Jim, with all due respect that sounds a lot like the attaboy principal we used to joke about the in the Navy. I'm sure you heard it, 1,000 attaboys and you get a free discharge, but one "oh crap" and you have to start all the way over.
Quite simply, the preponderance of one's beliefs are going to place them in either the conservative or the liberal camp. (WARNING THE FOLLOWING IS JUST AN EXAMPLE) The card carrying NRA member who voted for Reagan, supports a flat tax, sends care packages to the troops, but still invites his sister and her lesbian partner over for dinner on Sunday is a conservative. Sorry Jim, but supporting his sister's lifestyle does NOT cancel everything else out. If this individual were placed in a room full of hard-core liberals, they'd lynch him in under an hour.
Likewise, you can be a conservative and still be against the war we're currently engaged in. I support the war, however I can fully appreciate the Washingtonian stance against ANY foreign entanglement that some conservatives have taken. I don't agree with it, I believe it's misguided, but it most certainly has conservative merit.
So Jim, I'm appealing to your common sense. Stop this drive for conservative purity. No good can come of it. Worse, you've emboldened some of the more juvenile posters who now post little more than, "Nyayayayayaya Jim's gonna ban ban you, nyayayayayaya." Jim, have faith, if Rudy Giuliani is truly the liberal that you and others seem to believe, then it will come out on it's own and he'll lose supporters all by himself. If he's not the liberal you seem to believe, then that will bear itself out as well.
What I do know is that current atmosphere of complete hostility and antagonism isn't benefitting anyone. It's not benefitting you, it's not benefitting Free Republic, and it's not benefitting the denziens thereof.
Sooo...how much manure are you willing to tolerate in a batch of brownies? Oh, they look like brownies, and they smell like brownies, and they're certainly brown. But if you know there's an ounce or two of manure in the batch, are you still going to eat one of the brownies? Purity is a good thing, not a bad thing.
But it is not so much about purity that has driven the recent bloody fighting here on this forum. When we're fighting from the trenches and we see that some of the people in the trenches are firing on us and fighting for the other side, we have to turn and return fire and clear the trenches of the enemy. We have to shore up what they've undermined in order to invade the trenches.
Hi Melas... I think both you and Jim are correct. One difference does not a liberal make. I doubt that Jim or anyone here would say that Cheney is a liberal, even when he supports his gay daughter. But if someone like Rudy is liberal on several issues (gun control, abortion, gay issues, immigration), you just can’t call yourself conservative.
Would you agree with that?