Post by Bob Forsythe on Sept 18, 2009 16:00:09 GMT -8
Yawn. The conservatives have been statists for a rather long time. They just express it in moralistic terms and fools like you buy into it. Let's see. They favor a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. They favor a Constitutional amendment to ban abortions. They favor a Constitutional amendment to ban burning the flag. And that's mainstream conservatism these days. Please tell me what Constitutional amendments liberals have advocated since the failure to pass the ERA? Oh wait, I'm sure you'll come up with someone on the left who has advocated banning guns.
Do you actually know what a "statist" is, Bill? Are you aware that the 19th Century "anarchists" called themselves "anti-statists" and were given the name "anarchists" by Marx when it looked like Bakunin's followers might gain control of the 2nd International?
What exactly are you advocating, Bill? Is it just the usual right-wingnut nonsense about hating gays and abortion, or is it the really radical libertarian view that the government should spend money only on the military (as long as they are all in this country) with police and fire protection given to private companies who would allow your house to burn down if you didn't pay them to arrest the burglars or fight a house fire?
I'm sorry, Bill, but this is the problem. You offer bites that mean nothing. "They are statists". What the Hell does that mean and what political ideology do you assume exists among "statists"? Please offer us a list of every political ideology "statists" advocate and believe in. And then give us various regimes you believe are or were "statist" and compare and contrast that with regimes you believe were "anti-statist" (given that you've offered this dichotomy in the first place). Extra credit will be given for your analysis of the Anti-Statist movement in 19th Century Europe and the Andalusian "anarchists" and their ideology during the Spanish Civil War.
Needless to say, I doubt you can even breach the front line of those ideologies because you really don't have a clue when it comes to political philosophy. You hear or read a word or phrase and decide it's a cool description even though you have no background at all in anything having to do with politics.
You're sort of like the guy who claims he doesn't like this or that artist, this or that movie or this or that food, not because you've ever tried to understand it, but because it's "foreign". The main response one will usually get from people like that is, "I know what I like". Ignorance does not become you.
=Bob
Just how do you think that Conservatives have been "statists" for a while? The defination of "statist" conflicts with what Conservatism is all about. On this one, Bob, I think that you are way off base. The examples that you provide on the Conservative side are the exception rather than the rule. They are mostly founded in religious or moral belief rather than pure political belief.
Pooh, I won't disagree that statism "conflicts with what Conservatism is all about". What I'm telling you is that the "Conservatism" that currently exists is just as statist as that you and others claim the Liberals engage in that there is no real difference.
And within this statement, "They are mostly founded in religious or moral belief rather than pure political belief", you make my point. Everything is political, Pooh and the Conservatives have turned gun laws and most everything else that's within a liberal agenda into a "moral issue", when it's actually no more than a political issue.
It's one thing to argue that abortion is wrong - I understand your view on it even if I don't completely agree with it. But when someone demands a Constitutional amendment to remedy something they don't like, it automatically becomes political.
I've offered gun control as a defining argument, but I could go into other things as well. Do you actually believe that there are no preachers in the South telling their subjects, oops, I mean parishioners, that a public option health care plan goes against Christianity because it's "socialist? And after all, since all Socialists, by definition from the right-wingnut preachers, is "atheistic", it's really a "moral issue"?
The Southern churches have always used Christianity as a means to justify the views of their flock. And before Dave decides to offer yet another in his interminable links from the past, I will admit that Northern churches did the same with anti-slavery and social gospel sermons.
The difference, Duke, is that I recognize that what I was taught during my years in church, was based upon the social gospel and it's left up to me to figure out what's correct - something my church also taught me.
=Bob