The difference is that you want to live in a simplistic 19th century America and that world doesn't exist any longer. You want to weaken institutions of government in favor of privatization and greed. You want to continue to embrace a religiosity that the modern world increasingly rejects. You want to live in the past and we want to move forward.
This was somewhat true of the JFK tax cut, before which we were to the right of optimal on the Laffer curve. However, the data shows that this was not true of Reagan's tax cuts and is even less true of Bush's.
Little bit one-sided eh? First off, you should still summarize the 40 minute video that supposedly claims all liberals are "pro-saddam". If anything, you know...as a scientist, you'd want to flesh out your thesis and confirm your preconceived biases with the points you and the video lays out. I wouldn't overgeneralize as such. There are a lot of issues both sides agreed to but with varying degrees. Maybe it's the way things were framed in the 70s..."pro-life/pro-choice", "pro-civil rights/pro-states rights", "pro-war/pro-peace", that has made issues today seem polarized in a black and white frame. Yet many of today's issues aren't black or white. In the 90's, both parties agreed to the truism that regulations hurt the growth of banks and by extension, what hurt banks hurt the greater public. So both parties watered down financial regulations to the **** pile we had in the last 10 years, and financial scandals after scandal has arisen since mid 2000s. Yes, red tape and regulation can hinder business. Yes, there are cases of overreach. But the point in contention we have today about whether it's "all evil or all good" is insane and illogical. You don't throw the baby out of the bathwater and forget what happened in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries where panics, bubbles and busts were commonplace. Seriously man, if you were born and raised here for the last 70 years, then you were a product of a mixed-market system where the federal government provided infrastructure and support to you, the states, and the businesses you and your family worked in. They made sure you had clean running water wherever there was a tap, that you weren't ripped off (too much) in your energy bill, that your church was free from taxes so it could devote its financial energies to your congregation and the community, and that your kids had a park and library to go to, whether to play sports or do some homework. That was an America many people still believe in and rely on, but that's not one that will last for many reasons. The times are different. Job types are different. Priorities are different. Our infrastructure was planned and designed in the 50s. It's not the 50's anymore. There's a lot to retool, rebuild, and areas to recover. If it worries you that "values are different", it should. Some people are too keen on shedding the ad hoc community influence of churches and other religious groups, but at their best, they're places to encourage, enrich, and deepen community bonds. At their worst, they're merely reactionary cliques that speak more than they act. That part is up to you and your church on what course it takes. Not the government's. On that note, are Republicans still the better representation of political Christianity? Do they really embody what it means to be Christian? We can all defer that Jesus was a-political, but not many people are framing it like that these days. You have pastors and priests coming out and endorsing certain politicians. Religious leaders attacking people as un-American, as if America is the political representation of Christianity. Perhaps they want it to be the next Rome? There are no more undiscovered continents to conquer... You are thinking too hard, cml750. Jesus started to understand criminals, beggars, and prostitutes by talking to them...a lot. It doesn't take God to accomplish that, let alone with people who disagree with how a government should run.
I love abortions. Love the sound a fetus makes when you snuff it out. Gets me all giddy and ready to do bath salts and threaten traditional marriage. My favorite thing to do is hate America because wow does America suck. We need 14 more 9/11s, 65 more Columbines, and at least one more Cuban Missile Crisis just for old times sake. I enjoy watching fellow Americans die, but if anyone eats a chicken nugget instead of a soy nugget they are the real murderers. Saddam and Osama were just misunderstood. I'm sure they were good dudes, just like when we thought Joey Stalin was cool even though he killed more people than Hitler. Somebody pass the bong.
Amen! It scares me how some people are either too dumb to form educated/informed opinions themselves. They listen to the most vocal, hate mongering, fear breeding loudmouth and buy in to this "us or them" mentality. Labels, generalizations, prejudices are for the lazy, insecure, and narrow minded. No two "liberals" or "conservatives" has exactly the same views on every issue. Unless FOX or Rush tells them to. D sorry, had to squeeze that in there)
OP started this thread just to be a condescending douchebag. Either that or like poster above mentioned, everything he knows about Liberals he learned from Faux News.
Because conservatives can not rationally come up with a reason for hating liberals, they conquer this crap up to justify their inane hatred. Why are the right wingers so against thinking? Why are they threatened by an educated critical thinking population? Why do they feel that tolerance is an embrace of evil? It's just madness and I laugh at it. It used to depress me to realize how many stupid people there are on the right. I mean the left has it's share no doubt but the right is a lot more dangerous with its reckless thinking. People like to find an excuse for their deficiencies. In the case of the conservatives, their scapegoat is liberals instead of just taking responsibility for themselves.
Here is something that is curious: as a "sixties" liberal we were anti-government, we wanted "The Man" to get out of our lives, to stop telling us what to do, stop regulating our lives, leave us alone. We wanted the government to stop meddling with other countries, let them be, stay out of their business. Well, today's liberal is largely pro-goverment, regulate everything, stick our nose in the world's business, etc. That is curious.
What's curious is that me-first boomers won't stop until they drain this country dry as long as The Man or banks are there to write checks for them. Maybe it's not coincidence that Tea Baggers attract middle-aged middle to upper class white people.
Solid, I always respect your opinion. You make a solid point, but only to a degree. It was never that simple, that cut and dry. I was a Hippie during the '60's, starting around 1966, so I think I have some knowledge of the time and the politics. Back then, Liberals weren't how you described them. That was how my own subculture thought, and even within that group there were political factions, political disagreements. Liberals in the 1960's were Mainstream. Jack Kennedy, the President cml750 quoted on taxes, was a Liberal Democrat. He pushed for civil rights legislation and much of what LBJ later called "The Great Society," based largely on JFK's own agenda, while expanding the military and its global bases and infrastructure, much of which remains today, confronting the Soviet Empire wherever it sought to expand. He was a young, tough Liberal Democrat, a man who fought in World War Two, the first Catholic President, when the very idea of a President of that religion was considered radical. A man who fought communism and social injustice, despite coming from a privileged background that would have allowed him to spend his life surrounded by luxury. That was a typical liberal back then, writ large. Post-Reagan, and to a degree, during his presidency, the Republican Party went beyond co-opting the bigotry that was the basis of the Southern branch of the Democratic Party before Kennedy and Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act. They began actively attempting to label the Democrats as radical socialists, using chunks of the ideology of some of the Hippie subculture as a template. In other words, the GOP lied to the American people about my party, and that party being in what seems to be perpetual disarray, Democrats made it way too easy. They allowed themselves to be "defined" by the other party, something they should never have allowed to happen. What the extremists on the Right say here about both Democrats and Liberals uses the same divisive weapon. It's been going on for so many years now that some otherwise intelligent Republicans believe it to be true. Just as the Republican Party of today doesn't resemble the same Party during the Reagan/Ford/Nixon years, despite their attempt to drape themselves in the cloak of Reagan's legacy while becoming a party that wouldn't allow Reagan to sniff the nomination if he were living, the Democratic Party is in many ways far different than the party of the Kennedy/Johnson era. Barack Obama isn't as liberal as JFK, in my opinion. I don't think it's even close. Heck, IMO, Obama isn't as liberal as Bill Clinton, who must be quietly grinding his teeth looking at just how much of George W. Bush's agenda the President has continued. Just some thoughts. I'm glad cml750 started the topic. I hope he'll use the opportunity to review some of his convictions about liberals and Democrats, and Liberal Democrats. They aren't always the same thing. Many Democrats today are moderate to conservative in their beliefs on a host of the issues of confronting the country. Just as it is unfair to label Republicans with too broad a brush on many of those issues (I know many pro-choice Republicans, just as I know several anti-abortion Democrats, for example), it is equally unfair to label Democrats with too broad a brush. Members here like basso and bigtexxx have no interest in those kinds of Democrats and Republicans. Their only interest is to promote division. Why? It promotes their extreme agenda. Wake up and smell the coffee, people. If the issues of today, and the two political parties, were remotely as simplistic as they are so often portrayed here, all problems would have been taken care of long ago, one way or another. I'll add one more thing about Jack Kennedy and his tax cuts. They were not seen as "supply side" cuts, but rather as "demand side" cuts, intended to put more money into the hands of consumers so they could spend the economy into growth. No one, to my knowledge as best I can recall, ever called those cuts a way to put more money into the hands of the rich so that they could "create jobs." In fact, Kennedy was given a hard time from the Left because 45% of the cuts went to 12% of the wealthiest Americans. Rates were lowered from 91% to 70% on marginal incomes over $400,000. Compare those rates to the highest rates of today. The middle class benefited from a new standard deduction and lower rates, as well as some other benefits for those who itemized. Some of the loop holes were closed. None of this was remotely like the insane gift for the rich that Bush and his GOP Congress pushed through, and that Obama sadly extended for the wealthy. Again, food for thought. If some think this post is a bit long, too bad. This didn't fit into a "sound bite."
Bible bumping conservative posting a video he has no knowledge about and no opinion about...just to see "what up" from liberals that want to watch something that a comedian as to say. Is it any wonder why Rush Limbaugh is one of the most successful radio personalities in the country when the vast majority of his listeners don't care about knowledge and just want to re-affirm their ideals and directed hate to be righteously focused? Pathetic. It's amazing how many folks that are so politically outspoken and passionate really don't have the slightest idea of what is really going on (not that I'm an expert either)...just mommy and daddy told them to be this way and they can't see it any other way...But I guess if they actually changed their minds after seeing the truth then they'd have to admit what complete idiots they were before.."gasp" that means they'd have to swallow their pride...meh, it's only a sin, no biggy...forgiveness is only a Sunday away, amirite?
Let's see...Republicans are AGAINST abortion or at least the right for a woman to choose to have an abortion gun control rights for gays higher education helping the poor Geez, why don't they just re-name themselves "The Negatives" or "The Againsts". Invisible hit the nail on the head - Jesus surrounded himself with the sinners and outcasts. He didn't have any use for rich people or those that were smug and self-righteous. The Evangelical Christian portion of the Republicans are not doing them any favors.
Why not just extend the pro-choice argument everywhere? If I were to batter someone, I'm not pro-battery I'm just pro-choice. No one likes to batter, really. If I were to speed when I drive, I'm not pro-speeding I'm just pro-choice. No one likes to speed, really. Calling it pro-choice is de-sensitizing the outcome. There is a little life at stake as well. When in life does a "choice" outweigh the value of a "life?"
I'm right-center. Liberals are generally better educated, from personal experience. The arguments from the liberal movement, as a whole, are better formed. But a lot of liberals also employ talking points and just repeat things. They've got this group bullying tactic: some guy says something that's supposedly witty and every other guy congratulates him for supposedly owning whoever he's arguing with or whatever. The right is generally very obstinate and needs coddling to even listen which makes arguing with them very tiresome. They're got this team spirit thing to back a point because of who's backing it rather than its merits.
Any time the death penalty is applied to a trial. Any time a war is started and people volunteer to fight and, during war, choose to kill people. Any time the developed world chooses to ignore starvation issues around the globe. Or disease, etc. Any time a person chooses to have an abortion. We devalue life in all aspects of life pretty much every day.
Not true, there are a LOT of people who enjoy violence, inflicting violence on other people, and fighting in general. As evidence, see MMA and boxing participants as well as drunk men (and to a lesser extent, women) in bars from Maine to California and Washington state to Florida. Again, there are entire professions of people who like to speed and do so for a living. NASCAR, funny cars, drag racers, and off road racers get off on speeding like it is a drug. Hell, there was a time in my life when I LOVED to speed on the freeways, I was completely "pro-speeding." Calling it pro choice is exactly as accurate as calling the opposite viewpoint pro life. In today's society, banning abortions would have exactly as much actual success as our current efforts banning drugs. So, if you feel like calling people like me "pro abortion," I posit that you could just as accurately be called "pro illegal abortion" as that would be the ACTUAL effect of an abortion ban. BTW, many dispute your personal definition of where "life" begins, this is not a universally held belief. There were several examples in a post above, but in my mind, as long as the fetus is completely dependent on the biological processes of the mother, it is not an "independent life" and as such, the mother's choice trumps any rights the fetus might otherwise have.
Pretty fair assessment but there are compromising issues in some cases and these distinctions are important: A Death Penalty often involves someone guilty of a horrendous crime against another innocent human being or beings-- most often Murder-- and is a decision made by the State system of justice not an individual. A War is, often, defensive in nature even if the defense is remote and not necessarily immediate (although 9/11 hit home). We tend to take our wars to them rather than let them come to our shores. World Hunger issues are far-ranging and complex. We have no direct responsibility for the suffering of others. Most of us could do more. Abortion is different in that it gives the individual the "right" to devalue another life for the sake of "choice."
Your point might have validity if everyone defined "life" the way you do. Many of us do not believe that a fetus qualifies as an independent life, thus the mother deserves to have the power of choice over her own body.
Really? That was the purpose of my asserting "really." Violence is dangerous; in general we don't tolerate people who like to have that choice. Sports is a controlled environment in which all participants are volunteers. Speeding is dangerous; in general we don't tolerate people who like to have that choice. Sports is a controlled environment in which all participants are volunteers. In what way does an aborted fetus volunteer? No one is making anyone have an illegal abortion but pro-Choicers are allowing many innocent lives to be destroyed every year with legal abortions. There is no way that there will be MORE abotions were it illegal instead of easily accessible. Lives saved. Any disputation on when life begins is just more of a reason to be respectful and cautious rather than an excuse to be reckless.
