The_Noble_Cause wrote:It’s whatever you want it to be.
Today it’s a reason to rant about high taxes; tomorrow it’s an excuse for treasury bankrupting wars of aggression.
Such incongruity can only be explained away by modern conservatism having been defined ad-hoc by its capricious leaders, and not by any consecrated stone-engraved principles, as you would have me believe.
The movement is whatever the leadership wants it to be at any given moment.
Under that reasoning, I can also define modern liberalism by the actions of the Democratic Party, correct? But I don't -- I separated the original ideal from the tactics of the politicians who lean to the left. Neither did I give the Republican Party any grace for their political tactics. Look, I think you are using "conservatives" as a synonym for Republicans, and that's technically false. I'm not here to defend Republicans a bit, but I would stick up for Ronald Reagan on any day of the week and twice on Sunday -- and this is Sunday, right? But today's Republican Party has moved away from traditional conservatism, which is why they are suffering in the polls.
The_Noble_Cause wrote:Rip Rokken wrote:But on Willie Horton particular, you miss the point, which was to depict Dukkakis as soft on crime, which he was. He supported the furlough program which allowed a guy with a life conviction w/o parole -- a guy who should never have seen the outside of a prison for the rest of his life -- to taste a bit of freedom and commit brutal crimes. He should have been tagged for that!
If you think the GOP’s motives in running that ad were as pure as the driven snow, you are more clueless than I thought.
They even changed his name from William to “Willie” to give him that authentic Step 'n Fetchit subservient house negro sound - and that's not even half of it.
This is TYPICAL... Take my comments out of context to bolster your unstable arguments, and also filter out anything that you can't defend against. I
clearly stated that both political parties used the Horton/DuMond ads as election year political "ploys", but at the same time, that the points raised were valid and fair. Did
either party have pure motives in delivering those ads? Or course not -- their aim for doing anything is and always will be to win elections. But it doesn't mean the issues they bring up aren't valid -- both were. Crime is a serious issue in America, and an instant hot-button with any thinking citizen, so no doubt they'll use it when they can. Just too bad they won't do enough to address the root causes of crime.
What do you want to do? Do you want to solve problems and come up with solutions, or do you just want to bitch? You can't even debate in the same realm with me because your arguments aren't sincere. You are in the
Crossfire realm of "us vs. them" where you are siding with a political party, whereas I'm zoomed out to a higher realm of "us vs. them" where I can see that the problems are actually ALL the people vs. politicians in general. From my vantage point, I can see that neither party has proven to be sincere in resolving any of our major issues, and the country and every working class citizen has suffered as a result. The problem in a nutshell is the disease of
people who are willing to achieve something for themselves (power, money, etc.) by manipulating and stepping on countless numbers of others (even our whole country) in order to get it. I wouldn't do that... would you? The
whole system is corrupt, man, so zoom out and look at the big picture.
Your second, most glaring flaw, is your apparent inability to accept the problems on your own side of the fence. As I said, you pick and choose the things that support your case and ignore and discard those which hurt it. Just your responses to my posts say it all... You are not sincere in your arguments, because you are unable to recognize your own weaknesses and find a way to move beyond them. That makes you a political hack, no different than a Paul Begala or a Tucker Carlson, or a Hannity or a Colmbs. I only debate with the intention of improving something, not simply to argue. This tit-for-tat stuff has become the order of the day for too long now, and people are only into scoring "zingers" -- when issues come up that they can't respond to, they just deflect it back at the person who made it, like you accuse this thread of doing.
Anyone who reads this thread can tell who's trying to make honest arguments and who is not...
Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 1:49 am
God help us.
