Letters to the Editor
healthyskeptic
Published Letters: 671 Editor's Choice: 14
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FYI on Nixon
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nixon was for, and got, a lot of social programs that would be hard to pass, let alone enforce in today's poltical cliamte.
The EPA, OSHA, etc. Issues the left was for even more than Nixon of course. But the point is, that prior to the CC movement, Americans were gradually evolving towards left issues, even Republicans albeit grudgingly.
Prior to the CC movement, people thought of Ansel Adams and Roosevelt and such when they thought of environmentalists. and, as such, it was a mainstream popular issue, so that even Nixon had to support the EPA.
Talk to anybody ont he right or middle with a beef about environmentalism today, and what will they mention? "Tree huggers" and "hippies" and other bad examples of flakey pseudo-environmentalists whose goals was always to offend rather than convince.
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@ondelette
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That must be another one of your history as accident dissertations I suppose. I suppose the tanks just fought on thier own, without any people with political beliefs inside. Right?
Why did Maoist extremism win in China as opposed to a more reasonable centrist revolution?
Because Mao was a populist capable of mobilizing hundreds of millions of (legitimately) angry, but also wholly uneducated and overzealous peasants, with promises of glorious utopia, that of course never materialized. Mao took advantage of already down and out people to sell them a lot of empty promises, many died for. Now China is basically realizing, "that didn't work" and still having a largely uneducated and poor populace without the wherewithal to establish a more sensible and moderate government, is heading at breakneck speed back to corrupt capitalism, classism, and such.
China will be more stable and prosperous when it calms down and stops swinging radically left and right like a drunk. And the same goes for any nation.
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@C2H5OH
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Also, Ronald Reagan was elected the first time on a groundswell of repudiation for Carter, just as whoever runs on the Democratic side will be elected overwhelmingly by a groundswell of repudiation
You're saying he could have been anyone and his campaign had nothing to do with it? So, all his social conservatism campaigning, which directly capitalized on the counter-culture movement, all that was totally irrelevant right? How a convenient little ball of self delusion which allows hippies to escape any blame for their irresponsibility and complete alienation of the mainstream.
Gee, what does that remind me of? Oh yeah, the right wingers who claim all the blowback we've experienced over the decades from over aggressive FP, from Latin america to the ME, from Pinochet to Hugo Chavez, from our buddy Saddam to our enemy Saddam, none of it has anything whatsoever to do with what they did.
How fucking stupid are you? It's amazing some of the posters here complain about LGF, and yet are just as amazingly clueless and in total self denial.
In the last 50 years, the hippies were the worst thing that happened to the left. They terribly hurt the left's credibility and by over reaching on a radical agenda, soured the nation to much of the gradual liberalizing that was occuring in an un-forced manner.
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FYI
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The lack of substance from people who disagree with me, helps make my point about flakey hippies. But then, it's not like you'll figure that out either.
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@bucky
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree that beating these Republicans is the main issue
It's that, but also a lot more than that.
We need to establish Democratic leadership that is primarily concerned with respecting the voting public and the principles of compromise and governing from the middle, and we need to culturally frown on radicalism for radicalism sake and people who are just fringe trouble makers, both left and right.
And if Democrats do that, the right will lose elections and then have to follow to the middle. We'll all get more done, and the country will be able to evolve more smoothly, and rapidly, than if we keep up the radical stops and starts, lunges back and forth.
And history shows that over time, people do move to the left. You could say the left is often a bit ahead of the curve, the middle is on the curve, and the right a bit behind. But if the left over-reaches, the middle and right become reactionaries and jerk away.
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@doofusX
[Read the article: "Fringe liberal bloggers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Carter was ideologically aligned with the left, despite his Anapolis creds and such. the most visable elements of the left at the time were:
Peacenik hippies, which overshot the mark of mainstream anti-war protest against Vietnam, and went into the territory of flower-child happy talk about needing only love and such. That scared the hell out of the middle and right, was liek going from one extreme to another, and helped create the perception that anything bad which happened in FP, such as the hostage crisis, was due to FP weakness on the left. Reagan and Republicans exploited that.
Radicals which which contributed to many riots and social upheaval, which created a desire for a more authoritarian figure was needed in the middle and right. Reagan had been very authoritarian as gov of California in cracking down on hippies, which the mainstream and rt liked.
Radical and aggressive counter culture, atheitsm, free-love, etc was not appreciated by moderate religious people and certainly not by the right, and allowed Reagan a free pass from the middle to court the religious conservatives, which previously Republican candidates couldn't do so blatently.
Even though McCarthy had overreached and inspired blowback against red-baiting, hippy socialists living in communes and such, managed to alienate the mainstream so quickly, they helped inspire a second wave of red-scare, which of course Reagan also used to tremendous benefit.
The hippies and CC movement just handed Reagan so many issues.