direwolf74 Wrote:Oh man, that's great! You can always count on Moore for a little humor to lighten things up. It's been a week already and I'm still as pissed off as I was on November 3rd...but reading this makes me feel a bit better. Thanks for posting!
:thumb:
cratch: :x :rambo:
prz Wrote:I believe Bush was the first president since 1988 to get over 50 percent of the vote. There is a number good old Michael Moore forgot to include.There was really no viable 3rd candidate this year receiving votes.
The Darkest Canuck Wrote::thumb: im a good guy sometimestragicallymike Wrote:but over 50% of Americans are Idiots. And they all voted for Bush.
hmmm, something i agree with Mike on...how strange...maybe he's not so bad after all...
for a Buffalite
:lol:
Stephen Dame Wrote:I thought for sure this would have something to with cheap wine and Krispy Kreme's... LOTS of Krispy Kreme's.Ha ha ha...no kidding. I bet every Democrat who ever tried to quit smoking, drinking or binge-eating has just suffered a relapse!
Quote:Nov. 9, 2004. 06:59 AM
So liberal, it hurts
Liberals need to open their minds, instead of alienating everyone who doesn't agree with them
SAN GREWAL
"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."
John Stuart Mill, 19th-century liberal scholar
Two e-mails circulated last week offered further proof that liberals today are out of touch with their classic values.
One of the mass mailings was a list of the 50 U.S. states, ranked in order of highest average IQ. The top part of the list included all the states that swung in favour of Democratic senator John Kerry. The states with the lowest IQ voted for President George W. Bush.
The other shows a map of Canada and the U.S, separated by two colours, one that covers Canada, the West coast down to California and the northeastern states — this region, shaped like a fat horseshoe, is referred to as The United States of Canada. The rest of the map, covering the American South and Midwest, is called Jesusland.
The message behind the two postings is clear: The values shared by the enlightened folks living in traditional liberal areas are not shared by bible-thumping rednecks who live elsewhere.
And, worse, if you're not a liberal democrat, you're stupid.
Were he alive, liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill would probably suggest the opposite: That the arrogance of liberals today, who assume they are always right and their counterparts always wrong, is a product of the dimmest of bulbs.
In the last half-year this sort of attitude saw the federal Liberals in Canada reduced from a strong majority to a flimsy minority — even after a fear-based campaign directed at proving, "The other side is evil," as one Liberal party insider was quoted in a national newspaper after the election was over.
Canadians evidently, still blindly embrace liberal ideology, too often celebrating all attacks against anyone who disagrees with them.
However, in the U.S., regardless of what any acerbic e-mails suggest, the numbers don't lie — close to 60 million American voters rejected the liberal platform of the Democratic party.
The modern liberal is quickly accomplishing what conservatives on the far right have long hoped would happen: The distortion of classical liberal values into a brand of elitism that renders contemporary liberalism irrelevant to much of the North American mainstream.
Liberals have become an aristocracy, often out of reach and reason of the average individual.
Consider some content from the <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.turnleft.com">http://www.turnleft.com</a><!-- m --> website, "The Home of Liberalism on the Web" which has been particularly popular among university students. It includes a list of "Friendly cities" (such as Berkeley, California) and "Unfriendly cities" (like Charlotte, North Carolina).
Here's a quote from the site: "You know you are a conservative if you believe ... The most persecuted group of people in all history are white, Christian males and it is about time they started to fight back against their oppressors ... Your AK-47 is the only thing keeping a tyrannical government from imprisoning millions of your fellow citizens in secret concentration camps ... Any woman who wants equal pay, control over her own body or thinks for herself is a wacko feminist ..."
None of this unbelievable exaggeration actually helps the liberal cause — all it does is alienate.
At its root, classical liberalism stands for the protection of individual freedoms. And it's this value that pits so many young liberal-minded Canadians and Americans against conservative forces, which advocate restriction such as no same-sex marriages.
But, more than any other issue, what many young liberals fear is the threat to their unique brand of cultural liberalism.
In a tone intended (unsuccessfully) to avoid any obvious snobbery or elitism, young liberals often veer into discussions about those "other" people who don't live in urban centres.
They comment on how those people dress — usually in earthtones — their bewildering acceptance of religion and remark how a lack of cosmopolitan cultural sophistication that makes these people rubes and rednecks.
Somehow, family life lived outside large urban centres, devoid of artistic/creative/intellectual refinement, narrowed by the detail to financial security and future success — and often guided morally by religion or spiritualism — cannot ever be reconciled with liberal values that place individual freedom and choice above all else.
For such liberals, anyone who disagrees with them is either a fool, a conservative or, usually, both.
Even old-guard liberals like``Halfmast Trousers," who posted the following on Fark (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.fark.com">http://www.fark.com</a><!-- m -->), are growing weary:
"I guess the biggest pill to swallow is the whole `Bush Stole the Election' thing. Well, no more. He won this one, no argument. For myself, I am liberal on almost all issues, and never voted Republican in 20 years, but I ended up voting for Bush simply because of people like Michael Moore, the whole Hollywood contingent, the insane protesters in black masks that I have seen, the reckless Fark posters ... the anti-Bush ignoramuses I hang out with at the cafe, the Portland, Seattle, San Fran contingents, etc."
The sort of urban liberals Mr. Trousers laments continue to lump their unenlightened counterparts into broad groups of people who listen to mainstream top-40 music (or country), or worse — shop at big-box chain stores.
By contrast, the cultural liberalism young people have adopted is a licence of sorts, to conduct oneself in a free-spirited way, as long as no harm is done to others.
It encourages individuals to pursue freedom not as a means to an end, but simply because they can.
This form of liberalism runs contrary to the beliefs of many classical theorists. People such as Mill, Adam Smith and David Hume expressed a profound respect for the embeddedness of individuals in families, religious communities and small social networks.
The classical brand of liberalism they defended recognized the need to protect individual freedoms: To guarantee the material opportunities everyone should enjoy equally and, perhaps more importantly, to help preserve the moral conventions that help condition people.
Many young people today have turned this definition on its head.
For example, freedom of religious expression — a foundation of traditional liberalism in this country — is now often viewed in a contradictory manner.
Even though evangelical Christians have chosen their path, liberals offer up patronizing explanations of how these churchgoers have been brainwashed into adopting specific views about a range of moral issues.
Many young "liberal-minded" people today seem ill-equipped to reconcile the hypocrisy of the brand of liberalism they've been sold.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't agree with the Christian right's position on moral and social issues.
But I always thought it was a liberal position to accept and respect differences of opinions.
So, when Bush's victory last week came with news of the emerging force of the evangelical movement and the power of a mobilized Christian right, many of the liberal opinions expressed in Canada seemed misguided.
These religious constituencies are now described in a similar way that Islamic extremists have been: Somehow these people are unable to make individual choices due to the overwhelming and fanatical influence of religion in their lives.
If a new generation of young urban liberals can drop this sort of moral arrogance and accept the khaki pants and Gap shirts that their SUV-driving conservative counterparts in the suburbs seem so fond of, they might be able to push liberal values back into respectability.
If not, the liberal culture snobs in this country and those south of the border will have to continue to find solace from other members of their exclusive club, as they shake their heads at the growing number of people who just don't seem to think the way they do.
MikeS Wrote:Not trying to stir the pot, but I offer this up strictly as food for thought, in light of the latest round of "Bush-bashing"...from the youth section (I.D.) of today's Toronto Star (a decidedly Liberal newspaper)...I apologise in advance for the length, but it's a subscription website, so I can't just post the link...
Quote:The message behind the two postings is clear: The values shared by the enlightened folks living in traditional liberal areas are not shared by bible-thumping rednecks who live elsewhere.
And, worse, if you're not a liberal democrat, you're stupid.
Quote:However, in the U.S., regardless of what any acerbic e-mails suggest, the numbers don't lie — close to 60 million American voters rejected the liberal platform of the Democratic party.
Quote:The modern liberal is quickly accomplishing what conservatives on the far right have long hoped would happen: The distortion of classical liberal values into a brand of elitism that renders contemporary liberalism irrelevant to much of the North American mainstream.
Liberals have become an aristocracy, often out of reach and reason of the average individual.
Quote:But, more than any other issue, what many young liberals fear is the threat to their unique brand of cultural liberalism.
In a tone intended (unsuccessfully) to avoid any obvious snobbery or elitism, young liberals often veer into discussions about those "other" people who don't live in urban centres.
They comment on how those people dress — usually in earthtones — their bewildering acceptance of religion and remark how a lack of cosmopolitan cultural sophistication that makes these people rubes and rednecks.
Somehow, family life lived outside large urban centres, devoid of artistic/creative/intellectual refinement, narrowed by the detail to financial security and future success — and often guided morally by religion or spiritualism — cannot ever be reconciled with liberal values that place individual freedom and choice above all else.
For such liberals, anyone who disagrees with them is either a fool, a conservative or, usually, both.
Quote:Even though evangelical Christians have chosen their path, liberals offer up patronizing explanations of how these churchgoers have been brainwashed into adopting specific views about a range of moral issues.
Many young "liberal-minded" people today seem ill-equipped to reconcile the hypocrisy of the brand of liberalism they've been sold.
Quote:Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't agree with the Christian right's position on moral and social issues.
But I always thought it was a liberal position to accept and respect differences of opinions.
Quote:Were he alive, liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill would probably suggest the opposite: That the arrogance of liberals today, who assume they are always right and their counterparts always wrong, is a product of the dimmest of bulbs.
skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Instead of focusing on ideology, character, intelligence, and so on, perhaps debate could actually focus on fact and argument, i.e. on the issues themselves?
The Horrible Esthete Wrote:skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Instead of focusing on ideology, character, intelligence, and so on, perhaps debate could actually focus on fact and argument, i.e. on the issues themselves?
I would answer by saying that what's chiefly responsible for the reluctance to focus on the facts of the issues themselves is clearly outlined in Gewal's editorial....
