Posted on 01/02/2005 2:33:24 PM PST by OOPisforLiberals
So close, yet still so far.....
I would send this to my now irrational liberal brother but after I sent him all of 5 political type emails over the past 3 years (not knowing how far gone he was), he asked me not to send him political email, anymore. It's funny how the liberals don't like hearing thoughts contrary to their own. This will fall on deaf ears to all of 'em.
A lot of good stuff. This guy is no conservative, but an intelligent liberal. (I do like his comment about the collectivist feel of the pledge, too.) I'd like to think we're open to different voices here, and are more about free debate than the DUmmies--can you imagine them letting a conservative version of this over there?
I had the exact same thing happen--a liberal friend who endlessly stomps on W asked me to stop sending her political emails after only a few. Of course, that didn't stop her from the Bushbashing, until I pointed out her hypocrisy.
So true. The Left wants the US, which they do not identify with, to apologize for EVERYTHING.
I was at a New Year's Eve party and I heard a couple of British expatriates commiserating over what an awful year 2004 had been. The problem, of course, was GWB. One of the examples they shared with each other was the way GWB has wrecked America's image in the world, and has no sense of international sensibilities. In particular, they were griping about was US tsunami aid. Why on earth, they wondered, did the US have to send in 2000 Marines? (Because the armed forces has the helicopters and other logistics, idiots). They saw it as an insensitive display of military imperialism, rather than the most efficient way to get aid to the disaster area.
I'll bump this. I'm always amazed when an intellectual can find his ass with both hands.
Great post. Reality mugged him. Many people are making the journey of leaving the hard Left. It is still not an easy journey to make and I salute the people who make it.
Correction from me : Article is originally from 10/14/2002.
bump
And the hard left is making it easier and easier. It is no longer the party of FDR, HST and JFK all liberal but still Americans. It is now the party of Ted Kennedy, Hillary, Al Franken and Michael Moore.
They are anti American nut cases and that is empowering conservatism.
Not exactly new. I am sure I have read it on FR around that time.
I agree. Reading it was a bit of a long slog for me, (I'm not dumb, just lazy and ill-informed, you see) This was a very good article.
He still had to get his leftist jabs in, though.
Hey, Ron, baby! That's my line!
So close, yet still so far.....
And that is as succinct an analysis as Mr. Rosenbaum shall ever receive.
In saying "Goodbye, all that", Rosenbaum has indeed come a long way. But he remains in denial as to the real agenda of the right, so that he still has a very long way to go.
Let's give him credit for the progress he has made, though. Even if he has merely abandoned the Marxist left so as to join the dilute ranks of the honest liberals, he is to be commended.
If nothing else, he has regained status as a patriotic American.
'So I went up to the antiwar demonstration in Central Park this weekend'...
New Yorkers are the only people in the universe who are allowed to start a paragraph with " SO..."
I still have trust issues.....
I think he's got a good point here.
Of course, the scale of the offenses is greatly different, thousands of innocent dead as opposed to tens of millions.
But when conservative Americans supported or tolerated racism, as something that just wasn't important, they were in blatant violation of the very principles they claimed to be "conserving." I don't know many conservative Americans today who are willing to admit this.
This position also turned out to be an enormous strategic blunder. Imagine if half of the "civil rights workers" who went south in the 60's had been conservatives. Would have cut the liberals most effective criticism of conservatism right off at the knees.
I don't like his comment on the "collectivist" feel of the Pledge. I'm committed to seeing this country be all the Founding Fathers hoped it would. I have no problem pledging my commitment alongside others. There's nothing "collectivist" about it.
I'm also glad the Pledge now includes "under God." I see nothing aberrant in this -- we are a country whose laws are based on the moral values of The Bible - a book about God. The Pledge acknowledges where our values came from. I'm proud that's where they came from and I'm proud our legal system is based on them. It doesn't preclude anyone being an atheist. It reinforces our history and acknowledges the higher authority our forefathers acknowledged.
The ACLU needs to get over it.
Perhaps, for PR purposes, we should provide Marines on disaster relief missions with Hawaiian Aloha shirts...
It would be so much more "sensitive"...
Many of them were.
They just weren't into self-promotion.
Politically, though, the reason why blacks became predominately Democrat has nothing to do with the political leanings of the Freedom Riders, et al. Barry Goldwater, who had been the GOP standard-bearer in 1964, of course, took a principled stand against the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and voted accordingly.
Goldwater's objection was on Constitutional grounds, as the provisions of the act applied to only 13 states. Had the Voting Rights Act applied equally to all 50 states, Goldwater would've supported it.
Given his personal history, it is impossible to label Goldwater a "racist". But this one very visible public act gave the Democrats and the liberal media a bogey-man to demonize...and they harvested the black vote thereby.
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