Letters to the Editor
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I don't know why it should be necessary to point this out, but not ALL Christians are fascists, but SOME fascists are Christians(self described)
The same goes for Islam, although it is vital to understand that currently the fascist componet in Islams' case is much more powerful. I wonder at the inability of many liberals to deal clearly with the fact that there is a strain, an influenctial one, of Christianity which is the enemy of freedom. Not ALL Christians. What would motivate anyone but a right wing apologist to be so incapable both of acknowledging the existence of this faction AND of hearing the repeated statments by virtually everyone who comments on the issue that it DOESN'T include all of Christianity.
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XCN, wipe the spittle off your mouth.
... and show that you're capable of making rational points.
Nowhere did I indicate that I voted for Bush. I considered him better than Gore or Kerry, but being that the Left is insane and seditious (cf. my two earlier posts), that doesn't really say much. Nowhere did say that I am a Republican. So you whipped yourself into a frenzy and you're seeing things. This is par for the course as far as the Left's idea of political debate goes. Bush = Hitler. Osama = Santorum. Christian = Muslim. The moonbats are here all right, but they're the hysterical idiots and juveniles who rant and rave about Christian "fascism".
My post about Bush may have been unclear, though. What I meant was, that 50% of Americans hoped for a lot more from him. But other than saying "Jesus" and "strict interpretation" a bunch of times, Bush never really had any intention of being a conservative president. He betrayed his supporters and essentially, he is a liberal, to the left of Clinton in a lot of ways. And for that reason, I called him a gift to the left. I have no idea why you lefties despise him so much.
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FYI
Indian society has plenty of baggage, as does every other, at least every other large, society. I don't know if a place like Iceland has what counts as baggage. On the other hand it's got something, and in an increasingly integrated world doesn't everyone have, on some level, the same baggage.
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Don't be silly, Ricky.
Spittle? The rabid right making this accusation is just too laughable.
My post about Bush may have been unclear, though. What I meant was, that 50% of Americans hoped for a lot more from him
Please. Save for Teddy Roosevelt who was promptly put in his place by the Party fatcats, the Republican party has operated pretty much consistently for the past 120 years.
We can all give them an A+ for that much at least.
The point is you knew what you would get from the get go with Bush and a GOP Congress:
the elimination of what taxes remained on the 4700 elite placed
squarely on the backs of American workers, sky high deficits and courtrooms stacked with justices decidedly hostile to regular working people.
The rest was just noise, the usual, a few manufactured social crisi to agitate the social conservatives and whatever else it took to accomplish the above primary goal.
I leave you to your moonbatting on the free republic, conspiracy theories
about liberals hiding under your bed and whatever else passes for
other than spittle in your circles. Good day.
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Relax XCM
The problem with debating lefties is that they're so angry, so righteous, so worked up, they sound like an angry college sociology major.
You're all backwards about who is bad for an average American working family. Since the '50s, it's been the Left that hiked taxes on middle and working-class Americans, and, to put it delicately, has been less of a friend to them in touchy issues like race, schools, patriotism, values, religion, etc.
But let's get back to the topic of this article. And since someone brought up India, there is this lovely passage from a recent Mark Steyn column that sums up our problem in the so-called War on Terror:
>> In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours." <<
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O'Hehir on Beinart
Yes, Beinart's tone is civilized--lacking the obsessive imprecations of Berman and the sneering self-rightousness of others. His knowledge of history does seem limited. The Cold War struggle against Stalinism was a good deal uglier than he makes out:re-integration of the Nazis in German life and Fascisti in Italy, deal with the Japanese elite, overthrow of governments in Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Iran, incitement to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians by their generals (Muslim, by the way), alliances with Portugese dictators, Franco, Turkish and Pakistani generals, and not last, support for Baathism to counter Soviet influence in places like Iraq----as well as the wholesale purchase with CIA funds of plenty of intellectuals in foreign countries.The Cold War also contributed no little to the American triumphalism John Kennedy finally criticised in his June 63 speech, the one that might have cost him bis life, which called for a negotiated end to the Cold War. I can understand why Joe Klein, himself not sicklied over with the pale cast of thought or very literate, would be enthusiastic---but did none of the reviewers take history courses in college? The Cold War in fact could have been ended much earlier but the apparatus created to pursue it took a life of its own (Stalin proposed to clear out of Germany in 1952).
And even if we accept Beinart's notions of the Cold War, the USSR and China were nations---
Islamism is something else. But that is what Andrew O'Hehir sees in an unusually
insightful review.....Norman Birnbaum
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You should do the relaxing, Ricky, and let others do the heavy thinking.
The problem with debating right wingers is that they're so angry and delusional, yet they deny their real feelings and pretend to be rational and calm.
"The problem with debating lefties is that they're so angry"
Test your partisan bias: listen to Bill OReilly, Rush Limbaugh or Mike Savage for a while then compare the tone to Al Franken or Ed Schultz. If you're not pre-biased, you will notice the right wingers are much angrier and more derisive and insulting. The left *is* angry, about real things that are being done by The Republican Federal Government. The right is angry about fantasy strawmen like "activist judges," "man hating feminists," and "liberal elites" who mostly seem to be movie actors and college professors.
"Since the '50s, it's been the Left that hiked taxes on middle and working-class Americans"
The Republican Eisenhower administration hiked taxes the most, and the rich were appropriately taxed at high rates. The result was a prosperous economy and a strong middle class.
Eisenhower would be a far-left president today.
Tax the rich and spend on public infrastructure, and the money spreads unencumbered throughout the economy. Republican trickle-down tax theories don't work, unless your goal is to kill the middle class and create an American royalty.
The result of Reagan/Bush I&II tax cutting and deficit spending is a 9 trillion dollar debt and a cash-strapped middle class.
Tax cuts are easy to sell to selfish rubes who don't understand hidden costs. These rubes get all hot and bothered over "welfare queens" and "social redistribution" but don't care about corporate handouts and the structural advantages of the real elites: the lazy, rich "conservative" oligarchs who suck up wealth while the middle class work harder for less.
Finally Ricky, complaining about the problems of other cultures is pointless and a distraction. If you want to change Islam, move to an Islamic nation, learn it's language and preach on the streets there.
America can't bomb Islam into the 21 century.