Posted on 01/02/2005 2:33:24 PM PST by OOPisforLiberals
I think any fair person will agree that few American conservatives of the 50s and 60s were particularly concerned about the civil rights (or lack thereof) of black Americans.
Understandably, they were more concerned with a nuclear-armed Communist enemy.
But I still believe the conservative failure to be pro-active about civil rights was an enormous blunder.
I sent my lib sister-in-law some emails about Demo'rat corruption, until she asked me to quit because "they make me nauseous". I eschewed any gloating after November 2!
Sorry, bud, but the Southern racists were Democrats back when civil rights were a real issue.
I respect this type of liberal, even when I think they are wrong. Hitchens is another one, always a good read, even when you disagree.
I dont know if I ever had a "goodbye to all that" moment, although the first gulf war might have been the start. Not the war itself, but the reaction by the leftists was so... so abjectly stupid. It was hard to believe I ever thought the way they demonstrated..
Oh, and for the record, the Pledge thing bothers me somewhat as well. For very conservative reasons.
And yet the founding fathers did not find a need for 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.<<<<<<<<<<<<<
So without the pledge we would forget that?
"The ACLU needs to get over it."
Having kids stand up and pledge fealty to the government isn't something I find attractive. I couldn't give less of a damn what the ACLU thinks of it, I just am repulsed by loyalty oaths.
Let's agree that the conservative movement was near-nascent at the time. It didn't really exist until the Goldwater campaign in 1964. The civil rights movement was actually much more mature than conservatism.
As you note, at the time, conservatism was more concerned with was national defense and a survival strategy for the Cold War. For all we know, civil rights may have been #3 on the priority list (after controlling spending) -- but #1 absorbed all of the movement's efforts.
Thus, it's difficult to call civil rights a conservative "failure". Especially when Republicans provided the majority of the congressional support for civil rights, while congressional Democrats were generally opposed.
Granted, the Republicans of the time can't be considered congruent with conservatism -- as the latter was still a nascent force (which is, basically, my point).
Conservatism developed later and apart from the civil rights movement. Conservatism, however, is intrinsicly more respectful of civil rights than is liberalism.
A liberal who's becomimng disillusioned with the kooks who've taken over the Left... I do call that progress.
Because America isn’t perfect, it must be evil. Because Marxist regimes make claims of perfection, they must be good.
This single sentence is perhaps most penetrating insight I've seen into how the Left thinks.
So, do you also have a problem serving in the military? You have no problem using government currency, I assume. You obviously ride on government subsidized roadways. Do you pay your taxes?
I'm not being a smartass - I know it's hard to determine tone in the written word. My point is, where do you "draw the line" with your fear of the government?
Goodbye to the deluded and pathetic sophistry of postmodernists of the Left, who believe their unreadable, jargon-clotted theory-sophistry somehow helps liberate the wretched of the earth.
Part of this is painful to read because it so resembles my own epiphany of thirty years ago now. The entire Marx/Foucault/Postmodern intellectual dance depends entirely on a close selection of criteria to measure the truth that does not admit of contraindication. It is a system of thought that puts more work into fitting available evidence into the mold of theory than in measuring that theory in the terms of the evidence. It is a very strange, incestuous, inbred, profoundly uncreative shield against the necessities of rational thought and the humbling intellectual experience of being mistaken. As such it is inherently brittle, and what we see before us, IMHO, is a piece of its long overdue crackup.
What is happening is very simple - there has developed a vital contradiction between its ostensible values - equality, human rights, liberation of women - and its established practices - that reflexive anti-Americanism, anti-Corporatism, anti-Militarism, anti-Capitalism - that has led it into conflict with those values. Hitchens pointed this out long ago and it is evident that our author is finally being forced to admit it. The greatest acts of human freedom in the last half-century came largely as a consequence of those abstractions that the Left abhors - when faced with a choice between re-examining those abhorrances or simply denying the freedom, the Left has been reduced to denial. And that denial is inexorably reducing its sphere of influence step by step into a mutual admiration society of intellectual dinosaurs. A loud one, to be sure, but one that is increasingly and embarrassingly irrelevant.
I can't answer your post because I don't know where you're coming from. No offense, I just don't see where you get all that. You could ASK me my opinions and we could discuss them, but you've just invented positions for me and then ask how I could hold them.
I don't hold the positions you've invented for me, so I can't reply.
Sorry. I guess I haven't interpreted your lack of desire to say the Pledge, correctly. If you like, please explain your point of view.
There is simply no need for the pledge. I am the one in my social circles who is constantly telling people the founding fathers were believers in god, that the basis of the morals on which this entire nation is built is the Judeo-Christian tradition. Only an idiot denies this.
I have zero problem with god being mentioned on money, or with any of the other things you seem to think I am against.
I simply don't believe that in a nation founded to celebrate freedom, to escape monarchy, and in its existence over the last centure is the symbol for all that collectivism and totalitarianism stand for, citizens should be REQUIRED to recite what amounts to a loyalty oath. That is too much like the camera-ready processions of like-uniformed Soviet children--who are uniformed without free choice, as opposed to those in uniform in a volunteer army they willingly choose to serve in because they embrace what it stands for FREELY, without state coersion--and lately Elian Gonzalez's uniformed classmates parroting their love for a system they know nothing about.
I am a loyal American. Not because I performed a pledge which "proves" that, but because of my freely-held beliefs. And I live in a country that doesn't require me to DO anything to prove that, as opposed to making laws preventing me from harming it (i.e. certain actions would be traitorous under the law).
I would want my kids to learn about this country and love it as I do. Having their first civic actions be REQUIRED of them is not my idea of how to run a free nation.
Thanks again.
Wow. When they finally turn and shoot, they really turn and shoot.
Well, I made it back to Fayette Co. safely in time to see the Falcons barely lose to the Seahawks. You see, my best old friend has to leave to go back to his job in Frisco tommorrow so we had one last meeting for dinner. At the Vortex-in Little Five Points. I felt intimidated from the minute I parked my truck in that tattoed, pierced, spiked hair part of Atlanta.
Dave's sister was there, his young daughter who lives in the city with her boyfriend, his ex wife and his brother, who supports Cynthia McKinney.
The bright red haired waitress brought burgers and beer and there was some political conversation.
I used to play guitar with Brother John Boy but that was a few years ago. I told him I loved him like a brother but his politics was why we don't associate-one of us would kill the other and I'm the one who is always armed.
He asked me " you did see Fahrenheit 911 didn't you ? "
You all know the answer. I then loudly asked how many of you liberals had contributed monies to Tsunami relief. Well, none.
I told my friend (who at least voted for Badnarik) I had to leave. I told his ex wife, an old friend, I could not stay in that place any longer and left.
You could feel the animosity at the table.
But I'm back home safe in Fayette Co. now, it's dark and I feel no fear.
I hope my truck (with the W stickers) wasn't keyed. We'll see in the AM.
At least the burger was good, but you'll never see Fuzzycat in that part of Atlanta again.
Oh yeah. I had a professor tell my advisor I was "too political" and had better cool it... and his office door was (and still is) plastered with anti-Bush, pro-Marx spout & drivel.
Published in the New York Observer? Be still, my heart!
Great article! If he hasn't gotten it yet, he's obviously in the process of getting it. (Btw, I've never liked Heidegger, either, and have never seen how people could defend his silence on this rather crucial issue.)
I have a great response for this; it usually shuts them right up. I say, "No, I didn't see it. Michael Moore is just the poor man's Noam Chomsky. And I've already read Noam Chomsky."
It's so funny. If they've read Chomsky, they know I'm right and they shut up. If they haven't read Chomsky, they feel intellectually inferior (which is worse than death to a liberal) and they shut up. Either way, they shut up. And I smile a cat-like smile, and stare at them till they go away. It's very satisfying.
Important point. Also, certain churches that were still conservative at that time (the Catholic and Orthodox Churches) were very supportive of civil rights, and segregationists were even excommunicated. Of course, because these were not leftist organizations, they never got the credit they should have. But that's no surprise.
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