Thread: Oh Good Lord
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Re: Oh Good Lord
Old 11-12-2006, 04:37 PM   #3
Xantar
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Default Re: Oh Good Lord

I'm going to sidestep the world peace argument for now because really, nobody knows what's going on out there. I just want to focus on one little point here.

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As for the world being a better place under Democrats... maybe. Who knows, the future hasn't happened yet and the Denocrats did elect conservative blue-dog reps.
It's conventional wisdom that the Democrats ran a bunch of "conservative" candidates and that's how they won the House and the Senate. There's a grain of truth to this, but we have to be careful about what we mean by the word "conseravtive."

Jon Tester of Montana, for example, is against the flag-burning amendment, is against a gay marriage ban, is pro-choice, is very pro-environmentalist (he used to be an organic farmer) and wants the tax system restructured so that the rich are paying a greater portion of it. A lot of the media has called him "conservative," and I guess since he supports gun rights then in that sense he is more conservative than than John Kerry. But given that list, I hardly think you could call him a true "conservative," whatever that word means nowadays.

Jim Webb of Virginia is really hard to nail down one way or another because his stated positions are actually pretty vague. You can look at his website and see if you can figure it out for yourself. About the only thing I've been able to glean is he thinks the tax system is too favorable to the rich and that the middle- and lower-classes are getting squeezed.

Claire McCaskill of Missouri wants to raise the minimum wage, supports "fair trade" policies (I've never been sure what that means, but it's always a Democrat position for some reason), wants to develop renewable energy resources, is strongly pro-environment and is against privatizing Social Security. In fact, her opponent was slamming her for being "too liberal" for Missouri.

The other new Democratic senators come from Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Ohio, none of which are exactly Republican bastions.

As for the House, we have people like John Yarmuth in Kentucky. He doesn't have too many stated positions, so all I have been able to find is he is against privatizing Social Security, wants universal health care and is a strong critic of No Child Left Behind.

I could get into all 28 other House candidates, but you get the idea by now. These people aren't pinko hippies, to be sure, but I don't think you could call most of them "conservative."

Oh, and one other thing.

Quote:
Your comments, while likely intended to get a rise out of me, are the common contention between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives think, while liberals feel. World peace would be wonderful, but logical analysis quickly brings the conslusion that world peace is an impossibility. So while conservatives recognize this fact and act in ways to try and protect themselves and their people, liberals refuse to apply logic and lessons learned in history and insist on believing that if we were just nice to everyone the world would be filled with lollypops, dandylions and free Phish concerts.
Come on now. All liberals are just acting on "gut instinct" or something? None of them are out there actually using their brains? There is absolutely no logical basis for their thinking at all? All the liberal thinkers out there are actually not thinking and their conservative counterparts are?

That's a wee bit harsh, not to mention simplistic, don't you think?
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