@georgeob1,
Sheesh. Now I'm McCarthyish. But you've taken your time with that post. Thanks.
Quote:It appears to me that you are basically saying that things you don't agree with don't exist or have any validity
Protests against some government initiative self-evidently tells us a disagreement exists. Where I or you are protesting, obviously we grant little or no validity to the initiative.
Paying into an insurance scheme that funds abortions is hardly equal in terms of incursion into citizens' private and personal lives as forcing women to undergo medically unnecessary vaginal probes or making it illegal (or functionally impossible) for women to receive an abortion if they wish one. That's the difference I point to. To deny women the right to have an abortion is equivalent to forcing women to have an abortion when they don't want one (one child policy).
Quote:growing limitations on free speech and the exercise of religious freedom
You've bought into the religious right's agitprop and I'm not going to argue this one with you again.
Quote:I don't believe the framers of our constitution had "social organization initiatives" in mind when they wrote our constitution.
Of course they did. The constitution and bill of rights are exactly that. They are designs around which society was to be organized. Three co-equal branches, balancing each other, is very exactly a construction of social organization (based on Enlightenment understandings of how prior systems had come up short). Humans are social animals and always organize themselves. Very often, that organization is built on domination and cruelty, and on exclusion and maintenance of power through force. Equality is the very last thing desired. The notion forwarded that 'all men are created equal' is exactly and precisely a notion or value forwarded to engineer how the future American society ought run.
Quote:Moreover, what in our constitution or tradition prevents either conservatives or progressives from organizing coalitions of political parties, social organizations and even media outlets to advance their views? I believe that is called freedom of speech and expression. My strong impression is that both progressives and conservatives do that about equally - as is their right, though it appears that it is only the conservative actions in this area that you see as dangerous. Do you consider that to be an objective and rigorously dispassionate intellectual stance?
Thus you'd be fine if the American Communist Party was resurgent and growing in popularity? Of if the White Supremacist Movement registered as a political party and put up representatives in all states and at the federal level? Or perhaps a New American Nazi Party? Freedom of speech and association and all that. I'd guess not. But why not? Or perhaps you might say, "go ahead, boys, organize" but then you'd fight the bastards. You and I don't share notions of what the Republican Party in the US has become. So you'll behave as you do and I will behave as I do.
The meeting in question was written up by Robert Draper in his book and was widely reported (lots you can find on the internet including interviews with participants like Gingrich). The over-arching goal decided upon was unrelenting and coordinated opposition to everything Obama would set out to achieve. So when you, or anyone else on the right, repeats the claim that Obama wouldn't talk to Republicans or wouldn't cooperate with them (a necessary cover story, of course - and propaganda because it was designed to deceive citizens), I just shut you off as no-nothings.
Was I in the room, you ask. Sleazy, george. You and I are never in those rooms. That's why we have to put in the time studying the reporting and accounts. You didn't much bother (big surprise) but I did.
