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This is me vs you, us vs them, nonsense is asinine. Both parties are useless.

Read it. Thanks.

On topic - Are there any who would agree with the Author of the Article (The one in this post - as THIS POST is what we should be discussing.)

Has anyone ever felt as the the Author has, and while once Liberal turned conservative.

I have, I used to be very socially Liberal. I believed everything the media had to say, how bad the GOP was and how much smarter I was for thinking the way I felt was progressive...

Until I had to take responsibility for my own actions... and over the years came to understand how wrong I was.

Has anyone else felt this way?


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Amaya wrote:This is me vs you, us vs them, nonsense is asinine. Both parties are useless.

Absolutely true. The Dems and the GOP are useless wastes of space, and should be MASSIVELY reformed. Term limits and equal application for Congressional members would fix 90% of the problem.

sebster wrote:

Connor McKane wrote:Sebster you desperately want this to be You Vs. Me or Your post Vs. My Post.... I refuse to participate.

I don't want it to be you vs me. I don't want any sort of vs at all. I want people to take a good look at the modern Republican party and what it represents, and really think about how worrisome that is, and how they might change it.

To the extent that you responded by posting a "your side too" thread, is the extent to which I'm going to explain to you that that isn't the answer, and the extent to which you (so far) appear to be doing your best to ignore that.

Please, just go and read the article.


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Connor McKane wrote:Agreed. The system is corrupt as it has strayed so far from the founding fathers ideals. Ever increasing government is a recipe for massive failure.

Anything run by fallible men will fail.

Anyone insisting that the government considered by the founding fathers is the government the US should still have is labouring under the assumption that the economics of the world haven't changed in the last few centuries.

Which I would have considered a ludicrous thing, but it seems quite common.

And what exactly does economics have to do with anything?

The intent in America was to create a free nation. Free to do what you wish. Freedom to live your life with minimal interference. The government is constantly growing and interfering more and more. The America of the Founding Fathers died long ago. It's been replaced by a global power ruled by the economic elite.

I'm going to sound like the ignorant youth that I am in just a second.

I just think no-one gives a gak about government anymore. It's just a highpaying job that people try and cling onto as much as possible, and a false sense of superiority.

No one is passionate about government anymore.

Goddard wrote:I'm going to sound like the ignorant youth that I am in just a second.

I just think no-one gives a gak about government anymore. It's just a highpaying job that people try and cling onto as much as possible, and a false sense of superiority.

No one is passionate about government anymore.

We whole-heartedly disagree, my brother (as to the 'no one.'). Many people are passionate about government... but not enough (This is where we do agree.)

If they were, we would have more informed voters and wouldn't be in the mess we are in now... and have been for decades.

What people are saying in this thread can be viewed as ironic if you read this article

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

Disaffection with the government is part of the strategy…


And on the topic, all I really got from mr. thompson's article is he felt as if his fellow liberals were hypocritical in that they wish to feign solidarity with the third world oppressed people but when push comes to shove did not support their liberation (in the case 2 middle eastern countries). He alluded to a distain for affirmative action and then went on to more abstract pull your self by your bootstraps stuff. It's also a 6 year old article.




Keith Thompson





http://www.thompsonatlarge.com/gallery.html

Amaya wrote:And what exactly does economics have to do with anything?

While the free and easy rhetoric says that business and government are two opposing forces, in the real world they're actually very closely connected, with each supporting the other. Business investment and development requires infrastructure, it requires a stable environment where people know their contracts will be enforced and their property rights protected. Then there's the large publically funded R&D sector, that develops blue sky tech, before turning it over to the private sector to bring it to market.

As the global economy has grown increasingly sophisticated and large, it's required even greater support. The economy simply demands a much bigger government than the founding fathers could have ever imagined.


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Amaya wrote:This is me vs you, us vs them, nonsense is asinine. Both parties are useless.

From the article I posted in the other thread, noting this quote is from a Republican staffer who just retired from the party;

"Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy."

So sure, maybe both parties are useless. But there is a fundamental difference between being corrupt and ineffectual, and being balls to wall bonkers.

Connor McKane wrote:Many people are passionate about government... but not enough (This is where we do agree.)

If they were, we would have more informed voters and wouldn't be in the mess we are in now... and have been for decades.

That's pretty much what I meant, so no offense taken.

...corrupt and ineffectual, or being balls to wall bonkers. Neither can do the job they were elected to do, and neither can do any good for anyone but themselves. So how is one better than the other? They are both disastrous failures on a Fonzy*Shark level.

So everyone loses.

Let's leave it up to Dakka to decided who is Corrupt, who is ineffectual and who is balls to the walls Bonkers.

Because I have my brackets already filled with the appropriate names.

Connor McKane wrote:...corrupt and ineffectual, or being balls to wall bonkers. Neither can do the job they were elected to do, and neither can do any good for anyone but themselves. So how is one better than the other? They are both disastrous failures on a Fonzy*Shark level.

No, one thing is not like the other.

Let's leave it up to Dakka to decided who is Corrupt, who is ineffectual and who is balls to the walls Bonkers.

I left it up to a party insider of almost thirty years. You know, an actual expert in the operations of Washington to give real information on how that place operates.

That's how it is supposed to work, you take information and use it to shape how you think about the world. I don't know what it is you're doing.

I think that the recently late Mark Hatfield said it best when he retired. During an interview he gave shortly before retiring (around 95 or 96 or so), he basically said that congress had changed much more than he could realistically put up with. When he first came to Washington, politicians, after being elected would "get to work" and try and accomplish things for the good of the nation, but that started to change. According to Mr. Hatfield, politicians were campaigning for their jobs 365 days a year, and could no longer support the "good of the people", but instead had to support their Party Lines.

One of the largest contributors, IMHO, is the relative ease of media available to people now. We have politics 24/7 on seemingly half of the cable channels on TV. If there is 'nothing' going on in the news, we get told how to feel about what happened earlier on the news, then we get all these "experts" on the air, playing the soothsayer and telling people what to expect will happen, and when it doesn't quite happen the way these experts say, we get more analysis on how to feel about it.

sebster wrote:

Connor McKane wrote:...corrupt and ineffectual, or being balls to wall bonkers. Neither can do the job they were elected to do, and neither can do any good for anyone but themselves. So how is one better than the other? They are both disastrous failures on a Fonzy*Shark level.

No, one thing is not like the other.

Let's leave it up to Dakka to decided who is Corrupt, who is ineffectual and who is balls to the walls Bonkers.

I left it up to a party insider of almost thirty years. You know, an actual expert in the operations of Washington to give real information on how that place operates.

That's how it is supposed to work, you take information and use it to shape how you think about the world. I don't know what it is you're doing.

Bless your little heart... You just aren't worth the effort... and since you are incapable of staying on-topic and continuiously refer to a thread, whose only association with this thread is that YOU keep bringing it up. I'll report it as spam, and simply ignore you.

Bye

As an aside:

One can be right-wing and still vote Democrat... or more precisely, be a liberal and not like the Democratic stance on economic issues.

For exampe, just because one believes in freedom of the individual over the constant religious oppression (See: gay marriage, abortion, separation of church and state) doesn't mean that one believes with all or even any of their economic stances.

Hope this is not off-topic, but it's funny how everything seems to be in decline. Here in the UK they talk of the country going downhill. In Europe they talk of the decline of the west. There seems to be this malaise of low -confidence kicking around, but historically, it's not new - Roman Emperors were always talking about decline. When the the British Empire was at it's height in 1911, they were talking about decline!!

Regarding America: In my experience and IMO the american idea of what the Left wing is, is miles away from the European ideal. People in the states talked to me about socialism affecting america, and I said they couldn't hold a candle up to Europe. You guys are not socialist, was my reply.

Hmm . . . since last posting I thought I saw a few posts attacking the Republican party. I thought this was a thread about people's disappointment with their own party. The original essay was a liberal disappointed about the shifting away of the democratic party from important liberal philosophies . . . something that should bother all intelligent liberals.

Conservatives pointing out the same problems with their own party is relevant to this thread . . . however I fail to see the relevance of quoting a disaffected staff member (hardly the least biased person in the world) as saying that this and that politician is "bonkers"

Purely a subjective opinion and it does not sound all that relevant, I assure everyone that people within both parties find some of their compatriots "bonkers", just think about your own co-workers!

I personally am bothered by how closely the financial part of America is tied to both parties. As someone who appreciates the ideals of the founding fathers if not totally happy about all of their results (i.e. legal slavery and the electoral colleges), I am very disappointed by the toadyism, graft and lobbying of our current government. A lot of people are getting rich in both parties from our horrible economy (q.v. "vultures")

Unfortunately there really is not centrist party and most of the small movements pointing out the problems with the current government are extremists. I am not at all comfortable with extremism.

Honestly I don't know what we can do. As I have gotten older, I have grown less optimistic that the U.S. will get better. Yet at the same time . . .I am regularly surprised by how many good-hearted people there still are. . .

Bastion, that's the tragic thing about Richard Nixon, he should have been the American dream - a guy from an impoverished background going all the way to the white house.

What happened to the Republican Party. Whenever I read the history books, they seem to be the good guys - Lincoln, Grant cracking down on the KKK, Teddy Roosevelt etc

Bastion of Mediocrity wrote:Conservatives pointing out the same problems with their own party is relevant to this thread

A lot of conservatives really have been disenchanted with the Republican party, which explains a lot of the difference in the 2008 elections. George W. Bush was a supporter of two of the three 'legs' of conservatism (social issues & defense) but damn near broke the third (fiscal sanity).

Fortunately, Democrats have shown in the last couple of years that while Republicans are bad fiscally, Democrats are a whole lot worse.

Bastion of Mediocrity wrote:As someone who appreciates the ideals of the founding fathers if not totally happy about all of their results (i.e. legal slavery and the electoral colleges)

I would hope you appreciate the historic relevance of these points at the time of the founding. Slavery wasn't specifically outlawed because most people didn't see slavery as the moral sin it is today. And the Electoral College makes a lot of sense if you understand the Federal Government as a product of State government collusion rather than a product of the people.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Grant

Actually one of the most ineffective presidents in US history with one of the most corrupt administrations. Not a wonderful example

biccat wrote:Slavery wasn't specifically outlawed because most people didn't see slavery as the moral sin it is today.

That isn't true. Slavery has been a divisive subject even pre-Continental Congress. In early drafts of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson blamed the King for forcing the evil of slavery upon the Colonies. Obliviously that was left out both because he was a slave owner but also because they were trying not to piss off those with political power that still liked owning people. When declaring war on the most powerful nation on the planet they couldn't afford to make it the issue many wanted to because they needed the support from the south. The amount of foreshadowing of the (American) Civil War goes back far beyond just the few years leading up to it. It was always a controversial issue that even slave owners wrestled with. Slavery was dieing off as an institution both economically and morally until the invention of the Cotton Gin reinvigorated it.

Ahtman wrote:

biccat wrote:Slavery wasn't specifically outlawed because most people didn't see slavery as the moral sin it is today.

That isn't true. Slavery has been a divisive subject even pre-Continental Congress. In early drafts of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson blamed the King for forcing the evil of slavery upon the Colonies. Obliviously that was left out both because he was a slave owner but also because they were trying not to piss off those with political power that still liked owning people. When declaring war on the most powerful nation on the planet they couldn't afford to make it the issue many wanted to because they needed the support from the south. The amount of foreshadowing of the (American) Civil War goes back far beyond just the few years leading up to it. It was always a controversial issue that even slave owners wrestled with. Slavery was dieing off as an institution both economically and morally until the invention of the Cotton Gin reinvigorated it.

I said "most people." Which is true (at least to the extent it's measurable I suppose, 8/13 original states had slavery laws). I think that the populace had been trending against slavery through the mid-1800's, but it probably didn't constitute a majority belief until after Lincoln was elected - he didn't run on a platform of abolishing slavery.

The Northern States were mainly against slavery, and were much more populous than the Southern States.

The Civil War arose because of the strong apprehension of the Southern States that popular democratic feeling in the North would lead to Abolition.

biccat wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

biccat wrote:Slavery wasn't specifically outlawed because most people didn't see slavery as the moral sin it is today.

That isn't true. Slavery has been a divisive subject even pre-Continental Congress. In early drafts of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson blamed the King for forcing the evil of slavery upon the Colonies. Obliviously that was left out both because he was a slave owner but also because they were trying not to piss off those with political power that still liked owning people. When declaring war on the most powerful nation on the planet they couldn't afford to make it the issue many wanted to because they needed the support from the south. The amount of foreshadowing of the (American) Civil War goes back far beyond just the few years leading up to it. It was always a controversial issue that even slave owners wrestled with. Slavery was dieing off as an institution both economically and morally until the invention of the Cotton Gin reinvigorated it.

I said "most people."

Again, no. "Most" did not. Tolerating something and is different than agreeing with it. Jefferson tolerated it, but felt it was wrong; it was a complex issue. Some were strongly for it, some were strongly against it, but most people had no say over it and were more concerned with making sure their farm was up and running. Many of them didn't care for it, though some for econimic, some for moral, but weren't politically active. Considering all the documents we have that specifically say that it was a contentious issue going back even before the 1800's it is a bit disingenuous to paint a picture where people were generally cool with it when it was a volcano brewing under the states since they formed, waiting to go off. It was never a question of if it would cause trouble on the scale of the Civil War, but when. It was always a problem. It isn't as if people were ok with it and then suddenly not one day.

I remember reading this, and while the basic premise of the essay is reasonable (I'm rejecting elements of leftist politics) even if the title is horribly confused ("Liberal" is not a party in the US), it is overly sensationalist (most likely by design for the sake of getting published), and makes basic logical and referential errors; several of which can be refuted using the text of the sentence in which they are contained.

Keith Thompson wrote:
I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

I fail to see the conflict.

Keith Thompson wrote:
Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.

This looks like equivocation, but its hard to say for certain without specific examples. Though I suspect that was largely the reason this particular formulation was chosen.

Keith Thompson wrote:
I began my activist career championing the 1968 presidential candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, because both promised to end America's misadventure in Vietnam....

...To my mind, Americans who had joined the resistance to Franco's fascist dystopia captured the progressive spirit at its finest.

These sentences are not only at odds with each other, but with his protestations about noise from the left regarding Iraq.

Keith Thompson wrote:
When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

This, of course, is always a poor tactic. Linking atrocities committed by a country in its past inevitably leads to trying to place terrible acts in a hierarchy of suffering, which really just escapes what the word "evil" means.

Keith Thompson wrote:
I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

Strawman.

Keith Thompson wrote:
Any racial or gender "disparities" are to be considered evidence of culpable bias, regardless of factors such as personal motivation, training, and skill.

Misrepresentation by way of the word "culpable".

Keith Thompson wrote:
Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).

Um, no, that's incorrect even per his statement of the policy.

Keith Thompson wrote:
I departed with new clarity about the brilliance of liberal democracy and the value system it entails; the quest for freedom as an intrinsically human affair; and the dangers of demands for conformity and adherence to any point of view through silence, fear, or coercion.

Except, of course, the one which considers the quest for freedom and intrinsically human affair.

Keith Thompson wrote:
A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

Ugh, I forgot he invoked "common sense", how lazy. He may as well just have wrote "The way I think." Additionally, what is this "traditional wisdom" whose traditional wisdom? The traditional wisdom of the left? Shall we use their everyday moral understanding too?


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Connor McKane wrote:...corrupt and ineffectual, or being balls to wall bonkers. Neither can do the job they were elected to do, and neither can do any good for anyone but themselves. So how is one better than the other? They are both disastrous failures on a Fonzy*Shark level.

So everyone loses.

Well, not everyone, I've done quite nicely under both corrupt and ineffectual parties, as have my parents, their friends, and the majority of people I know.

There's a reason that nothing has changed significantly, and it isn't necessarily because politicians are manipulating the system; some people simply have no significant interest in seeing things change.


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Connor McKane wrote:
Has anyone ever felt as the the Author has, and while once Liberal turned conservative.

Well there's your problem, you don't have to be one or the other. In fact, I'd argue that not only are most people not entirely one or the other, but that the author himself is not explicitly conservative. He certainly never claims to be.

Which, ultimately, begs the question: "Why do you think the author became a conservative in the absence of self-identification?"

@ Biccat: You pointed out my biggest complaint with the Republic party, especially with President W. Bush. He forgot the conservative values in relation to fiscal policy. How can none of them take responsiblity to their willingness to ride a fake economy?

I actually support his most of his defense decisions, which surprisingly President Obama saw the need to as well since I have not seen an "exit plan" yet. I think it is easy for us all to point at the man in charge, but they always have intel that we do not. Despite not voting for him, I am glad our president has supported the troops and I was glad he ordered the capture of Bin Laden (or assassination or whatever).

As far as slavery, I totally get how you have to judge the men in context of their society and not ours. I really have a lot of respect for the Founding Fathers. What an unusual social experiment they started!

However I still loathe the history of legal slavery in this country, much as I believe the Treaty of Versaille (Sp?) led inevitably to WWII, I think legal slavery made the Civil War unavoidable.

Stupid Eli Whitney and his cotton gin!!!! lol