have you ever noticed?

Re: have you ever noticed?


I think there are plenty of people out there that would think that's what makes you a liberal.

so no wing-nuts from either side want to respond?

What do you want us to say? Guilty as charged.

So, can we talk about the weather, or something, then?

What about lost leaders? Or is it loss leaders when broccoli @ 49 cents a pound?

I can never remember if that means Bush is lost, or if broccoli is selling below cost

The man who did most for me, when I was a lost soul (figuratively speaking) at an early age, was a political conservative. In time, I began to take issue with his conservative views, but chalked it up two differing personalities. What brought us together did not change at all. He was an author, and I still re-read some of his books from time to time. I have come to believe that true conservatism and liberalism are flip sides of a coin, that they are actually complimentary to one another. Not the wacked out stuff that generally serves in their name, of course. In a healthy and sane society, there would be constructive give and take.

Constructive give and take:

Conservative economics
Liberal legal / social policies
Effectual antitrust
Internet referendum voting on all major issues

pickles.

Half the time I don't even know what the hell i'm talking about. I just make the Sh!t up.

I don't even read what the other guy said.

Not even Chum? <Aghast>

I'm anti-lumping, dys. Except, of course, when I discuss you and the other stinking commie pinko liberal poopity heads.

The words "Liberal" and "conservative" have become quite elastic over time. What was termed "Liberal" political and economic views in Europe a generation ago (and in some quarters, today) is what passes for "conservative" in the U.S. today.

That said, I find Dys' proposition intriguing. First he announces that all partisans, on both sides, are jerks; then he admits his partisanship but claims to have overcome the jerk part. Finally he invites any and all jerk partisans to comment.

How to explain the absence of a stampede?

Everybody fancies himself a strident, independent iconoclast ... and yet debate here is an ever-repeating cycle of the same issues and political faultlines.

Odd, that.

Well, Nimh, I thinbk you are a strident, independent iconoclast. I, however, am a wise, well-informed, but modest and restrained commentator.

We all know you need to be restrained.

Nobody's perfect !

The plane don't fly with one wing baby.

The left and the right.

Why thank you, georgeob1: " Nobody's perfect!"
I do agree with Dys that "KNEE-JERK" anything is mindless. But notice that Dys is a knee-jerk trouble maker. He initiates these provocative threads and then disappears. Jeez.

In my archaeology studies, I read a translation of graffiti found on a Roman wall from a couple of thousand years ago. It said (paraphrasing from memory)..."What have things come to? We are led by men who care only for themselves and in these dishonorable days the young are spoiled and lazy and show no understanding of or respect for traditions." If george didn't have that O' in his name, I'd suspect a grumpy ancestor.

How we go about talking here, and what we talk about, is a consequence of our membership. If we were all graduates of MIT or had sociology degrees or were John Birchers from Idaho, our conversations would hew differently. Likewise if it was a European board or an African board. But the typical human elements would show up everywhere. Lola is part of a discussion board populated only by psychoanalysts (most with medical degrees preceding their long psychoanalytic training) and a lot of those discussions go round and round. And there are assholes along with the non-assholes there too.

I posted a link yesterday to what I think is a very important and valuable PDF file and yet, I expect that at most, one or maybe two might bother to read it. It isn't even complicated. But it is some 23 pages long.

But even if it was merely a page long, its observations and conclusions would simply not be palatable to a portion of our membership. It will violate an existing key political and epistemological myth.

I don't know what else we can do here (besides the spiritually indyspensible humor that our thread author excels at, or the submission of quality information that nimh and thomas excel at) other than the Socratic enterprise... try to undercut people's arrogant and delusional certainties.

The depressing corner of that is, that as valuable a fellow as Socrates was to human thought and culture, his is a battle which shows meager progress. It's a never-ending thing, like keeping your bum clean.