panzade
 
  2  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 12:15 pm
@rabel22,
rabel
Quote:
A president dem or rep has much power in relation to the media.


I guess you didn't read ehbeth's post

rabel
Quote:
The media who have a special place in a democracy are the ones who have let the people down.


certainly true during W's tenure and ehbeth pointed out that it is continuing.

rabel
Quote:
Why do you think that most people get thier information on the internet.


dunno...maybe because they want to read news and opinion that mirrors their own feelings.
I haven't found the internet to be more unbiased than the print media and (see above) Obama's media people are using the internet for exposure in much the same way as they use the print media.
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 12:15 pm
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:

Yes, but I can (and have) ticked off my reasons for saying that. I don't know if ehbeth can.


You honestly think Obama is more left-wing than FDR?

Cycloptichorn
cicerone imposter
 
  2  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 12:18 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
It's because Foxie is blind to the fact that most of Obama's bailouts are helping the fat cats of wall street and not main street. If that's a liberal, Bush was a light weight.
Foxfyre
 
  -1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 12:40 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Yes I do. FDR was the most left of center we had elected up to his time, but he still promoted and defended the basic American values of his day. He would never in his wildest dreams presume to diminish America in the eyes of another nation, he practiced fiscal responsibility, he recognized the virtue in working for what we have as opposed to a handout, he built assurances and stopgaps into the social security system he initiated and I honestly think he didn't realize what an enormous and unmanageable monstrosity it would become.

FDR said a lot of stuff that Obama has repeated in various ways, but can you imagine Barack Obama saying:

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.

I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.

"We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. . . . Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity."

"I hope that you have re-read the Constitution of the United States in these past few weeks. Like the Bible, it ought to be read again and again."

"I am certain that the rank and file of patriotic Republicans do not realize the nature of this threat. They should remember, and we must remember, what the collaborative understanding between Communism and Nazism has done to the processes of democracy abroad... "

"Those forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy. Their objective is to prevent democracy from becoming strong."

"The Nazis are as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God."

FDR said them all and frequently wove such concepts into his speeches. He did preach a social gospel, but never outside responsibility and personal accountability--he was not at all interested in giving away the store.

In some ways LBJ was left of Roosevelt and Carter left of LBJ. It is hard to say how any of those would have governed in this day and time and with the current Congress to deal with, however.

And LBJ was way to the right of George W. Bush for that matter.
panzade
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 12:49 pm
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:
most of Obama's bailouts are helping the fat cats of wall street and not main street.


I'm satisfied that Chairman Ben Bernanke knew what he was doing when he told Obama that if they didn't rescue Bear Stearns(for example) there would not be a main street left standing.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20090310a.htm
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  3  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 12:51 pm
@Foxfyre,
FDR was president in the middle of a war against an unprecedented and world-threatening evil, to which there is absolutely no comparison today. Statements such as the ones he made were appropriate to the time. The fact that Obama doesn't go around repeating that stuff doesn't make him 'more left' than FDR.

Obama also has not been making statements which diminish America in the eyes of any other nation whatsoever; quite the contrary, in fact. Obama's statements have elevated the US in the eyes of others. You have a hard time understanding this, because you don't really understand what weakness and strength are; like most conservatives, you feel that bullying and shows of force are signs of strength, when in fact the opposite is true. Obama's statements which show humility? That is a sign of strength, for it takes strength to admit errors and strength to apologize for them.

Cycloptichorn
panzade
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 12:53 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Quote:
like most conservatives, you feel that bullying and shows of force are signs of strength, when in fact the opposite is true.


hear hear
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 02:04 pm
@panzade,
That was really brought out by Bush who said "if you're not with us, you're against us!" What happened was that many of our long-time allies all over the world deserted us, and we made enemies of many Middle East countries.

The Bush administration's rhetoric during the invasion of Iraq used words like "shock and awe." We used napalm-like and incendiary bombs that was deemed illegal by the world community.

Quote:
Officials confirm dropping firebombs on Iraqi troops
By James W. Crawley, Union-Tribune, 5 August 2003. American jets killed Iraqi troops with firebombs similar to the controversial napalm used in the Vietnam War. “We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches,” said Col. Randolph Alles in a recent interview. “They were Iraqi soldiers there. It's no great way to die,” he added.
Fire Bombs in Iraq: Napalm By Any Other [Name]
Iraq Analysis Group, Report Summary, 15 April 2005. The continuing use of incendiary weapons (napalm) by the US military in Iraq. The UK is party to an international convention banning such weapons where they may cause harm to civilians. In Iraq, UK forces are part of a coalition which does not adhere to internationally agreed standards of warfare.
US ‘uses incendiary arms’ in Iraq
BBC News, 8 November 2005. Italian state TV, Rai, has broadcast a documentary accusing the US military of using of phosphorus bombs against civilians in the Iraqi city of Falluja. This amounts to the illegal use of chemical arms, though such bombs are considered incendiary devices. The US military admits using the weapon in Iraq to illuminate battlefields.
panzade
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 02:07 pm
@cicerone imposter,
you're preaching to the choir cici
0 Replies
 
H2O MAN
 
  -1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 02:17 pm
@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:

That was really brought out by Bush who said "if you're not with us, you're against us!"


The most devastating event after that speech was democrats removing their support for US troops.
0 Replies
 
Foxfyre
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 02:25 pm
@panzade,
The difference is those that conservatives usually do know why they believe what they believe and can articulate that. Liberals seem to be more focused on attacking or criticizing or insulting or accusing conservatives who do. Tell me Panzade. We've been friends for awhile.

What do you have a problem with in this definition? And what in it do you see as evil or bullying?

Quote:
Modern American Conservatism/Classical Liberalism
(adapted from Wiki)

Modern American Conservatism (MAC)/Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

As such, it is the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The "normative core" of MAC/classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society, though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of some basic public goods with what constitutes public goods being seen as very limited. The qualification classical was applied retroactively to distinguish it from more recent, 20th-century conceptions of liberalism and its related movements, such as social liberalism MACs promote strong national defense and necessary regulation to prevent the citiziens/states from doing violence to each other, but are otherwise suspicious of all but the most minimal government necessary to perform its Constitutional mandates and object to most of the federally administered welfare state.
cicerone imposter
 
  2  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 05:00 pm
@Foxfyre,
Most conservatives do not follow the MAC credos, so how do you know they can articulate the republican party thesis?

The most exposed republicans/conservatives today are Cheney, Limbaugh, Beohner, McCain, Palin, Beck, Hannity, and a handful of others. Where's the consistency that any of us can understand?

What we've been hearing from the conservatives are mostly fear-mongering and no solutions to the current problems.

How do conservatives articulate that? Just more fear and no?
0 Replies
 
Debra Law
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 05:46 pm
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:

FDR was president in the middle of a war against an unprecedented and world-threatening evil, to which there is absolutely no comparison today. Statements such as the ones he made were appropriate to the time. The fact that Obama doesn't go around repeating that stuff doesn't make him 'more left' than FDR.

Obama also has not been making statements which diminish America in the eyes of any other nation whatsoever; quite the contrary, in fact. Obama's statements have elevated the US in the eyes of others. You have a hard time understanding this, because you don't really understand what weakness and strength are; like most conservatives, you feel that bullying and shows of force are signs of strength, when in fact the opposite is true. Obama's statements which show humility? That is a sign of strength, for it takes strength to admit errors and strength to apologize for them.

Cycloptichorn


Exactly. Conservatives are advising the president to throw away common sense, decency, and diplomacy. Conservatives allege, if our president isn't denouncing Iran everyday as an evil empire and singing "bomb, bomb, Iran" on national television, then he's diminishing our nation in the eyes of the world. I'm thankful that we don't have a saber-rattling, trigger-happy president representing our country on the world stage. Everyone in the entire world already knows that we carry a big stick. Rubbing that information in their noses every five minutes doesn't make us strong, it only makes us hateful bullies.
spendius
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 05:52 pm
@Debra Law,
What's the big stick for then Debra?
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 06:03 pm
@spendius,
What big stick? Bush was good at threatening to use it, and did in Iraq.
0 Replies
 
panzade
 
  3  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 07:13 pm
@Foxfyre,
Quote:
What do you have a problem with in this definition? And what in it do you see as evil or bullying?


I don't have a problem with it dear friend. It's all hunky dory in writing.

The problem starts when a conservative president doesn't follow the MAC guidelines and starts a preemptive war under false pretenses, attempts to privatize social security, loosens the restraints on the banking and lending industries, loosens the fiscal constraints on our government to underwrite an illegal war(according to the UN) and turns a surplus into the largest deficit in our history!

Bottom line: you CAN articulate what you believe, and I have always read your posts with an open mind and will continue to do so.
panzade
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 07:15 pm
@spendius,
The Big Stick

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Tr-bigstick-cartoon.JPG
0 Replies
 
Debra Law
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 07:23 pm
@spendius,
spendius wrote:

What's the big stick for then Debra?


According to the foul-mouthed, pseudo-outraged mothers who claim to be the champions of family values while simultaneously calling Letterman's wife a slut and his son a bastard, a big stick is what A-Rod uses to knock up teenage girls in between innings. But, if you ask A-Rod, this is what he says:

"The less talking I do, the better," A-Rod said. "I want to let my bat do the talking."

Source: A-Rod promises to speak softly and to carry a big stick


Just kidding.

If you don't know what it means to carry a big stick without flaunting it around like a horny bastard anxious to use it and to show how potent he is, I doubt anything I say will educate you. Maybe you're one of those "uneducable" people whom Foxfyre claims cannot understand the kind of special intellectual intercourse that she alone shares with Dr. Thomas Sowell.



Foxfyre
 
  1  
Thu 25 Jun, 2009 07:53 pm
@panzade,
Well thank you for that. While we agree that a President and Congress who sold themselves as conservative governed otherwise--that was the whole motive behind my conservatism thread--we do disagree on other points here and there and probably will continue to do so. But as long as folks can disagree without either needing to be evil or even necessarily wrong, it's all good.

In my opinion that definition was what modern American conservatism is and I believe the large majority of Americans still philosophically agree with many, most, or all points in it. I see it as the goal to shoot for; perhaps the yardstick by which we evaluate those who will lead us.
spendius
 
  1  
Fri 26 Jun, 2009 06:41 am
@Debra Law,
The way I see it Debra is that if you have the Big Stick, and others do too, and people know about it then it is automatically flaunted. A bit like the heavyweight champion of the world in evening dress. The power only seems not to be flaunted if seen superficially.

I feel sure you could educate me in lots of ways.
 

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