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We conservatives need to calm down
Chicago Sun Times ^ | 04/06/09 | DAVID HOROWITZ

Posted on 04/06/2009 8:55:07 AM PDT by Borges

I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the right, which is beginning to cause me concern. I am referring to the over-the-top hysteria in response to the first months in office of our new president, which distinctly reminds me of the "Bush is Hitler" crowd on the left.

Conservatives, please. Let's not duplicate the manias of the left as we figure out how to deal with President Obama. He is not exactly the antichrist, although a disturbing number of people on the right are convinced he is.

I have recently received commentaries that claim that "Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history" and "never has a politician in this land had such a quasi-religious impact on so many people" and "Obama is a narcissist," which leads the author to then compare Obama to David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Excuse me while I blow my nose.

This fellow has failed to notice that all politicians are narcissists. So what? Political egos are one of the reasons the Founders put checks and balances on executive power. As for serial lying, is there a politician that cannot be accused of that? And once, a recent president set a pretty high bar in this category, and we survived it. As for Obama's speeches, they are hardly in the Huey Long, Louis Farrakhan, Fidel Castro vein. They are in fact eloquently and cleverly centrist and sober.

So what's the panic? It is true that Obama has shown surprising ineptitude in his first months in office, but he's not a zero with no accomplishments, as many conservatives seem to think -- unless you regard beating the Clinton machine and winning the presidency as nothing. But in doing this, you fall into the "Bush-is-an-idiot" bag of liberal miasmas.

It is also true Obama has ceded his domestic economic agenda to the House Democrats and spent a lot of money in the process. But what's the surprise in this? After all, George W. Bush and John McCain both proposed (and in Bush's case pushed through) massive government giveaways (which amount to government takeovers as well). This is bad, but it doesn't make Obama a closet Mussolini, however deplorable the conservatives among us may regard it. Moreover, he has run into political resistance even within his own party. Charlie Rangel has made it clear that the itemized deduction tax hike is not going through his committee -- and that should tell you the American system is still in place.

Even as astute a conservative thinker as Mark Steyn has been swept up in the tide that thinks Obama is a "transformative" radical. But look again at his approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, he is carrying out the Bush policies -- the same that he once joined his fellow Democrats in condemning. And that should be reassuring to anyone concerned about where he is heading as commander in chief.

In other words, while it's reasonable to be unhappy with a Democratic administration and even concerned because the Democrats are now a socialist party in the European sense, we are not witnessing the coming of the antichrist. A good strategy for political conflicts is to understand your opponent first -- not to underestimate him, but not to overestimate him, either.

As we move forward, Obama faces increasingly tough choices in the wars against Islamic fascism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza and Iran. Hopefully, he will make the right choices, and should he do so, conservatives will need to be there to support him. If he makes the wrong choices, conservatives will need to be there to oppose him. But neither our support nor our opposition should be based on hysterical responses to policies that we just don't like. Let's leave that kind of behavior to the liberals who invented it.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 60sradical; antichrist; bho44; calmdown; conservatives; davidhorowitz; democrats; first100days; horowitz; obama; obamatruthfile; ods; worst100days
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To: JasonC
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?

321 posted on 04/07/2009 7:37:14 PM PDT by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard
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To: HotLead61
I'm saying the lead story on Bloomberg is the team at GM carefully preparing their bankruptcy filing. GM is going bankrupt. Full stop.
322 posted on 04/07/2009 7:37:29 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: All

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


323 posted on 04/07/2009 7:40:03 PM PDT by sonic109
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To: WhistlingPastTheGraveyard
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.
324 posted on 04/07/2009 7:40:24 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: sonic109
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.
325 posted on 04/07/2009 7:41:58 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: HotLead61
You are not God, sweetie.
326 posted on 04/07/2009 7:42:47 PM PDT by JasonC
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To: JasonC
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.
327 posted on 04/07/2009 7:45:00 PM PDT by HotLead61 (Death as a Free Man is much preferred to "life" as a slave)
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To: JasonC

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


328 posted on 04/07/2009 7:46:28 PM PDT by HotLead61 (Death as a Free Man is much preferred to "life" as a slave)
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To: JasonC
America will in fact survive and prosper.

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

329 posted on 04/07/2009 7:46:36 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: JasonC

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.


330 posted on 04/07/2009 7:50:56 PM PDT by sonic109
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To: tarheelswamprat

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.


331 posted on 04/07/2009 7:52:22 PM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: JasonC
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.
332 posted on 04/07/2009 7:54:35 PM PDT by HotLead61 (Death as a Free Man is much preferred to "life" as a slave)
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To: JasonC
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.
333 posted on 04/07/2009 8:00:52 PM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: JasonC
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.
334 posted on 04/07/2009 8:03:13 PM PDT by HotLead61 (Death as a Free Man is much preferred to "life" as a slave)
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To: JasonC
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)
335 posted on 04/07/2009 8:08:35 PM PDT by HotLead61 (Death as a Free Man is much preferred to "life" as a slave)
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To: JasonC

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.


336 posted on 04/07/2009 8:15:39 PM PDT by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard
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To: HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity; JasonC; All
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!

337 posted on 04/07/2009 9:13:40 PM PDT by tarheelswamprat
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Comment #338 Removed by Moderator

To: tarheelswamprat
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]

339 posted on 04/07/2009 9:25:45 PM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: JasonC
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.
340 posted on 04/08/2009 1:10:10 PM PDT by fr_freak
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