Letters to the Editor
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Aycharaych:
It's probably futile but who knows? If arguing on the internet never changes anything, then why are any of us here?
My expectation is not to turn ABAB to agree with Glenn's point, or some similar radical epiphany. But if s/he's a little less eager to throw out baseless accusations that confirm his/her own biases about people, then it will be worth it.
Make a wingnut into a regular conservative, and a regular one into a moderate and a moderate into a liberal, and so forth (or whatever ideological destination you might prefer someone arrive at). That mirrors my own trip from conservative to liberal in slightly less than 2 years time, starting in 2003.
Besides, I actually have seen people change their minds about things, "live" on the internet. When Ron Paul voted alone against the Darfur Divestment act, some people I was discussing it with were sufficiently disgusted to disavow him from then on. That was a glaring incident, which certainly helps, but minds are not as closed as we sometimes think.
And of course, I can't deny it is satisfying to rub it in. I'm human too and being right is gratifying for its own sake.
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@ Dirigo
Once again, the nail on the head thing from you. It's just beyond me how anyone -- black or white -- could read Obama's books and not forgive him his compromises, which, after all most of us have had to succumb to, however pure a stance we take here.
Anyone who's grown up in America understands Obama's journey. Like him or not, think of him as a knight in shining armor or a greenhorn, what he says about his own journey can't be faked.
Thanks for slipping it in here.
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If the standards were equal...
If the standards applied equally, Pat Robertson would be in prison for inciting terrorism.
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Hey Wait A Minute
Farrakhan doesn't wear a flag lapel pin and neither does Obama.
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WT
I'm just slipping in a few things, without comment, from Darryl Pinckney's piece.
My selections are made with the thread in mind, but also with an appreciation for sense of the street that is presented - places where real people meet.
The "reality-based community."
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Scientician
That mirrors my own trip from conservative to liberal in slightly less than 2 years time, starting in 2003.
But I seriously doubt you were a neo-con.
As Orson Scott Card used to say in his secular humanist revival , we can't go from dumb and ignorant to wise and informed in one leap, we might strip our mental gears with a jackrabbit start like that. ;-)
Sadly, Card has now slipped to the dark side and become a fundie neo-con. I cannot imagine what might have made such a former free thinker do such a thing.
Twice that I can think of I've had the experience of changing someone's mind almost 180 degrees about politics, it really is an exhilarating experience.
I have had numerous instances of lurkers contacting me privately on those boards where it is possible to do so and tell me I had made an impression on their thinking.
I used to be proud to call myself a liberal, but not any more.
Not since I figured out that liberal politicians to a nearly virtual man support something as vile, evil and unjust as the drug war.
Choosing the lesser of two evils still entails choosing evil and I cannot in good conscience bring myself to do that.
I argue on the internet because I like to argue and every single person I know in real life is wary in the extreme of engaging me.
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dun
Chris, homeschooling, private religious schools, private secular schools, etc. are available to many that choose them. I imagine you will find good and bad with all of them, just like public schools.
But chances are that the former aren't on lock down and/or patrolled by armed guards and/or German Shephards, and aren't mandated by the Federal Government to do things that don't work.
So are Partial Products and the Lattice Method superior to the Standard Algorithm for Multiplication? Are Partial Quotients superior to the Standard Algorithm for Long Division?
Don't need the Standard Algorithm for long division later on or anything. Demonstrating the Proof of the Gram-Schmidt identity must be fun for students who don't know how the Standard Algorithm for Long Division. Don't need the Gram-Schmidt identity when discussing power series and limits or anything like that, don't need limits to show exponentially diverging trajectories in nonlinear systems or anything. Don't need "limit cycles" in dynamical systems. Most kids are just going to get through life with the calculator anyway, amirite? Better off letting the Federal Government mandate that math teachers reinvent the wheel.
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Yes you can
I cannot imagine what might have made such a former free thinker do such a thing.
It is called being mesmerized by warmongering propaganda and militarism.
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@Aycharaych
Just change your name to Anarchy and get the hard part over with.
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Scientician
You are a silly silly person, go be someone's mommy somewhere else. thank you.
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Yo, aych
More grist:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Report_1_in_every_100_Americans_0228.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/ypo6pm
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What is our children learning?
Two things: 1) Chris doesn't work at Wal*Mart. 2) His kids -- if he has any -- hate him.
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I didn't say Glenn supports the NoI
though it wouldn't shock me if he did. But it IS telling that on the hand he scribbles a whole column detailing chapter and verse of some other person's evil deeds and then sort of backhands Farahkan in the same class without any attribution. That way he gets to implicitly support the NoI while not leaving a quotable trail that will follow him across the internet.
My walrus mustache harrumphs at thee, vandal!!!!! Report for a caning immediately, knave!!!!!
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Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.......
you're squarely in the camp who believes or claims to believe for expediency's sake that Farrakhan is merely a great and noble man misunderstood as all great men are.
I didn't say Glenn supports the NoI
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But seriously, on topic
When did Obama stop hating Jews? As soon as Farrakhan Name's popped up, Obama immediately mentioned how much he 100% supports Israel. Why doesn't Barak Hussein Obama just give into the meme that he is really a crypto-Muslim supremacist Gentile who wants to give Iraq to Al Sadr, provoke Pakistan into nuking Kansas City, embolden Iran enough to "nuke Israel", or worst of all, say something that might insult the Saudis.
I heard Little Green Footballs dug through Obama's donor list and found $500 from none other than Hutton Gibson. Markos called up Charles Johnson complaining that by publishing the photo Johnson might be compromising the establishment approved transpartisan smear alliance, and to stick with belligerent Muslim bigotry and overt militarism.