Posted on 07/21/2004 6:42:20 AM PDT by dead
You'll rue the day, Perlstein!!
LOL...say hello to Hannity when you get out there to Boston...MUD
I look forward to the 3rd.
Regards, Ivan
Hmm, Aug 3rd?? Gee I think I have something important penciled in on that date? Oh yeah, I'm supposed to rearrange my sock drawer.
Decisions, decisions - do I watch a leftist get verbally eviscerated or rearrange my socks? Oh well, I guess the socks can wait.
dead,
Please pass this to your leftist buddy and tell him his world view is based on myths.
The source is the following from the non-partisan Annenberg Center.
I see you got one thing right.
Our Constitution is a "Calvinist document through and through" (look it up) based upon the fact that man is *NOT BASICALLY GOOD*.
They set up our government in such a way -- limited / objective rule of law (based upon the biblical law of love as THE STANDARD) / separated powers -- so as to ensure that no man would be able to obtain the reins of absolute power -- even if he/she professes to be a "Christian".
Perhaps you ought to get out more. This sort of tribalism isn't particularly conducive to productive political discourse, and I assure you that an auto mechanic in Provo or a welder in Lubbock regards the sort of urban sophisticate that is the Voice's target audience with the same level of entymological fascination as you offer us in that article toward conservatives. The very activity is presumptuous, and if the specimen finds it insulting there's usually a pretty good reason.
"If he loses in November, the voice of the American people has spoken a devastating verdict on his presidency. If he wins, he stole the election."
My vote for best post of the day! Great analysis.
Rick, I enjoyed an e-mail discussion with you a while back. It's unlikely that we will ever agree on a great deal, but you do have more openness to conservative opinion than is projected in this article.P.S.: Rick, why don't you open your thread on the fourth with a definition of what a conservative is, in general - and then make that definition specific to what an American conservative is! That is guaranteed to draw a crowd!I'll be looking forward to explaining your error come Tuesday a week.
Even if circumstances hindered me from attending this, I'd want to catch up the action after the fact. So I'll ping you, Miss Marple, if you don't ping me first when this fun starts!
"Again and again, I see conservatives defending Bush based on a sense of his inherent goodness. This dismays me, because I think the most profound thing conservatism has to offer America is its grasp of man's inherent sinfulness."
While it may be true that man is inherently sinful, and it is certainly true that our freedoms are not safe if they ultimately depend on the inherent goodness of human nature, we are not speaking in generalities here. We are talking about a specific individual, and the nature of a republic requires that we identify specific individuals whose moral judgement we trust and elect them to positions of authority.
There will always be 'cult of personality' types who feel the need to blindly worship their idols, whether GW Bush, Bill Clinton, or even Britney Spears. But if these people are your targets, why do you lump them in with the nuanced voters who may not like his policy regarding stem cells or steel tarriffs but still prefer him to the alternatives? You end up reducing your argument to "People support Bush, even though I consider him evil and dangerous. And they continue to support him even when I explain to them how evil and dangerous he is. Therefore, they must be dimwitted, brainwashed zombies."
You have been watching too much Michael Moore, I fear. Throwing out as many random accusations as possible (He lied about seeing the plane hit the tower! Plus, he used to blow up frogs as a kid! How can you vote for someone like that!) is not going to win over any new converts. Any more than a five minute conversation in which I carefully explained how Bill Clinton is a serial rapist who smuggled cocaine into Mena airfield while he was governor would have convinced you to switch your vote.
We now return you to the regular thread.
However, almost every review remarks that you are a liberal, and although I have not read your book, all reviews seem to indicate it is a history of the early days of the conservative movement, and a record of how we changed our tactics. I don't believe any review mentions that you were supporting any of the movement's ideas.
So, based on your more recent articles, I stand by my opinion. I, myself, could write a pretty balanced record of how Bill Clinton won the presidency, but it doesn't mean that I support him or have his best interests at heart.
Why are you so interested in having a specific date in which to debate? I find this quite interesting. If you didn't have time to debate, why did you have dead post the article now? Why not wait until after the convention.
My antennae are up, and I remain suspicious. You see, I am one of those conservatives who believes in the sinful nature of man...and that includes you.
Well, overall conservatives are generally just giving President Bush the benefit of the doubt.
He hasn't made a "no new taxes" promise, only to be broken in mere months, for instance...so without an obvious reason to distrust him (unlike our feelings about his father or his direct predecessor), we give him the benefit of the call.
But in all fairness, you raise a valid point or two. No man is inherently, purely, good. We shouldn't depend upon such a person coming around to run our government.
My problem with that valid point, however, is that so far to date there is little or nothing that I would have done differently than President (or even Texas Governor) Bush.
Tax cuts. Ban on partial birth abortion. National missile defense. Preventative, proactive care for our senior citizens (e.g. doctor checkups, prescription drugs, 6 privatization options for Medicare, etc.), killing the nonsensical Kyoto Global Warming treaty, pulling out of the Euro-based International Criminal Court, opening up Alaska to more domestic oil drilling, getting new logging going on in our national forests (esp. to serve as firebreaks), smashing the Taliban in Afghanistan, arresting Hussein in Iraq, etc.
It's as though President Bush is enacting every right wing dream that can remotely be smashed through the girlie-world of our current Congress.
I've never been more impressed with a President than with GWB.
History will record his time in office as the most legislatively and policy productive of all Presidents.
No one has ever gotten this many vast policy changes enacted, much less in such a short amount of time.
So how can we help but give him the benefit of the doubt and defend him from cheap shots or unfounded criticism?!
7 Full Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
You'll go down hard with the tripe you wrote in this article.
Even the newbies can best you against the line of 'reasoning' in this very silly article.
Yep. And my other problem with the writing is the tone of it. Is there a way for somebody who can't stand Bush to fairly write about Bush supporters, and give their opinions a real say? Sure there is, but this column isn't it. From the way this article is written, you would think Bush is some fringe candidate only supported by a various nutcases and idiots, not someone who got half this country's vote. The condecscension oozes here. Let me give you one example:
Larry's wife, Tami Mars, the Republican congressional nominee for Oregon's third district, proposes a Divine Right of Eight-Year Terms: "Let the man finish what he started. Instead of switching out his leadershipbecause that's what the terrorists are expecting."
Instead of just repeating what she says, he mockingly labels it a "Divine Right of Eight-Year Terms." It reminds the reader of the Divine Right of Kings, and makes you think that this woman is suggesting W is a king who doesn't deserve to lose his throne. Nice work.
As for Perlstein's "debate" with us, I won't be participating. You know it will end up in a Village Voice column, you know it will be selectively edited, and you know it will be written in such a way to make us all look stupid and venal. What's the point?
When did Bush say that?
It's an excercise in "Here's what I should have said, but didn't."
Well, that where you're more than famous, you're IN-famous!
(Quoting The Three Amigos from long distant memory)
after he insisted Bush couldn't have been lying when he claimed to have witnessed the first plane hit the World Trade Center live on TV,
When did Bush say that?
I had no idea what Perlstein was talking about either, so I researched it a bit on the internet. Apparently, theres a conspiracy out there in looney leftist land that Bush made a gaff that revealed that he knew the attacks were coming before they began. It appears in a CNN transcript:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0112/04/se.04.html
QUESTION: One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country, and another thing is that how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?
BUSH: Well. Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card -- actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident."
But I was whisked off there -- I didn't have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower. America's under attack."
The problem is that it can easily be explained if either Bush (who is famous for his garbling of the language) mumbled or left out (or the transcriber of the interview simply didnt hear) the word that in the statement.
In that case, And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on becomes the much less spooky And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw that an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on
But the conspiracy folks couldnt have as much fun with that statement. Either way, its a rather idiotic thing to even bring up.
Thanks. I hadn't heard that, and didn't realize there had been a TV there at the school.
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