We conservatives need to calm down

Chicago Sun Times ^ | 04/06/09 | DAVID HOROWITZ

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

It's just true to life, that's all.

What's true to life? The usenet posting rule that says if people resort to calling each other Nazis after a long flame war, the discussion has outlived its usefulness? Or the idea that the Third Reich is off-limits in any and all discussion of politics and history?

As a rule of thumb in the world of internet flame wars, I suppose Godwin's observation (sorry, "Laws" do require authority if I'm going to abide by them) was accurate, if not redundant. As a mechanism to erase the lessons of the Third Reich from political discourse altogether, it's absurd and dangerous. I don't know if the latter was Mike Godwin's intent (knowing something about him might help in understanding that), but I know that's what it's become. In its present form, it's a specious trump card for terminally lazy cyberpundits.

Tell me, should "Godwin's Law" be invoked if someone makes the obvious analogy in a discussion about the Islamic Republic?

[JasonC]

I'm saying the lead story on Bloomberg is the team at GM carefully preparing their bankruptcy filing. GM is going bankrupt. Full stop.

[sonic109]

Blow it out your ARSE sir...Obama will in fact destroy America...Anyone on here YET convinced that we need to take to the streets ? No ..Guess not

[JasonC]

What is true to life is bankrupt moral idiots with no arguments or wit, will always reach for a rhetorical nuke of a ad hominem smear to make up for their own witless stupidity. We've all seen it five thousand times by now. And when conservatives do it, they don't do it any better. They just persuade bystanders that conservatism has no remaining rational arguments. Now, that is not the case; precisely why it is a mistake and a piece of stupidity to put up with it. We are better than this. Cut it out. Yesterday.

[JasonC]

America will in fact survive and prosper. And oh, advocating the violent overthrow of the US government on FR is expressly against its charter. Go get your own electrons, nutter.

[JasonC]

You are not God, sweetie.

[HotLead61]

But they should never have received funds. They should have to sleep in the bed they made, not be propped up with my tax dollars.

And, as you say, they're going bankrupt anyway. So what good did the money do? Any other occasion in which private-sector enterprises have received government subsidies (I realize that there have been others) has served only to entrench the precedent for the "next time", and the "next time", until the government is in charge of way more than it should be. And you know full-well that the government does not have a good track record of being able to manage much of anything.

[HotLead61]

OK then, “sweetie”, what have I ever done that deserved your insults (whether you call them charitable or not)?

[Revolting cat!]

America will in fact survive and prosper.

Welcome all knowing visitor from the Radiant Future (Светлое будущее) !

[sonic109]

I NEVER said or implied violence my friend.
I think it naive on your part to think we will survive this.Look what this clown has done on only 70 days or so ..We have at LEAST 4 more YEARS of this ahead.We have a neutered GOP that is half as bad as the DEMS .This is a nightmare to be sure.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Billiant. It is sophistry. It’s a Straw Man argument. Classic fallacy. Liberals pull this all the time when they try to make it sound like they are running against the skinheads or the Klan. They did it with Palin.

[HotLead61]

What is ALSO true to life are people such as yourself that think they are "above" others because of how long they have been posting on FR, what they've read, what they've taught, and so on.

BTW, it's also possible to have a lot of "wit" and still be wrong about a lot of things.

Contest it if you please, but I've got just as much a chance of being "correct" as you do. And I made my point without using your own tactics of "ad-hominem attacks" to smear. I am sticking to the facts of what you've written here. You won't do that, just like you won't respond honestly to the many issues I have raised in this thread (beyond insulting me, of course)...but, I've been through that already.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

If you are laughing at ANY of the books cited you are farther gone in self-deception than the vulgar "crapstorm" slang indicated in the scurrilous and puerile ad hominem posts lambasting the netherrealms of kook fringedom. If fear of fundamentalists is the problem, read the real conservative books instead of beating this dead horse. Our movement is not based on what you are railing against. Lighten up. There is no problem with the panic outside of the uneducated areas you seem to worry about and which seems to be at the basis of your hysterical jeremiad for economic determinism. Since you missed the joke, just forget it.

[HotLead61]

bankrupt moral idiots

Hmmmmmmm. Let's see, "bankrupt" doesn't mean financially, because how could you know that...

"Moral"...does that mean: (a) People with morals, (b) People with no morals [morally bankrupt, perhaps?], or (c) something else?

Since you're so much better than this, go off and start your own stuffy site that caters to your elitist attitudes. The "fruitcakes" on this site don't need you.

[HotLead61]

Oh, come now! You've helped keep this thread going just swell, and then all of a sudden you leave us? At least say goodbye, or good night, or something like that!

Oh, BTW Jason, g'night! 8)

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Moral idiots and their witless stupidity... nice to see you’re above the ad hominems.

And I wonder why the bystanders weren’t convinced that leftism had no rational arguments after eight years of “Bushitler lied... babies died!”. It would seem they rode a wave of anti-Godwinism into absolute power. At the very least, their flagrant disregard for Godwin and his absolute truth didn’t hurt them in the slightest. Yet, when we have a president apologetically moving the country towards unprecedented, unconstitutional nationalization of private industry — a man who can’t so much as sneeze without a hundred-thousand (minimum) adoring worshipers weeping at the mere sight of him — any comparison to Hitler draws an immediate yellow card.

Sorry, you don’t get to play referee. You’re one poster among thousands. Put your flag back in your pocket. It doesn’t mean anything.

[tarheelswamprat]

It is sophistry. It’s a Straw Man argument. Classic fallacy.

It is indeed, but JasonC has at least provided us with a hilariously comedic and surreal tour de force admixture of all of those along with generous dollops of breathtaking ignorance masquerading as delusional claims of erudition, incoherent gibberish presented as logic, and world-class hubris, all whipped-up into a delightfully frothy confection of self-referential mental masturbation...

Now that's entertainment!

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Past his bedtime now.

The argumentum ad Hitlerum comes in different forms. The one targeted at Nixon the writer from Ramparts surely would remember. There is a big difference though between Jonah Goldberg's political analysis in Liberal Fascism or even Glenn Beck's discussion of the nationalization of private industries and the fringe suggestion Obama has plans for immediate UN internment camps. The lack of such plans hardly rules out any comparisons. Besides a fondness for giving speeches to hysterical adoring crowds in Berlin, the statism, and wanting to depopulate the sick, the weak, and genetically feeble with government funds, there must be many differences.

[irony/sarcasm tag for any challenged trolls lacking a sense of humor]

[fr_freak]

Well, here is what the private sector has decided - capital entrusted to the US treasury, 2%; capital entrusted to US banks, 12%. Capital entrusted to General Motors, 40% with no volume. The private market *refuses* to hand over allocation decisions to *other* private-market actors. But is entirely willing to let the US treasury do it.

Who says I am happy about that either? I do not just object to Obama taking control of GM, I objected to GM asking for a handout to begin with, and Obama and the Dem Congress (and Bush and a number of Republicans) agreeing. GM should have been allowed to fail. If no actor in the private sector was willing to capitalize that company, it should have been in bankruptcy months ago, perhaps even years ago.

The bottom line is that there are some principles of government which should be maintained always, even if it costs us periodic economic pain. Sacrificing those principles for economic stability will only result in loss of freedoms on levels other than the economy. I am aware that the US government has increased its meddling in our economic system since the Great Depression, but as I was not around in the twenties and thirties to stop it, I don't see how I can accept any blame for my blindness at that time.

It has been that way since the 1600s, as long as there has been modern finance and modern capitalism.

It has been that way in countries other than the US since that time, but the atmosphere that allowed that to occur was part of the reason many people fled to to the New World, and why the colonists rebelled against England. That as a factor in the US economy is a much, much more recent phenomenon. Why you would use it as a basis for justifying Obama's and Congress's actions now is a mystery to me.