Portland protests Aug. 17: What you need to know

Discussion in 'United States' started by Lee S, Aug 16, 2019.

  1. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    As one of those conservatives with nothing but hate in his heart, who used to be on the other side, presumably with nothing but love in his heart, I would like to comment:

    A few years ago,on another forum, I started a thread for 'switchers', both ways, and invited them to tell their stories.
    There were about the same number of people who went from Left to Right as went from Right to Left. The Left-to-Right people pretty much had the same story: when I was young, I was foolish, but when I had to start earning my living and found out about the real world, I sobered up.
    The Right to Left stories, as I recall, were more varied, but not too far from yours: I realize how horrible conservatives were, and, being a decent person, made the crossing.

    It would be interesting to do this, using the same words, on all political forums -- might give a future PhD student some material.

    More interesting, or interesting in a different way, are those intellectuals who have switched, because they are more thoughtful, or at least willing to write at length about why they did what they did... or why they think they did what they did ..or what they would like the world to think they did what they did. It's always for very high-minded reasons, of course.

    Relevant perhaps are these two observations:

    A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
    A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.
     
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  2. MissingMayor

    MissingMayor Well-Known Member

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    Racists don't go by those standards.
     
  3. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I respect your opinion, Doug, but I submit that I have to clarify my statement. What I meant to say is that I would like to hear Repubicans talk more about individual freedom and limited government. In other words, putting power where it belongs, in the hands of the people, i.e, the individual - not government. Over the past 2+ centuries we have increasingly strayed from that and ceded more and more power and control over our lives to the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.

    The Republicans have no message, my friend. Is it any wonder they stumble around aimlessly, reacting to their opponents instead of taking the ideological battle to them? No, it's not, and until they get what they stand for together they are going to remain on the defensive allowing Democrats to define them and what they stand for.

    Whether you realize it or not, you're actually agreeing with me, Doug.

    Just to throw it out there, we actually do have unifying culture in this country. We do have a foundation that our civilization, nation, society and government are founded on, otherwise the Nihilists masquerading as "progressives" in this country, ex. Barack Obama, wouldn't be pledging to fundamentally transform the United States of America. Our country is the zenith of a 2000+ year struggle of the individual to assert power and control over his/her own life - to escape the bonds of tyranny and slavery in all its forms, spiritually, intellectually and physically. This is what Western Liberalism is all about, this is the bedrock our nation is founded on, and it is, in my opinion, what the conservatives in this country should be fighting for alongside their libertarian brothers and sisters.

    I don't buy that, but for discussion and debate's sake let's say that's true. What does that tell you?

    It tells me Republicans and the Right are not only failing to define and articulate their vision, they are allowing Democrats to define them and their vision. In the War of Ideas, the best defense is a good offense. You never allow your opponents to define you and your vision - once you allow that to happen you have not only lost the initiative you're losing the battle and with it the War.

    I agree with your initial point, which brings us back to my point about waging the War of Ideas, but Trump's election was no mistake, The popular tsunami of anti-establishment discontent that carried him to the White House is not an anomaly - it has been building for years, and it finally started reaching critical mass during the last decade. The grassroots Right is finally coming of age.

    The reason this movement is waging an uphill battle right now is because it has sat on its hands for the past 50 years while "progressives" conducted their Long March through our nations's institutions and the party they abandoned in 1948 under Henry Wallace the Soviet sympathizers who formed the Progressive Party. That's an enormous amount of ground to cede, and the grassroots Right has been fortunate to regain some of that ground in the past dozen years, but there's obviously a long way to go and the Left is going to be throwing everything it has - the Democratic party, the media, its academics and intelligentsia - against this movement.

    I agree, but to your point about the "culture war", Republicans are saddled with the social conservatism that turns a lot of people away from the GOP and into the arms of Democrats. Much of the problem here can be attributed to the Republican party's frustrating and at times maddening inconsistency regarding the issue of individual freedom.

    See, now you're thinking strategically, and if conservatives, libertarians and conservatarians can't think strategically they can't think tactically. If they can't, their strategy and tactics will suffer from the incoherence we see today. When I said we need to think and talk big, I didn't mean we have to stop thinking and talking small. We can do both - this isn't a zero sum proposition - but we're doing too much of the latter and not enough of the former. Right now, the only people on the Right who are consistently thinking and talking big are libertarians, and if that's the direction we're heading in I'm all for it. But the Right can't just sit idly by and let the Left be the only side in the War of Ideas thinking and talking big - it has to engage in this battle, and I'm fully confident it is a battle we can win. It's why I am no longer a "progressive". It's why we'll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this November. You don't win the War of Ideas playing small ball. You win it playing big.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
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  4. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thanks for a thoughtful reply. We're probably going to be the only two people reading each other's posts, but what the hell.
    Let me be sarcastic, just for fun: are you implying that if the Republicans would come out for gay marriage and decriminalization of drugs and ..abortion on demand right up till a year after birth, and whatever else that is 'sociallly liberal' that they have not already conceded ... but also proposed privatizing social security and medicare and abolishing the minimum wage and the Environmental Protection Agency ... that we would be on to a winner?

    By the way, I love Libertarians and have spoken at Libertarian Party meetings in California -- they are often the-Right-with-a-human-face on campuses. But they are in some ways the Marxists of the Right -- in the grip of an ideology. They want to auction off the National Parks!!! As an old backpacker, that's a bit of socialism I want to keep! I know it's unfair, to make the boyz in the 'hood pay taxes for something they couldn't care less about, but ...Yosemite, turned into a Chinese retirement village???? What are they thinking?
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
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  5. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Pardon me for truncating your post but I'm doing so to save bandwidth...

    I'm all for exercising fire discipline - we exercised it all the counter-demonstrations against the ANSWER Coalition and its ilk that I've attended - but there's one flaw in your theory: The media won't show what kind of people AntiFa are, just as they didn't show who the extremists in the so-called "anti-war" movement were during the 2000s. The way the media portrayed these people you'd think they were your average mainstream American instead of the lunatic Leftist and Islamist fringe. Many of the Anarcho-Marxist punks who went on to join AntiFa were part of that coalition but the media portrayed them as violent interlopers, instead.

    Every once in a blue moon a ray of sunshine would cut through the fog, such as this strikingly unusual expose written by a self-proclaimed Trotskyist and published by one of America's versions of Pravda:

    Anti-War, My Foot
    The phony peaceniks who protested in Washington

    by Christopher Hitchens
    Sept. 26, 2005
    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/the-phony-peaceniks-who-protested-in-washington.html

    The progs in the mainstream media are no more going to expose AntiFa than they exposed the ANSWERniks they have been running with for decades, which is not at all. They see it as their job to blow smoke in the public's eyes and provide cover for those groups.
     
  6. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, yes.
    I make that point over and over ... Anti-Fa will throw a concrete-filled Coca Cola can at us, and if someone on our side picks it up and throws it back, and it's all video'd ... an editor will cut out the first part. I just watched the BBC last night cooly label the Proud Boys 'white nationalists'. Made me sick, as I have to pay for this.

    But ... they can't just do photoshopping yet. They won't just invent things out of the whole cloth. So far far far better for us to remain disciplined, to take the casualties, to remain non violent, and let anti-Fa be exposed, even though, yes, the mass media will do its best to push the 'brave resistance to fascist invasion' narrative.

    One quibble: Hitchens ceased being a Trotskyist fifty years ago, but he was still a Leftist ... although a decent and sane Leftist who didn't like lies or political correctness and believed in liberty and democracy, which practically made him a conservative.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
  7. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm not saying the GOP should take things to extremes as our infamous governor Ralph "Scissorhands" Northam has suggested - you may remember him of racist yearbook photo infamy:

    [​IMG]

    (Virginia Democrats have come a long way since Harry Byrd, Sr.'s days, haven't they?)

    But the opposition to Roe v. Wade, gay marriage, the decriminalization of marijuana, etc., on the part of social conservatives within the GOP is driving people into the arms of Democrats.

    As for privatizing Social Security and Medicare and abolishing the minimum wage and the EPA, those are, for the most part, Democratic talking points, not Republican positions.

    It's true that libertarians will no more see their ideal utopian society than Marxists will, but once again I'm talking about more reasonable things such as promoting the principles that the Founders and Framers built our country on - individual freedom and limited government. We've seen the alternative and it was a colossal failure that destroyed hundreds of millions of people's lives, freedom and prosperity. We can't just sit idly by and let the Pied Pipers of Socialism march us and our children further down that path.
     
  8. Pred

    Pred Well-Known Member

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    Conservatives give far more to charities than Liberals. Hate? More like Liberals are selfish, self centered, naive and only like spending other peoples money, usually. When it comes to their own, very tight on the purse strings. :)

    Typical. Very typical. And certainly follows what I’ve seen. And I haven’t lived in heavily conservative areas. Liberals think attending a rally or marching, where they can scream and complain, is charity. Uuuummm. Nope.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
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  9. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm all on board with three points you mention in your first sentence, although perhaps a bit worried about the "etc".

    I would say that federalism is a good pragmatic response to widely differing social values in a population -- let different sub-units decide for themselves, and if someone really doesn't like their child being taught how to do 'fisting' in sex education classes, or having to stand silently while the others pray at the beginning of a high school football game, they can move. It's certainly something I'm going to be pushing for at our Constitutional Convention in the new Red State Republic.

    As for Democratic talking points. Yes, they're not Republican positions, but are they Republican wish-list entries? Are Social Security and Medicare and the Minimum Wage and EPA Good Things, which the Republicans have eagerly embraced ...or are they just tolerated, because the Republicans know that coming out against them is political suicide? And if they are Good Thngs, why can't we think about extending them.? "Think about," not reflexively dismiss.

    Sweden was a pretty nice place to live, before they decided to increase their strength by increasing their diversity. They went too far in the socialist direction, and reversed out about 30 years ago. It's not death. Destroying the basic culture is death.

    We need to identify that component of the Democratic voting base who are more or less on our wavelength with respect to social values, but who vote Democratic because they would like to see Medicare extended to them. We don't have to just expropriate that part of the Democratic platform --we can do better, perhaps look at how Singapore does it -- but we have to address their perceived economic worries.
     
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  10. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The "etc." was more for brevity's sake but to be fair to my socially conservative friends in the GOP, they're not the only Republicans driving people in the Democrats' arms. The most obvious of these culprits - and you somewhat alluded to them before - are the hawks and neocons who never met a defense system they didn't like and think we should still maintain our 20th Century Cold War military posture and continue playing World Police (I believe you mentioned something about "entanglements with warring tribes abroad"). We don't need and we can't afford to keep doing that anymore, and quite frankly I don't blame the young men and women who are reluctant to support the neocons and hawks who think the prestige of remaining the world's greatest superpower is worth their blood and our treasure.

    There are others I could list and take issue with, but I think you get my point. I don't want to lay all of the GOP's shortcomings at the feet of social conservatives.

    I'm all for federalism. Some of the issues I mentioned, such as the decriminalization of cannabis, should be left to the states, in my opinion. I don't think we need to tear the country in two to achieve this, either. We just need more of the federalism and local autonomy that many of the Founders and Framers envisioned.

    I think the GOP has come to accept these things, but on the other hand, everything has its limits. Just because I want to keep our social safety nets intact doesn't mean I want to go Full Socialist Retard.

    [​IMG]

    There's only so far Republicans can and should go to accommodate that. We already have healthcare programs for the poor and elderly and we can't afford to provide free sh*t to every person who wants it. I'd rather find ways we can achieve lower costs and expanded access without creating more government programs, or worst of all, handing our healthcare entirely over to the corrupt, self-serving swine inside the Beltway who have their snouts shoved down in the Washington pig bin. Our government can't be all things to all people and it was never intended to be such.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
  11. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The stereotypes that each side have of the other -- or rather, that the highly-political people on each side have of each other -- each have a grain, maybe more than a grain, of truth, but are very far from describing the average liberal, or the average conservative. There's a good book by a liberal psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, which explores this, called The Righteous Mind. Have a look at the WIki summary, which I've linked to.

    The problem with our side seeing their side as a solid block of evil, is that then we don't spend any time thinking about how we can split them, win some of them over, neutralize others, make united fronts with those of them who happen to agree with us on important issue. (Foreign policy comes to mind. Hillary as president, among other things, might be a far more aggressive President than Trump. Remember that all of America's wars in the Twentieth Century except for Desert Storm were run by Democrats.)
     
  12. Fred C Dobbs

    Fred C Dobbs Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Many Americans are thinking tactically but are avoiding the media spotlight, apart from Trump rallies.. The Tea Party is still alive and well but are out of the Public Eye because they were naturally being portrayed as "Racists", "Homophobes", etc. just as we've come to expect from Leftists.

    So they remain a grassroots organization, but very large and influential. They also don't cooperate with pollsters or the media but certainly do with each other. talking to their neighbors, meeting in small groups, and so on. Websites like this also contribute to a national mood, and there are many of them.

    Leftists are loud and disruptive, and have their supporters, but they certainly don't represent the future most Americans want and that will show up on the next election just as it did the last one.
     
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  13. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Totally with you on foreign policy, and there would be a LOT more people on the other side with us, except for the usefulness of the Russian stick with which to beat Trump. They got so tired over the last fifty years of being called 'dupes of the Reds' and accused of ignoring Commie influence and infiltration of the US, that they now just cannot resist putting the shoe on the other foot. But they'll get over that, maybe when Trump gets into a shooting confrontation with Russia.

    As for dealing with the social and economic problems we have, we need to, at some point, start a conversation about what a 'conservative welfare state' might look like. I think that ferociously-capitalist Singapore, where it's illegal to be unemployed, may have worked out some ways to handle these problems, which I'm going to read up on in the next few weeks. We must not talk in generalities, but in specifics. The so-called 'Clinton welfare reforms' showed the way: don't abolish welfare, but craft it so that it doesn't encourage the sort of behavior that makes welfare necessary in the first place.
     
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  14. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Anti-Anti-fascists are fascists. You know kinda like a double negative. Fascist don't deserve a platform. 60 million people died determining that.
     
  15. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I agree. I might have to read what Singapore is doing myself...
     
  16. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I hope and pray -- in my own way -- that this is true, but ... I keep looking at those damned polls. [To be fair, I lost a hundred dollars in the last election because I trusted the polls, and I won't make that mistake again.] I know that proposing to buy Greenland (surely he was joking?) ought not to be a reason for someone not to vote for Mr Trump, but ... there will be people for whom that sort of thing is important.

    If Trump had been a different sort of personality -- almost any different sort of personality -- we would be a lock for national leadership of the nation, for a while at least. The problem is, the other side has almost total control of the part of society that trains and educates the next generation, and I don't see that changing. That's our real problem: they train the people who mold the culture. That's how they're slowly dragging us to ... I can't call it 'the Left', but to a complete dissolution of the customs and habits and reflexes that allow society to function.

    Anyway, one day at a time.
     
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  17. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Stupid generalizations are stupid.

    Opposing the blackshirts in "Antifa" does not make you a fascist. It makes you someone who opposes a violent Anarcho-Marxist hate group that likes to behave and dress like Mussolini's fascists.

    You know, a lot of those people who died were Americans who fought to defend their fundamental human, civil and political rights against the fascists who said people like them didn't deserve a platform.

    What you think and do in your country is your own business, but here in our country we have a Bill of Rights that protect's everyone's right to lawfully express their opinions, regardless of how stupid, objectionable and offensive that person and their opinions are.
     
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  18. Lee S

    Lee S Moderator Staff Member Past Donor

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    It is all about definitions. One definition of Fascism is:

    a governmental system led by a dictator having completepower, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc.,and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

    Since Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys are led by non-whites, then racism cannot be an issue. They believe nationalism, so they do have that in common with Fascists. They believe in smaller governent, and not in regimenting industry. Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys have always said they do not want to suppress the free speech rights of Antifa, so making a statement that suggest these groups are fascists does not fit the meaning of the word in any way, shape or form.

    Antifa, however, does want to curtail other's free speech. They are for a larger government. They are not racially diverse.

    But classic definitions of what a fascist is has nothing to do with the conversation in Portland. A Fascist is anyone who disagrees with you. That is the only definition that is meaningful in this particular instance.
     
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  19. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    (1) Evidently you believe the Proud Boys are 'fascists'. Could you give us your reasons for believing that?

    (2) By 'platform' ... do you mean just the paltry literal 'platform' of a two-hour rally in a park? What about the real platforms: websites, books. Which of those would you close down and which would you allow us to view?

    (3) "Anti-Fascist" is a nice word. After Hitler attacked Stalin, American Communists switched overnight -- literally -- from opposing American involvement in the war, to demanding it. (This was six months before Pearl Harbor.) Of course they called themselves 'Anti-fascists', and even, jokingly, 'premature anti-fascists', as if the apologists for the Stalin-Hitler pact -- after signing it, Molotov qupped that fascism was 'a matter of taste ' --were the real anti-fascists and non-Communists were not.

    So the Communists were, from June 22nd 1941, genuine anti-Fascists. However, you can be an 'anti-fascist' and still make life very unpleasant for the Jews, as the anti-fascists in power n Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union did for the next forty-five years. I am sure you know about the "Doctors' Plot"?

    I had Jewish friends in the USSR, and learned all about Anti-Fascist Anti-Semitism first hand from them. Details supplied upon request but as I recall from other posts by you, you're an intelligent man and probably already know all about it.

    (4) I don't know much in detail about AntiFa at the moment, but ... a recent turn by the American Left has been towards becoming very Anti-Israeli (those Israelis are fascists too, in their own way, don't you see?) and pro-Palestinian. So I don't think it's at all beyond the bounds of possibility that we shall see AntiFa attacking Zionists.

    Won't that be interesting?

    Please think again about 'Anti-Fa'.

    I used to go out there to teach every year for a few weeks. It's NOT a very libertarian place, to put it mildly. But the old guy who ran it for fifty years turned it from 'Third World to First' as his autobiography put it, so people aren't eager to change. But the young there, like young people from Moscow to Tehran to Beijing, don't really like being told what to do by old men, and have access to the internet, and travel (a lot don't come home, which worries the people who run Singapore, which means they have a strong motive to liberalize). I'm confident that they will slowly relax their grip over the next two or three decades.

    They're very smart. They understand that people have their separate cultures -- they've got Buddhists and Muslims and Christians -- but they know they live in a dangerous place, and have envious neighbors. All the young men serve in the military, and I suspect their military is as good as it gets, given their small size. If I were a Chinese reformer in the Peoples Republic, I would be pointing at Singapore as a successful example where you don't have to go the full course on liberal democracy, can still keep things together, but get some of the benefits of a multi-party system to keep the rulers on their toes: they have multiparty elections and the opposition Workers Party sometimes wins a seat from the ruling Peoples Action Party. (Names are so confusing, but they've got nothing on us, with our reversal of the meanings of 'Red' and 'Blue'.)

    You've got to watch what you say about the government -- get a bit careless in your wording and the ruling party will bankrupt you for 'slander', but it's possible to exist and to make your voice heard if you're a critic of the government. The rulers don't worry too much because, as in China proper, they have turned a nation of paupers into wealthy people within one lifetime, so the voters aren't keen to turn a party that can do that out of office. Capitalism truly works miracles!
     
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  20. Thought Criminal

    Thought Criminal Well-Known Member Donor

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    But who are which?
     
  21. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes stupid generalizations are stupid, so why do you engage in them? Anarcho marxist hate has NOTHING to do with hating and confronting scumbag fascists.

    I don't doubt there are anarcho-marxists masquerading as anitfa. Just like there are neo nazi white nationalist masquerading as trump supporters. Oh wait.....




    Gee imagine fighting for fundamental human civil and political rights.

    Who knew that is what the fascist right of today is doing.



    Nice simple interpretation. Apparently you are not familiar with the fact that freedom speech is not unrestricted in your country to begin with.

    And for damn sure freedom of expression is NOT freedom of consequence. Wanna puke up nazi bullshit? Get stomped. Seems a fair transaction to me.
     
  22. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    When I go to my doctor, and she tells me 'take these pills, but don't eat grapefruit', I do what she says. She' spent years studying medicine, and keeps up with developments in the field. So I let her dictate what goes into my digestive system. She's an expert and I'm not.

    But when someone tells me what I'm allowed to hear and to read -- to put into my central nervous system -- I want to know, why are YOU more of an expert than me? Why are YOU allowed to listen to some group and read what they write, without being corrupted ...but I am not? Did you spend years of study to turn you into the equivalent of a political doctor, able to prescribe for the rest of us?

    The human race used to, and in many places of the world still does, follow that sort of thinking: political decisions are too difficult for the little guy, he might get it wrong, is easily confused. So political power must be held by experts, called Kings or, often, Presidents or Chairmen, but who are really dictators.

    And they are not entirely wrong! Democracies do make mistakes. The voice of the people is not the voice of God.

    As Churchill said, Democracy is the worst system in the world, except for all the others.

    But I'm an open-minded guy, so I'm willing to hear from anyone who thinks they are the equivalent of my doctor, and can tell me what I'm allowed to hear and to read, and what I'm forbidden to. Please make your case.
     
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  23. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What Fred said is true, Doug. I interact with those people every day - patriot groups in Virginia, TEA Partiers in Hawaiii - they're everywhere, and try as "progressives" might we're not going away.

    But it is changing, slowly but surely.

    The "progressive" Long March through our nation's institutions didn't happen overnight and reversing its inroads won't occur overnight, either. They got a 40 year head start on us but we've regained a lot of ground in the past 15 years.

    And we train our own, from Hillsdale College to Young America's Foundation to our own living rooms. We are not bound to their notions of culture.

    NIHILISM.

    Make no mistake about it - the people who masquerade as "progressives" in this country and pledge to fundamentally transform the United States of America are Nihilists. They're waging a war of destruction for destruction's sake and they're no better and different from the monsters in Dostoevsky's Demons, the Reign of Terror in France and the horror show in civil war-era Catalonia.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2019
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  24. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Antifa is not for larger government. They are opposed to fascists, period. If the fascists slithered back under their rocks, you'd never hear from antifa again.

    And the only people who define fascism as anyone who disagrees with you is fascists who virtually everyone disagrees with in the first place.
     
  25. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Antifa thinks they are fascists which is what proud boy supporters are whining about.


    who knew a two hour rally that is covered by national media is considered "paltry". As for where the limitations of freedom of expression are, I am not sure, apart from excluding promotion of violence and/or oppression against fellow citizens.


    Commies being antifascists is hardly a newsflash. So are most other political ideologies.
    And STalin and the commies being virulent jew haters is also not news.


     

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