.
Roy Edroso, for the win:
… Try to imagine what a spectacle this presents to normal people: The Loyal Opposition telling them that the President is a dictator, and that non-discrimination laws are the real fascism. Maybe they actually think this is electoral gold. After all, we’re all supposed to be libertarians now, right? And, as we grow weary of repeating, libertarianism is basically conservatism with a brand makeover. At Forbes, Ralph Benko assures us that “Libertarians And Conservatives Must Find Common Ground” to win, and the way he suggests they achieve that is… to turn against gay rights. “Traditional values as vote getter (not just within the party base but with Independents — including ethnics and blue collar workers) violates the meta-narrative of the party elites,” he says. “Still, the conclusion that traditional values is a net, and a legitimate, vote getter is almost impossible to avoid.”
That’ll be news to most people (though maybe Matt Welch will go for it), but conservatives aren’t most people, and decreasingly resemble them. Here’s Ben Shapiro with his own formula for conservative victory:
Ask anybody who’s ever broken up with a girlfriend, no matter what you say to your girlfriend after you break up with her, she’s going to think you’re a jerk. Right? And the same thing is true with the American people.
The American people have broken up with conservativism. You’re not going to convince them that conservativism is the way to go by being really nice. The way that you’re going to convince them that conservatism is the way to go is because this is a two-party system, and we can paint the other side as mean and nasty as they are. And they are. They’re mean and nasty and they’re horrible people. I mean, they truly are.
Maybe Shapiro will get a chance to read that from the podium at the 2016 GOP Convention. You know, in my conspiratorial moments, I think these guys are all plants designed to destroy the Republican Party. Crazy, you say? We’ll see who’s crazy!
Virgin Ben Shapiro’s idea of a winning pitch: Vote for us, America, or we’ll stalk you on Facebook! And tweet threats to release your (nonexistent) sex tape! And call the campus radio station and tell them it’s ALL YOUR FAULT that we’re threatening to shoot up the quad!…
***********
Apart from mocking the Usual Gang of Idiots, what’s on the agenda for the weekend?
Bobby Thomson
I think I understand why the formerly Virgin Ben was.
TriassicSands
That isn’t really true. Most liberals value certain things that either conservatives or libertarians believe, but they usually aren’t the same things. What conservatives and libertarians have in common mostly is all the bad things. Conservatives may once have been isolationist and against foreign intervention, but that isn’t true of the modern conservatives — at least not those in the Republican Party. A real libertarian believes in a right to privacy; modern conservatives don’t. The list goes on. It may not be an incredibly long list, but I believe it’s a real list of real differences.
I’ve always considered libertarians to be silly. Theirs is not a real world philosophy. On the other hand, I now consider conservatives to be just plain bad human beings (there are undoubtedly exceptions, but I doubt you’ll find them as active participants in Republican politics). Of course, today the conservative agenda and philosophy has joined libertarianism in not being a real world philosophy. Both now occupy different suites in the Hotel Make Believe.
bemused
Shapiro…wow. That’s one of the worst cases of rightwing projection projectile vomiting I’ve ever seen.
Suffern ACE
If only there was someone out there letting voters know that there was some party out there standing for traditional family values. Voters just aren’t aware of that brand positioning.
raven
These last couple of weeks before football are murder. . .and then like a flash it is gone.
NotMax
The fault, dear Shapiro, is not in your stars, but in yourselves.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: 14 days, 16 hours according to my alma mater’s website.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Sooner, there are several decent games Thursday night. Obviously the Georgia Clemson game is huge!
Linda Featheringill
Continued celebrations because Steve climbed a tree. :-)
MattF
I’ve gotten to the point that I (sincerely!) hope that wingers are just lying about what they believe. If not, they’re living in a land far, far away from actual sky-is-blue, grass-is-green reality, and that can’t be good.
ETA: I should say that lying doesn’t exclude appearing sincere, angry, or resentful. Quite the contrary.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I’m only interested in my 3 favorite teams: UCLA, UW, anyone who is playing U$C
raven
@MattF: It’s strange. I have known the head of the local republican party for many years. He is smart, funny as shit ,loves dogs and I always enjoyed running into him. I haven’t seen him since the last election but I cannot believe HE believes what idiots like Paul Broun spew. He’s a bail bondsman and I know he deals with the rough edge of our community but it just baffles me.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t blame you, one has to be interested in the teams they are connected to. It’s a shame the PAC 10 is so mediocre. It kills my LA brother too.
raven
Armed Dog Terrorizes Athens
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: PAC-12, I sometimes make the same slip. PAC-12 south is pretty bad again, UCLA is favored to win. PAC-12 north has Oregon and Stanford.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: I’m familiar with the makeup of the conference. It’s nearly 30 years since my awful Illini played your Bruins in the Rose Bowl but I have no illusions about what conference is light years ahead of the “PAC”! Hardy har.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I remember New Year’s Day 1984 well.
Annamal
My cat just slept all the way through a 5.5 earthquake (and has been calm through the entire spate of 5s and 6s that we’ve had over the last 2 days).
This is a cat who is periodically absolutely terrified of everything else in the entire world…she’s making me feel like a wimp.
c u n d gulag
Right now, the Republican Party looks like a group of hatter’s who believe that the cure for their madness, is more mercury.
JGabriel
Roy Edroso:
“We-e-ell, if these anti-American freaks don’t like it here, they can just go to Russia and hate gays there!”
Wait, when did I start sounding like the Democratic progressive version of 1960’s-1970’s anti-hippie Republicans?
“You don’t like it here, with all yer America-hatin’ whining? Then get outta my goddamned country! Love it or leave it, you anti-government weirdo freakazoids, and take yer godamm tea parties and mis-spelled sign with ya!”
.
Baud
@raven:
There are probably still a lot of people who simply vote republican because they believe republicans will lower their taxes. Many people don’t reexamine how things have changed from 20-30 years ago.
low-tech cyclist
Hey now, calling the Republicans “the Usual Gang of Idiots” is a sin against these people, who’ve been using that handle for roughly half a century.
Sly
@TriassicSands:
A real libertarian believes that the most important issues of the day are the petty grievances and abstract paranoias of people who are overwhelmingly white, male professionals. Small wonder that it is aligned, in both real and philosophical terms, with the conservative movement.
RSA
That Ben Shapiro interview was… amazing. A really incredible combination of delusion and projection. The most interesting bits:
WTF? And then on Democrats:
WTF squared?
PurpleGirl
@low-tech cyclist: I had that thought too but you had a picture of them. More fun that you beat me to it.
MikeJ
Are you ready for some football?!?!?!
Liverpool game about to start.
MattF
@RSA: Shapiro is quite the item:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Shapiro
Betty Cracker
@JGabriel: Haha! Love it or leave it, pal!
@raven: The Dawgs should do well this year and ‘Bama too. I’m afraid it’ll be a long season for my Gators. Brutal schedule, and our offense has a long way to go.
Glocksman
As an aside, that newsmax ‘headlines’ box on the right side has a link to a story about ‘Spice eradicates diabetes’.
It’s not a story, it’s a direct link to an ad.
Is Newsmax so desperate for cash that they label an ad link (and for a dodgy ‘supplement’, at that) as a story, or are they just unethical?
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson:
You’re making a pretty big assumption there, fella.
SFAW
@Glocksman:
Is that a trick question?
Botsplainer
@TriassicSands:
That used to be the case. Once the Libertarians allowed themselves to be coopted by conservatives via conservative money, libertarianism got flipped on its head.
In that vision, the right to private decisionmaking without government intervention as was enshrined in Roe v. Wade becomes an anti-liberty act.
lol
Ben sounds like a textbook case of “nice guy” syndrome complaining about being friendzoned.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
Gee, I wonder what would make them believe those things.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
They believe that it’s only certain decisions that require government intervention. For other decisions, such as whether to serve darkies at the same lunch counter as real people, or whether to poison the air and water with industrial by-products, or whether to buy one AR-15 or 100 AR-15s plus 75 M60s, or whether to cheat homeowners out of their homes via mortgage shenanigans – for those decisions, the government should LEAVE CONSERVATIVES ALOOONE!!
Botsplainer
@Sly:
FTFY
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Especially since Senator Ayn Rand Paul has said there’s no objective evidence that voting by darkies has been suppressed. And he wouldn’t lie, would he?
Baud
One of the contributors to ODS on the right. Obama is the antithesis of mean, nasty, and horrible. Despite all the lies the right has attempted to foist on Obama, I don’t think they’ve even seriously tried to paint Obama as a nasty person. It drives them crazy.
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF: from the Wiki article you linked, one of the best laughs of the morning (my emphasis):
Published by a publisher! Published by another publisher!
Culture of Truth
Who is the “they” here?
RSA
@SFAW:
I was happy to find out that the mainstream news are on this, at least in NC, but I don’t remember whether this was a local or national NPR piece. It described the efforts church groups go through to get their members to the polls in a rural NC county, where they really need to take advantage of early voting (just reduced from 17 days to 10 days). It explained why a lot of the poor people in the county may not have driver’s licenses or other government-issued ID, and it mentioned that a food stamp ID would not count. It said that voter impersonation was basically non-existent. The piece was balanced, including a tobacco farmer who spouted off Republican talking points, but I think doing more damage to that side than otherwise. The overall message came across pretty clearly.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
I also liked the Wiki line “Shapiro became a shill at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.”
Shapiro is, as Shakespeare or someone else might have written, one sick fuck. And, based on wingnut standards, that charge has been “meticulously documented.”
Culture of Truth
@Baud: Indeed, much of conservatism lately has been screaming “come see the violence inherent in the system!!” as Obama stands off the side offering reasonable compromises looking bemused and whispering to the audience “can you believe these guys?”
danielx
THE Ben Shapiro? The Formerly Virgin Ben? Aye, the very same!
Well, I certainly haven’t noticed conservatism painting people as mean and nasty, or perverted, or lazy, or…whatever. I believe this line of thought should be encouraged; increased Republican/conservative dickitude certainly sounds like a winning proposition to me…
SFAW
@RSA:
I think either Colbert or John Oliver pointed out to some Rethuglitard that there had been only one completely documented voter “fraud” case out of four million votes cast in NC.
If there’s even one
drop of black bloodillegal vote cast, then EVERYblackperson must prove their worthiness to vote!SFAW
@Culture of Truth:
amused.
“Bemused” was George Bush when they told him to stop “reading” The Pet Goat. Sorry to be grammer police, but its what I does bestest.
SFAW
@danielx:
Youse guys keep saying “formerly.” Until we have “meticulously documented” evidence that this is, in fact, the case, I wish people would refrain from ascribing to Shapiro things which may not actually be true.
Rational thought, as another example.
c u n d gulag
@SFAW:
One of the fundamental beliefs of Conservatives, is that we have to punish the many, for the sins of (even) very, very, very, very, few.
Especially if they are of a different color, religion, ethnicity – and non-male, of course.
Also too – younger than 50.
TheMightyTrowel
OT: Ugh. Now that Mr. Trowel is finally back in Oz I’m getting to catch up on TV shows he wanted to see together. We just finished Orphan Black (OMG SO GOOD) and started House of Cards (FINALLY!). I think i’m annoying him though, because I keep pausing it to clarify points of policy or quibble about whether D senator from NH would really be the ultra lefty. Also, why was the good representative from SC not eating his ribs with SC bbq sauce?
Roger Moore
@c u n d gulag:
I think it’s more that we must punish the many for the sin of not being one of the few. If only those people had chosen their parents better, we wouldn’t have to do this, but it’s for their own good…
Hillary Rettig
Moving!
To Kalamazoo, MI.
I wonder how many Juicers are in Michigan, or better yet, K?
the Conster
I’m on the high speed ferry to PTown on a glorious summer morn, literally with a boatload full of queers allready in full raucous. Suck it Shapiro and all the rest of you asshat tight assed haters.
the Conster
I’m on the high speed ferry to PTown on a glorious summer morn, literally with a boatload full of queers allready in full raucous. Fuck the haters.
Roger Moore
@the Conster:
Lucky you. I’m at work, waiting for what will hopefully be an uneventful switch over to backup power while the utility does some work on our system. Fortunately, the computer is on a UPS, so I can keep reading and posting when the power goes out.
the Conster
I’m on the high speed ferry to PTown on a glorious summer morn, literally with a boatload full of queers allready in full raucous. Suck it, haters.
MattF
@Hillary Rettig: Nice town. I visited good friends there several times, back in the days before Upjohn was bought out and then closed down. I recall there was a sign in the courthouse parking lot: “No Parking. Prosecutors Will Be Violated.”
J
Edroso’s is a fine column, but the fact is that it’s been true for years if not decades that the Republican party’s positions–which are insane–their politics–constant transparent lying–and their attitude toward the people who vote for them–they plainly despise them–should have rendered them electoral poison. Yet here they are pulling in votes, winning elections–and acting like they own the place. And alas here we are in the country they’re doing their best destroy, a project which is going pretty well for them.
the Conster
Fucking wifi first world problem.
SiubhanDuinne
@Hillary Rettig:
Well, I used to live just down the road, in Battle Creek.
But that was thirty years ago.
Culture of Truth
@SFAW: You’re right to correct me, but watching someone complain about tyranny while punching themselves in the head *could be* be pretty bemusing.
Betty Cracker
@the Conster: Have fun! I was just reading in the NYT about how gray seals are all over the Cape now. Never saw any during my brief time up there 20 years ago. Dog mermaids on the Cape!
ksmiami
@Hillary Rettig: @Hillary Rettig: Despite moving around a lot and getting posted to the detroit area, I love Michigan and Kalamazoo’s Bell’s beer hall is to die for. Good luck and the Kal Haven bike trail is really fun. It takes you from Kalamazoo all the way to south haven and the beach.
the Conster
@Betty Cracker: Actually staying in N Truro in a house on the bay that’s in an Edward Hopper painting. Coincidentally PTown is having Carnival this weekend, because its too sedate during summer wkends here or something. You should see the big black drag queen in the gold lame I’m looking at right now!
the Conster
@Betty Cracker: Actually staying in N Truro in a house on the bay that’s in an Edward Hopper You should see the big black drag queen in the gold lame I’m looking at right now!
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: That’s why there are sharks now, too. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet for them. Unfortunately the gray seal population isn’t good for the fishermen, and sharks aren’t good for people who want to swim when they’re at the beach.
the Conster
@Betty Cracker: Sharks follow seals. You should see the big black drag queen in the gold lame I’m looking at right now!
Just One More Canuck
@Glocksman: both
MikeJ
Liverpool is now the first place team in the Premier League.
Baud
Because nothing says VICTORY! like uniting behind the issue you’re losing most spectacularly on.
Amir Khalid
Wonderful news! Liverpool have won the first match of the 2013-14 English Premier league season. It’s only 1-nil at home to Stoke City, but hey, it’s the three points that count.
Hillary Rettig
@ksmiami: I live will be living one block from the KalHaven trail!
Thanks for all the Kalamazoo and Michigan Love, everyone!
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: How anyone can even think of swimming in that cold-ass water is beyond me! My feet turned blue if I so much as stuck a toe in that water.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: It’s fine in August.
Keith P
@RSA: It sounds like Shapiro is still trying to convince himself of that bullshit.
The “they’re mean and nasty. No, they really are” part is really funny, though.
Kropadope
@SFAW:
That’s not a grammar issue, but word choice.
BruinKid
Ah, Shapiro. I definitely remember him from when we were both undergrads at UCLA. I wrote about him last year when he took over Breitbart’s empire, delving into the psychology that makes up a guy like Ben.
I also compiled some of the insane right-wing crap he was spewing as an 18-year-old columnist for our school paper at UCLA in the link above.
Oh, anybody see The Newsroom this past week? That WND bit was basically Shapiro’s “Friends of Hamas” smear against Chuck Hagel.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: And now the
ArseholeArsenal game. C’mon Villa!SFAW
@c u n d gulag:
Fixed
RSA
@BruinKid:
Nice. MattF‘s pointer to Shapiro’s Wikipedia article includes one line I thought was pretty funny:
My emphasis. I like the trajectory.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
Maybe so, but no one ever calls for the word-choice police.
Kropadope
@SFAW:
True story, but the temptation to correct a correction was too great.
c u n d gulag
@BruinKid:
I never could stand (not-so) Breitbart.
But to compare Shapiro to him, is unfair to that deceased and diseased turd.
(Not-so) Breitbart had something this insipid and banal cipher doesn’t have – for lack of a better term, Breitbart had some kind of “charisma,” for good (rarely) or ill (nearly 100% of the time).
You can associate any word you want to Shapiro, but “charismatic,” could not be one of them.
c u n d gulag
@SFAW:
Thanks.
Better! :-)
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
Just remember, you can’t spell “Arsenal” without “Arse”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“They’re mean and nasty and they’re horrible people. I mean, they truly are.”
Hmm, going by my years of experience of on line gaming, a statement like Mr Shaprio’s here translates into “they wining!”
Mike in NC
Nobody has a better connection to the average voter than some entitled douchebag at Forbes magazine.
shelly
Yeah, I chuckled at that too. One was Regnery Press, and the other World Net Daily. I’d keep mum about those myself.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
No problem. I actually appreciate the correction/clarification.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
Speaking of which, the Arse are being held 1-1 at home by Villa. And Vincent Tan FC (okay, Cardiff) are down 1-nil at West Ham. Did I ever mention that Vincent Tan was rude to me once?
burnspbesq
@raven:
Whaddayoutalkinabout? Football starts today. Six matches in the EPL on Opening Day.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq: I’ve been walking around singing “You’ll Never Walk with Sweet Caroline”.
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
The Fenway Sports Group anthem?
Chris
@TriassicSands:
I consider them silly and “not a real world philosophy” because 90% of the “libertarians” I’ve met are either regular liberals or (more often) conservatives, who choose the “libertarian” label because they’re either too hip or too embarrassed to use one of the other two. Libertarianism could be a real world philosophy (as in a philosophy with an actual following), albeit a very bad one, but right now it’s not even that.
“Libertarians are what conservatives call themselves when they’re trying to get laid” is still the best definition of the movement I’ve ever heard.
burnspbesq
Villa are trying to fill every vacant bed in the Arsenal MASH unit.
TriassicSands
@Sly:
I agree that there it’s no surprise people who call themselves conservatives and people who call themselves libertarians are aligned, but I don’t believe that real conservatism, which has a historical meaning, and real liberatarianism, ditto, are one and the same. It would be a disaster for this country today if either a self-identified conservative (in the GOP) or a self-described libertarian in the GOP were elected president.
@Botsplainer:
I think it’s still true. One problem is that both modern conservatism and libertarianism (forever) live in the Land of Make Believe. They argue, with straight faces, that policies that have been shown to be unworkable are the only way to run a country. But adherents to both philosophies (if you can call either a real philosophy) have become dumber over time and a “libertarian” like Ron Paul can oppose government intervention in the lives of individuals in ways no real libertarian would. But is Ron Paul really a libertarian or merely a delusional conservative who calls himself a libertarian. One person, widely disliked at BJ, who is a libertarian is Glenn Greenwald, a person with little in common with modern or past conservatives. It may simply be that people who are really conservatives are now calling themselves libertarians or pretending that’s what they are.
Many Americans have become so ignorant that they have no idea what communism, socialism, libertarianism, or conservatism really are. But if you’re going to award identity based on what people call themselves and others, then Obama is a communist, and a socialist, and a Nazi, and an Islamist and everything else the extraordinarily ignorant Republicans call him. Anyone who calls Obama a socialist has no idea what socialism is. I think it would be a huge mistake to change the meaning of socialism based on common usage by a bunch of lunatics. By the same token, conservatives who call themselves libertarians aren’t really libertarians. And that may be the disagreement I have with what Edroso wrote, and he and I may not actually disagree on the facts, but in how we use the terms. If he’s saying that people who today call themselves libertarians are simply conservatives who call themselves libertarians (without being libertarians) then I agree. If, on the other hand, he means that libertarianism is just re-branded conservatism, then I disagree.
I’ve taken to calling today’s GOP the Modern Republican Party, because it has strayed so far from what the Republican Party has been. But the definition of a party can change with time and personnel, whereas I think we should be a lot more reluctant to change the meaning of important words just because a bunch of stupid, uninformed people want them to mean something else.
DesertFriar
National Anthems:
Conservatives – God Bless America.
Liberals – This Land Is Your Land
Libertarians – My Country ‘Tis Of Me
MikeJ
Time for more magic spray. Are they gonna spray his balls right there on the pitch?
burnspbesq
@TriassicSands:
The “libertarian” label allows mean-spirited right-wingers (who are not remotely “conservative” in the traditional sense of the word) to pretend there is a consistent theoretical basis for their me-first-and-pull-up-the-ladder approach.
It’s lipstick on a pig.
burnspbesq
If current results hold, at the end of the day my boys Forest will be alone in first place in the Championship.
Felonius Monk
When you see a picture of Little Bennie he looks like a harmless toad, however there is an inherent nastiness in his inane, twit-headed mutterings. Whether he really believes that shit or is just trying to get some street cred with the wing-nuts, I don’t pretend to know. However, though he might appear rather harmless, the world would be a better place if pest control was called in to fumigate his nest.
Villago Delenda Est
Libertarians demand that other people surrender their rights in order for the Libertarian to do anything the fuck they want.
The classic case of this is the guy who puts up a chicken rendering plant next door to you, and asserts that it’s his property, and his right, to do so, no matter how much it impacts your property and your rights. A friend of mine has a boss who is a Libertarian type who just imagines that no one would ever do that, would utilize their property in a way that harms another. In other words, he wishes away the real world when it conflicts with his notions of how the world should be.
Mustang Bobby
@Bobby Thomson: Ben Shapiro: the Screech of the GOP. [vague 1980’s cultural reference]
MattF
It’s safe to say that whatever the topic here may have been, this is off-topic:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/08/17/beethoven_s_ode_to_joy_9th_symphony_played_on_theremins.html
Go ahead, click on it.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Pretty much. It all gets back to the idea of positive and negative rights. Positive rights are the power to do as you wish, and negative rights are protection against other people doing things to you. Libertarians have a maximalist view of positive rights and a minimalist view of negative rights, primarily because they’re privileged assholes who are used to doing unto others rather than having others do unto them.
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF:
Epitomizes the old saying: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you must.
gbear
If I was virgin Ben, I would certainly believe that. Every time he posts something, he might as well be using a crosshairs as his text background; his ideas are so easy to shoot down. He gets a well-deserved pile-on every time he opens his mouth.
Villago Delenda Est
@SiubhanDuinne:
or you should.
MMOs provide a laboratory for viewing human behavior in this manner, especially in reference to player vs. player behavior. Most games have rulesets that prohibit players from attacking other players except under circumstances in which both players allow those attacks to take place, and nothing causes more grief for the developers of those games than a breakdown in those rulesets.
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
Unless you can come up with better descriptions then these will stick. The world has changed and the people using these words to describe themselves have changed. Words have meanings and those meanings change over time. Lincoln was a republican. But today he would be considered a democrat and I have a hard time believing that if he appeared and studied politics for more than 5 minutes that he would disagree. Parties change, what they stand for changes, who they are changes and describing them with the old definitions just because they met those definitions once usually fails. Miserably.
Roxy
@Matt:
Click I did. Interesting. I noticed in the whole group just one left handed person.
Jay C
I know this may fall squarely within the parameters of “rhetorical question”, but why do politicians’ (or their bastard hangers-on, political commentators’) invocation of “traditional values” almost invariable involve some sort of animus or discrimination? Does no one ever make the point that tolerance is also a “traditional” American value?
Chris
@Jay C:
Because animus and discrimination are considered bad things, which is why they need to be dressed up in a pretty, nondescript name like “Traditional Values” – same basic principle as communist country names with their Democratic People’s Republic syndrome. “Tolerance” is generally considered a good thing, so we just call it “tolerance;” it doesn’t require a makeover to make us think it’s a good thing.
(Though it does require a makeover to make us think it’s a bad thing, which is where the term “Political Correctness” comes in, and why it’s one of the most oft-recurring concepts in wingnut speech).
fuckwit
Those Shapiro quotes are priceless.
Keep fucking that chicken.
Citizen_X
@Roger Moore: Or, as my favorite definition of libertarians puts it: a libertarian is an anarchist who expects the police to keep his slaves in line.
TriassicSands
@Ruckus:
I don’t see any disagreement in your comment. I said parties change; that’s a given. What shouldn’t change — much anyway — are the definitions for things like communism, socialism, etc. If their meanings change, then I don’t see any coherent way to talk about history or even the present. Individuals and parties may try to co-opt words — as the Republicans have with their use of socialism to describe Obama — but every thinking person and all media (except Fox, of course) should repudiate their misuse of words solely for political advantage. If Obama is a socialist, then what do we call people who are real socialists? When people use words the way Republicans use them they cease to have any useful meaning at all. One can append adjectives to terms to try to differentiate, but that can get pretty tedious and be misleading. Would it make any sense to talk about Obama Socialism, when Obama isn’t a socialist?
The reason I refer to the GOP today as the Modern Republican Party is because, unlike the Republicans of the sixties and seventies, and they were no great shakes, today’s Republicans make governing responsibly nearly impossible. Historically, when bills have been passed and become laws, even ones the Republicans hated, they didn’t hold scores of meaningless votes to repeal those laws. In other mature democracies the political right may try to “reform” programs they don’t like, but they accept that something like universal health care is in place to stay. The Modern US GOP wants to repeal the first major improvement (flawed as it is) in health care policy and replace it with nothing. That’s pretty special.
Chris
@Citizen_X:
I think the big difference is that while they’re both anti-government nuts, anarchists tend to be afraid of the government because they see it as a tool of “the man” oppressing the masses, whereas libertarians see it as a tool of the masses oppressing the (well-off, white and male) individual. Which among other things means one of them loves cops and the other hates them. It’s like communism and fascism – the end result looks similar, but they’re coming at it from opposite perspectives.
@TriassicSands:
In the American context specifically, I think it’s also harder (or it was, for most of history) to define words like “Republican” and “Democrat” because the parties were really loosely defined – they were basically coalitions of local party organizations brought together by circumstances, which often had radically different ideologies, interests, etc.
RaflW
@J: “Yet here they are pulling in votes, winning elections–and acting like they own the place.”
For many, the tribal urge, the winning team energy trumps any policy considerations. We have to make help them lose a few more times do the loser stink sticks to them so that they’ll loose even bigger
Bob In Portland
It’s our annual block party today. Food, beer, a band.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
I suspect that part of the horror for young Republicans like Shapiro is the haunting fear that they picked the wrong team.
Linda
@fuckwit: Yes, Smart people don’t get their broken-up significant others back, but they learn things–like how not to piss off another S.O. Like not being an asshole. But conservatives are too smart, and never wrong, so they learn nothing. The only thing that they have going for them is the amnesia of the average American.
patroclus
I think TCU v. LSU is the best game of the first weekend of college football.
Linda
Hmmm. The stalking comparison seems spot-on. There is a sense of entitled bitterness common to both many stalkers and conservatives in their current relationships- I have every right to own this person (country). I’m not a failure. They failed me. The bitch!
Tyro
We’re going to lower the cost of medical care by making it easier for doctors to get into the business
I assure Ben that there are no doctors out there who are just waiting for regulations to ease before “getting into the business.” Does he not know how med school and residency work?
Yatsuno
@Tyro: The main regulation keeping there from being more doctors is the AMA restricting the number of spots in medical schools. Somehow I get the feeling Little Ben isn’t talking about that…
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
It sounds like your issue is not the definition of the words but the misuse of the words. And not separating a changeable term like party affiliation with a definition of a concept like communism or socialism. And even then those concepts changed depending on who/where/when were trying to practice them.
Any definitions of ideology will change over time. It is the nature of human existence that we change over time and it is the nature of human existence that our ideologies will change over time. That we change the definitions of words doesn’t change what those words meant 50 or 100 years ago but it does require that we discuss ideology and politics as they existed within their time frames. That is why people can understand that Lincoln was a republican then and he most likely would not be one today. Or that a centrist democrat today would be a republican in 1955. These things are consistent only in a small time frame, not in the larger context of time.
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
I get what you are trying to say here. The modern republican party has little ties to the republican party of 59-60 yrs ago.
You are mostly correct. Their tactics are different their ideals are not.
But the modern republican party has little to no ideological connection to Lincoln’s party other than using the same name. Which is why conservatives using the line “Lincoln was a republican” is so stupid. Yes he was but that has no connection to today’s republican party, as you pointed out.
So I guess my question is “What is the real purpose of your original post?” To distance yourself from voting republican in the 60’s-70’s? To get us to all be on the same page definition wise? To understand that current day conservatives are fucking crazy no matter what they call themselves?
Gene108
I agree with Ben Shapiro. I do feel superior to conservatives because I am liberal.
Liberalism brought an end to child labor in the USA and damn near everything else that is good in society.
Steeplejack
@SFAW:
Maybe you need to up your game.
Bemuse, definition 3: “To cause to have feelings of wry or tolerant amusement.”
Culture of Truth’s usage was fine.
I’ll assume that your misspelling of grammar and it’s is part of your “does bestest” joke.
Joel
@c u n d gulag: like this guy?
MC Simon Milligan
@burnspbesq: Football started last Friday and those Bavarian bastards at FC Hollywood took the three points.
Fax Paladin
@c u n d gulag: Hatters gotta hat.
Fax Paladin
@SFAW: The sense I’ve generally seen for “bemused” is sort of a combination of somewhat amused and “WTF?”…
SFAW
@Culture of Truth:
Fair enough.
@Fax Paladin:
All that means is that the authors of what you’ve “generally seen” need to brush up on their writing skillz.
@Steeplejack:
Or maybe we can have Merriam-Webster insert ALL the slang and misused words that they now consider to be legit – because, per Cokie’s Rule, “They’re out there” – and then we can pretend that their mis-usage is A-OK..
No doubt Merriam-Webster will tell us that a “stem-winder” is an exciting speech, because someone, somewhere – probably Drudge and Politico – used the term in that manner.
Now whatever would lead you to that conclusion?
ETA: And, yes, I do realize that plenty of English words have changed their meaning and usage over the course of years. No doubt I have used some of same. Doesn’t mean I feel the need to “go along to get along” or whatever the right cliche would be.
J R in WV
@Villago Delenda Est:
There is no zoning in most of West Virginia. We have what spouse calls W V zoning, which means the house is in the middle of acreage sufficient that no one can see our house without trespassing – and we can’t see anyone else’s property from our house.
My plan if someone starts to install a trailer park adjacent to any of our property lines is to beat them to the punch with a big hog lot, right up against the property line. Then watch them try to rent single wides where you can hear the hogs squeal.
Fight fire with pig shit!
But a trailer park will probably never come here, the soil won’t support the sewage disposal.
mclaren
At this rate, won’t be long before the Repubs start airing commercials with a beagle and a gun to its head and the logo:
VOTE FOR US, OR WE SHOOT THE DOG
SFAW
@mclaren:
Except for PJ O’Rourke, I wouldn’t have thought wingnuts would have read National Lampoon.
Jay in Oregon
@Gene108:
I know what you mean to say, but your comment looks like a Jon Swift-esque parody.
eyelessgame
@DesertFriar:
I submit this as the Libertarian national anthem.