2007-3-17 20:01:00
Before I comment on your (Joe M) post let me state that your answer was far from what I was looking for. Why? Not because it gives me an ideological problem, but because you were all over the map and when a general attack on a group ideology is made very little truth will be revealed or common ground reached.
In order to see the illusion of the day we must isolate various issues and see who is applying the principles of light or dark.
That said - because your post was allowed through I will make some comments with this caveat. I want to avoid going all over the map in the future and deal with one issue at a time where light or dark seem to prevail. At the present that issue is global warming. If posts start coming through that lead us to more material and subjects than we can possibly deal with intelligently then they will be rejected. Please try to keep any response honed down to a subject that can be covered in some detail.
Joe writes:
It seems these qualities more describe Republicans than Democrats.
Ignorance.
You used the Civil War as a previous example. It was the south that supported slavery, that was a long time ago, but the trends are still the same. The white southern base of the Republican Party still has very racist tendencies. Republicans are more likely to exhibit such qualities as racism, sexism, and homophobia.
This is an interesting distortion. You claim your argument is right because Republicans are now the old Democrats, but the Republicans still espouse the basic party platform promoted by Lincoln mores than the Democrats. Lincoln would have never supported the socialism promoted by the Democrats today.
There is racism on both sides but because the press is about 90% Democratic (according to polls as to how they vote) you rarely hear of liberal racism which is more intolerant than the conservatives.
That's all I will say at present for we could spend ten posts on this subject alone.
Joe:
Anger.
During a political debate, the conservative person is almost always the angrier person. Anger is used much more often to promote conservative policies than liberal policies. For example, the conservative positions on gay marriage, abortion, guns, and religion, are all supported by anger. Conservatives are much more likely to get angry both in a political debate and in life.
I don't see this at all. I watch just about every exchange of views that comes on TV. Both sides get angry at times and I kind of make a mental tabulation when I see both sides debating and this does not match with your mindset at all. Maybe you are only watching media that tells you what to think rather than seeing actual debates between the two sides.
Joe:
Distortion.
Two Words: FOX News
You supply no evidence here and I see none. Fox News is the only one that gives both sides in a debate.
Fox News has a large number of orthodox liberals, some quite extreme, as regular contributors, most of them paid staff. Some of these are: Alan Colmes, Ellis Henican, Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Geraldine Ferraro, Katrina vanden Heuvel, David Corn, Eric Alterman, Juan Williams, Mara Liasson, Mort Kondracke, Flavia Colgan, Susan Estrich, Ellen Rattner, Eleanor Clift, Jane Hall, Neal Gabler, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, radical black Moslems, and as many Democrat legislators as are willing to appear.
Where are their conservative counterparts on CNN, NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNBC and the other media??? They do not exist.
Why make an accusation that you cannot back up?
Joe:
Selfishness.
The whole conservative position on welfare, taxes, and capitalism is based in selfishness.
To see only one side as being selfish is partisanship in the extreme. Again we need to examine the subject issue by issue to find any misplaced selfishness rather than making a sweeping stereotype accusation.
Just one point to make you think. Research shows that conservatives give over twice as much to charity as liberals.
Joe:
Desire to limit freedom.
Because of the acts of the Bush Administration, our privacy is limited, our right to trial by jury is limited, our right against cruel and unusual punishment is limited, the freedom of the press has been limited, the freedom to petition the government has been limited, the right against warrantless search and seizure.
Just one example of distortion here. Your privacy has about a million times more chance of being violated by a traffic cop than by anything Bush has done (with the support of Democrats), but does this bother you? Probably not. It does bother me though about a million times more than anyone looking into which books I check out, which has about a zero chance of happening.
Freedom of the press limited? They are certainly free to attack Bush or whoever they want as well as to reveal top secret documents without being tried for treason as FDR would have done.
I'm sure you also hold an even greater grievance against FDR for opening people's mail, spying on private citizens (even JFK), throwing the Japanese in Internment camps, rationing gas, etc.
You are backing nothing up here. And the reason is you are taking a shotgun approach on which it would take a whole book to present both sides.
Joe:
Retribution toward those who harmlessly oppose.
This is evident by the recent Valerie Plame CIA leak case.
Richard Armatage, who opposes Bush on the war, outed Valerie Plame and because he does not like Bush the Democrats saw to it he was never accused of wrongdoing.
In fact, Plame was already outed by her husband who witnesses say often introduced her as "my CIA wife."
Joe:
Strong use of authority.
Even George Bush will admit himself that he believes this; remember when he said a dictatorship would be a whole lot easier?
I heard him say this and he was saying that as a joke and I would have said the same thing in that situation. Does that mean I also believe in abuse of authority? This is a distorted accusation here.
Joe:
The position of this white house has always been that they do what they want no matter what anyone else says, be it Congress, the American people, or the Supreme Court.
Again an accusation with no evidence. The same case could be made for any president, especially Jimmy Carter. He went so much against the will of the people they had a misery index for him.
Joe:
Very accusatory.
This is evident by the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky case and the countless accusations made against Democrats by Republicans and espoused by FOX News.
Most of the material against Bill Clinton were not accusations but facts sustained by DNA, his own words, the blue dress and eye witnesses. That's a lot different than the Valerie Plame case where Scooter Libby was brought up on charges over a non existent crime.
Joe:
Remember the accusation that Barack Obama spent his childhood in an Islamic madrassa?
And even many Democrats think that Hillary Clinton's investigators dug that up. Most Republicans would rather see Obama nominated rather than Hillary and have no motive to hurt Obama before the nomination.
Joe:
Desire to excessively punish enemies.
This is evident by their position on torture.
And what torture is this? Liberals today have a wimpy idea of what torture is. By their definition boot camp or a Boy Scout outing would be torture.
Joe:
Desire to not allow both sides of an issue to be heard or understood.
There are so many accounts of conservatives doing this, barring people with liberal views from speaking at events and appearing on TV channels.
What an amazing distortion. Can you give any evidence that this is more prevalent on the liberal than the conservative side? Conservative David Horowitz needs up to a hundred guards to protect him when he speaks at a college and other conservatives need similar protection. Where is there any liberal that needs that kind of protection from conservatives - just for giving his views?
Joe:
I rest my case.
But no case has been made. You have not backed anything up. This illustrates a problem I have with the liberals of today. They make a proclamation and expect me to believe them just because they say a thing is so. This is why we need to concentrate on one thing at a time and not stereotype 50 percent of the population with no evidence.
Joe:
Here is an interesting poll done recently by Gallup, I think it shows the trend of intolerance in people with conservative ideologies.
Willingness to Vote for Non-Traditional Presidential Candidates by Political Ideology Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates--their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be--would you vote for that person?
Catholic:
Liberal - 97% Moderate - 95% Conservative - 94%Black:
Liberal - 95% Moderate - 94% Conservative - 92%Jewish:
Liberal - 93% Moderate - 91% Conservative - 91%A woman:
Liberal - 96% Moderate - 89% Conservative - 82%Hispanic:
Liberat - 92% Moderate - 87% Conservative - 84%Mormon:
Liberal - 75% Moderate - 77% Conservative - 66%Married three times:
Liberal - 74% Moderate - 71% Conservative - 60%72 years of age:
Liberal - 59% Moderate - 52% Conservative - 63%A homosexual:
Liberal - 81% Moderate - 57% Conservative - 36%An atheist:
Liberal - 67% Moderate - 48% Conservative - 29%This shows that as you go from liberal to moderate to conservative, people become more and more intolerant, with the exception of someone over 72 years of age.
First, let me add that this poll only claims to be accurate to plus or minus three percentage points. This puts the top three in a dead heat statistically.
The second point is that this poll only deals with conservative religious bias and has no categories related to liberal religious bias.
A similar number of conservatives and liberals are decent and tolerant people but when religion (or similar ideology) enters in this will influence their opinion.
The religion of a portion of conservatives who are literal Bible believers enters into all the above categories except that of age and where religion is not an influence the conservatives are the more open-minded.
BUT, suppose we do a poll where the categories relate to Liberal ideology.
It could read something like this:
If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be "??????", would you vote for that person?
You'd be lucky to find five percent of the liberals who are open minded enough to consider such a candidate but look at who is the top Republican contender.
He is Rudy Giuliani and in ALL the above four categories he supports the liberal point of view. I'd say that it is pretty open minded of conservatives to place such a person at the top of their list. It would be like the Democrats nominating Zel Miller to be their candidate and that will never happen.
Global Warming Enlightenment:
So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore's portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.
By WILLIAM J. BROAD;
New York Times, March 13, 2007, Science Section
Copyright © 2007 by J J Dewey, All Rights Reserved