Liberals at war
Many people do not believe liberals are capable of fighting a war. To the contrary, I believe they are adept. The paradox is this. Most of us view war as action taken against our nation’s mortal enemies – the people desiring our destruction. Liberals view war the same way. In their view however, our nation’s mortal enemies are any who do not share their liberal-progressive-communist worldview. Generally it is conservative thinking Americans with whom they are now and have long been at war. Their energy is always, as they like to say, focused like a laser beam toward the end they have in mind. That end? Fundamental transformation if that is what you choose to call it, but it is better expressed as fundamental destruction of the United States of America we know. It is disconcerting to contemplate that people inside our republic have the same end in mind for it as those outside of it do. Liberals are at war, but it is with America.
People are simply who they are. They will always show their true colors. Liberals are patronizing when it comes to the active military and veterans. If it is campaign time, each will find a way to say something positive. But, when it comes right down to it they cannot help themselves. They will always let you know how they truly feel about the military often invoking their meme of supporting the troops, but not the war. I do not know how that conflict is going to work out for them in the near future.
Our Commander in Chief, as are many others in Washington and the media, is an Islam apologist who is always rooting for the moderate majority of the religion of peace. He has clearly shown his dislike for the military with his severe cuts and social engineering. There is no switch inside ones head that magically transforms him from that to a leader of warriors whose job it is to destroy those who threaten our country. We knew his intentions and feelings before he became our president yet we elected him anyway.
“First, I’ll stop spending nine billion a month in Iraq. I’m the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning. And as president I will end it. Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems. And I will institute an independent Defense Priorities Board to ensure that the Quadrennial Defense Review is not used to justify unnecessary spending.
Third, I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”
“We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should never been waged, and on which we have now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.” – Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama
To the detriment of national security, he has kept his promises. With his last election behind him, Vladimir Putin and the Ukrainians thank him for being more “flexible.”
Candidate Obama made his feelings apparent with his “lives wasted” comment and his promises to render America defenseless, but what was the troop supporting liberals saying during the war?
“Let me be clear. The violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American Soldiers to protect these tribes from Al-Qaida said to these tribes: We have to fight Al-Qaida ourselves.” – Senator Charles Schumer
“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything…” – Senator Harry Reid
“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans [Soldiers] had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings.” – Senator Dick Durbin
“There was no firefight, there was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops [Haditha Marines] overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. They actually went into the houses and killed women and children. ” – Representative John Murtha
“Shamefully we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.” – Senator Ted Kennedy
And there is no reason… that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the – of – the historical customs, religious customs.” – Senator John Kerry
“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” – Senator John Kerry
“I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.” – Representative Charles Rangel
“The fact is if we are able to cut off the funding for the war, the president will not be able to conduct [win] the war.” – Senator Russ Feingold
“From New Orleans to Baghdad, this administration has made ‘planning’ a dirty word and an alien concept, and the damage to the United States has been immeasurable. Now with American lives on the line in Iraq, the least we can do is force them to draw up contingency plans to redeploy American troops in Iraq.” Senator John Kerry [discussing his and Presidential Candidate Clinton’s demand for briefings on redeployment plans]
He has to answer for his war. He has dug a hole so deep he can’t even see the light on this. It’s a tragedy. It’s a stark blunder. – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
First of all, [it is] the president’s war. He’s the one without a plan. – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
“The War on Terror is a slogan designed only for politics, not a strategy to make America safe. It’s a bumper sticker, not a plan.” – Former Senator, Former Vice Presidential Candidate, Presidential Candidate John Edwards
JFK and LBJ owned Vietnam, yet over the years liberals have framed it as Nixon’s war. I tried to show the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam in Just Another Vietnam. We now learn, just as LBJ and McNamara did for Vietnam, the Whitehouse will be doing the targeting for the president’s air campaign. Although similar, this time there is a new twist. With elections in the wings and the 2016 presidency on the line, the liberals are trying to salvage something that says they are not dangerous on matters of national defense. They realize they cannot run on their “success” in Iraq and the greater Middle East.
There is no magic switch. This is how these people feel about the country and specifically about the military. Around the services, I do not believe there is a resounding chorus of hooahs about following these liberals into a war that did not have to be.
© 2014 J. D. Pendry American Journal
Category: Politics
I dont think I would call 14% “tons of liberals,” but then again, you didn’t actually do any research, you just made that up because it suits your argument.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/25/military-no-less-conservative-less-republican-surv/
Shut the fuck up cunt. John Kerry had a knife kill too, right Mark?
Centrum Silver. Good one, killer. You take your Flintstones Vitamin today? Thanks for the laugh. Carry on “soldier.”
Your a Phildo.
“The people on this forum take Centrum Silver vitamins.”
Liar. But then, John Kerry is your hero, so no one is surprised.
Yes, Kerry’s “got” a Silver Star. That’s established fact.
Whether it was deserved or not is an entirely different question. Inflated, “cheap”, or outright fraudulent awards in Vietnam were far from unknown – my impression is that they weren’t real common, but did exist. And a number of people who were, well, there with Kerry at the time and should know “what really went down” appear to have heartburn with the “deserved” part concerning more than one of his awards – including his Silver Star.
I wasn’t there at the time, so I can’t have an authoritative opinion on the matter; that would require personal observation of the situation. But then again, you weren’t there either.
I have found, however, that firsthand accounts of people who were there are often pretty good sources. And if they’re raising doubts, well . . . .
Yes, we know about Kerry’s medals. Guess what? LBJ had a Silver Star too! Look up how he got it for riding in a bomber on one mission, being a pain in the crew’s ass, and mysteriously being the only one on the plane to get a decoration of any kind for it. Compare that with the controversy surrounding Kerry’s Silver Star and Purple Hearts.
Kerry is not a valor-thief douche because he’s a liberal. He’s a valor-thief douche because a great deal of evidence indicates that he obtained most or possibly all of his combat awards through fraudulent means. Couple that with the many, many times he’s been caught openly lying about what he supposedly saw or did in Vietnam.
If you wanted a liberal who undeniably served with honor, you could have at least tried the late Senator Inouye. Nobody ever disputed his service, because he was honest about what he did, and, fuck politics, he was a certifiable motherfucking HERO.
Sorry, dude. Wrong answer.
True dat!
LBJ had one too. And he got his where he never fired a shot, never had fire directed his way…fuck they never even SAW the fucking enemy?
Your point, again?
(Meant to post this on another thread earlier, but forgot to do so. Finally had a chance to consult good references re: Johnson’s Silver Star mission.)
Actually, NHSparky – turns out the mission for which LBJ received his undeserved Silver Star saw real action. His plane was indeed engaged by at least one enemy aircraft, as well as suffered mechanical difficulties.
However, he did nothing heroic besides keep his cool (crew accounts did say he was pretty cool under fire). He was just a walking sandbag along for the ride, and other than tell the crew “There’s one now” (or words to that effect) when he looked out a window and observed a Zero approaching their aircraft Johnson did nothing else of note during the engagement.
I’ll give him points for keeping his cool. But he damn well did nothing remotely meriting the Silver Star on that mission. If he’d not been a sitting Congressman at the time, he would never have received it.
Source: Robert Cato, The Path to Power, Chapter 3: In the Pacific.
As has previously been noted elsewhere, no other crewman on that aircraft that day received an award.
I’ll also correct two other errors in a previous statement I made about the raid. First, the mission obviously was NOT “uneventful” as I previously stated. Getting shot at doesn’t qualify on that score.
Second, it was indeed a USAF raid vice a Navy mission. Johnson was aboard as an observer. He was part of a 3-man observation team composed of officers from both the Army and Navy. Johnson was the Navy officer assigned to the team.
If I recall correctly, all 3 were on the raid, in different aircraft – and one didn’t make it back.
I stand corrected. Thanks again.
You do realize that when you make an argument with no facts presented, and someone else makes a counter-point with a primary source, and you respond with an unfounded insult that you automatically lose the debate, ammirite?
Dear Leader said he’s planning on making about 40,000 personnel cuts. Can anyone guess where he should start? 😉
I’ve served with your type, they certainly do exist in the military. But then so do all sorts of unsavory characters. My units were never so happy as when jackwagons like yourself moved on.
To clearly answer your question about whether or not we should just say ‘Fuck that 14%’, I say yes. Have a nice day tool.
Oh, yeah. 280K = a ton. Sure it is. (Doesn’t matter, it’s still only 14%.)
What are you smokin’ there, cupcake? You make absolutely no sense at all.
It must scare your bigoted little sparkle pony self to realize that there must be a bunch (that’s more than a ton) of brown people in the military who are conservative, self-sufficient, patriotic, hard working, and make fine neighbors.
Oh, I can’t wait until a few of our regulars who haven’t yet weighed in here see that last inane comment (no conservative minorities in the military) by Markie-boi . . . .
What’s the point, Hondo? All Markie-boi does is make snide comments and insult people who show him he’s wrong on many points? I have better things to do than waste time on a 4-year-old attention whore in an (maybe) adult body.
Marky Mark… I am Hispanic, conservative, and would very much like to tell you to step the fuck off to your pussy liberal face.
Horale! Dile a ese pinche carbon!
And to translate Green Thumb:
Palabra!
Why you are a bigot? Only you can answer that question.
Me, I fail to grasp why anyone would be, but then, that’s more about the gazillion or so conservative type people I have associated with through the years. The only bigots I have personally ever known were lefties.
As for you, at least half of your posts have expressed bigotry along with your immaturity spewed out as hostility and all around cluelessness.
You beat on that poor strawman enough yesterday, leave the poor bastard be today.
I know that you’re welcome to fuck the fuck off anytime it suits you. I mean, since those who post here are so obviously bigoted and you are obviously so noble.
“Well, this whole site is basically just…blah, blah, blah…”
Says Mikey, who just wants to go play doctor with brown people in Africa.
Three women commenting here? Hmm.
Hell, I can more than double that off the top of my head without really trying. And they’re all fairly regular commenters at the site. Add semi-regular and occasional commenters and we hit double-digits in terms of female commenters damned quickly.
Being observant ain’t exactly your strong suit, Markie-boi.
They’ve got binders full of women…
Fuck you, you racist piece of liberal trash. I am one of those “brown” conservatives. There are a lot more of us than you think, loser.
A ton of lefties in the military? Well, we know where all the fat bodies are now.
Seeing how this forum, with a very few exceptions, is made up of veterans, you’re wrong again.
Well, bother. All this time I thought the conversation was about those currently serving.
Mark,
If you were where I am right now, I suspect everyone here would want a turn with you … 16 oz. style … And no, I am not talking about a drinking match with imperial pints. Something that you and your punk gernationsknow nothing about.
Each lefty in the US military weighs only 17.5 lbs?
That is not true. There was an error with brain weight calculation. The correct weight is: 17.13 pounds.
And most of it is hot air.
This one is a bit more recent – it shows liberals at 20%, conservatives at 44% and moderates at 29%.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/01/iraq-and-afghan-vets-are-conservative-but-theyre-not-all-republicans/
So while it’s true that the ‘20% of liberals’ might not qualify as a ‘ton’, and there ARE more than twice as many conservatives as liberals in the military, it’s worth noting that NONE of those three categories represents even half the military population. In other words, less than half the military views itself as conservative, according to this poll.
Just my two cents.
And a poll of vets tells us precisely what about the composition of the current-day serving military, precisely?
There are at least two problems with that approach (polling vets and using that data to draw definitive conclusions about the currently serving military), LC. You should be able to figure them out yourself.
It tells us nothing definitively – much like the other poll by Military Times, since it’s a web-based poll and anyone (including non-military) could have answered.
But since we’re dealing with imperfect polls and don’t need exact numbers, more data is better. Note that 23% of responses from the one I linked were from people who self-identified as still being active duty, and the vast majority of others were ‘recent’ veterans. The demographics of strictly active-duty soldiers will certainly be quantitatively different from that of this survey, but it probably won’t be qualitatively different.
Liberals seem to be somewhere between 10-20%, and conservatives seem to be just under half, with moderates making up the rest. I’m happy to see any other data you have to the contrary.
Don’t have an issue with the data, and don’t have immediate access to anything better (or the time to search for any). Just hate to see people apparently drawing firm conclusions from shaky or inappropriate data.
The numbers in that poll well may be close – as in “+/- 5%” – to the corresponding numbers of serving military. I wouldn’t think they’re within a percent or two, but they might be.
Two factors that may have skewed the results a bit (though IMO probably not hugely) are the following: (1) I’ve found conservatives are more likely to be reticent to answer polls (privacy), and thus opt out; and (2) a veteran population can be expected to have a higher fraction of those who left due to dissatisfaction with military rules/regulations/lifestyle/etc . . . than the serving population. It’s been my experience that those from the more liberal end of the political spectrum are more likely to get fed up and leave over relatively petty stuff like that than those from the conservative end of the spectrum.
On both points, YMMV.
The first of these factors would tend to make conservatives somewhat underrepresented in a veterans poll vice one of serving military, while the second would also tend to make liberals somewhat overrepresented. I’d guess the magnitude of each “delta” would be small – 2-3%, maybe – but since they’re in opposite directions that’s a 4-6% swing overall. That’s significant.
Using polling results from one group to answer questions about a similar – but different – group is not usually a good idea. If we could get data only pertaining to serving military who answered that poll, it would remove one of the two sources of possible bias I identified. Not sure how to remove the second, though.
That’s fair enough, but we can both agree it’s speculation. Informed speculation from your perspective, perhaps, but for point #2, I could just as easily say I would expect there to be a higher degree of conservatives in the ‘recent veteran’ column because of formerly active-duty conservatives who, for a variety of reasons, were unhappy serving under the current President’s administration and got out. That’s a common-enough sentiment around both this blog and B5, I believe.
And yes, a 4-6% swing is nothing to sneeze at, but that’s why I said somewhere between 10-20% liberals, and just under half conservative. The overall point was that ‘only’ roughly half of the military seems to identify as ‘conservative’. Maybe I’m wrong, but my feeling is that most people here think the military is overwhelmingly conservative. I just found that data point interesting.
(And yes, it’s clearly true liberals are a minority in the military.)
Clearly we’d both like better data, and Military Times did a survey this year, but I haven’t seen any results anywhere yet. It would still have the same problem in that it’s not a carefully controlled survey, but it’s likely to be better than nothing.
PVT SNAFU, you realize that B. Hussein 0bama has made as many cuts as possible to us Vets while he has had his administration bend over backward to hand out as much as they can to illegal aliens and welfare flunkies? The multimillion dollar handouts to say, Solyndra among others like GM, which we haven’t seen a dime in return? The Tricare budget surplus which was taken away and handed to a lavish 0bama campaign donor to build another wind farm?
You lose yet again, PVT SNAFU. Are there others waiting in line for internet access?
The VA is the military now?
Those goalposts, you moved them.
I can’t really blame “A Proud Infidel” for that, the administration of “the one” is a rambling incoherent mess and it’s hard to describe that in a coherent manner.
Still I noticed that you didn’t address his point that the military, the prime function of the state, is being cut while Obama and company throws money after various skittle shitting unicorns.
“And we’ve definitely never cut the military immediately after a war. Nope. Not once in our history.”
At least we’ve been smart enough to wait until the war was actually over to make the cuts, though.
He who frames the questions wins the debate.
Since I don’t trust the media or any other organizations to do anything other than spin for their own personal gain, I don’t buy the premise that the majority of the public supports military cuts. Simple.
And if it somehow is actually true? Well, then we as a nation deserve what befalls us.
May you live in interesting times.
The social engineering wasn’t done with the input of Congress, try again.
And while there are some liberals in the service, they are a decided minoity.
I was actually talking about putting women in the combat arms. But hey, that’s on me for not being specific enough. Still, tell us all about how that is going to be a giant success.
We? I remember how VMI and the Citadel were basically forced into letting women in. VMI was prepared to turn into a private school to avoid letting women in, but the Virginia Adjutant General essentially vetoed the idea (what with him being a commissioned officer and subject to pressure from the Clinton administration and all).
You don’t say that that move made those better institutions though, do you.
Anyway, if only we could look at how another nation’s military tried this and what happened. Like say Canada who had to abandon the concept.
I think it’s interesting that you are “willing to try” this nonsense on the one hand, while you are defending the military budget cuts on the other. Tell me, do you think it will be more cost efficient to “give it a try”? If so why?
This ought to be good.
Oh, I didn’t realize I was arguing with a misogynist. My bad.
Oh no, I have been insulted by a lefty. This is totally the first time that has ever happened to me, whatever shall I do?
I think you might find that actual graduates of VMI and the Citadel would disagree with your opinion.
Our growing debt, which I will give you credit for at least recognizing, is a function of our political class buying favor with the public by bribing us with our own money. DOD spending makes up about 1/6th of the Federal budget (despite the fact that it is one of the few functions the government preforms that is explicitly defined by the Constitution. There are plenty of places where the budget could be cut, but none so politically convenient for lefties (there actually is room for cuts in the DOD budget as well, but only after severe cuts other places).
The voting public says it wants lots of things. It is not the job of leaders to respond to every public whim, it is the job of leaders to understand the interests of the nation and work towards protecting those.
I like how if he sides with the voting public, he’s wrong, but if he goes against the interests of a majority of his voters he’s still wrong.
Yes, he has to determine if his voters (or voters in general for that matter) are realistic in what they say that they want-or not. That’s sort of how leadership works, it’s not a popularity contest, or at least it shouldn’t be.
” The easiest way to reduce government spending is to reduce the military budget.”
So that makes it a good thing?
” the people of this country want our government to spend less money on the military.”
And? The people of this country didn’t want ‘Obamacare.’
Okay, so we now know that women in military institutes is good for the economy, *snicker* and lefties like Mark use the tired old Fox News canard when they have nothing meaningful to say.
Lick freezer shelves and windows much, Mark L? Or are you sidestepping the fact that the ACA was rushed through without anybody reading it?
You do know that military cuts started in 2005, right? It was the beginning of a large reduction in force.
You do know that military cuts started in 2005, right? It was the beginning of a large reduction in force.
No.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004598.html
http://www.cfr.org/defense-budget/trends-us-military-spending/p28855
Interestingly enough, 68W58 – DMDC figures for Active Duty strength also say, um, not really. Reality is a bit more complex than that, at least since 1994:
https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/rest/download?fileName=AD_Strengths_FY1994-FY2012.xlsx&groupName=milTop
Total strength declined fairly steadily from 1994-2000, rose for 4 years, declined for 4, years, and then rose from 2008-2010. It then began to decline again in FY2011.
Strength at end of FY2010 was higher than any time since FY2003, and FY2011 was nearly as high.
“You can’t help a fool.”
You can’t teach a fool either, and PVT SNAFU (Mark L) proves that!
Here’s our fool “at work”:
“Many people believe liberals are not capable of fighting a war.”
They are! Unfortunately it is only a war of their convenience.
Or is politically expedient. Too bad that national security is never their priority.
Mark,
We all know where this is going, so let me help out by expiditing the process.
1. Announce that you are ghey.
2. Start wearing medals, badges and awards you don’t rate.
3. Steal military secrets and GIVE them away …
4. Roll a grenade into a tent.
5. Walk off your base.
6. Claim PSDT.
7. Get captured buy bad people and help them out.
8. Allow to be photographed looking happy.
9. Get rescued and procecuted buy the alligators.
10. Change name to Marcia and ask for sex change in prison.
That is all.
Hey, the new chew toy has returned!!!!!!
That reminds me, whatever happened to Joe our rock climbing hero? Did he fall off a rock?
Maybe “he” tried to eat a rock and then sued the mountain to pay his dental bills?
Wow. There is so much love in this thread. It’s weird. I don’t remember going to war and thinking, “this is convenient”. And does anyone else find it weird that the guy who inhereted the war has decorated more MoH recipients than the guy who started the thing?
You are aware that it takes more time to award a MoH than it does an AAM, right? It also isn’t up to the Administration for when the action that one earns the MoH happens. The enemy also gets a vote on that.
You’re right in everything you say of course, but I’m going to give Charlie Sierra at least partial credit: there should be at least one (and more likely several) living MOH recipients for the war in Iraq-PFC Stephen Sanford and (then) 1LT Brian Chontosh spring immediately to mind and there was plenty of time between their respective actions and the end of the Bush administration to make it happen. Our awards system is seriously fucked and someone at the top needs to address it.
I agree with you about our award system. I feel that I did more to deserve my ARCOM from my first tour than I did the BSM for my second tour. The only difference is was that I got promoted between tours. I put three of my Squad Leaders in for the BSM and it kept getting kicked back and resubmitted before my 1SG wrote the awards himself. They got ARCOMs. Four years later I’m still pissed off about it.
I saw similar. Guys that busted their asses got ARCOMs and a senior NCO who literally accomplished nothing got a BSM.
Your new Blog Handle here is:
DELTA SIERRA for dip shit!
Next time use capitalization not for any reason other than proper use of our alphabet!
I thought “Charlie Sierra” stood for Chicken Shit.
My bad.
I don’t find it weird at all. Happy coincidence for the failure in chief.
It suddenly got quiet, I wonder if someone reminded ‘lil PVT SNAFU that his time was up or he had latrine cleanup and police call?
FUN ‘lil chew toy while he lasted, he reminds me of a guy I went through Basic & AIT with, the first week of Basic our DS’s nicknamed him “Poodle Dick”!
I am still requesting from TAH command:
1. IP check
2. Geo location
3. Target aquisition info
4. Weapons release authority.
5. Contracted wild dogs for clean up.
Got the wild dogs ready to roll…
Are we sure Mark L. is not just “Hussar” under a new handle? The tone is very similar – the insults, the condescension, the lack of substance.
Contrast him with LC, who is able to present a dissenting opinion without being a jackass.
You’re not the only one wondering that, MrBill.
Have to disagree with CSM Pendry on this point, at least in part.
I’m sure Putin’s very thankful our
Fearless LeaderPOTUS is more “flexible” these days. However, I rather doubt the current Ukrainian leadership is terribly thankful that’s the case.Attempt at sarcasm on the Ukrainian piece of that..
Hondo cuts no slack, I know! He is always correcting me. Thank God he has not focussed on my speling.
But in this case I got the sarc!
(chuckling) OK, CSM Pendry – ya got me. I did miss the sarcasm. (smile)
Actually, most liberals that I have encountered blame the US and “Colonialism”, both pre – and – post philosophies.
Easier that dealing with the problems at hand.
Also, a great way to spread the blame as well while avoiding doing your part.
All leftism is, at it’s heart, Marxism. Marxism is founded on the idea that there are “oppressors” and “the oppressed”, which is nonsense-the world being so much more complicated than that-but is easy to sell to young minds full of mush and those who wallow in self-pity. Look for who the lefties identify as “the oppressors” and you will see who it is OK to hate. Generally the west or white guys or America.
Liberals don’t actually want to have to fight for anything, unless their material world is somehow threatened, or there’s a Black Friday sale starting at 12:01AM on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Hell, they’ll trample each other to get those special prices and get in to fist fights over nothing. They pretend to despise money and people who work hard for it, but they drool over it worse than any Lotto winner’s relatives suddenly showing up out of nowhere after a 10-year absence. The have-nots displace the haves on a regular basis, but the have-nots don’t want to work to get there. No, they prefer just finding some way to steal ‘there’, whether through robbery at gunpoint or a violent revolution, e.g., the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, Pol Pot’s slaughter of his own people – whatever. Dig up history, it’s all there. Their idiotic idealism – that everyone will be ‘equal’ – fades in the reality that being the competitive primates we are, we all scramble to be on the top of the heap, period. The so-called liberalism isn’t really liberal at all. It is more clutch-fisted than my mother was with a one-dollar bill. Liberals really don’t want you to have what they have. They are more elitist, exclusioniary and self-absorbed than a bunch of drunken Texas high school cheerleaders. They will whine and complain about how ‘unfair’ it is for conservatives to have all that ‘stuff’, when it reality, they think the conservatives should just fork it all over to THEM, and smile while we’re at it. Like it or not, liberalism does not mean generosity, because their so-called generosity is as phony as it is possible to be. It isn’t liberal to make hard-working people cough up more tax money that goes to pork barrel programs and phony causes. It’s crap. It’s pure, unadulterated selfishness, but if you don’t want to go along with their phony-assed ‘feel good’ crap, you’re a horrible, unfeeling person. And they really don’t like it when you point out the flaws in their desperate needs to rewrite history and everything else to… Read more »
Ex-PH2. I have a Liberal litmus test, and no, it’s not 100% but I work in an office with a LOT of Liberals. All the liberals carry Apple products, the conservative, Android. Weird, huh. Yes, there are the exceptions but they are few and far between.
I have to agree with Pendry.
The Liberals are fighting a war, and by God they’re effective at it.
Unless the GOP starts treating this as a fight for their very survival, I don’t think it’ll be an easy fight.
Naturally, I’ll disagree.
Let’s pick an issue that conservatives often rail against liberals on – entitlement programs. Now, the reality is that if you survey ‘liberals’ on how they feel about various entitlements, you’re going to get a wide range of opinions. This isn’t a solid ‘give-us-everything-for-nothing’ voting block like it often appears because, shockingly, the most radical and ridiculous voices that espouse that view get the most publicity.
I don’t have any numbers in front of me, but let’s just say for the sake of discussion that 33% of liberals want MORE entitlements, 33% want less and 33% aren’t sure. And let’s say liberals and conservatives are roughly split 50-50, since that’s more or less how things go.
Now you’ve got two options – you can rant about ‘liberals’, and by painting them as what’s wrong with the country, position yourself against them in their entirety, OR, you can seek commonality with the ones who feel these programs should be scaled back, and then you have 67% for scaling back, 16.5% unsure and 16.5% for growing them. What sounds better to you, 50% vs 50% or 67% vs. 17%?
The problem isn’t liberals or conservatives, it’s fanatics with extreme positions and a desire of both sides to demonize the other rather than work with them on an issue-by-issue basis towards some mutual agreement.
Unfortunately the entire political machine of both main parties is dead-set against that, but if you keep in mind that most people on the other side of the political spectrum also want what’s best for the country, it helps a lot.
Yes, that’s obviously the problem, Conservatives haven’t reached out often enough to lefties. Why if only John McCain had reached out more to Democrats he might have gotten more support from liberals when he ran for President against the most left-leaning candidate ever to run for the office.
Oh wait.
Sorry LC, I don’t doubt that my political opponents “want what’s best for the country” (so far as they understand it), it’s just that I think that their understanding of what that is is seriously flawed.
Right now I’m watching (because it’s 3:30 in the morning and there’s nothing else on) a replay of “Meet the Press” where Grover Norquist and Thomas “what’s the matter with Kansas” Frank are arguing about tax policy in Kansas. Norquist said that he was always ready to compromise (which he noted meant “moving more slowly towards freedom than I like”), but I didn’t hear similar language from Frank and that’s probably because he thinks he’ll eventually get what he wants if he can continue to get Republicans to compromise.
I realize that you probably don’t read Ace of Spades, but he has a regular bit on how compromise for Democrats means 1) give us what we want and 2) shut up. Guys like McCain and Graham have reached across the aisle time and again getting irregular plaudits from the press, but not much reciprocation from the Democrats-screw that!
I’m not talking about the politicians — they’re pretty useless, and their careers live or die based on how incompetent, evil, etc., they paint their opponents. But when you go into discussing an issue with the mindset that half the country is your enemy on it, you aren’t going to get as far as if you go into the argument with the mindset that a portion of the people whose politics differ from your own will see the reason in your argument.
Or do you really feel that when liberals bemoan conservatives as ‘what’s wrong with the country’ that that’s actually somehow helping our nation? And reverse the political ideologies and ask yourself the same question again. We’ve got actual enemies out there, it just seems counterproductive to me to manufacture new ones out of half our own people.
And yes, you can surely point to examples where Democrats didn’t want to compromise, and Republicans were trying. And I could go over to Daily Kos or something and find plenty of examples of Democrats reaching across the aisle and not getting anything in return. Hell, ObamaCare is a big example of that for many on the left.
My point being you’ll find plenty of examples of stupidity from both sides, and naturally, more on the ‘other’ side from your own. And if you want to call out the politicians for their idiocy, on either side, go for it. But labeling the average American who has a different political ideology than your own an ‘enemy’ is one of the most self-defeating things you can do, in my opinion.
Sorry bud, but someone who tries to tell me and my fellow citizens that water will run uphill will always be my enemy.
And I wouldn’t expect you to have to entertain such idiocy – there are, of course, limits to how far understanding can take us. That said, to use that tongue-in-cheek idea as an example, let’s imagine for a brief moment that there were in fact liberal politicians spouting off that water will go uphill. Do you, in all honesty, think that the vast majority of liberal voters would agree with that statement? Or is it more likely that whatever politician is saying that is being supported for his stance on a wide range of issues, and his loony thoughts on water are merely tolerated because the opposition is simply someone with whom they disagree even more?
I don’t know about you, but no matter which way I vote, I’ve rarely come across people I support one hundred percent.
The point being, if some liberal politician were to start preaching about how water goes uphill, and your options are to ridicule and make an enemy of all liberals, OR to reasonably tackle this single issue and seek commonality with the presumably large number of liberals who find his lunacy on that subject off-putting, I’d wager you’d get much further doing the latter. To put it more succinctly, issue-by-issue works better for us as Americans than party-by-party.
I’ve posted it before, but if you want I can dig up the link for the Republican candidate who claimed his opponent had actually died and been replaced by a look-alike. My guess is his supporters didn’t support THAT notion, they just felt he was by far a better candidate for their interests.
(Fun fact: Under certain conditions, water can in fact go uphill. But clearly we’re both talking about nutjobs, not bizarre physics or engineered systems.) 😉
Liberal politicians consistently tout raising the minimum wage which flies in the face of the law of supply and demand.
They also generally endorse taxing corporations and businesses, apparently thinking that the business will allow their margins to shrink and not pass the increased cost to the consumer.
Those are two examples of liberal politicians, in effect, stating that water will run uphill. Their constituents generally go along with them as does the media. So what does compromise look like in terms of Supply and Demand? Do we negotiate an agreement that it only works 50% of the time?
The biggest lie perpetrated by the left is that state actors (bureaucrats) have your best interests at heart and will use the money they confiscate from individuals in a responsible way. History is replete with evidence to the contrary. War on Poverty is but one example. If the state truly had my best interests at heart, they would get their hand out of my pocket.
Just look at all of the problems confronting our Congress. Most of them were created…. BY CONGRESS. Insert Einstein quote about insanity here.
Regarding certain conditions, let’s leave out the power of the pyramids, anti-gravity, perpetual motion, and penis pumps.
The Leidenfrost effect requires a significant energy input for merely theatrical results, which makes it a good metaphor for liberal social programs at large. 🙂
Thanks, LC for addressing the issues without the vitriol.
As one of those Americans who has lived in this glorious Republic for a lot of decades, it might interest you to wade through a few observations. First, I am one who self-identified as a “liberal” back in the 60’s simply because I believed in all that good freedom stuff – personal responsibility, get the gubmint outta our lives, equality for all, yada, yada.
After a few decades of career building, I awoke to the reality that my values had remained the same, but that the same people who had loudly proclaimed the grand ideals of the Republic had turned it all around into a government dependency thing and had sold it to the American public in spite of it being contrary to the public good.
Short version – my values, character, and vision had not changed but the entire country had shifted so far left that I, an “uber-liberal” in the 60’s, was a “right-wing nut” by the late 80’s. And the friends with whom I could hold a civil conversation was shrinking.
I really miss the days when folks could hold intelligent conversations without the childish behavior. Unfortunately, they seem to be gone. I simply don’t have the energy to actively search for the few lefties who might or might not exist to engage in civil discourse.
Additionally (and I still refuse to be partisan), I have watched as the RNC has repeatedly “compromised” with the DNC over things like amnesty which the DNC simply failed to meet their obligations when it came time to do that meet in the middle thing. It’s occurred too many times for me to give either party a break when they discuss “compromise.”
I can absolutely understand and respect your position on this, OWB. I considered myself a liberal ‘back in the day’, but these days I’m certainly far more of an independent than anything else.
At the moment, I live in a pretty liberal place, surrounded by fairly liberal people, and I come into the political threads on TAH often to get a different perspective than I’m usually exposed to. Even if I ultimately don’t agree with the sentiments being expressed, I find that hearing opinions that are different from my own, and generally believing the people expressing them to be decent folk, is incredibly helpful in terms of being fully informed.
The one thing I find incredibly hopeful is that more and more of my friends, many of whom were also very liberal, are becoming more independent over time. I don’t have much faith in things improving within the DNC (and RNC) in the near term, but a softening of party identity within individuals bodes well for the future of civil discourse, in my opinion. And, in turn, for our politics, and our future as a country.
Any time you want to grab a beer and chat politics, though, let me know.
Thanks! Will take you up on the offer one of these days.
“The Liberals are fighting a war, and by God they’re effective at it.”
Their war started in the 1960s with the radical student movement picking up ideas and strategies from good socialists like Alinsky. They’ve had decades to perfect their attacks.
Regarding MarkL and his fatuous comments; see “pig wrestling”
Remember what Putin said about Marky-Mark’s hero?
“Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over the pieces, craps on the board, then struts around like it won.”
Mark seems to be trying hard to emulate the same pattern of behavior.
Liberals will never own this war and refuse to accept virtually anything to do with the current mess. All you have to do is peruse a few liberal sites like Huffpo and you can see the depth of denial in the comments.
It will always be Bush’s fault and lately the mantra seems to be that the “Generals” have usurped POTUS’ powers and hung him out to dry since he couldn’t possibly be making any of these decisions himself.
The great pretender in chief (lack of capitalization intentional), recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has failed in Iraq, failed in Afghanistan, failed with ISIS, failed with Russia, failed with China, and the United States has lost stature world wide. Own it Liberals and stop making excuses.
We aren’t any better served by the clowns in Congress on the right either so its not like the Liberals have a lock on stupidity but at some point Libs are going to have to do a little soul searching and see that they have supported a failed empty suit.
I think I have to agree with LC on his statement “The problem isn’t liberals or conservatives, it’s fanatics with extreme positions and a desire of both sides to demonize the other rather than work with them on an issue-by-issue basis towards some mutual agreement.”
Reality can be an ugly bitch and the reality today is we have a weak President with a failed agenda abetted by a weak Congress and it will be decades before we emerge from this mess and I highly doubt we will emerge intact.
Well when the entire ideology revolves around hatred of America and trying to fundamentally transform it, protecting it or making it look good is counter productive isn’t it?