Why can't the Democrats seem to get it together? (GREAT blog post, must read!)

Thanks. I really think one of the last, best hopes we have for the future is for this country to start steering itself away from "-isms" of any and all ideological stripes and persuasions. Be that 'socialism', 'stalinism', 'Rush-ism', or 'whatever-no-brain-ism'. I mean I'm pretty conservative on a lot of social issues, but I'm liberal enough to hope the U.S. Park Service (Yosemite, Glacier, et al) never gets "privatized". That's a proposal that the House has tabled, but which the present Executive Administration has threatened to veto. Ditto the FCC "drop all the rules against mass-media megalopoly" Michael Powell proposal. I was sort of encouraged that along with the NRA, the lefty-Trot lobbying group Common Cause had no problems seeing through the crap and jumping onboard to put a halt (for the moment) to that particular greased-rails train.

Being skeptical about Big Government shouldn't be just about watching the budget and tax roll's bottom line. Taking the time to actually plan, evaluate and consider the consequences of government policy is too big a job for any one single, isolated segment of the political spectrum. That's part of what they were talking about when they coined the phrase "checks and balances".

is not that they're God's chosen people, but that it's dangerous to keep the dial tuned to Fox all day.

Gee, with liberal views spewed at us from all directions (including Fox), I don't think that this will be a problem. It is amazing that people truely think that Fox only gives the conservative view. I wish that there was a truely conservative news station out there, not one that just wants to give both sides a chance (oh, the absolute horror of giving both sides a chance).

I just have this gut feeling that Democrats really are stupid, at least those who work and pay taxes, and (apparently) walk around with "kick me" signs taped to their backs.

No, I know some very smart democrats. They just live in a very isolated or insular world. They are never exposed to any other view point, nor now would they even listen if they were exposed. They have thought of anything not liberal as evil for to long now, and all of the people around them hold their views.

Yes. Some topics are better for discussion around here than others. There is a lot more varied opinions here than you'll find at pleaces like DU, but my point was that FR has had it's quality of discussion degrade noticably since 9/11/2001.

I'm certainly not saying that it is eqivalent to DU and similar boards though. They ban folks for breathing out of thier right nostril over there.

What the author misses, is that what the liberals proclaim as complexity and nuance is usually the unwillingness to recognize a failed, illogical or incomplete argument.

In otherwords, once a liberal gets to a point in an ideological debate where their position no longer makes any sense, it is because the conservative is just too stoopid or simpleminded to understand its complexities and nuances.

This is usually the point at which the conservative recognizes that liberalism doesn't exist in the real world.

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