Foxfyre wrote:If you had really been paying attention you would note that this is a Bush supporters thread, and you also would have noticed that I have been comparing how various well known people have been taking opposite sides of a particular issue.
Well, quite. I'm sorry if I missed some, but I merely listed the "various well known people" you chose to quote by name on the last few pages I read. And it had me wondering. Are these, then, sort of the calibration points? It's a very logical, natural reaction to, when confronted with an ambiguous issue, think: "What do [fill in] think?", with [fill in] standing for proposed figures of authority that one would look to. I was struck by the [fill in] people here being Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, Hannity ... are those the primary points of orientation, then?
My question is twofold, really. There is usually quite a little storm of indignation among residing conservatives when a ranting libbie says something about you all just listening to Limbaugh and Coulter. It is ignorant and insulting, you would object, to pretend like they speak for the mainstream of conservatives. It's in fact, you would reply, the typically bone-headed reaction of lefties who just want to make you out to be stupid talk-radio sheep. Hell, "I never listen to talk radio, actually", would be a typical reaction.
OK, so how does this instance figure into that? Who do you go on by instinct? What's the first sources you look at, yourself, when you want to know what the map of conservative opinion looks like on a topic? If it is, apparently, Coulter, Limbaugh and Hannity, doesn't that make it a little harder to object when those are the figures referenced to by lefties when they try to characterise "US conservatives" next time, too?
Seriously though - I have a sincere enough question here, too. There
must be more reasoned or expert opinions to sample out there. Who do you consider the prime conservative thinkers, analysist and opiners? Who are leading the way into the thoughts of tomorrow? If I were to ask, recommend me one author to read on conservatism's answers today, who'd it be? The stuff copied/pasted into this forum is overwhelmingly the column stuff by exactly the above-mentioned type of pundits. But who do you read when you want more than that?
Foxfyre wrote:But then I suspect you are more interested in playing "gotcha" than you are interested in what we are actually discussing.
I already noted that on the issue of the British selling their ports in the US to Dubai, I have no opinion really - apart from thinking it's an overblown story in the first place. So yeah, the dynamics of the reactions
to the issue are the more interesting thing for me, here.
