Dabum,
<<one of the most knee jerk conservative>>
Whenever a "liberal" accuses me or anyone of being a knee-jerk anything, I simply realize that he has given up trying to understand or reason anything and simply defaulted to an emotional and useless level of non-discourse. As I noted at length before:
Message 20410827
The Democrats/liberals [nothing very liberal or open about their minds, of course] are now caught in the very emotional sway of the poisonous stuff the the Dem brain stem feeds them. GWB and Cheney? A couple of fascists, no different than Hitler, Saddam or even Bin Laden, that's the scary story they have told and retold (Mort Sahl recently said exactly that on a story board).
It's very interesting to hear the common Democrat wax long and eloquent about the corruption, cowardice, conniving fascism and oppression of the current administration (almost certainly without any experience whatsoever of corrupt or fascist governance). It's a funny thing, but I don't feel the need to use words like communist, traitorous, weak kneed, disloyal, etc. to describe why I dislike Democrats and would not vote for a John/John admnistration, because I am not caught in the throes of emotional upheaval. I have an open mind. I read the liberal press, the conservative press, the centrist sources (if they exist) and figure out where I should stand on the political landscape, without an emotional response in the entire analysis.
I'm not caught in the Vietnam experience, looping ever backward into the unfortunate war waged between LBJ's immense ego and pitifully small brain on the one side and the North Vietnamese and the elite east coast press on the other side. If you have problems with D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, imagine the problems most people have with the entire conduct of the Vietnamese conflict.
One cannot, in essence, have a deep and constructive conversation with liberals until they untie themselves from the emotional ideas which they are slave to. They also need to try, TRY to understand how democracy is supposed to work (here's a shorthand: if we have the right to self governance, that means we have the right to get it wrong, until we decide to get it right, NOT that we need to cede the right to democracy to judges who exercise their wisdom upon the benighted masses and create law where legislatures have deferred, demurred or simply been negligent).
I imagine a conference of religious scholars, gathered for a week of hard thinking and discussion to determine the true nature of God. After a week they produce a 20 page paper or declaration, and congratulate themselves heartily on having mined the depths and breadths of human knowledge and spiritual endeavor. At last, finally, Man can understand God!
Unfortunately, since all the panels were made up of Southern Baptist ministers from the Virginias and the Carolinas, not a WHOLE lot of discourse and discussion actually takes place. No Catholics, Buddhists, or even Methodists have been invited or heard.
This is very much like the thought process that happens when universities, Hollywood and the Democratic Party try to decide the big issues. One university recently had a symposium on the war in Iraq: guests included 5 professors and 2 antiwar activists. Guess what their conclusions were?
Kb |
