Conservative Vs Liberal Rant

“Perhaps if he opens a Walmart in China....”

“now you're thinkin tiltie von stinky pinky!


JIHAD CAPITOLISM!”

“Howdy-do Naviguesser! I've just been too darn busy around the holidays. I wouldn't feel good about debating an issue (especially with you) unless I have some time to think about it. Not that that helps me much, but a discussion with you deserves my attention. About the only thing I’ve been able to do is devote time to the college football thread. I need to win back my title. It’s a pride thing. One of my worst character traits.

Thanks, laqtis. It’s nice to know a few folks are thinking about me. I really enjoy these talks but the operable word is BUSY!



I’m really surprised that nobody took issue with James O. Goldsborough calling Reagan’s philosophy, and Libertarian economic philosophy, “conservative”. I agreed in my post and still nobody questions it. Now y’all know I love to play games with words like “liberal” and “conservative”. It’s because these words have been appropriated by the media (and so follow the unwashed masses) until they mean whatever the writer wants them to mean. Usually it means, “I belong to this group, you don’t, all good things flow from my group, you are an idiot.” There are even a number of folks here who believe that I’m “conservative” because I ask them to THINK about their beliefs.

Let’s review the dictionary. LIBERALISM- … b: A theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usu. based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard.

That’s exactly what Reagan stood for. That’s what Libertarians stand for. The left wing of the Democratic Party has been for more government regulation, and against NAFTA. Calls for more government regulation mostly come from “liberals”. Calls for free-market mostly come from “conservatives”. It would appear that “conservatives” favor liberal economics. So if they are against liberal economics, what sort of economics do “liberals” favor?

Let’s see: The left wing favors environment policies advocating the collective ownership of land. They force people to give up property rights for a large variety of environmental reasons. The left wing favors large government agencies that oversee the distribution of retirement funds, healthcare, endowments for the arts (presumably, opera, classical orchestration, art museums, and ballet for the homeless programs), … ad infinitum. The left favors larger government over privatization. The left does not trust the market to regulate itself and calls for more government regulation. These policies run counter to the dictionary definition of liberalism as it relates to economics. The dictionary defines these ideas as socialist. Is socialism “conservative” economics?

“Conservatives” wanted to change welfare. “Liberals” wanted the status quo. “Conservative” want privatization of healthcare instead of the current government controlled system. They want to change affirmative action policies. “Liberals” do not want these things to change. Are “conservatives” in favor of liberal policies and “liberals” in favor of conservative policies?

Do y’all like your labels? Inquiring minds want to know.”

“This thread is exactly what Im talking about.”

“"In our time, government has become the main source of America's
troubles. It deprives us of freedom and self rule, makes us
poorer, sows strife among us, undermines our families, and
debases our souls." --Malcolm Wallup



"The U.S. military has had considerably more success in turning
Iraq around than liberals have had in turning the ghettos around
with their 40-year 'War on Poverty.' So far, fewer troops have
been killed by hostile fire since the end of major combat in
Iraq than civilians were murdered in Washington, DC, last year
(239 deaths in Iraq compared to 262 murders in DC). How many
years has it been since we declared the end of major U.S. combat
operations against Marion Barry's regime? How long before we just
give up and pull out of that hellish quagmire known as Washington,
DC?" --Ann Coulter


"No one is more victimized by the failures of America's
government-run school system than the children of the urban poor,
and those children are usually black. Stuck disproportionately
in schools that don't work, blocked from the escape hatch of
private or parochial school, black children routinely perform
far below average in every subject. Sixty-three percent of black
4th-graders, for example, cannot read. The average black high
school senior is about as well educated as the average white middle
school student. There are many ways to ruin someone's life, but
few are as effective as ignorance. And ignorance, by and large,
is what public schooling guarantees for children from America's
poorest and blackest neighborhoods." --Deroy Murdock



"In the Colorado school-vouchers case, District Judge Joseph
Meyer says 'I see no way to interpret the voucher-program
statute in a way that does not run afoul of the principle of
local control.' What could be more local than the individual,
which under a voucher program exercises their right to decide
where their child is educated? I thought the school board was
but a representative body of local individuals..."”

“DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG


A Conspiracy So Vast

Meet Ann Coulter, the Maureen Dowd of the conservatives.

Monday, July 7, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT

http://www.opinionjournal.com/medialog/?id=110003713" TARGET="_blank"> http://www.opinionjournal.com/medialog/?id=110003713


John G. Adams, a key figure in the proceedings that effectively ended Sen.
Joseph McCarthy's career, passed quietly from the scene last week at age
91. Not surprisingly, his death made no news; it's been a while since those
heady days when McCarthy launched his investigations of the Army, which
had, he charged, been shielding countless Communist agents at Fort
Monmouth and elsewhere. It fell to Adams, the Army's chief counsel, to deal
with the charges, which he did to devastating effect in the Army-McCarthy
hearings that held the nation in thrall in the 1950s.

You can read all about McCarthy's downfall, and the alleged dupes and
traitors responsible for it, in "Treason," a new book by Ann Coulter, the
Maureen Dowd of the conservatives. It derides McCarthy's critics and
brands the notion of McCarthyism itself as a myth and "the greatest
Orwellian fraud of our times." She also thanks her publisher for his bravery
-- a suggestion that it took courage to publish this work. Here we are, only
up to the acknowledgments page, and already enjoying a laugh. True, at
one point a book representing the Democrats as the party of treason, and
Sen. McCarthy as one of the greatest heroes of the age, might have given
some publishers pause. Not today -- the era that has put its money on
outrage merchants and shock jocks.

Imagine the delight Ms. Coulter's publishers (Crown Forum, a division of
Random House) felt as they contemplated the possibilities. "Treason" had
Everything -- attacks and dark revelations about eminences hitherto
untouchable, such as CBS's Edward R. Murrow, author of the famous "See
It Now" broadcast that struck the first blow against McCarthy, from which
the senator would never recover. "On what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
that he is grown so great?" Murrow asked, in that searing indictment,
delivered to a huge national audience, charging McCarthy with the reckless
destruction of lives and reputations. It was, Ms. Coulter claims, a vicious
and deceptive hatchet piece, "produced by Edward R. Murrow, friend of
Soviet spy Laurence Duggan."

Pure gold. Could a publisher ask for more? But more there is: Ms. Coulter
has not just set about rehabilitating McCarthy as a martyr destroyed by
anti-American leftists -- she has also set about rehabilitating the most
notorious of his cases, the kind dramatized in famous film clips of the
period. Cases like that of Annie Lee Moss, a black code clerk who had lost
her job at the Pentagon when she was hauled before McCarthy's
committee as a security risk and Communist Party member. She had been
confused with a different Annie Lee Moss, the witness explained – and who
Karl Marx was she could not even say. So evident was Ms. Moss's
confusion at what she was doing there that applause erupted in the hearing
room when Democratic Sen. Stuart Symington declared he believed her.

But the evidence against Ms. Moss was not insignificant, the author of
"Treason" now maintains. The code clerk had said there were two other
people called Annie Lee Moss listed in the Washington phone book –
whereas the two others were actually Anna Lee Moss and Annie Moss.
Dynamite evidence, as far as Ms. Coulter is concerned -- case closed. After
all, an FBI report had identified her as a Communist.

Also up for refurbishing is another famous McCarthy case, that against
Army Capt. Irving Peress, a dentist reported to be a member of the
Communist Party -- to become famous mainly for McCarthy's insistence on
learning who promoted the captain to major. "Who Promoted Peress?"
became his battle cry for a year. Even after the Rosenbergs had been
caught, Ms. Coulter now charges, the Army had promoted the dentist
reported to be a Communist. "When were they going to learn?"

Yes, a book with everything -- and we don't forget the classy prose.
"Needless to say, the scrawny pinko was also a failure as a soldier," writes
Ms. Coulter, about Peress.

And the book with everything has been getting precisely the kind of media
attention the publishers counted on -- anywhere one turned on the TV
screens last week there was the author of "Treason" happily confronting
wide-eyed interviewers wanting to know how she can say the things she
says -- her manner inviting them and the public to see just how bad she
can be. Wait, you think that was something, her tone seems to say--there's
worse to come.

There always is, in the book, which ranges from the martyrdom of Sen.
McCarthy -- without whose great fortitude and perspicacity in exposing the
Communist menace, we might, Ms. Coulter suggests, all now be in the
gulag -- to such matters as the Hollywood blacklist and the House
Un-American Activities Committee hearings, which in fact had little to do
with McCarthy. Here Ms. Coulter pauses to reflect on the whining of those
on the blacklist, all of whom she mocks as prosperous exiles racing happily
around Europe with rich friends and having a good time. In Ms. Coulter's
version of this history, of course, the blacklisted are only the rich and
resourceful -- a history that doesn't include the countless people destroyed
because their names had popped up on some list of alleged Communists
or fellow travelers, or sounded like a name on one of those lists. People
like the actor Phillip Loeb, for example, unemployable and ultimately driven
to suicide because he could no longer pay the bills for the care of a mentally
ill son.

Conservative enough for me, that's why I voted Perot. Back then, Isolationist

The portrayal of Sen. McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying
innocent lives is "sheer liberal hobgoblinism," Ms. Coulter maintains. It is
true enough that there was nothing particularly wild-eyed about McCarthy,
though that eerie giggle of his which tended to erupt at odd moments did
have a certain out-of-this-world pitch. Matters like that aside, the senator
knew what he was about -- knew how much gold, political and other, a
crusading Communist hunter could mine--particularly one who could wave
lists of names, numbers of traitors and plotters against the nation. The times
were ripe for his kind.

Whether Sen. McCarthy actually believed some of the more fantastic
charges he made -- charges that brought him instant fame -- remains a
question. In 1951 he declared that Secretaries of State George Marshall
and Dean Acheson had conspired to deliver China to the Soviets; and, not
least, that they and other American leaders had taken part in a conspiracy
against the United States, "a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf
any previous venture in the history of man."

In another time – our own -- he might have found a calling as a political
shock jock. It was his fate, instead, for his name to be forever associated
with a reign of fear and terror all too real. In her devoted effort to redraw
Sen. McCarthy's history, Ms. Coulter makes the point that the members of
the elite establishment all despised McCarthy. So did most educators,
intellectuals and university faculties. That last is always worth remembering,
though not for the reasons Ms. Coulter thinks. It is worth remembering that
during that bleak political time the universities, faculties and students
understood the threat McCarthyism posed to intellectual freedom -- and,
dismal to note today, that the universities which were once hotbeds of
opposition to McCarthy are now little worlds of their own, where political
censorship, speech codes and other ideologically driven assaults on
freedom are the accepted order of things.

Ms. Coulter's work includes an admiring if brief biography of McCarthy's
political career. One that for some reason excludes the senator's
remarkable efforts on behalf of the members of the SS battle group who
executed 86 American POWs in the Ardennes campaign in December
1944; otherwise known as the Malmedy Massacre. In his impassioned
efforts on behalf of the accused -- one never to be repeated in his
investigative career -- the senator charged that the U.S. Army had cruelly
mistreated the former SS men.

All things considered, Sen. McCarthy's reputation would be hard to
refurbish, but give Ms. Coulter credit for an all-out effort. The senator –
who knew something about the art of outrage merchandising – would
have understood the latest of his public advocates.”

“HAHHA... I left in my spacing device: a line from another post....

"Conservative enough for me, that's why I voted Perot. Back then, Isolationist"”

“lolz, i was wondering about that line.

interesting article tilt. amazing that a liberal doesn't like ann coulter....wowzerz!”

“Dorothy is No Liberal, LOLOLOLOL...

That's an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal!


LMAO!
”

“On what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,
that he is grown so great?

"Cassius"
Julius Cæsar. Act iii. Sc. 2.
Wm. Shakespeare (1564–1616)”

“Arc, my dictionary defines liberal as 1a. Open minded; tolerant. b. Favoring civil and political liberties, democratic reforms, and protection from arbitrary authority.

Not really to your economic point, but more to my self view.”

“My dictionary has quite a few meanings for liberal, Nav. The definition I posted is for liberalism. You'll notice the little b at the beginning of the definition I posted. That should actually be 2b as there are quite a few meanings listed in my dictionary under liberalism. You need a more comprehensive dictionary. That Dick and Jane pictionary you got just ain't cuttin' it!

Yeah, I too like that definition of liberal. "Of or favoring the principles of liberalism" is another. "Generous" is another. I like to think of myself along those lines as well.

But YEEHAA there are an awful lot of people who call themselves liberal who are in major denial about being closed-minded bigots. They are generous with other people's money, and they don't believe in economic liberalism as described in the dictionary. To call oneself liberal when your behavior has nothing to do with the definition is hypocrisy. That's why I usually use the "quotes" around liberal when addressing them and their ilk.”

“Didn't that reference to the gold standard tip you off that that definition is about a hundred years old, arc?”

“Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Therefore, blah blah blah blah=blah blah².”

“Ya mean we don't have a gold standard anymore, violin? Wow! Maybe we ought to inform the folks at Oxford and Websters.

And I'll bet the English language is just littered with words that have been around since the beginning of time, 100 years ago. That would certainly change the validity of those words. Take violin for example. It's probably irrelevant by now.”

“I almost wish Ann Coulter was relevant enough to take umbrage with. However, any person in their right mind can see through her. Does anyone on this site believe that she is anything more than a smut merchant?”

“Gold no longer backs the dollar — or any other currency. All currencies since 1973 are called “fiat” currencies — backed only by the faith markets have in a country’s government and its economic fundamentals.”