadly water tank is somewhat notorious and has a grisly history. Maybe people ahould not stay there.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/21/us/california-horror-hotel/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:27 pm
Now you’re calling freedom lover Barry Goldwater–Mr. Conservative– a closet lefty?
Elissa, so do you think each and every person out there is totally one way or the other? That their ideological preferences are totally pure? I don’t. That’s why it would be ridiculous to label Goldwater as 100% rightwing, which depending on one’s POV, either is a good or bad thing.
What is the matter with you that all you can see about people are their supposed “impulses” and “biases” and sex lives?
You’re the one who interpreted my scrutiny of what made Kennedy and Goldwater tick as somehow based only on their sexual behavior. What was reported by ABC News was merely incidental to other aspects of two well-known public figures of over 45 years ago. And least you think I associate liberalism and its adherents as totally one way or the other, Harry Truman, a big supporter of socialized healthcare back in the 1950s, and who’d often slam conservatives on the campaign trail (and he’d cast the word “conservative” in a negative light), was known to be rather prudish about socio-cultural (ie, sexual) matters.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:27 pm
there’s still local stuff
which will at least help keep Team R kinda maybe viable for awhile
but yeah I’m not sure exactly why that’s something to be hoped for
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:29 pm
Yeah. OK. I rest my case.
G’night all.
Comment by elissa (90eaf8) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:36 pm
Which Goldwater, elissa? The socially conservative Goldwater who ran in 1964?
Who quoted Washington in his speeches, who said “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”
Who was largely responsible for the 1964 Republican platform which contained this:
Or the later Goldwater who reversed many of his positions after he retired from the Senate?
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:46 pm
Many believe that the change in Barry’s viewpoint after his retirement had something to do with his new wife, who was his nurse.
Comment by askeptic (2bb434) — 2/21/2013 @ 11:53 pm
This is from William F. Buckley’s Obituary for Goldwater:
Barry Goldwater, R.I.P.
As Buckley observes what people most remember about Goldwater was who he was after he retired; someone quite different than who he was at the zenith of his career. He changed largely due to personal reasons, those “home-grown attachments,” which apparently mattered more to him than maintaining any sort of coherent governing philosophy toward the end of his life.
Me? I guess I’m a Goldwater Republican but of the 1964 variety. And also a George Washington Republican, as I also find it self-apparent that you can’t maintain self-government as a form of public administration unless you can govern yourself individually. Self-government, and ultimately liberty, depends upon morality. That’s what GW meant in that quote the 1964 Goldwater chose to use (and I’m not talking about a Bush).
When you ignore the social issues by which you maintain the moral standards required for people to exercise liberty and self government you get the nanny state and the modern regulatory state.
You get people who can’t live without a daddy. You get rulers. You get gun control. You get to where we are right now. The 1964 Goldwater understood that; apparently you couldn’t get him to stop warning the country about it.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:18 am
I wondered where nurse Ratchet came from.
Comment by mg (31009b) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:19 am
Could be. I remembered that almost everyone who knew him believed that he had changed due to entirely personal reasons. That’s why I decided to look up WFB’s obit for Goldwater. I recalled he had touched upon the reason for his change.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:22 am
The discussion of AuH2O, lead me to thinking about a 2nd Constitutional Congress, the course of human events tending to rhyme, the eventual need has become evident.
Plainly we will need a Nominating Convention, to set the agenda, objectives and rules of the Congress. A ‘nice to have’ would be the delegates to the latter represent the population then extant by some measure(s).
Deuteronomic rules of conduct would apply. Two strikes and you’re out. Agreement established by consensus or ultramajority.
A sovereign, defensible territory would be required under martial law. Isle Royale comes to mind. Certainly the core of the project will have to be unalterably committed, hand-picked hardcases.
Attendees of the Congress will be by invitation only, following oath of fealty to the Congress and Her purpose on penalty of death. Uninvited attendees will be subject to summary execution. The indigenous wolf population of Isle Royale would simplify the disposal of rubbish.
My personal demands for the Congress are only cursory at this point. Rescinding the 17th Amendment, making language less subject to interpretation by means TBD, perhaps simply by a glossary and preamble, defining Treason more specifically and to include attempts to replace our Republic with an absolute Democracy, proscribing delegation of legislative responsibilty, possibly by ‘sunsetting’ bureaucratic edicts, etc.
As to selection of delegates, lawyers, military officers of high rank should be severely restricted, as should delegates above a certain age, weight or secular professional education.
Were I honored to be a member of the Nomination Convention I am duty bound to reveal I’d blackball Milhouse.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:16 am
Re: Goldwater.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes people tick but I’m definitely an amateur when it comes to understanding them. Still, it seems to me that Arizona politicians like Goldwater and McCain are more independent and maverick-y in their views than most. I always wondered if it comes from Arizona’s rugged individualist ethos or its Wild West days. Maybe Icy knows.
happyfeet, is it possible you’re frustrated trying to make the GOP fit your Libertarian beliefs? Libertarians have interests in common with both the Republicans and the Democrats but, as a rule, they are marginalized by both Parties. I can see how that would be frustrating for people who want to actually have an impact on politics and policy, especially at the national level.
You might be happier in the long run.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:00 am
BTW, Spains’ federal deficit has broken above 10% per.
But for Bennie, there go we.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:00 am
You might be happier in the long run actually being a Libertarian.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:01 am
I already said I’m not a Republican no mores. No sense in being a Libertarian though that is not time and energy well spent. I believe in individual liberty and limited government. And particularly so when we live in such a broke and declining little joke of a country. Done and done.
But politics is just a wee part of it anymore. Team R doesn’t seem to comprehend that it is rapidly becoming something so vile that it’s increasingly socially and professionally untenable to associate yourself with those ones.
They’re in terrible denial of where they stand, and the consequences of this for an America in which fascism is ascendant are very very scary.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:28 am
What in the hell is this?
What in the hell is going on here?
Comment by Dustin (73fead) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:31 am
So you’ve decided to become our resident critic?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:32 am
This reeks of Homeland Security money Mr. Dustin. They’re obsessed with this idea that anti-government Americans are gonna need to be thinned out in the near future.
I think it’s mostly cause they don’t have a whole lot else to do with their time and money.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:35 am
Do we have a problem with DHS personnel being gunned down by the armies of pregnant women and cute five year olds?
Also, I don’t buy into the infowars type conspiracy theories, but DHS is buying a ridiculous amount of ammunition. What for?
Maybe feets is right and they are just spending money to spend money, but couldn’t they build something and name it after Murtha as usual?
Comment by Dustin (73fead) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:38 am
DRJ I’m not a “resident critic” and there’s not even an “our” anymore cause of the things that fall apart when the center cannot hold, they are falling apart, cause the center is not holding.
What is “our” Republican party? The porky porky chris christie one
the accomodationist boehner one
the susan b. anthony paul ryan one?
And who among us is not a “resident critic” of Team R?
Maybe Mr. daley, but he’s special.
As the Republican party breaks further and further into dysfunctional factions and seething impotence it’s very very important that a diversity of voices be heard I think. Ok I volunteer.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:39 am
184. The idea, contra McCrystal, is to eliminate the hesitation to shoot civilians, already known to be present and assumed hostile.
I’ve already developed a rule, shoot any congregation in military uniform within several hundred yards of my home.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:42 am
There is a distinction between the leadership, ‘who lack all conviction’ and the rank and file,
‘who are full of passionate intensity’
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:42 am
==Which Goldwater, The socially conservative Goldwater who ran in 1964?
Or the later Goldwater who reversed many of his positions after he retired from the Senate?==
Oh I guess I mean the western-bred indivdual liberty loving renaissance man Goldwater who drew in and inspired countless people, including freedom loving young people to the conservative movement. I mean the Barry Goldwater whose candidacy jump-started the political rise of Reagan whose delivery of the A Time for Choosing speech in support of Goldwater and conservatism is one of the best and most honest political speeches I’ve ever heard–and is the speech which helped position RR to later win the presidency. And also I mean the rugged opinionated statesman Goldwater who made up his own mind based on his experiences and observations, voted his conscience and throughout his life always called a spade a spade including when he decried and warned about the dangerous overbearing influence of religion on all politics not just in America. The Goldwater who grew with the times and whose thinking appeared to reflect reality and not sclerotic mindless futile zealotry. The Goldwater who fully particpated in society outside of Washington and so understood the ebb and flow and trends of national circumstances more than most lifer pols– and horrors! even found a few of his positions had evolved over time while never losing sight of his deep conservative roots. I mean the Goldwater who was called “an extremist” in his day because of his conservatism, but is apparently now not considered conservative enough by some on the right today to be given his due or to be taken seriously as the fsther of what used to be considered Conservatism or what was once understood to be how one might choose to live a conservative way of life.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:44 am
187. I hesitate to appear alarmist, yelling fire in the theatre, so here’s some moderation.
Judging from the little I’ve seen of the DHS, one won’t have to be a crack shot to repel a few at a time.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:46 am
things are moving very quickly now Mr, narciso
as America plunges into an irreversible fiscal vortex
the whole durned checkerboard gets tilted in favor of fascism dependence and authoritarianism
and you know what I say about that?
Yikes!
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:46 am
*Mr.* narciso I mean
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:47 am
No, because his subsequent behavior, is out of character with his previous one, I don’t blame him, in part, after the savaging he took in ’64,
something we didn’t see again for another forty plus years. It is too pat to attack the Moral Majority, for all it’s foibles, when all of the institutions are being ‘blitzkrieged’
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:51 am
DRJ–nothing personal intended, but I think despite their both being from AZ and “mavricky”, lumping Goldwater’s politics and accomplishments and thought processes along in with opportunistic McCain’s is not a fair comparison at all.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:51 am
By “our,” I meant Patterico.com — not the Republican Party.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:54 am
And it’s not fascism, pikachu, it’s the brand new Chavez flavored marxism south of the border.
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:56 am
well again no
I am kinda critical of Angry Bob though cause of him is just gonna stand there when the fascists come to put people on trains to where he will let them effing choke and die.
No Angry Bob that would be the Wrong Choice.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:59 am
elissa,
I don’t think their policies are the same but I see similarities in their willingness to be independent. I also see similarities in LBJ’s, Rick Perry’s and George W. Bush’s larger-than-life personas — a common feature of Texans, whether they are from the left, right or middle.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:00 am
it’s fascism when purportedly independent propaganda sluts fall into lockstep with an autocratic regime I think Mr. narciso
at least it’s every bit as frightening
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:01 am
Sorry if I misunderstood what you were getting at there, DRJ. I took it as an untypical of you broad stereotyping– like some people say all politicians from Illinois are crooked. Yeah, most are, but not all.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:05 am
What is striking is how his ‘maverick’ path, almost entirely conforms to the left template, from no drilling in ANWR, to vapors over Gitmo,
to instant acceptance of the Tarp, to arming the Moslem Brotherhood’s affiliates,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:09 am
Thank you Mr. Feets. My mother recognized that in me too, but she passed many years back so not many people tell me that anymore.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:12 am
plus he shares national soros radio’s hyper-extreme histrionic angst about performance-enhancing drugs and nutritional supplements
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:13 am
you are welcome Mr. daley
your mom was a very perspicacious lady
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:14 am
Well Oscar Pastorious, eleventy,??, OT, the lead detective seems to be getting the Fuhrman treatment,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:16 am
Or the later Goldwater who reversed many of his positions after he retired from the Senate?
Generally, a larger number of people become more conservative as they grow older compared with those who move in the other direction. I originally wondered if some of Goldwater’s attitudes later in life reflected his dealing with situations similar to that of Dick and Lynn Cheney, referring to their daughter being homosexual. I had heard rumors that Goldwater’s son (who penned the article below) was gay or bisexual, so I originally thought that might have pushed the father left.
But I suspect it actually is a manifestation of Goldwater’s left-leaning impulses getting the better of him, certainly since the Republican Party he was dealing with before his death in 1998 has to be placed in the context of the US being far more liberal in the 1990s than in the 1960s. Now in 2013, this society is even more “progressive.” IOW, it was one thing to have left-leaning sentiments over 50 years ago, it’s a totally different matter to feel that way today.
I think Goldwater’s daughter and his granddaughter, to be wailing about social liberalism being somehow threatened in light of today’s trends (ie, where young girls can get an abortion without parental consent, where public schools happily hand out birth control but not aspirin, where GLBT is becoming almost an honor and privilege, where Nanny State-ism is alive and well—and all from the left), would be disingenuous or delusional if they’d claim their biases in the 21st century are somehow moderate or of the right. It says more about how liberal they are if they truly believe today’s Republican Party is too rightwing or major elements in it are too conservative.
Based on the following, I think even Goldwater’s son wasn’t being honest with himself by either downplaying or ignoring the left-leaning impulses of his father.
^ Joanne and CC reflect X percent of the population (along with people like happyfeet), and observers — or manipulators — like David Plouffe gladly, contentedly know that. That’s why I believe that America is destined to become a variation of France, Argentina and Mexico, and there’s no turning back.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:29 am
elissa,
I guess I am stereotyping here but I think the culture we come from affects how we look at things, how we view ourselves, and thus how we act. People who come from big cities are different than people who live in rural areas, and people who move a lot are different than people who lived in one place all their lives.
It’s silly for me to generalize like this because I know there are so many variables involved in what makes people tick. Nevertheless, I’m always amazed at how much geography affects who we are.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:36 am
And who among us is not a “resident critic” of Team R?
But you perceive parts of it as being too conservative, while others see it as being too liberal, or moderate, or squishy.
Context is important, and I’d say in the 21st century to deem “Team R” as being too rightwing (or threatened the way that Barry Goldwater was ticked off about) is analogous to a person in, say, the 1950s claiming America was too liberal—ie, when anti-lynching legislation was controversial, when Hollywood ostracized a famous actress for having a child out of wedlock, when a late-night talk-show host saying “water closet” on TV raised eyebrows and the threat of being censored, when blatant forms of bigotry and discrimination were practiced legally and socially.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:42 am
i have to hurry if I’m a get a breakfast burrito Mr. Mark
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:50 am
Mark,
Frankly, I don’t recall social issues being important when I was growing up in the 1950′s because everyone agreed on basic family values. It wasn’t until the ’60′s (the ’70′s where I live) that social issues became important. Isn’t it possible that Goldwater was always more libertarian on social issues than you realized, but it wasn’t apparent until the 1960′s and 1970′s?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:50 am
happyfeet,
You know, if Megan McArdle is right, the real culture war isn’t between social conservatives and social liberals. It’s between liberal elites who demand people conform to their authoritarian ideas of what society needs. Conservatives are the enemy, not because of what they believe but because they won’t conform and thus represent a threat to elite authority.
If that’s true, and I think it is, then abdicating social issues won’t solve this war. Nothing short of total abdication by conservatives on all issues will satisfy the liberal elites, because they need the masses to conform and be dominated.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:07 am
Sorry. My second sentence should have begun:
“It’s between conservatives and liberal elites …”
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:10 am
“I guess I am stereotyping here but I think the culture we come from affects how we look at things, how we view ourselves, and thus how we act. People who come from big cities are different than people who live in rural areas, and people who move a lot are different than people who lived in one place all their lives.”
DRJ – Using a broad brush, I completely agree. I grew up and went to school in the Northeast and moved to the Midwest more than 30 years ago. People are very different here than in New York, especially outside Chicago. One job I had for many years for a large corporation involved managing people at subsidiaries scattered in many different states. The personality types, work ethic, sense of entitlement, etc., did indeed vary rural versus urban and by region. The areas with which I had the most consistent difficulty were California and the Northeast. People from Texas and the Heartland were a pleasure to work with.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:16 am
Isn’t it possible that Goldwater was always more libertarian on social issues than you realized, but it wasn’t apparent until the 1960′s and 1970′s?
DRJ, I admit it was only a hunch on my part that Goldwater’s left-leaning impulses had gotten the better of him later in life. But it was only a hunch. Now, based on the following, I think my hunch was correct:
The point that I’ve been making, and which Elissa seemed bothered about, is that most humans — if not all — have a variety of ideological impulses in the nooks and crannies of their mind. Those include both liberal and conservative biases.
Even more so, my suspicion that Goldwater started to be overtaken by his left-leaning emotions as he grew older wasn’t such a stretch. After all, for anyone to be groaning about the Republican Party becoming too rightwing (becoming threatened by the boogeyman of cultural conservatism) in the context of the late 1900s, or certainly the early 21st century, would have to be quite beholden to liberal sentiments.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:26 am
==Who was largely responsible for the 1964 Republican platform which contained this:
Much of today’s moral decline and drift—much of the prevailing preoccupation with physical and material comforts of life—much of today’s crass political appeals to the appetites of the citizenry—can be traced to a leadership grown demagogic and materialistic through indifference to national ideals founded in devoutly held religious faith. The Republican Party seeks not to renounce this heritage of faith and high purpose; rather, we are determined to reaffirm and reapply it.==
Steve57- I’m happy you posted that and here’s where I think we differ. I personally believe that nothing in Goldwater’s later statesman years or in his healthy and ever evolving thinking would have made it impossible or uncomfortable for him to have used or written those exact same words on the final day of his life. There is quite a difference between reaffirming and re-applying a “heritage of faith” and freedom and high purpose (in the tradition of the founding fathers and Lincoln)– and his concerns during his time about the effects of demagogues religious or otherwise, whom he believed did not have the right to try to buy or dictate policy for all citizens.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:32 am
Generalities are great, as long as individual differences are allowed for.
Conservatives are the enemy, not because of what they believe but because they won’t conform and thus represent a threat to elite authority.
If that’s true, and I think it is, then abdicating social issues won’t solve this war. Nothing short of total abdication by conservatives on all issues will satisfy the liberal elites, because they need the masses to conform and be dominated.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b)
I think this is true. For example, for many the issue of SSM is not limited to anti-discrimination by making legal treatment of SS couples the same as heterosexual married couples (or heterosexaul non-married couples, in terms of some employee benefits and such), but the demand that people believe SSM is essentially identical/equivalent to heterosexual marriage.
The problem is fundamentally irresolvable logically. One can believe SSM and hetero is equivalent, or one doesn’t. You can’t have a situation where everybody agrees to some neutral understanding, unless that agreement is to allow for disagreement. If I think SSM is not equivalent to hetero, “I don’t have to have one” as they say, but I also do not demand that a SS couple say they agree with me or I will ostracize them as “heterophobes”. But many will say that if one does not agree that SSM is just fine, that such a person is a bigot and a “homophobe”. It is the so-called “liberal” who is demanding PC thought orthodoxy.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:32 am
Thanks, Mark, and I agree with you that none of us are ideologically pure. In fact, fascinating contradictions may be what makes us human.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:32 am
With age should come wisdom, hence perhaps “rounding off rough edges”. But with age can also come fatigue and “just not wanting to deal with things anymore”.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:37 am
I have a little of that fatigue after last November.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:41 am
In some ways abortion will likely always be among the most difficult and contentious issues, because what is at stake, at least for “one side” of the disagreement, is not simply a difference of opinion among two people, but a difference with impact on a third party. If a person thinks the developing child in utero is indeed a child, it should be absurd to expect that person to idly stand by as if the decision to have an abortion was simply the decision of one person.
My limited understanding of Roe and later Casey is that the SCOTUS punted on the question as to whether the fetus was a “person” or not, that the question was “above their pay scale”, yet they found a way to make abortion legal. From one perspective what they did was try to tell everybody that they had to believe that the fetus was not a person after all, and if not believe it, at least act like they did.
It logically should not be surprising that it does not work to tell someone who thinks that abortion is murder to pretend that it is not.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:49 am
and I agree with you that none of us are ideologically pure.
What spooks me — and the reason I’m not being outright sarcastic when I say that if we in the US won’t go to France (or Mexico, or Argentina, or Greece), then France, etc, will come to us — is because I find that I myself am growing increasingly desensitized (or dumbed down) by issues and controversies that would have shocked or alarmed me several years ago.
BTW, when people say that economics are separate from culture, and believe that issues like household income and unemployment — and education — are somehow floating off in their own magical world, I wonder if they ever consider how much tougher it will be for a society to have a sound economy when the basic unit of the family (namely, socio-cultural matters) is in turmoil or roiled by dysfunction?
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:52 am
“With age should come wisdom, hence perhaps “rounding off rough edges”. But with age can also come fatigue and “just not wanting to deal with things anymore”.”
MD in Philly – Heh. I frequently find myself in the car at night when Mark Levin’s radio show is on. Just a few minutes of his grating voice, reminding me of how he worked for Reagan in the 1980s, his relentless negativity even though he is an incredibly smart person, usually causes me to change the station. If I want to get angry I can just turn on any network news, CNN or MSNBC, which is one reason I pretty much don’t watch TV anymore.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:54 am
daley- I must say that I do not enjoy listening to him either, no matter how smart he may be.
And he can’t be that smart, as once I heard him criticize the host of this noteworthy site. Disagreement is fine, abuse is unnecessary, at least when it comes to PP>
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:02 am
==The point that I’ve been making, and which Elissa seemed bothered about, is that most humans — if not all — have a variety of ideological impulses in the nooks and crannies of their mind. Those include both liberal and conservative biases.==
No Mark. That is not what bothers me–at all. I believe many humans are quite interesting and complex and often riven by inner intellectual conflict. I appreciate that in individuals just as I pine for a healthy two party system to play against itself. What bothers me is that if you truly believe as you say you do, that all humans have “a variety of ideological impulses in the nooks and crannies of their mind that include both liberal and conservative biases.”, then why do you spend so damn much time and bandwith “wondering” and trying to pigeonhole everybody else, attempting to guess their motives, “outing” their perceived impulses and biases and on some unknown basis “channeling” what they probably think? This is a rhetorical question by the way, because I sort of doubt you even grasp what I am saying.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:09 am
elissa @217, yes we do differ. He couldn’t have written this after 1986:
Because he adopted positions that are the same as the present day liberals which as we are seeing are not only indifferent to a devoutly held religious faith but actively hostile to it.
In what way were Goldwater’s later socio-political views different from those of the “liberal elites who demand people conform to their authoritarian ideas of what society needs” that DRJ mentions in #213?
Liberals loved Goldwater in his later years precisely because he provided them cover. “See, even ‘Mr. Conservative’ has adopted our views which require an all-powerful centralized regulatory state in order for us to impose them on an unwilling society.”
Is that not where we are now?
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:20 am
BTW, 7th Circuit affirms Judge Posner’s decision re CCW in IL.
http://www.saf.org/viewpr-new.asp?id=423
180-days boys, and the clock’s been ticking for 60 of them!
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:28 am
I don’t get the problem with this. The inspector comes, you show him the weapon and how it’s stored, and he goes away. How is it different from the annual boiler inspection that cities require, at least around here?
Comment by Milhouse (15b6fd) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:32 am
That’s just BS Steve. There was never a moment in his life that Goldwater adopted a view that that would have required an all-powerful centralized regulatory state to inpose them on an unwilling society. Yes he had views on industrial pollution and other affronts to nature by irresponsible municipalities and corporations which many conservatives agree with both then and now.
Is there anyone in recent past years or currently in politics who meets your exacting standards? If so, who? If not, then why are we even talking about it?
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:38 am
Barry Goldwater’s Left Turn
It takes leviathan to impose Barry Goldwater’s “libertarian: beliefs on people, as we are seeing predictably play out. His unthought-out position that the government should stay out of people’s lives requires government to intrude into people’s lives as a matter of enforcement.
The social conservative of 1964 understood that. Later he forgot. Now we are seeing the natural progression. He was so worried about the religious right imposing its morality on people, he threw in with the secular left and even helped them impose there morality on people.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:40 am
Milhouse,
Inspections exist to protect the community from things like unsafe buildings/construction and unsafe food providers, especially in public places. This is a different situation to me because people generally have the right to own a gun and the right to be free from government intrusion in their homes.
Would you acquiesce if the government decided to come to our homes to inspect our books and computers — to make sure we aren’t researching dangerous topics? Would you agree that the government should be able to inspect our home safe or safety deposit box to verify we don’t keep weapons?
I’m sure many people might acquiesce to significant intrusions, especially after 9/11. (The TSA is proof of that.) But it doesn’t make those intrusions consistent with the notion that there are limits on how intrusive the government can be.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:43 am
Also, Milhouse, what if the inspector doesn’t approve of how you store your gun, or that it’s not registered, or that you don’t have your paperwork done properly (according to him), or any number of other problems? Do you get to politely thank him for coming or do you get hauled before a court or some other government bureaucracy? My guess is the latter.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:46 am
then why do you spend so damn much time and bandwith “wondering” and trying to pigeonhole everybody else, attempting to guess their motives, “outing” their perceived impulses and biases and on some unknown basis “channeling” what they probably think?
Actually, in the case of Goldwater — and thanks to the curiosity (or “wondering”) about him inspired by various posts here — I was able to guess what happened to him during the later years of his life. So the assumption that his ideological preferences hadn’t changed, but instead something else had changed, was not correct. If I had pigeonholed him, I wouldn’t have understood that, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out what, in fact, affected him well after the 1980s.
Some have quipped that liberalism is a mental disorder. To that, perhaps a form of senility can be defined as what happens to a person formerly of the right (who therefore presumably has some common sense) who finds him or herself growing increasingly liberal (and, for example, isn’t living in the middle of today’s Sharia-crazed Middle East) towards his twilight years.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:52 am
Stonewall was not until 1969. As DRJ accurately pointed out almost no one was even talking about or thinking about social issues before then. The Republican platform in 1964 certainly was not. So why do you think you know with such certainty that Goldwater fell in with the wrong crowd and that his idea that government should stay out of people’s personal lives was a later pivot, rather than his strong lifetime libertarian/conservative value?
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:53 am
I guess I lean more toward Rush and occasionally Beck by presentation, then again they have inflicted Rich Sanchez, on our drive time radio, that’s something against the Vienna and Geneva conventions,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:54 am
elissa, how do you keep government out of people’s lives when you espouse an anti-discriminatory regulatory scheme that requires government to intrude into people’s lives?
That’s the paradox libertarians don’t get; their social views require a big government to alter society to fit their tastes. And the later Barry Goldwater actively moved this country toward the all-powerful regulatory state we have now (from the same article above):
Thanks to Barry Goldwater businesses now have to choose between their 1st Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and paying for Sandra Fluke’s contraceptives and abortifacients.
Barry Goldwater the “libertarian” didn’t understand the basic contradiction of libertarianism. Most libertarians don’t get it. As demonstrated by his easy resort to federal laws to regulate business hiring practices in the name of government staying out of people’s lives.
There is no difference in substance between Barry Goldwater’s later positions and Barack Obama’s. It’s only a matter of degree. But the fact is if you think using the full force of the federal government is the best way to engineer social change for the better, then you bloody well believe in using the federal government as a force for social engineering.
He may not have know what he was doing, as his contradictory statements indicate, but he put his stamp of approval on the intrusive, all-powerful regulatory state.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:58 am
Mark and elissa,
I know I will regret inserting myself into this discussion because (1) I don’t have much to add, and (2) neither of you needs me to moderate. Nevertheless, Mark:
I have the feeling that elissa isn’t talking about you psychoanalyzing public figures as much as your occasional tendency to analyze the motivations of Patterico.com commenters. It seems a little like a personal attack.
I guess the reason I’m saying this (against my better judgment) is that I do it, too. My motives are to try to understand where people are coming from so I can better understand what they think, but I fear it comes across as an attack. I regret that and apologize, especially to happyfeet.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:59 am
The Republican Platform of 1964 was all about social issues, elissa.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:59 am
I think most of the radio talkers are unlistenable on a regular basis. I do occasionaly like to hear a rerun of a program if someone I trust recommends it as having been a particularly good one.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:01 am
The 1964 GOP Party platform.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:02 am
It sounds pretty libertarian to me, but with a recognition of God that current Libertarians might not include.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:03 am
You see in Williamson’s example, what a total ordeal it is to be publicly for self defense, much less any other social issue, an opinion about prop #8, earned a ‘hanging in effigy’ and a burning of a church, for one political figure, and no end of death threats.
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:04 am
==Thanks to Barry Goldwater businesses now have to choose between their 1st Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and paying for Sandra Fluke’s contraceptives and abortifacients.==
O yeah. Goldwater and Sandra Fluke. A complementary duo that readily comes to mind to everybody. Not.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:04 am
As DRJ accurately pointed out almost no one was even talking about or thinking about social issues before then. The Republican platform in 1964 certainly was not.
You mean the platform was NOT talking or thinking about social issues, or do you mean it was? If the former, huh? You mention about my using so much “damn…bandwidth” in this forum — and, yep, that I do on occasion — but you then chose to either overlook or inadvertently missed this.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:06 am
This is what prochoice has come to mean, absolute endorsement and financing of birth control and abortion, come to think of it, that was the Huxleyan view that Holdren held thirty years ago,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:07 am
“I don’t get the problem with this. The inspector comes, you show him the weapon and how it’s stored, and he goes away. How is it different from the annual boiler inspection that cities require, at least around here?”
“No, I’m not letting you in.”
“You’re under arrest for refusing to deny me in your home according to the law” Do you understand how huge of a violation against the 4th this is?
Take it in another scenario.
“Sir, we need to check your home for material that may be dangerous to you and the community.”
“No. Get a warrant.”
“You’re arrest for endangering other people. We’re coming in anyways.”
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated
SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED
Do you understand that? Naturally, no.
Comment by Kaitian (054e80) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:07 am
I have the feeling that elissa isn’t talking about you psychoanalyzing public figures as much as your occasional tendency to analyze the motivations of Patterico.com commenters
But she seemed resentful that my characterizing Goldwater as turning left later in life was somehow inaccurate or unfair. To me, it’s just stating reality. It’s not too different from saying: the sun is hot, the South Pole is cold.
As for happyfeet — and as I mentioned earlier to him — he’s merely a reflection of people who lean right (mainly on economic issues) and also lean left on social ones. Again, that’s like saying: the sun is hot, the South Pole is cold. It’s just basic reality, no more, no less.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:14 am
no apology needed I need to find time to make sure I get all the McArdle piece and then I can respond about the culture wars but I’m working with british people today and god help me
they are so tedious and not a one of them sees the forest for the tedious bloody trees
I wonder how maybee endures them go mad I would
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:15 am
Well, not all about social issues, natch. They had to address other issues or it wouldn’t have been a well rounded platform.
Republican Party Platform of 1964
I find this part ironic:
Later in life Barry Goldwater adopted exactly the liberal premises that the left would use “in the name of benevolence” to expand Federal power.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:16 am
=At 85, after a life in politics spanning five decades (he retired from the Senate in 1987), Mr. Conservative has found himself an unlikely new career: as a gay rights activist. While that’s not his sole pursuit – he returned to Capitol Hill yesterday to testify in favor of scenic overflights of the Grand Canyon – in recent years he’s championed homosexuals serving in the military and has worked locally to stop businesses in Phoenix from hiring on the basis of sexual orientation. This month he signed on as honorary co-chairman of a drive to pass a federal law preventing job discrimination against homosexuals.==
Since you posted it is there is something here that you believe amplifies your point? Something that you find deeply disturbing and morally objectionable, Steve? You have a problem with a federal law preventing job discrimination against gays? Really?
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:17 am
==But she seemed resentful that my characterizing Goldwater as turning left later in life was somehow inaccurate or unfair. To me, it’s just stating reality. ==
That’s because to me it is innacurate and unfair and not stating reality.
Let’s leave this, now, shall we?
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:22 am
Barry Goldwater the “libertarian” didn’t understand the basic contradiction of libertarianism. Most libertarians don’t get it.
I’m not being glib when I theorize that as the human mind ages, certain intrinsic changes occur within it, including political biases. Whether Goldwater was or wasn’t libertarian in the 1960s, or later, or before — or was or wasn’t a staunch conservative — I really believe he was affected by a political form of senility, in which common sense declines or becomes impaired.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:23 am
Barry was a Conservative Jeffersonian, in that he did believe that “the Government that Governs least, Governs best”.
He would have been quite happy to emulate Coolidge, but with a Jacksonian foreign-policy using Pattonesque tactics – hit them hard with everything (E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G! – my best Gary Oldman), and never having to fight twice for the same piece of property.
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:40 am
Or he just changed his mind on some issues. Most of the people who opposed segregation in the 1950′s and 1960′s changed their minds about it, and I don’t think they changed their minds because of senility.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:41 am
DRJ– as always is the case I am so glad you are contributung to this thread today. To carry your changing minds theme further, people also “changed their minds” about slavery which made the emancipation proc possible. Thankfully, sane people also “changed their minds” about miscegenation laws and women’s ability to vote.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:55 am
This is the fundamental problem, those that started in the civil right community, took the same urgency and intensity to the anti war, the environment and other social relations; that is the template that is followed.
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:56 am
Most of the people who opposed segregation in the 1950′s and 1960′s changed their minds about it, and I don’t think they changed their minds because of senility.
DRJ, I’m not sure you instead mean people who opposed integration decades ago and then changed their POV. But one way or the other, I’m reminded of the phrase that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.”
And so the harsh glare of reality — and not aging, or senility — can influence people as they grow older. But that’s why a larger percentage of people, as they mature, tend to start tilting right, not left. IOW, unless their common sense has been damaged, they’ll adjust their opinions more in one direction than the other.
That the opposite apparently happened to Goldwater — and his expressing alarm about the boogeyman of cultural rightism (in the context of modern, libertine, “anything goes!” America), and not just limiting his rhetoric to, say, a case of a gay guy being overtly discriminated and harassed at the workplace (btw, was Goldwater even confronted with a specific instance of that?) — is why I theorize his common sense had grown weak towards his retirement years. Sort of like a “senior moment.”
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:03 pm
Goldwater was constantly being harassed in the workplace; but of course, they were “Dear Colleagues” – it is what Leftists do to Conservatives.
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:07 pm
I was hoping you’d go to the link; there’s a bit more to it:
Some libertarian, huh? Who knew libertarianism was all about making not only this country but every other country conform to Barry Goldwater’s social views. Which apparently conform to those of the Human Rights Campaign. And the Human Rights Campaign had an agenda that went far beyond job discrimination. Even in 1987 when they organized their march on Washington they were demanding an end to discrimination in all areas of public accommodation, the kind of LGBT curriculum we see now in Kali, gay marriage, etc.
So, elissa, just answer my question. Does achieving all of the above require a larger, more intrusive government or less?
(Hint: I think Goldwater provides the answer.)
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:09 pm
By the way elissa, there is no federal law preventing job discrimination against gays. It’s permitted. I live in a state where there is no law against discriminating against gays.
I’ve received no complaints regarding my treatment of people in any regard.
Barry Goldwater was simply wrong in his later years when he abandoned both his social conservative and libertarian principles and decided to turn the Federal government loose to make them do what he thought they should.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:21 pm
*…turn the Federal government loose on people to make them do…*
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:22 pm
I realize I’m sort of piling on, but there’s something I noticed about the Goldwater quote I used:
Goldwater thought he had the right to make every other country, with a few exceptions, observe gay rights under the US Constitution?
In 1964 he had a coherent philosophy. As he aged and adopted leftist impulses, less so.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:26 pm
Well consider another issue, the death penalty, which the liberals have invoked the Baldus study, and international opinion, against it, but as Mark Steyn has pointed out, only certain international opinions,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:33 pm
“The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions…”
But, this could also be read to say not that he wants to impose his (and our) vision of tolerance on other countries, but that he thinks we should join what already exists in other countries.
It is not a finely crafted statement.
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:33 pm
Evidently Rep. Jordan’s demand for a plan to unwind the Fed’s balance sheet is creating anxiety in house.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/22/news/economy/fed-future-losses/index.html?iid=Lead
We’ve touched on this before, their balance sheet is worth somewhat less than nominal value because they won’t be able to sell much of the kitsch.
So the placid among us can always say “Why worry, they haven’t enough scratch to run a gulag”. Well if we’re happing fretting what’s it to you?
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:45 pm
I’m so sorry that Barry Goldwater disappointed you to the extent that you are this riled and angry and ready to blame him for all sorts of ancillary stuff that happened later. I truly don’t know what else to say about that. That I was not old enough to have the honor of voting for Barry Goldwater for president is a regret of my life. Almost everything I’ve read about his early years appealed to me and nothing in his later life changed my appreciation and admiration for this incredible man. In fact, in some ways I respected him more because of his ferocious independence and love of the land.
I asked above if you had any conservative political role models recent past or present to whom you can give an unqualifed Steve57 vote of confidence. You did not respond that I noticed. Does that mean you have none to offer up for our consideration? If there is someone you can give the seal of approval to, who is it? If not, then what does that say about your expectations?
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 12:50 pm
267. Thanks, I was in seventh grade and never paid Mr. Goldwater any mind. You’ve raised my awareness orders of magnitude.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 1:05 pm
@askeptic
but that he thinks we should join what (tolerance) already exists in other countries.
It is not a finely crafted statement.
You’re right, it is quite poorly crafted. I always thought that’s what he meant though. Dictatoring was never Barry’s style.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 1:06 pm
Well, I did vote for Barry – it was my first voting Presidential Election.
As the joke went:
If you vote for Goldwater, we’ll be fighting a war in Asia.
Blame me: I voted for Barry, and damn, we were fighting a full fledged ground war within months.
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 2/22/2013 @ 1:10 pm
Let’s see. There’s Reagan, Duncan Hunter Sr., and Tom McClintock. It’s too early to tell about Duncan Hunter Jr.
They are all going to disappoint; I don’t expect to agree with everyone all the time.
I’m not riled or upset about Barry Goldwater. It’s just a fact; he abandoned his small government libertarian principles.
Or perhaps you disagree.
So, let me ask you again; what was libertarian about using the federal government to make this country , and every other country, conform to Barry Goldwater’s social views on gay rights?
And does it require more government, or less government, to ensure society conforms to the HRC’s vision of equality for gays in terms of employment, accommodations, LGBT curriculum in schools, and that public and private institutions support parenting by gays?
That was their agenda back when Goldwater was working with them.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 1:29 pm
Just to be clear, I’m not asking if you think his views on gay rights were correct.
Just what was libertarian about his approach to convincing his fellow citizens his views on gay rights and the Constitution were correct.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 1:32 pm
“Or you can commit seppuku with a chainsaw. I really don’t care anymore. This is the end of my support for any liberal cause, because liberals have become anything but.”
Well, that’s just f-ing stupid.
Comment by libarbarian (803b96) — 2/22/2013 @ 2:01 pm
==So, let me ask you again; what was libertarian about using the federal government to make this country , and every other country, conform to Barry Goldwater’s social views on gay rights?==
steve57–please read the short give and take between askeptic and me. I didn’t answer your question because I don’t subscribe to your question’s premise (interpretation) in the first place.
==I’m not riled or upset about Barry Goldwater. It’s just a fact; he abandoned his small government libertarian principles. Or perhaps you disagree.==
Well yeah, I do strongly disagree as I thought was already pretty clear from my numerous entries on this thread. Do you think continued brow beating is going to cause me to have an epiphany and change my mind? :} Blog disagreements can be interesting and instructional in minor doses, but not when the tooing and froing between commenters start to look like the movie Groundhog Day. That’s where we are Steve.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 2:07 pm
Here’s a crazy thought, let’s treat people as people, not by which group they belong to, that was his vision back in ’64, when he pushed to
open up the Phoenix airport, and other elements,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 2:08 pm
Wow, what insight! Thank you for your in-depth analysis.
Comment by Chuck Bartowski (11fb31) — 2/22/2013 @ 2:17 pm
Mark:
Duh. That’s exactly what I meant, and thanks for the gentle correction.
Mark, I think people hate to change their minds, especially young people, and they feel this way for all sorts of reasons: Sometimes we feel like it’s admitting we’re wrong and we hate to do that. It’s also easier to stay the same rather than change. In addition, sometimes we’re responding to peer pressure to conform — I think the young especially feel this pressure. Last, change can be scary so it can be hard to accept the risk of change or to overcome our fears. We may even be genetically hard-wired to resist change.
But there are times in our lives when we are willing to change. Those times are probably as varied as there are people, although I suspect someone has studied when and how this happens. (The Obama campaign has probably studied it in depth.)
Nevertheless, I haven’t studied it so this is all I can offer. Overall, though, what I’m trying to say is that I used to believe people “matured to the right” but I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe people trend conservative on fiscal issues as they age, but I think social attitudes are more complex and dependent on the individuals involved and their life experiences.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 2:20 pm
It also matters that we’re constantly being pushed left by the educational system, culture and media.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 2:26 pm
Mark and Steve57,
I don’t know much about Goldwater but I don’t see a lot in this NY Times article that suggests he dramatically changed his beliefs as he aged. Obviously he changed on some issues but we all change a little. Overall, though, did Goldwater really change that much?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 3:19 pm
In other words, it sounds like he retained the two qualities he was best known for: Independence and an advocate for small government.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 3:22 pm
On the other hand, I’m not sure the author is someone whose judgment I trust.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 3:32 pm
best thread ever
Comment by EPWJ (6140f6) — 2/22/2013 @ 4:25 pm
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 4:32 pm
I voted for Goldwater. I think his views changed — very slightly towards the center. What really changed was the Republican party. AuH2O started on the right wingtip of the elephant and moved to engine #4, and then eventually #3; today he wouldn’t be allowed aboard at all, he’d be (as shown here) a target.
Comment by htom (412a17) — 2/22/2013 @ 4:40 pm
Steve57,
Are you saying that you disagree with Goldwater on some issues, or is he just another lying politician to you?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 4:45 pm
The NYT article link DRJ pasted above is really excellent. I’m not certain I’ve ever seen it before. It’s long but quite thorough and its author very much captures-fairly with warts and all IMO- the Barry Goldwater as I and most others have always viewed him. I hope people will take a few minutes to read this article/obit so they can make up their own minds about this man, his legacy, his huge heart and his contributions both to his country and the conservative movement.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 4:59 pm
They are all just politicians. I leave the cults of personality to the Democrats, DRJ. The proof is in the pudding.
Would it surprise you if Goldwater took politically calculated positions on issues? Positions on issues that weren’t sincere?
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:01 pm
The point is it doesn’t matter what we think, the media, academia, even sizable portions of the business community, will persecute you, for being a heretic from the new orthodoxy,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:03 pm
Steve57,
I think politicians are human and, like all humans, some are more reliable than others.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:17 pm
THat is the point of the Williamson piece, you can cheer a murderer like Dorner, without much public blowback, and legitimate right to self defense, well you see the consequences,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:19 pm
==Would it surprise you if Goldwater took politically calculated positions on issues? Positions on issues that weren’t sincere?==
Yes it would surprise me very much. Nobody’s perfect, but just for example he forcefully defended Nixon against the democrats and the roiling media tide until he knew Nixon was a liar and a menace. Then when he saw the truth and absorbed what Nixon and his henchmen had done, Goldwater took bold steps to get him to resign and publicly excoriated Nixon. That’s character, not cynical political expediency
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:21 pm
Steve57,
I was a teenager when Goldwater ran for President, and he wasn’t really on my radar then or subsequently. However, in retrospect, I view Goldwater as more reliable than most politicians because he took an unpopular stand on things he believed in, even though he knew it would probably mean he wouldn’t win.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:21 pm
I think Meghan is saying very much the same thing mr. codevilla is saying
unlike Meghan though mr. codevilla explicitly addresses the social issues thing. I remember cause when I read it I thought he sounded like he needed a hug.
You read that and you think oh bless your heart. And then as if sensing your patronizing faux-pity he offers this by way of a confuzzled justification:
See that is very weak. Cause of I don’t hold with the idea that sally peterson in utica who had an abortion last week is a per force non morally upright person. And I also don’t hold with the idea that supporting same sex marriage means one is not a morally upright person.
And I MOST CERTAINLY (I put that in ALL CAPS for emphasis) don’t hold with this notion that same sex marriagings have any bearing on the smooth and proper functioning of capitalist economics, nor do I think sally’s abortion has any such effect either.
And also I don’t really even hold that capitalist economics “presupposes a morally upright people.”
That sounds like an ass-pull really. The market has lots of ways to weed out bad actors.
So there’s that. And this comment has gotten longish so I’ll leave it there for now.
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:34 pm
This part is typical,
Resistance is illegitimate because it can come only from low motives. President Obama’s statement that Republican legislators – and hence the people who elect them – don’t care whether “seniors have decent health care…children have enough to eat” is typical.
recall Obama characterized Reagan’s reforms, as ‘low deeds’ that inspired his entry into community organizing, Kerry was the no. 1 advocate for the Sandinistas, who were the Soviet proxy in Central America. Brennan was an Arabist
apparatchik in that period, and as such went native in that period,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:43 pm
Well, I disagree, happyfeet.
I don’t think all Americans have to live by the Golden Rule all the time. but our system does assume that most people will abide by the rule of law. That means we need a moral populace. If enough people aren’t self-governed by personal morality, they won’t abide by the rule of law … and no amount of government will have the oversight or law enforcement assets to fix that.
At the risk of sounding like an old, politically incorrect fogey: Just as traditional marriages offer the best chance of having successful kids and economically stable families, the best chance of having a successful democracy comes from a population guided by the morality of traditional Judeo-Christian values.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:51 pm
Further, happyfeet, how do you answer McArdle’s suggestion that caving on every social issue won’t satisfy liberals. Their goal is total surrender by conservatives because the point is control, not coexistence.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:54 pm
“I don’t get the problem with this. The inspector comes, you show him the weapon and how it’s stored, and he goes away. How is it different from the annual boiler inspection that cities require, at least around here?”
You don’t get arrested for a noncompliant boiler.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/22/2013 @ 5:54 pm
liberals aren’t liberals anymore they’re fascists
yes yes yes they are authoritarian to their core
we should bop them on the goozle
but I just for the life of me don’t see what that has to do with abortion or gay marriage
it makes abortion and gay marriage seem very small and trivial I think
I say abortion and gay marriage are best left to the states to manage best they can in this fallen fallen world
at the national level we have bigger – much bigger – fishes to fry
for fascism is afoot!
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:03 pm
happyfeet,
So your answer to McArdle is: Let’s cave on social issues because “who cares about them anyway, they aren’t important compared to our fiscal problems”? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth but I want to understand your position.
I think the contrary argument is: “Don’t give up on issues that matter to some people in your base when it won’t gain you any points with liberals and it may empower liberals to demand more.”
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:07 pm
he also ignores there are no states rights, as prop 187, 229, and 8, prove (I don’t know if the middle one was reversed,)
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:13 pm
speaking of holding down the moral fort the comments to this thinger about a drug bust I found on drudge are kinda fun
no my answer to McArdle about social issues is for Team R to…
it’s all about flies
you got your flies, pesky and noisome, and you wanna catch em
you got a bottle of honey
you got a bottle of vinegar
your move
Comment by happyfeet (4bf7c2) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:14 pm
happyfeet,
We live in a welfare state that could easily be considered socialist. Libertarian solutions don’t resonate with voters when Republicans win elections. They are especially hard sells to politicians given the results of the last election. Do you really think politicians don’t see or care what voters did in November 2012?
At this point, you have a better chance hoping for an asteroid to solve our problems than believing a majority of the Beltway politicians will embrace and implement fiscal responsibility. There just aren’t enough red state politicians to make that happen. I would be delighted if every Republican agreed with the members of Texas’ GOP delegation and voted a hard fiscal line, but it’s not happening.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:25 pm
Also, one man’s honey is another man’s vinegar.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:27 pm
To be clear, happyfeet, I agree we need less spending, entitlement control, and to reduce the deficit. I think the GOP could win elections with that message alone, and I’d be happy if Republicans said that everyday from now until the next election. Social issues aren’t the point to me, but I don’t see the benefit of turning away values voters in an effort to “purify” the GOP message.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:33 pm
Of course, if the GOP could win Presidential elections with that message alone, we’d be talking about President Romney.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:35 pm
There are self-described socialist states less generous with social programs than we are.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:37 pm
Our once proud jucicial system is grinding to a halt because increasingly witnesses are willing to raise their hands to swear to tell the truth –and then easily lie under oath usually with impunity. A fair trial relies on truth telling and honest presentation on which juries and judges can trust as they formulate their verdicts. Lawyers tell me that is no longer the norm.
Middle class students as young as Jr.High regularly buy/steal tests and plagerize to cheat to get good grades so they can build a record to get into good colleges where they continue to cheat rather than learn.
These shocking societal breakdowns and others which appear to be quite commonplace now were nearly unheard of two decades ago. The golden rule is never taught in schools anymore, fewer and fewer kids go to Sunday school where core moral values have traditionally been taught and reinforced. And many fewer kids are raised in intact two parent families where there are hopefully dual role models and double the chance that kids will be secure and taught right from wrong and caught when they do bad things and set straight.
A big concern of mine which I know I have mentioned here before is that once these expectations, tools, rules, values and traditional role model skills have been out of many people’s lives for a generation or two how does a society ever reclaim them? You can’t just learn this in popular culture (TV movies) or books. You can’t legislate it. I don’t think after three generations of single mom centered families with multiple absent baby daddies America is one day soon going to miraculously like magic reclaim the Beaver Cleaver household model.
It’s one thing to bemoan on blogs what the liberal welfare state and educational systems have wrought on society. It’s quite another thing entirely to deal with the real outcomes and run a country with fewer and fewer shared values and experiences –which is where we seem to be now. Perhaps I am wrong that a lot of the social values many conservatives espouse are nearly beyond salvage, but I sure don’t see many ideas on how they can be resussitated.
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:47 pm
Well here’s an example from across the pond;
http://www.melaniephillips.com/do-we-need-iq-tests-for-juries
Monty Python doesn’t even capture reality any more, much less satirizing it,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:50 pm
feets,
everything was fine until somebody told me what I had to believe about marriage or I was the meany meany bad person. I never called people names and I told people to cut it out when they did. I figured if it was good enough for Moses and Jesus and the vast majority of the 8-10 billion or so people that have lived on earth who was I to tell everyone else what to believe.
most of us believe a person cannot kill a 5 yo child just because he/she is “their” child, or a 4 yo, or a 2 yo or a 2 day old. mostest of us probably believe a person can’t kill their child when it is 2 minutes old either, but not as mostest of us as a 2 yo. in fact, some people pays lots and lots of money to send their 18 yo to princeton to listen to someone say yes it is ok to kill your 2 minute old child because it really isn’t “a person” yet like you smart 18 yo that can get into princeton is
then even more people think its ok to kill the “thing” 2 minutes before it is born because it really really can’t live on its own yet
how someone knows when during that 4 minutes it is still ok and when it isn’t sounds to me like above the pay scale of the SCOTUS, POTUS, and FLOTUS, and if they’re not sure maybe they should play it safe and let it live
but no, they say even if it is above their pay scale they say kill it anyway
and then they say they are the ones who look out for the vulnerable and defenseless
who is more vulnerable and defenseless than a little creature that cannot run away
little kittens and puppies can run away and even bite and scratch when you catch them, but you get locked up and are told you are really really super evil for hurting defenseless puppies
but if you kill a baby just before its born it’s ok
that is just not right
if you want it to be ok to kill babies before they are born why do you think it is not ok to kill puppies maybe if i want to kill puppies you shouldn’t stop me
i remember being on a tennis court when i heard on the radio that it was ok to kill babies before they were born because the SCOTUS said so. At the time I thought, that’s stupid, they don’t get to tell me what is right or wrong but i’ll never have one anyway so what difference does it make
the difference it makes is that even paul krugman says yes yes what tina fey said is true we will need to tell some people bye bye time to go now, just like Charleton heston saw his friend Edgar G
no man is an island, not even in lake michigan, and when one life is made cheap all life is made a bit cheaper and if one isn’t paying attention you get to be like pastor niemoller who said “where is everybody” when the fascists knock, knock, knocked on his door
and mr “i’ve had enough” williamson doesn’t want to be like niemoller, even if he has german heritage (which i don’t know)
saying no, no to sacrificing babies for the sake of the grownups was also something moses was not to keen on that mr moses must be spinin in his grave something terrible
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 6:57 pm
307 – Elissa, You make it a pleasure to read paragraphs.
Thanks.
Comment by mg (31009b) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:04 pm
ditto, but we seem to be going for the wonderful world of carousel, that michael york and jenny agutter, (who was one of the shield controllers in the avengers) discovered, which turned out not to be sanctuary after all.
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:05 pm
true that, narciso
why should anyone tell the truth when president clinton got away with lying and president obama has perfected it as performance art?
years ago I read an article that made the argument that charles wesley was the main reason that england never had a bloody revolution like the French
there have been revivals of public morality at least as long as thousands of years ago when young king Josiah found out about a lost scroll that was found in the temple
but more often what happens is very ugly and it is hundreds or thousands of years before things get back to as good as they once were
let me know when the one takes up violin lessons
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:10 pm
the Jeremiad, takes it’s name from the prophet who thought he could steer the people away from their impending doom, he didn’t end up like Howard Beale, but he didn’t succeed,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:19 pm
DRJ what I got out of the last election is that Team R is actively repellant to the voters it wants to attract
so what’s gonna change? What are you putting on the table?
There aren’t any charismatic Team Rs on the national stage. None. People think roobs is charismatic, but they’re wrong.
He comes across as smarmy and phony and the second he opens his mouth you can tell he’s cut from the same tired old cloth as Romney and Boehner and Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush.
Rand Paul is new and different but he’s just a baby senator with a weirdo daddy and not to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.
With respect to who’s running, there’s nothing new under the sun. We might nominate our first exorcist, and he’s probably the most deserving of the lot.
But he’s a flippin exorcist.
I can’t help you, exorcist. Hillary is going to kick your exorcist ass and I can’t help you.
All the money favors porky porky right now.
And that’s just pitiful. The difference between porky porky and Hillary is porky porky is slightly more likely to keel over at any moment than Hillary is to get clotted up.
But only just.
Something has to change in mudville cause mighty Team R’s Three-Legged Stool has struck out. Twice in a row.
I say we explore the “honoring of all Americans for their right to pursue happiness in their own way” idea, and focus on a message of economic freedom and growth.
Mr. Dr. you can’t square a federal government what is consumed with extremist lila rose-style abortion angst and a hyper-concern about whether or not some gay dudes in Iowa got married last Friday with a philosophy of limited government.
And this reeks of hypocrisy … mostly to young people. And it completely and utterly destroys any coherent messaging about the proper role of the federal government.
Keep all that 700 club stuff at the state level and you republicans will be a whole lot better off and you won’t have all that Akin all over you to where people point and laugh.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:19 pm
mr feets
I really really am not that concerned about what 2 gay guys did in Iowa last month. I am concerned about when some bureaucrat points to a statute and says I’m unfit to be a parent because “I teach my children to hate” because my own personal belief that i don’t scream on the frontpage is that SSM is not the same as hetero marriage.
And I am concerned when doctors and nurses think they know better when an elderly relative should die by giving morphine instead of a water pill and a med student wearing a yamaka says dr kavorkian is a great man, and I wonder how did we get to this?
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:31 pm
Mr. Dr. your fears are overblown
except about the dead old people
America voted for death panels and John Roberts blessed them so you just have to look at the bright side
it’s gonna save a LOT of money
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:34 pm
mr feets stay tuned for when you have to say, oh, I guess your fears weren’t overblown after all
and may you never experience what i have with “dead old people”
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:38 pm
I should clarify; it was a pledge to support the human life amendment Goldwater signed, not any amendment itself. He signed it at home. Of course, he waited for his wife Peggy to leave before he let anyone bring it over for him to sign. It was later that the other co-sponsors knew they should have taken that as a clear signal Goldwater was not sincere about the pledge. As you might be able to tell from this article.
Herald-Journal Apr 12, 1982
It’s a more than a little disingenuous for Goldwater to say in April 1982 he hadn’t seen the bill, since it had been written in January 1981. Then it was referred to committee. And Goldwater does give the game away when he says he doesn’t think it’ll be called up. He never thought it would make it out of committee. And it never did make it out.
And then of course Goldwater voted against the Hatch-Eagleton amendment in the year after Goldwater was interviewed for this article. It was defeated Yea-Nay 49-50. Had Goldwater voted for it it would have passed.
But by then he didn’t need the pro-life organization to get out the vote for him. He hadn’t really decided to run that year and entered the race very late. He had done little campaigning, and none outside Phoenix and Tucson. He was behind, he needed help, and by signing that pro-life pledge he knew he could get an auxiliary campaign organization that was already up and running.
But can anyone read that article and come away with the idea he ever really meant to support that human life amendment? Especially considering the surrounding facts.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:47 pm
you have a lot of experience with dying people cause you’re a doctor I’m in marketing so I don’t have as much experience
but I been around the block a time or two
plus I watched like 7 episodes of house one night I think it was a marathon
he sure is sassy
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:49 pm
my worst experience has been as a family member
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:54 pm
Steve57 – Is that chicken worn out yet? Need any CPR?
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:56 pm
i been there Mr. Dr. it’s a horror
I think we can address it on a policy level though without getting all
you know
lifeydoodle about it
Let’s put that Dr. Carson to work on it. He’ll make short work of all this fascist death panel business.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 7:59 pm
“Mr. Dr. your fears are overblown”
Mr. Chicken Little Feets – I think you are listening to Henny Penny too much. If you want smaller government and more power back to the state, get the government out of the abortion business. Hah! Can’t do that can we cuz the fetus flensers scream war on wimmenses.
I don’t understand why anything has to be “put on the table” to attract low information Obama voters. That seems counter to basic conservative principles, out freebieing the freebie party and dividing the country by identity group.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:04 pm
If there’s no good GOP candidates, who do you suggest we get to market the campaign to “Honor all Americans for their right to pursue their happiness in their own way”?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:04 pm
mr feets
dr carson would make me look all wishy washy and wimpy if he took on the task
one must have a lot of conviction and confidence to work on people’s brains
and he knows about knife fights from personal experience
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:06 pm
“Honor all Americans for their right to pursue their happiness in their own way”
Doesn’t that sound a little woodstockish?
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:08 pm
By the way, when did “happiness” become the point of living? I think it was the 1970′s because it wasn’t that way when I was growing up.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:09 pm
We think alike, MD.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:09 pm
who do you suggest we get to market the campaign to “Honor all Americans for their right to pursue their happiness in their own way”
I’m quoting that cause by the time I think of something it could be awhile
um
first of all we have to herd all the cats onto the same message
we can use the party platform for this
it has a bunch of dumb stuff in it now – we can make it a LOT shorter and easier to digest
I’ll be happy to do that part
then once we have a message we just need to get the Rs to stay on it
and we need one person to sorta be the spokesmodel for it – like vanna on wheel of fortune except as a presidential candidate
I think
I think the best person would be
um
I’d have to go with
Condoleezza Rice!
She is probably the bestest choice in 2016 if we want to beat Hillary plus also salvage something of the Republican brand.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:11 pm
Well, as the article I posted shows Goldwater had a 100% ACU rating. But then, so does Mitch McConnell so take that for what it’s worth.
Yes he took stands even though he meant he probably wouldn’t win. But did he he take those stands because he didn’t want to win?
As the obituary you linked to earlier said, “he said he had always known that he did not have a chance against President Johnson.”
The odd thing about that his campaign manager Clif White and his campaign team surprised everyone by winning Goldwater the nomination on the first vote. White put together a ground game that beat out the better funded Rockefeller and Scranton teams in the primaries to that extent.
What did Goldwater do after the convention victory? Fired White and everyone else, went with a different crew, and in the view of many from that point ran as if he wasn’t really trying to win.
I’m going to drop the Goldwater thing now. I’ve only brought it to this point because I’m very suspicious of Republicans who tell me they want to shrink government. I doubt they’re entirely sincere. Which is why I say the proof is in the pudding; it’s what they do that counts.
So here we are now now with leviathan breathing down our necks demanding our guns.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:11 pm
happiness tests well in focus groups DRJ
just go with it
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:13 pm
No CPR needed. The fork tells me it’s about done.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:13 pm
hmm, Steve that sounds vaguely familiar,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:14 pm
A couple of links from Spectator impinging on this and the Rove topics of discussion:
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/22/the-banality-of-the-rinos
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/21/se-cupp-and-the-freezing-of-th
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:16 pm
So the new plan is conservative fascism?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:18 pm
limited government can’t be fascist it’s actually the bestest bulwark against fascism there is except for Spider-Man
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:23 pm
308. I love Melanie. Don’t tell my wife.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:30 pm
She does have a no nonsense point of view, what would be considered ‘speaking truth to power’
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:32 pm
happyfeet,
This is poetic justice but Barry Goldwater anticipated your Happiness themed campaign and explained why it won’t work:
Liberals and Libertarians for a couple of generations have led us to a society that values personal fulfillment and happiness above all else, but it isn’t the recipe for a good democracy. To the Founding Fathers, the pursuit of happiness didn’t mean personal fulfillment; it meant virtue. They knew people need morality to guide them to a good life, and both they and Goldwater knew that anything less ultimately leads to conformity and despotism.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:33 pm
282. I agree Pee Wee, and hope our being bystanders is just happy coincidence.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:34 pm
328. You two are the best.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:40 pm
Let us assume arguendo that there exists a social institution based upon male-female pairing. Let us further assume that there exists at least three centuries of writings describing the purpose of this institution as being the denigration and oppression of homosexuals. If such an institution existed, I would oppose giving it legal effect, and, in the alternative, I would only support giving this institution legal effect if the same legal effect were available to same-sex pairings.
Marriage is not such an institution.
No centuries-old writings describe marriage as an institution whose purpose is to oppress persons of a particular sexual orientation. As a matter of fact, the first published writing to specifically deal with the issue of same-sex “marriage” predates the concept of sexual orientation. Compare Joel Prentiss Bishop, Commentaries on the Law of Marriage
& Divorce § 225 (1st ed. 1852) (“Marriage between two persons of one sex could have no validity, as none of the ends of matrimony could be accomplished thereby. It has always, therefore, been deemed requisite to the entire validity of every marriage . . . that the parties should be of different sex.”), quoted in Defendant Sally Howe Smith’s Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment
and Brief in Support With Consolidated Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion
for Summary Judgment, Bishop v. United States, 04-CV-848-TCK-TLW (N.D. Okla.), at 18, with J. Katz, The Invention of
Heterosexuality 10 (1995); J. D’Emilio & E. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America 121 (2d ed. 1997) (“The modern terms homosexuality and
heterosexuality do not apply to an era that had not yet articulated
these distinctions“), cited in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 at 568-569 (2003)
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:40 pm
but the happiness campaign isn’t really about happiness
it’s about trust DRJ
it’s about saying to the voters you can trust us not to get all up in your bidness cause we’re just here to roll up our sleeves and get to work growing this economy and creating jobs and bringing prosperity back
and we’re gonna do everything we can to make government less burdensome and intrusive, and you can take that to the bank
and the voters will say
OMG you’re so awesome we love you thank God there’s finally an alternative to the fascism of obama and hillary
then Team R will get elected to the White House and take back the Senate and grow their house majority
and then all they have to do is execute
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:44 pm
Mr. Feets – Just remember that Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day in Boston and everything will be boom boom dadum swim.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:51 pm
“Trust me” worked for Obama but not so well for Romney, happyfeet. Why would it work for your happiness candidate?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 8:56 pm
Prince Spaghetti Day is carbs Mr. daley
and carbs are not on Team Win
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:01 pm
Romney was a phony baloney say anything pander express candidate
he was more plastic than barbie and more overproduced than katy perry
and god help us he was the best nominee out of those that ran
this is why we need New Ideas
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:04 pm
plus he had romnesia it was on cnn
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:06 pm
So if we just had the right salesperson and the right ideas, we can win with a “Trust me” Happiness Platform.
Do you really think no one has ever thought of this before? You’ve just described virtually every campaign that’s ever been run, except McGovern ’72.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:06 pm
Via the indispensible Doug Ross:
http://www.gunssavelife.com/?p=5931
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:10 pm
you’re forgetting we’re also gonna be excising a bunch of 700 club stuff that makes voters say I can’t vote for you people
that part is key to the whole plan
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:11 pm
342. Yeah, I don’t get it either. People want what they want when the want, same old, same old.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:14 pm
No, homosexuality was known some 1900 years ago if not longer, otherwise Paul wouldn’t have spoken of it, in Romans, it is no worse then any other sin,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:17 pm
It’s ironic, because it wasn’t social issues, but the spendings and to a lesser degree foreign policy, that the left used against Goldwater,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:21 pm
353. Having read Tacitus and Suetonius it really is embarrassing we got here in half the time.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:24 pm
Andthe founders were familiar with Gibbon, Livy was also someone they were aware of, Sallust might
have been reminded of Catiline,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:28 pm
happyfeet:
Who are these voters that would vote Republican but who, instead, stay home and/or voted for Democrats because they were turned off by GOP values? Are you talking about young voters or someone else?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:28 pm
Re-read the 1964 GOP Platform, happyfeet. With the exception of its references to God (who was still popular with Americans in 1964), the GOP and Goldwater stood for everything you say you want:
There’s more but you get the drift. So how’d the Goldwater campaign work out?
And do you really think today’s American electorate that voted for Obama (twice!) would respond to this message, especially now that the economy is in such dire straits? My guess is voters feel they need government now more than ever. The time to argue for limited government is when times are good, not when times are bad.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:30 pm
No, that was Ron Paul.
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:32 pm
mostly worried young people and professionals and educated people who are concerned about the decline
and also single white females – the ones what aren’t food stamp whores yet
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:34 pm
yes sounds like the Goldwater campaign would make a good template I think
it’s not 1964 anymore it’s 2013 and people are scared and disheartened by how seedy and filthy and fascist their little country is becoming
I guess Goldwater was just before his time
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:36 pm
Talk about timely! Firebrand arch conservative Ann Coulter and firebrand arch libertarian John Stossel duke it out. Debate is good.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/02/22/epic-ann-coulter-and-john-stossel-duke-it-out/
Comment by elissa (30ddde) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:38 pm
Young people and young professionals and single white females love Obama, and nothing was going to change that. They were never going to vote Republican.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:38 pm
“Having the appearance of wisdom”, Amerikkka you are so lost.
356. wow, I dint know until this instant Gibbon was that early.
We are so provincial, “there is nothing new under the sun” not even I-Pod 5.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:38 pm
that’s kind of defeatist DRJ and defeatism works more better on my side of the argument I think
so…
are you suggesting Team R stick with the 3-legged stool paradigm?
what suggests that will be a winner in 2016 when it failed so spectacularly in the last two at-bats?
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:43 pm
Duh. That’s exactly what I meant, and thanks for the gentle correction.
DRJ, in reality — in terms of how many people live (particularly behind closed doors) and not just what they say (in public) — your original characterization actually is just as applicable, if not more so.
People do vote with their feet and the moving van, and while quite a few hard-core do-gooder liberals — among others — truly believe in the ideals of integration and certainly civil rights, in terms of where they choose to live and which schools they send their children to is a whole different matter. In that regard, such liberals are the epitome — the essence — of the “limousine liberal.” So while they talk the talk (about abhorring the concept of segregation—and rightly so), they don’t walk the walk, and therefore lead lives not too different from that of garden-variety segregationists.
The behavior of civil-rights “progressives” is rather analogous to the way that, for example, Bill Clinton was and is a big supporter of women’s rights. Or Al Gore, with his jetset lifestyle and wasteful set of toys (eg, fancy gas-hog vehicles), was and is a big fan of green-earth this, green-earth that.
Overall, though, what I’m trying to say is that I used to believe people “matured to the right” but I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe people trend conservative on fiscal issues as they age, but I think social attitudes are more complex and dependent on the individuals involved and their life experiences.
In light of the Baby Boomer generation being sometimes characterized as a case of stunted maturity, of hippies never growing up, of people enthralled with youth (and with the Botox injections to prove it), the current group of graying Americans, when it comes to the notion of “with age comes wisdom,” may deserve an extra dose of cynicism and skepticism.
As for Goldwater — very much pre-baby-boomer — he apparently was quite happy to change his mind later in life. I do wonder if he therefore changed his tone about the leftwing, about the Democrat Party and liberals in 1990s America. My suspicion is he did–certainly behind closed doors.
When he was joking about how he and John McCain were now seen as too liberal by various Republican Party activists, Goldwater was too foggy or in a state of denial to realize that he, in fact — in the context of late 20th century America — really was leaning left, regardless of the presence or absence of Pat Robertson or the Moral Majority, etc. IOW, what Goldwater was warning about in the 1960s had — in the context of do-your-own-thang America in the 1990s — become increasingly and absurdly evident.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:45 pm
Mr. Feets – Why do people vote for the Purple People Beaters and Race Pimp overlords on the left? I don’t even know where to pick up a membership card in the religious right.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:45 pm
Mr. daley they’re STUPID is why
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:46 pm
I hope the GOP voters avoid moderate candidates and choose someone who can articulate a conservative message of limited government, fiscal responsibility, entitlement reform, a stronger economy through reduced regulations (especially in the manufacturing and energy sectors), and belief in values that strengthen our society. To me, the latter includes support for two-parent families, pro-life policies that make abortion legal in some cases but rare, and ways to increase opportunities for immigrants and gay partners — such as more/streamlined visa programs and civil unions — but without granting amnesty or legalizing gay marriage.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:53 pm
Why did they avoid Ron Paul?
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:00 pm
Boy, this post generated a lot of good comments, but that’s not unusual for this site.
I am still perplexed, however, how Goldwater could have been considered a viable Presidential candidate after trying to blow up Fort Knox and corner the gold supply, not to mention having a Girl Friday with the name of Pussy Galore. And Odd Job, a sinister oriental, as his right hand man at the height of the Cold War and the VietNam War? Come on! How did he survive being sucked out of that plane, anyway, although he was a lot thinner afterwards.
Comment by nk (53646e) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:01 pm
it doesn’t seem odd to have such big huge ecumenical stuff what literally affects the whole world (limited government, fiscal responsibility, entitlement reform, a stronger economy through reduced regulation) juxtaposed with micro niche-targeted stuff as (pro-life policies that make abortion legal in some cases but rare; streamlined visa programs for hay partners)?
That really jumps out at me DRJ and it’s puzzling
I would say ok if you had to pick half of all that stuff what’s the most important.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:01 pm
I mean c’mon – hay partners? really?
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:02 pm
Mark:
I’ve read studies, reports and articles that support what you say but I don’t think it’s true everywhere. Where I live, the main minority group is Hispanics. There are some areas of town that are predominantly Hispanic but this is due to economic reasons rather than racial segregation.
Hispanics live in every area of my town and make up a sizeable percentage of every school and neighborhood. We shop in the same stores, go to the same restaurants and malls, and work in the same offices and buildings. Maybe I’m clueless but I don’t see segregation in my community.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:04 pm
Michael:
Because he’s a loon on foreign policy, and I say that with affection.
nk!
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:06 pm
happyfeet,
I say to you: If value issues are so unimportant to you, ignore them and vote for the big items that matter. Why do you let something like abortion or gay marriage distract you from what really matters?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:08 pm
because of these are the issues what are alienating America’s youth and preventing them from hearing the messages about limited government and prosperity
and that is cause the social issues are blatant contradictions of any assertion that Team R values individual liberty
they’re non sequiturs, and, especially given Team R’s Akin problem, they’re non-trivial problems
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:15 pm
and frankly if you wanted tons of abortion and gay marriagings Team R would just need to keep doing what it’s been doing
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:17 pm
(losing)
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:18 pm
I don’t think dropping social issues will win the youth vote. By definition, liberals will always be able to offer more liberal lifestyle choices, and that’s what appeals to today’s young voters. As you’ve said repeatedly in these comments, happiness works with those voters.
The conservative message of personal responsibility simply doesn’t appeal to young people right now, and it may not until times are so tough that they have no other choice. Even then, many will probably stay home instead of voting.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:29 pm
it doesn’t work that way tough times just tilt the checkerboard towards the fascists – remember the circumstances what produced that Hitler guy?
our fascists here in america decided not to wait for the economic hell they decided to create it themselves
and they figured out what it means when you can print print print money
it’s probably already too late to do anything though
we’re all gonna die
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:34 pm
There are some areas of town that are predominantly Hispanic but this is due to economic reasons rather than racial segregation.
DRJ, class differences — including social-cultural traits and idiosyncrasies — definitely are at the core of how people interface with one another. Also, an interesting irony is that areas within some of the most true-blue states in America — super-super-blue urban areas in particular — awash in do-gooder liberalism, are not necessarily anymore integrated than anywhere else, and, if anything, may be more demographically polarized.
Then, too, the external traits of X percentage of Latinos (and the traditional cultural/scientific classification behind that—ie, Latino being an ethnicity and not a race) would give them a different dynamic. For example, in the 1950s, Lucy could be married to Desi, and the entertainment value of that (meaning the lack of controversy) didn’t shake and wobble. But would she have done as well if her husband looked similar to, as one obvious example, Barack Obama?
BTW, has Hollywood — super liberal Hollywood — ever done a TV show (even in today’s era of political correctness run amok) where the MAIN characters of the program were an interracial husband and wife? Offhand, I don’t know of any. If there really hasn’t been, that actually surprises me. It also reminds me that there’s nothing more contemptible and worthless than a bigoted or racist liberal. That’s because true tolerance and sophistication about racial differences are perhaps the only positive traits I associate with a stereotypical liberal.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/22/2013 @ 10:53 pm
“I don’t think dropping social issues will win the youth vote.”
I agree. Two thirds of them don’t even understand the other issues and just guzzle propaganda.
I was very surprised to be able to maintain a civil conversation with my son’s rabid feminist lesbian girlfriend after college graduation a few years back. He tipped me off she was going to be gunning for bear. Turned out she didn’t understand the basics of any conservative positions.
If a voter’s biggest concern is over so-called social issues, they should have issues with both parties, not just Republicans. The 30+ year old hysteria about the religious right is a overused and tired meme. People need to be concerned about thought and speech police from the left in academia and the media, protection of the second amendment, programs such as ObamaCare as encroachments on our liberties, gaiadoodles trying to take us back to the stoneage, etc.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:16 pm
If you give up the social issues you’re essentially saying their fascist indoctrinators from k thru college graduation were right about you all along.
“Yeah, you got me. It isn’t like I thought marriage between a man and a woman served an identifiable and valuable social function. I just hate gays.”
Then you’re worse off.
It isn’t like it just sorta happened; they became alienated by these issues all on their own. A lot of people worked very hard on the kids to make sure it happened.
Really you have no hope of them ever voting Team R unless you deprogram them from all the brainwashing.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:16 pm
Chicago is 32% Hispanic. I heard it on the radio.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:20 pm
The Deepest Source of Our Troubles
Or, what she said:
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:26 pm
“Really you have no hope of them ever voting Team R unless you deprogram them from all the brainwashing.”
Steve57 – I find myself with some good ute deprogramming opportunities around camp fires late at night as a volunteer with a brown shirt fascistic national ute organization which stresses personal responsibility and traditional values.
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:35 pm
you’ll just be sitting there minding your own business and they’ll come marching in and crawl up your leg and start biting the inside of your ass and you’ll be all like hey get out of my ass you stupid gaiadoodles
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:41 pm
I’ll bring President Tiger Beat with me, Mr. Feets.
They won’t even notice I’m there, so eagerly will they be humping his leg.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:45 pm
the social issues are mostly just made up crap for to raise money for focus on the family weirdos in their stupid direct mail campaigns
in real life they just don’t mean anything
people gay marrying willy nilly and aborting this that and the other – I just go on with my day
try to avoid the carbs
what do you want from me
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:45 pm
Well, if you’re not going to eat the whole sandwich I’ll take the bread.
I’m carb loading cuz I’m fighting in the Kumite in Hong Kong in a couple of months.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:49 pm
Mr. 57 I saw that odious nasty Jimmy Carter on the tv today or yesterday –
probably on Piers Morgan
and it made me think how young food stamp is
and how he’s gonna have to watch all the misery his vicious rape of america is gonna cause
and his kids are gonna see it too
and nasty little food stamp is gonna have to live with that
but by then Hawaii will probably be an independent fascist republic or whatever and his kids will be fascist princesses and
whatever
it all sucks
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:52 pm
I’m carb loading cuz I’m fighting in the Kumite in Hong Kong in a couple of months.
you’re officially the coolest person I kinda know
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:52 pm
Look on the bright side Mr. Feets. The way President Obamageddon is running the economy into the ground you won’t have to watch Piers Morgan for very much longer.
He’ll probably get cannibalized by a starving CNN production crew once New York turns into a Snake Plissken movie set what with the upcoming societal collapse.
And you won’t have electricity any more in our new green economy anyway.
Anyway, relax. It’s gonna get a whole lot worse before it really sucks.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/22/2013 @ 11:58 pm
i hate that cause
I’m in LA
I already got mega-tuberculosis on my ass and giant goldfish between me and my escape route
it’s hard out here for a pikachu
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:02 am
Just don’t let any CNN production crews in your house and you’ll be OK.
If any do come to your door, pro tip: just toss one of those giant goldfish in one direction and then they’ll chase after it, then run the other way.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:06 am
i replied Mr. Steve but
it got stuck
I’m pretty sure I didn’t use any nono words
pickles
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:26 am
391. The squirt gets her first lesson, and maybe joins the class this AM.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/23/2013 @ 5:38 am
371. Where ya bin, doing good?
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/23/2013 @ 6:00 am
@371–Yeah, hi nk. Your emily latella-like comment cracked me up. It’s nice to see you back in good blog commenting form. Some of your commentings just prior to your taking the break were kinda scary and unpleasant (but I’m sure you know that). Hope all is well now and that it will stay that way for you.
Comment by elissa (a55268) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:00 am
Hawaii is even farther to the left, then say Oregon, with single payer and all that, maybe China can straighten them out,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:13 am
Ditto. Tell us more, Steve57.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:29 am
And tell us about the first lesson, gary gulrud.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:30 am
happyfeet,
You encourage you to read every word of this article linked by Steve57 at comment 286. Here is the conclusion:
I know you disagree with this. You are consumed by the moment and believe everything will be fine if we just leave social issues alone. You are wrong and the author explains why. I challenge you to rebut his facts and analysis.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:46 am
Oops. “I encourage you” not “You encourage you.”
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:47 am
403. Rescheduled to next Sat., earache.
At minimum the economic fight is lost already and the social demands lodged by the Left ultimately self-destructive and anyway so-so shallow and vapid.
Thanks for your heroic effort to maintain a level of respectfulness that I can’t begin to muster.
How could I ever learn to love my enemies, I can’t even love my friends.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:03 am
I’m a believer in martial arts for kids. Talking about your squirt’s lessons reminded me of taking my son to TKD lessons many years ago, probably at about the same age. (He missed many lessons because of chronic ear problems, so even that resonates with me.) Hope she feels better soon and likes the lessons.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:18 am
As DRJ said @404, the Paul Rahe article is very good and certainly says what I’ve been trying to say much better than I have.
To build on that, There’s a post up at Legal Insurrection along the same theme.
Coulter on Stossel shows foolishness of Fordham’s cancellation
It’s a 9 minute video of John Stossel hosting a Q&A session with Ann Coulter fielding questions from Libertarian students.
Prof. Jacobson makes this astute observation.
Libertarians somehow don’t realize they’re the allies of the of the liberal statist elites. I believe this form of libertarianism (as the first questioner asks r.e. drugs, “What business is it of yours what I put in my body”) appeals to the young, especially college students who’ve had somebody else pay for everything their whole lives, because they just can’t understand how shallow the arguments in favor are, and how harsh reality’s verdict will be.
Consequences escape them. It’s too bad that Coulter didn’t tell the young lady, who doesn’t use drugs herself, that creating large numbers of dysfunctional drug addicts leads to the 70% socialist system we currently have. Not merely that it would be OK with her if we didn’t have it.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:29 am
Since the problem lies in culture, the law is a poor instrument,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:32 am
DRJ @407, Krav Maga, Hebrew for “contact combat,” is very good. It’s the Israeli Defense Forces unarmed combat system. Very easy to learn, very effective.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:32 am
i read it. I’ve read that before actually.
no I can’t agree – this is not the Republican Party’s job and it reeks of those creepy Saudi Arabian vice squads what burn school girls alive
my first thought though is we’re doomed anyway
my second thought is that the best way to instill a sense of responsibility in people is for them to have a job and a non-fascist education and goals and opportunity
and that means it’s imperative that we free our increasingly-fascist economy from the shackles of the obamawhores
and that is what Team R should focus on
not being moral guidance counselors
and Team R has far far far less moral authority than you suppose
remember what our friend Mr.
oh what’s his name
Mr. Alinsky
remember what our friend Mr. Alinsky said
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
There is absolutely nothing what inheres in your average Republican politician what suggests that they can live up to the rules that would of necessity accompany an attempt to reverse the sexual revolution.
Republican mens and womens are not *that* different from your typically whorish American, except for me and you. They just keep it all on the d/l more better.
But we mustn’t judge.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:37 am
The whole point of so many liberal causes is to denigrate culture, at least American culture to the extent they’ll admit it exists at all, as just a collection of irrational bigotries. Usually relics of a primitive religious origin.
Then pass a whole set of anti-discrimination laws to protect women, the LGBT crowd, and minorities from the irrational bigotries of the majority who are merely trying to protect their White privelege anyhow.
Voila, law becomes the only tool, the only source of legitimacy.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:42 am
It goes to the Brechtian insight, where he suggested ‘dissolve the people, and elect another in it’s stead’ a society without a stable family base, cannot long prosper;
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/aborting_the_party_of_lincoln.html
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:43 am
Then enjoy your fascist nanny state, Mr. Feets.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:46 am
Take Rolling Stone, please, the same marketing arm of the Medellin and now Sinaloa, tells us, it is wrong to have a Keystone Pipeline, ironically they use the metaphor of a ‘junkee’s needle, the one thing that keeps our economy, running is considered a toxin,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:48 am
happyfeet:
Why not? It’s our money paying for other people’s lifestyles. Why shouldn’t we judge how they spend our money?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:48 am
The concept of homosexual acts certainly existed.
The concept of homosexuality as an orientation or an identity did not.
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:51 am
When you go to restaurants, don’t you return to the ones that do a good job and refuse to dine at the ones that do a bad job? That’s a form of judging and, by your standards, that’s wrong.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:51 am
“we mustn’t judge” referred to the Republican mens and womens what are not *that* different from your typically whorish American in the sentence before that
is all
sorry that was unclear
but judge away on the spendings I got your back there
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:51 am
narciso @413, that was one of the main problems with the Soviet Union. They actively worked at destroying the family (not to mention what they did to the church; the Bolsheviks rabidly hated the church and meted out the harshest punishment to priests and religious people) so that there would be no sources of morality or objects of loyalty except the state.
When you atomize civil society and its institutions, until there is nothing between the individual and the state, then the state wins every time. For as long as it lasts.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:52 am
Good link, narciso. Thanks.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:53 am
Then enjoy your fascist nanny state, Mr. Feets.
that’s what we all get to enjoy until the stupid republicans figure out how to win actual for reals elections
I liked a lot of what Rahe said about Romney though btw
he really was a hubristic lil dipstick, and more and moreso in hindsight
someone should throw a shoe at him at CPAC to where it bops him in the goozle and he’s left sputtering with rage and humiliation
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:56 am
Thanks for clarifying that, happyfeet. Now, regarding this:
As a rule, people don’t get jobs until they are adults in today’s world. Maybe a few teenagers but not that many anymore. Does it make sense to wait until they have formed lifelong habits to expect them to learn personal responsibility, punctuality, frugality, and the other values that make up our market system? Isn’t that especially unlikely when so many young people have children before they have jobs?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:57 am
In other words, isn’t it plainly true that the best way to instill a sense of personal responsibility is to encourage intact two-parent families? You may not like doing that, but surely you admit that it has a greater likelihood of success than waiting until adulthood to instill those values.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:59 am
No, the problem with Romney is he thinks too much like you, pikachu, he doesn’t judge Obama’s works as anything other then being ‘in over his head,’ the other side has no such reservation, a dog starving, tax dodging, cancer causing, plutocrat,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 9:59 am
well the yoots can have the goals and opportunity part
everyone should have a dream
you know – like those kids in Glee
full disclosure
I think having lil womens sneaking off to abortion clinics for so their college dreams don’t get derailed is a far far better problem for our society to have than turning them into pint-sized lil food stamp whores
if we got to pick
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:01 am
As for a non-fascist education, single parents generally don’t have the time to home school or the money to send children to private schools. How are they to avoid putting their children in today’s public education? Isn’t it more likely that children of a two-parent household will have more educational opportunities?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:02 am
happyfeet:
We don’t get to pick for them. They pick for themselves, and many of they are choosing to have babies and take welfare.
You seem to think it’s an either/or choice. Apparently for today’s young women, it’s all-of-the-above.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:03 am
the best way to instill a sense of personal responsibility is to encourage intact two-parent families
maybe but that’s the purview of parents and churches and neighbors and friends and society in general
not the federal government
so while yes yes yes let’s reform welfare as best we can, it’s not Team R’s job to instill responsibility in other people’s kids
that’s why Santorum is so creepy – he wants to bend the whole apparatus of the state into socially engineering model families
and that’s just not gonna fly
it’s not realistic
and it can’t be made out to be anything but creepy
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:05 am
happyfeet,
Are you being your typical entertaining and carefree self, or do you really believe life is like a TV show and most young people are college-bound and Gleeful?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:06 am
No, if you want people to learn market-based as opposed to dependency-based values they have to start when they’re young. That’s why the Socialists are way ahead of you, DRJ.
Obama’s War On Children and the Family Farm
You know how the liberal song and dance goes, don’t you, DRJ?
“You heartless woman! You’re for exploiting children in child labor?!?”
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:07 am
no we don’t get to pick people’s choices DRJ
I’m just saying that I’d rather America have problems attendant to opportunity and prosperity as opposed to having problems attendant to decline and dependency, and there’s a lot Team R could do to tilt the landscape in favor of the former
if it could win elections
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:08 am
happyfeet:
The federal government uses taxpayers’ money that effectively encourages single mothers to procreate. That makes it everyone’s business.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:08 am
Are you being your typical entertaining and carefree self, or do you really believe life is like a TV show and most young people are college-bound and Gleeful?
I don’t have to answer that
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:09 am
DRJ–
The discussion(s) on this thread have been fascinating. I particularly appreciate happyfeet’s contributions which illuminate that under all the mirth he has a thoughtful and serious nature more than on any other thread which I can recall. I do think happyfeet’s conclusions are somewhat naive and simplistic but I likewise think the Ricochet article exudes considerable naiveté of a different sort.
The article carefully describes how we got to this not so good place, who’s fault it mostly is, and why it has been slowly killing the patient for a few decades. It posits how much better off we’d be if we could go back in time and have a redo –or, if we could somehow now recapture some of the lost traditional values around which society was organized and were the foundation for creating American families while also helping make them long-lived, self-sufficient and strong. Most who read and post here probably agree with much or at least some of that.
But where this article fails utterly is where most articles of its “stay the course-keep the faith” type fail, IMO. While it passionately preaches what should be, and that we need to “turn things around” and that libertarians should be wanting to help and why, it offers no clear path at all by which the message will suddenly be received by enough of a resistant and increasingly needy electorate to win national elections or how a turnaround of the welfare state might be accomplished in practical terms without winning elections. It shows no recognition of the near impossibility of returning to the desirable intact two parent family model which values marriage and personal responsibility now that that model has been so thoroughly non-operational across all ethnicities and most income levels for quite some time. My @307 touched on this yesterday.
It’s like America needs to be taught a whole hard extinct language. But what will make people want to make the effort to learn it?
Comment by elissa (a55268) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:10 am
Of course we get to pick people’s choices, happyfeet. We do it all the time. You can have an abortion in some cases; you can’t in others. Ditto for guns, contraception, where we live, even the food we eat.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:11 am
The federal government uses taxpayers’ money that effectively encourages single mothers to procreate. That makes it everyone’s business.
yes and they should stop doing that
but Mr. Rahe wants to swing the pendulum to the opposite extreme, and I don’t think that would prove to be a fruitful pursuit
I don’t think Team R would get very far with that, and there’s much better things for them to work towards if given stewardship of the increasingly limited resources at our piteous little country’s disposal
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:12 am
How can you not be aware of all the ways the feds are making war on that assertion? If the feds have their way parents, churches, neighbors will have no say in the matter.
And what is this society thingy you are talking about?
DNC video: “Government is the only thing that we all belong to”
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:12 am
elissa,
There are a number of things government can do to encourage traditional values including two-parent families — especially tax breaks, restoring faith-based activities (including partnerships with government), undermining teachers’ unions (something that’s already happening in some parts of the country), and better job-promoting policies (hf is right about jobs being part of the answer). But IMO the first step is realizing social issues matter. If we abdicate social issues, things will never change and will only get worse.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:16 am
Hence the Julia project, or Michelle’s ‘Barack will not allow you to remain uninvolved, we must learn new ways, a new form of history’ we may call it marxism or fascism, but at it’s heart, it is a feudal project they are designing,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:17 am
The opposite extreme would be a small government not interfering with society and attempting quash social values as established by institutions like families and churches. Which would probably socially conservative because that’s the only way you can survive without the nanny state.
For instance, before the welfare state your family was your “social security” and only rich bohemians could really do what they wanted, like have all the kids they could without a husband and expect somebody else would support them.
What other extreme are you imagining, Mr. Feets? That he’s proposing we have Saudi morality police running around beating women for showing too much ankle and toppling walls on gays like the Taliban?
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:19 am
I chuckle at the thought that happyfeet is doing an act, putting on a masquerade, and in reality — beyond the computer screen — writes like (but doesn’t necessarily think like) a George F. Will or talks like a William F. Buckley.
As for one more reason why I take conservatism (social and not just economic) more seriously is because of information like the following. IOW, I originally bought into the idea of “if I could choose to be a certain way, why would I choose to be…?!” But when there apparently is a lot more “B” in the “GLBT” among no less than females, then many people’s assumptions need to go by the wayside.
I now realize the old-fogey wisdom (or boring common sense) dating back eons — and symbolized by stories like the one about the city of Sodom and one of its residents, Lot — was more on-target that I was aware of.
^ If the dynamics of personal behavior didn’t often come attached with liberal sentiments in general (IOW, if the pro-GLBT crowd wasn’t also overwhelmingly of the left), I would be more libertarian about such matters. For instance, there are Republicans like Lynn Cheney who has written books — Frontier American fiction — in which one of her characters is described as being similar to what’s described above. But more times than not, feel-good sexuality and rampant do-your-own-thang leftism are mutually inclusive, so it’s virtually impossible to have one without the other.
We’re well on our way — covering lots of miles now — traveling on that road paved with good intentions.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:22 am
Awkward phrasing. I meant while rich Bohemians could have kids as single parents, most could not emulate them because they didn’t have the same resources.
Until WIC, SNAP, TAMP, Medicaid…
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:22 am
happyfeet:
Are you essentially saying that young people will never give up the sexual and personal freedoms they enjoy, so we might as well stop trying? If so, I agree that’s true, but only as long as taxpayers are funding their lifestyles. There won’t be enough money for everyone. My guess is young people will be among the first to see the payments stop.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:23 am
government shouldn’t be in the business of rewarding model families and punishing non-traditional ones Mr. Steve
That’s what Santorum wants to do and I suspect Rahe would agree.
So yes, a small government not interfering with society and attempting quash social values as established by institutions like families and churches sounds lovely.
But having government be in the business of rectifying “our abandonment of chastity as a norm” is overreaching.
That’s not the government’s place and it’s not at all in consonance with a limited government philosophy.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:25 am
They should be in the business of the former, and not in the business of the latter.
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:26 am
*to* quash social values I mean
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:26 am
Why? Government effectively promoted our abandonment of chastity by providing for children of unwed mothers. The intention may have been noble but the result was to promote more unwed mothers to have children. Why shouldn’t government have to rectify this?
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:29 am
I don’t agree Mr. Ejercito, about the rewarding
virtue is its own reward!
and a lot of people in non-traditional families get there through no fault of their own
government needs to settle down and stop using the tax code as a plantation foreman’s whip
it’s demeaning to everyone involved
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:30 am
He doesn’t get what the spendings are about, in part why Obama worked so hard to return welfare reform to the pre 1994 status quo ante,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:31 am
Mr. Feets, if the government was small and limited it wouldn’t be rewarding or punishing anybody.
It would merely letting people learn by their own mistakes. Choices have consequences. Unless you have a nanny state; then some third party pays for the consequences.
The problem, Mr. Feets, is that you’ve accepted the way the libs have framed the issue.
Obama wouldn’t want his daughters “punished” with a baby, would he? By punished he means learning that choices have consequences.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:31 am
I think government should stop providing for children of unwed mothers
also it should stop providing for children of wed mothers
it should be getting out of the providing business in a big way
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:32 am
The federal government uses taxpayers’ money that effectively encourages single mothers to procreate. That makes it everyone’s business.
What you “tax” you get less of;
What you “reward” you get more of.
Immutable laws are just so damn inconvenient.
Comment by askeptic (2bb434) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:33 am
But, right now, government essentially funds unwed mothers and not married mothers, so it skews the market.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:33 am
You can say government shouldn’t do either, happyfeet, but the reality is it picks winners (unwed mothers) and losers (married mothers). Thus, government effectively picks the social issues that will win and lose, too.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:35 am
We need to restore balance to this equation, instead of futilely wishing that it will all go away.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:36 am
DRJ@439–a government “could” do those things, sure and a responsible media could help immensely. But you’re a smart lady. Do you honestly think our current government has any reason to– or intention to–promote two parent families and faith based partnerships or undermine teachers’ unions? Do you think the few states which are taking a lead in this area can have enough of an impact or sufficient clout to effect change nationally before it all comes crashing down in a few short years? How much time do you think we actually have to turn it around, DRJ?
Comment by elissa (a55268) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:38 am
But, right now, government essentially funds unwed mothers and not married mothers, so it skews the market.
Married moms get tax benefits too they just look different than the EITC food stamp et cetera benefits the single loser moms get.
And Team R can play with that if it ever gets a chance.
But it doesn’t need to run a campaign based on rolling back the sexual revolution.
That whole way of talking is self-defeating.
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:39 am
Without the nanny state, reality is in the business of rewarding naturally occurring families and punishing non-traditional ones.
The nanny state exists to shield people from reality and reward non-traditional families and punish traditional ones.
That’s the choice.
You’ve accepted the liberal strawman that conservatives want to use the same leviathan that they’ve created, just for the opposite purpose they’ve created it for.
As opposed to just dismantling the whole thing, which is the reality of the situation.
Obama understands this, which is why he has to lie about what would happen if conservatives succeeded.
Obama Blasts GOP ‘You’re On Your Own Economics’
In other words, “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state.”
No one would be on their own. If you dismantled the fascist apparatus people would find that out.
Hence the HHS mandate to destroy religious charities, hospitals, schools, etc. If there are no alternatives to government for these things then no one can find out what Obama knows to be true.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:40 am
Obama understands this, which is why he has to lie about what would happen if conservatives succeeded.
If The Left told the truth about what they intend, nobody would support them –
at least to the extent that they do.
Comment by askeptic (2bb434) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:42 am
you’ve accepted the liberal strawman that conservatives want to use the same leviathan that they’ve created, just for the opposite purpose they’ve created it for
yes that was my takeaway from the Santorum campaign
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:43 am
elissa,
Candidly, given the last election, I’m close to giving up on the United States. It may be too late, even if a Reagan-like transformer shows up in 2016 or 2020. There’s just too much to undo and I fear we will become (or have already) a John Edwards-type “Two Americas.” That will crush the opportunity ethos of our nation.
However, I have modest hope for the red states. If the federal government and the blue states continue their current path — and, at this point, I admit they probably will — then I expect to see some red states talk about secession.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:47 am
Filed under It’s For the Children™
“The fliers touted new ballfields, science labs and modern classrooms. They didn’t mention the crushing debt or the investment bank that stood to make millions.
In early 2008, residents of Placentia and Yorba Linda approved a $200 million school construction bond after reading those fliers and being assured repeatedly that “their money will be spent wisely.”What happened instead was that Measure A led to a debt so large and long lasting that it has mortgaged the future of their children’s children.
With no public discussion, the school board had hired George K. Baum & Co. and its staff of political strategists to help push the measure through so the district could continue an ambitious building spree.
After the election, the board allowed the bank to sell some of the costliest bonds ever issued by a California public agency. Just one $22 million borrowing from 2011 will cost taxpayers nearly 13 times that amount – $280 million – to repay…”
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bonds-496091-school-bank.html
Comment by Colonel Haiku (90ec41) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:50 am
==Without the nanny state, reality is in the business of rewarding naturally occurring families and punishing non-traditional ones.
The nanny state exists to shield people from reality and reward non-traditional families and punish traditional ones==
Absolutely. Correct.
And we currently live in a nanny state. Soo, the all-important question nobody seems to want to touch on is: what is the practical proposal for getting back to even a semi- non-nanny state before TSHTF? That’s a lot of dismantling. No? Especially hard when the “good guys” are not in charge of the government. How much time do you think there is before TSHTF?
Comment by elissa (a55268) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:57 am
Mr. Steve I get what you’re saying
and a lot of what DRJ is saying
and I’ll tell you guys that yes yes welfare reform and such are on the table and that’s fine and let’s have that be what we mean when we talk about social issues
but that is not what the lifeydoodles are passionate about
they’re not passionate and vocal about the welfare reform and about the impacts of welfare on the family
that’s way way way down their list after about 100 different nuanced takes on the abortion holocaust and the gay menace
and that’s just sad
what do they think it means when America elects a gay-marriage-loving abortion cheerleader?
it means that all of the energy and shrieky volume they’ve expended on their flagship issues
has been a huge waste of their time
nobody’s buying what they’re selling anymore
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:57 am
sad meaning shallow
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 10:58 am
if the GOP had practiced “You’re Own Your Own Economics” back in 2008, there would not have been a bank bailout.
Of course, given the capacity for cruelty that humanity is capable of, people should be lucky if the government merely left them “on [their] own”. It is far less than what humanity actually deserves
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:02 am
nobody’s buying what they’re selling anymore and what’s worse is
their obsessiveness with gays and abortion hopelessly scrambles any attempt to align Team R with a philosophy of limited and minimally-intrusive governance
cause nobody’s buying that anymore either
they’re buying fascism
and it’s a worry
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:14 am
However, I have modest hope for the red states.
I’m not sure how the combination of demographics and, in turn, the prevailing politics — and culture — in your part of the US will play out. Based on the description you gave of your community, its population is diverse, with a fairly large cross-section of Latinos. Residents who I’m guessing either immigrated directly from, or have close connections with, Mexico—or a situation that’s similar to what’s going on in California.
The more politically nonsensical a community or society becomes, the more important its populace becomes. IOW, if a large number of people in any place are skilled, resourceful, talented, reliable and self-starting, then even foolish, self-destructive politicians and government policies may be but a glancing blow. But if far too many people in such a place are average to below average, THEN the picture changes and one may be looking at an indefinite (or permanent) period of aimlessness, fecklessness, mediocrity, corruption and decline.
I observe the long history of Mexico — certainly the various disreputable aspects of it dating back quite awhile, if not for generations — or farther south, Argentina (with its mostly European demographics, but no less notorious traits), and compare that with the political trends straight out of urban America (read: ultra-ultra blue, true blue), and I say, “Oh-oh, Houston, we’ve got a problem.”
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:19 am
nobody’s buying what they’re selling anymore
But does that really bother you? My sense is you don’t like the leftist tilt of this society, but, at the same time, you certainly seem far more bothered by the idea of this nation becoming too conservative.
Your reaction would have been understandable decades ago, and I’d probably have shared it (eg, a time when famous wealthy people, who happened to be black, couldn’t buy homes in certain neighborhoods, couldn’t stay in certain hotels, couldn’t eat at certain restaurants, etc), but not today.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:27 am
I’m hungry Mr. Mark I haven’t had breakfast yet
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:33 am
When talking about Hispanics especially in Tejas and California it is important not to “guess” or get tied up in the idea that everybody’s probably a recent arrival from Mexico and a leech. If I’m not mistaken both Texas and California have had well integrated citizens of Spanish descent for two hundred years or so. I believe they think they’ve paid their dues and that they’re pretty much “Americans” by now. They do not appreciate being casually lumped with the illegals.
Comment by elissa (a55268) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:33 am
I think an important first step is to demonstrate to the Libertarians that, whether they know it or not, they’re the handmaidens of the intrusive regulatory welfare state. I don’t think that’d be so hard to do.
For instance, if you watched the Coulter/Stossel vid you may have seen a young man describing libertarianism as a “third way” when it came to gay marriage. He believes government should be out of the marriage business.
I would have pointed out that we had government out of the marriage business for about 2000 years, at least when it came to defining marriage (in England [and consequently for the purposes of US law]) government got into the marriage business in 1600). And you know what you got? Marriage between one man and one woman. As a matter of fact, you had two thousand years full of generations who would have looked at you if you said two men could get married like you were nucking futs.
To get gay marriage, whether you know it or not, you need to get government more heavily involved into marriage. Not the other way around.
And what do they mean about getting government out of the marriage business? If they’re going to force people to treat gay marriage as if it’s equal to (I try hard not to say traditional because that’s playing into their hands) natural marriage then guess what? Government’s back in the marriage business. Are they going to force parents to will all their kids equal amounts of money, or can parents decide based upon their religious values to only will to the kids who gave them grandkids? Are they going to force business owners who are willing to cater a wedding receptions if it’s a man and a woman to also cater a reception when it’s a man and a man?
If they’re not willing to do that, then they don’t really want government out of the marriage business. They are in fact liberal statists.
Sorry to keep harping on the gay marriage thing. Other than that and drugs what is libertarianism about, again?
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:36 am
feets, i think the lifeydoodles are interested in finding a place where they can draw a line in the sand and say STOP and then everybody stops and we can catch a breath
since people having children out of wedlock already appears to be the norm no use drawing that line
the line about having to do something worthwhile to get your benefits was done under Clinton and erased under the one
the line of killing preborn people was crossed years ago, but too many people have this guilt thing about babies being treated worse than puppies so they do still try to draw that line
and it wasn’t lifedoodles who said no no no we can’t let ss couple marry anymore like they’ve been doing all along most lifeydoodles are happy to say you two go do what you want to in private and we’ll leave you alone, just don’t tell us we have to say it is a good thing and we approve when we don’t
America is not a hateful nation, though it is very flawed. because it is not a hateful nation, people want to be kind and help people out of jams, especially when not their fault like a factory closing down because of the price of steel in Japan or something
but once it is no longer a person helping a person, but some “thing” helping a person, the person loses a sense of responsibility, they think obama has a stash of cash he got from somewhere and he is going to give it all out santa claus style. children find out at some point that what santa gives actually gets paid for by mom or dad or granny or someone they know, so they can’t have everything from santa
the huddled masses that once were free haven’t figured out that obamasanta is just taking their money to buy them presents, and keeping a lot of it along the way
the idea of shutting down private charities, which at least try to put a human face and some responsibility, for the sake of all beneficent big brother is about as Luciferian as one can get
and I’m writing this way because imitation is supposed to be flattering
and Painted Jaguar isn’t up to helping out
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:38 am
That’s true, elissa, at least where I live. Some have lived here a lot longer than my forebears, and we came in the 1800′s.
One more thing about the United States: I’m not pessimistic about America, even though I think America will become more of a European-style socialist nation. Just as the nation I grew up in was different than the nation my grandmother grew up in, it will be different for my children and grandchildren — but they will adjust and it will seem normal to them.
What makes me sad is that America is trending away from the land of opportunity for all. Now it’s the land of opportunity for certain people. I might have liked that in my youth or as a young professional, when my goal was doing better than the other students or colleagues.
But I don’t feel that way anymore. Instead of wanting to succeed more than the next guy, I learned America works better when everyone has opportunities and does well. A rising tide really does lift all boats and makes things better for everyone.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:43 am
Well Alinsky did dedicate it ‘Rules for Radicals’ to Lucifer, the first rebel, as he put it,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:49 am
Libertarianism really can’t exist outside of the regulatory nanny state. They imagine that if government gets out of the business of telling people what to do, then there’d be a vacuum that won’t be filled; people won’t establish social institutions that do the same thing.
They always have. You can go back as far as you want. The Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Japanese, the Chinese, whatever. Family, tribe, culture, religion did what the liberal statists want to do. No one ever got to define for themselves what marriage is and insist everyone accept it.
I suppose the drug thing is easier to tackle. Sure, you can do all the drugs you want. If you’re willing to die because there’s no nanny state to save you from the consequences of your actions. Or, if you need help, you have to turn instead of the nanny state to some Salvation Army type charity. And then live by their rules.
Only the nanny state will help you out without insisting on certain standards in return.
If they want to do drugs but don’t want any consequences, they’re liberal statists, not libertarians.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:49 am
maybe the problem isn’t so much where they want to draw the line Mr. Dr. it’s that they want to use the Republican party as their tool for drawing it
it’s no longer an appropriate tool for that, if it ever was*
this is an assertion and I am asserting it assertively
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:51 am
i forgot my second asterisk
it’s cause of I’m getting weak from hunger I bet
Comment by happyfeet (acd614) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:52 am
No, they don’t. Consequently La Raza type groups lean on them pretty hard for not supporting “their” people.
You’ve got to be a pretty strong Tejano to insist Mexicans aren’t there people as their families went to a lot of trouble to successfully revolt against them.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 11:53 am
When talking about Hispanics especially in Tejas and California it is important not to “guess” or get tied up in the idea that everybody’s probably a recent arrival from Mexico and a leech.
Then the situation there is noticeably different from the situation in California, where a huge percentage of the Latino population over the past few decades is made up of immigrants. However, all things being equal, any place or society automatically will be more stable or reliable if its attitudes (ie, the socio-political views of its people, public and private) is sensible and down-to-earth. There’s a sense of that in this report:
^ California does lead the pack in a notable, heartwarming way: It’s public-school textbooks are now required to mention famous people who are GLBT.
Onward and upward.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:06 pm
intervention number one, males are responsible for support of their children
if they can’t find a job, put them in a work camp CCC sort of ish
If you are going to give money away, at least get something for it
no money to single women with kids unless the father is ID’ed and held accountable
all them young dudes hangin’ on the corner won’t be anymore, except the ones that know how to behave responsibly
18 yo’s need to learn if they want to act like an adult they will be held accountable like an adult
the 15 yo’s will watch and learn
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:07 pm
Who are those people?
Does not the “homophobe” ™ population vastly outnumber the gay population?
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:10 pm
11th century Europe used to have such a system called the manorial system.
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:12 pm
There is no seperation of mosque and state, allowed, as Bloomberg and Christie prove,
http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/02/the-vast-right-left-wing-conspiracy/#comments
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:15 pm
Just as the nation I grew up in was different than the nation my grandmother grew up in, it will be different for my children and grandchildren — but they will adjust and it will seem normal to them.
Your comment about how people learn to adjust makes me think of the mindset reflected in this:
A big shout out and “hello” from the Golden State to Cristina Kirchner in Buenos Aires!
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:16 pm
353. Having read Tacitus and Suetonius it really is embarrassing we got here in half the time.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:24 pm
And the founders were familiar with Gibbon, Livy was also someone they were aware of, Sallust might
have been reminded of Catiline,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/22/2013 @ 9:28 pm
There you go again, rubbing it in to us science majors that took Science Fiction as Literature and History of Science as humanities electives.
Painted Jaguar: Don’t tell MD I told you this, but somebody once asked him if he had read any of Durant and Durant and he said, “No, I’ve only seen their videos on MTV”.
I may not know what a “MTV” is, but my mummy, ever so smart as well as kind, would read from Durant and Durant to me when it was too hot and steamy to play down here by the deep, dark, turbid waters of the Amazon.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:16 pm
11th century Europe used to have such a system called the manorial system.
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:12 pm
And there was no welfare system or guys hanging out on corners selling drugs.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:21 pm
Hey, that’s just the kind of edumification that’ll make us more competitive in the world economy.
Besides (he, he, he) what sort of objective standards can you come up with to tell if the drunks and incompetents in the teachers unions are doing it wrong. Math and science are so unfair in that regard.
So let’s suck more capital out of the private sector so Barack Obama can get his “stimulus” money to put more
public sector employee union members who can help the unions kick back their dues to Democratsteachers into the classroom.Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:29 pm
“We can’t wait!”
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:29 pm
This guy had some pretty high approval ratings, too. So keep that in mind.
Lawyer says former Bell, Calif., Mayor Oscar Hernandez was too illiterate and uneducated to realize he was misappropriating public funds to pay his $100,000-a-year part-time salary
Apparently he didn’t finish grade school. But people liked him! He’d walk around town and listen to people’s problems. Then screw them and make their problems worse by joining the city council and city manager in a scheme to rip off their tax money to the extent they couldn’t provide services.
Yeah, Obama!
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:40 pm
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:40 pm
What is that saying about people getting the government they deserve? They really put somebody in for mayor that didn’t finish grade school?
There may be many wonderful and highly skilled people who didn’t finish grade school, and maybe even he had a very bad time with the family- but I would have thought a GED would have been a good thing.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 12:56 pm
Yes, he knew enough to cash the check,
Comment by narciso (3fec35) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:09 pm
Heh.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:17 pm
O/T, but about “Defense” from Nat.Review via PowerLine:
Peter Kirsanow on the impending confirmation of “Caligula’s Horse” as Secretary of Defense:
Just because they’re laughing in Tehran, Pyongyang, Moscow, and some hovel in Mali doesn’t mean this nomination is funny.
Are there any possibly valid reasons for Obama to nominate Hagel other than to undermine the military? really.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:24 pm
No, although I think Obama is also using this nomination to send a further message to the generals that he’s in charge, not them and not the SecDef.
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:27 pm
Bad idea, Doc. That would have created a paper trail and destroyed his alibi.
On a different note, remember “we can’t judge.”
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/02/15/mass-dept-issues-rules-transgender-pupils/L0rr4AYIwCKH33z0hxcGTL/story.html
To be honest, I came across this the other day and it was one of those things where it’s like, “This has to be just some internet rumor.”
Yes, for some reason the Mass. Dept. of Ed. finds completely unfathomable some kids may be uncomfortable.
Got that? If your 4th grade girl doesn’t want to share a locker room with an 7th grade boy, she’s bullying him.
I can’t imagine anything more inclusive than a school system that demands rigid conformity to their agenda upon pain of punishment, even and especially if it goes directly against whatever values you try to instill into your kids at home.
Yeah, I’m really worried about the Paul Rahe types swinging the pendulum the other way.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:36 pm
What does this have to do with the 2nd Amendment?
If you’re going to force a system of organized child abuse upon an unwilling populace, you can’t leave them with arms.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:39 pm
This guy had some pretty high approval ratings, too. So keep that in mind.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:43 pm
To be honest, I came across this the other day and it was one of those things where it’s like, “This has to be just some internet rumor.”
Or something from The Onion.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:45 pm
Mark, that was my second reaction. My first was that it was totally believable.
I’ve actually stopped reading the Onion. What can they come up with to rival what the Mass. Dept. of Ed. can come up with? Or the liberals in general?
But hey, that Oscar Hernandez guy and Barack Obama dude! They’re doing such a great job, aren’t they?
Si se puede!
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:49 pm
Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:27 pm
I think Obama has been eliminating opposition in the military about as well as Egypt’s new ruler.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:36 pm
Like I said, the lifeydoodles are still trying to find a place to draw a line.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:50 pm
but I would have thought a GED would have been a good thing.
Personally, I’ll have more confidence in a high-school dropout running for office who is philosophically/ideologically sensible (ie, of the right) than a Harvard-trained brainiac who loves — just loves — himself some of that down-home, modern-day liberalism.
Similarly, I’ll have more confidence in a truly, sincerely, honestly, conservative GLBTer on the ballot than a leftwing heterosexual, who’s as straight as can be.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:54 pm
I can’t find the motivation to read National Review or Hugh Hewitt since November 6th. Have I missed anything?
Comment by Colonel Haiku (90ec41) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:56 pm
Doc, let’s all repeat after our illustrious GOP establishment pols.
“This is not the hill to die on.”
It’s never the hill to die on.
Besides, we can’t judge. We can be judged, of course. We can be called every name in the book. Islamophobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, anti-science, and un-American. But we can’t judge.
So let’s just drop all these social issues.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:56 pm
Or the liberals in general?
Steve57, we’re living in the era when life imitates art. The Twilight Zone over and over again.
Comment by Mark (767b53) — 2/23/2013 @ 1:57 pm
I believe they’re still giving Obama credit for wanting to come up with some common sense compromise on all sorts of issues.
King like how Krauthammer believes Obama doesn’t want to gut the military because he’s the CinC and thus responsible for national security.
You know, just like he’s responsible for the economy.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 2:00 pm
*Kin
gda like…*Although “King like” is an appropriate phrase to use when discussing Obama because that’s obviously how he sees himself.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 2:02 pm
Jonah Goldberg gave a good speech at AEI recently
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/23/2013 @ 2:04 pm
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Comment by Streaming CentovaCast (03e978) — 2/23/2013 @ 2:10 pm
You’ve got to watch them thar lifeydoodles, Doc. You never know how far they’ll go.
They may attempt to use the public school system to brainwash your kid that the global warming science isn’t settled or even (shudder) indoctrinate your kid into the pseudoscience of creationism while also teaching them the one true faith of evolution.
They might even punish the kid for trying to resist the brainwashing cuz they’re not good tolerant people like liberals who are open-minded about differing points of view.
Why, when I lived in the Bible belt the Xtofasists even made me buy all the beer I needed to get through the weekend by midnight Saturday because there were no alcohol sales allowed on Sunday.
The heathens. I believe they may even have a secret plan to take away my rights and tell me how to live.
That’s what the Democrats who know best what light bulbs I should buy and how many gallons per flush I ought to be allowed and that the world won’t let me heat my home or drive an SUV tell me, anyway.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 2:29 pm
The public school system actually was very good at basic math and reading/spelling, but they did teach my daughter the polar bears were dying, and they even showed her a picture to prove it.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 6:25 pm
MD in Philly, which turns out to be the result of actual fraud.
Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/23/2013 @ 6:34 pm
SPQR, you could say that about global warming alchemy in general, not just the polar bears.
Comment by Steve57 (60a887) — 2/23/2013 @ 6:51 pm
Did anyone there even consider the fact that this sort of thing would lead to violence?
I know for a fact that the students at the high school I attended, when I went there, would not have put up with this kind of shit. No boy would have dared asked to admit to feeling like a girl.
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:09 pm
No one is more lifeydoodle than the Amish, living in relatively marginal land around the Midwest where I’ve loitered.
Tend to have a dozen, bro is sort of a fringe of the Brethren that way.
Interested in our lives outside their orbit? No, not beyond confirming their life’s path.
In the Driftless area of WI, you can miss their presence entirely. What seem to be wooded boundaries between farms are deep swales that you drive down into on dirt roads.
At the bottom they open up into safe little vales.
Its a brief enough life, to pass it without commutes, road rage, bankruptcies, dissipative celebration, advanced degrees, .. , seems entirely valid from my vantage.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:21 pm
SPQR,
Yes indeed, which is why I intended it as an example of what they did not do right.
Guess who my child wanted to believe? Yes, the teacher.
My understanding is the person who took the picture, while a nature buff, was not happy her work was being used as scientific misinformation.
Comment by MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 2/23/2013 @ 7:22 pm
He already filed the brief.
http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/US-merits-brief-Windsor-2-22-12.pdf
True, it does not directly argue that state marriage amendments violate the 14th Amendment. But there is no doubt that if the Supreme Court agrees with the primary arguments of that brief, it would, at a minimum, call into question the continued validity of state marriage amendments that also ban civil unions (e.g., Oklahoma, Virginia)
Comment by Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 2/23/2013 @ 8:09 pm
517. Civil unions are fine in my estimation. And they should be valid for insurance death benefits.
Gay priests and female girl’s team coaches are hard to preclude, on a number of grounds.
Lifeydoodles who practice a religion of ‘moral rectitude’ are going to always be with us, like liberal moral Nazis.
The advantage of the nanny state to liberals is they don’t have to give a rip about the starving drug addict they step over, its handled. Social workers, DMV clerks, postal carriers, enviornmental lab technicians all work in service of people.
A free pass to sainthood.
Comment by gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 2/24/2013 @ 5:00 am