Flipping channels, I happened on Crazy Eddie, or Ed Schultz on MSNBC. I held it there for a minute to see how he reacted to the election. The main thing I got from the minute of Crazy Eddie's ranting was that John Boehner might need to take out a restraining order.
It sort of illustrated a psychological problem of the far-left folks like Ed, Olbermann, Behar, and Maher. Even Obama projected when he strongly suggested that the Republicans need to discover civility, even while he called them "enemies", and proclaimed they needed to be "punished".
Sure, folks like Limbaugh are the flame-throwers on the Right. But I've never heard Rush wish horrible illness and death on any liberals. I don't hear him viciously attacking people personally like Ed did with Boehner yesterday, or like Behar did with Sharon Angle.
I used to visit CNN and MSNBC a bit more often, back when I thought I would get serious policy discussions that would help me learn more about the arguments from the Left.
But even though I have tried to do that for a few years, I can't say that I've ever heard a reasoned, logical argument explaining why the policies of the Left would be good for the country as a whole. It seems the arguments always degenerate into personal attacks on the right-wing villain of the day, and I never get to hear the policy argument.
Most of the social arguments seem to be misleading at best.
Gay Marriage: People need equal freedom to choose who they love. (Huh?)
Abortion: Women have the right to control their own body. (Doesn't a baby have a body too?)
Legalize Pot: We can tax it! (That's your argument, really?)
Illegal Immigration: They just want a better life. (So why don't we invite everybody in and forget about our immigration laws?)
Voter ID Laws: They are designed to disenfranchise voters. (What voters? Illegals and Convicts? Dead people?)
Taxes: The rich don't pay their fair share. (What exactly is anybody's "fair share"? Fair share of what? If 35% isn't a fair share, what percentage is? Who is rich?)
Obamacare: It's good because it forces insurance companies to cover people and not drop people who get sick. (What about the massive new bureaucracy, Federal control of the entire system, Federal decisions about what companies are priviledged enough to be chosen to offer insurance, and the unconstitutional mandate?)
Deficits and Debt: Those were Bush's fault. (How is it that tripling it after Bush left office makes it still Bush's fault?)
Weak arguments devolving into ad-hominem incivility, then projecting that incivility onto your opponents is the rule of the day for Democrats.
It's very much like the bully who beats up a kid every day and steals his lunch money, so the victim gets some self-defense lessons and fights back one day. Then the bully screams to an adult, "He punched me!".
And the poor kid who was only fighting back gets punished.
3 comments:
Gay Marriage: To learn the real arguments for gay marriage, I suggest you read Andrew Sullivan over at The Daily Dish. If you're willing to open your heart, I suspect you'll be surprised.
Abortion: I view abortion as completely barbaric, so the "right to choose thing" seems ridiculous to me, too, for different reasons.... so no argument.
Legalize Pot: (That's your argument, really?) This is a straw man. The real argument for legalization is that prohibition has led to a needless war on a fairly harmless drug; a war that is putting huge numbers of people in prison and costing taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars.
Illegal Immigration: You can't really pick on liberals *too much* for this, when Obama has actually been pretty tough on illegal immigration.
Voter ID Laws: They are a good idea, but some are absolutely designed to disenfranchise voters. Would you be happy with voter ID laws manipulated to put more liberals in office? I suspect not.
Taxes: The rich don't pay their fair share. This is the truth, and it's not due to tax brackets, but rather to a horrifying tax code. The right solution is NOT the liberals' solution, but it's clear that the very rich are not paying their fair share, even at current rates. Regardless of your ideological stance on this one, digging out of our current hole is going to require decisions which are painful to *everyone*. Think we can cut spending in entitlements and defense enough to get our financial situation under control? I don't, sadly.
Obamacare: It's not Obamacare. The bill was written by *Republicans* and Obama actually had very little to do with it. I agree that it is horrible, but for very different reasons. I see it as akin to saying, "Man, BP really messed up the Gulf. There's only one solution: put them in charge of the EPA!" Don't complain about the federal interference when the insurance companies themselves are giggling gleefully over the money they're going to make over this.
Deficits and Debt: Where does most spending come from now? Two sources. One, entitlements such as Medicare, which expanded with Medicare Part D, an *unfunded* expansion of Medicare which went into effect under Bush. Two, the military, which is involved in two wars which were commissioned by Bush.
OK Nick, you've elicited a response.
Gay Marriage: No heartstring-tugging argument changes the fact that sexual activity outside the context of the traditional family is simply wrong. There's a difference between tolerance (our current state) and permissiveness/celebration of disordered behavior. Nobody's denying anyone the freedom to have sex with whatever consenting adult they choose, but nobody should be locked up for believing such behavior is wrong.
Pot: I prefer education to legalization. Legalization will be disastrous, especially for the kids, who will suddenly have frighteningly easy access.
Illegal Immigration: I can't disagree more. Obama's official responses belie your statement. 1200 National Guard troops sitting at desks was a token political response, murders and kidnappings of Americans by illegals are skyrocketing, and filing suit against Arizona is an outrageous statement proving there is no will in the Administration to do anything substantive about the problem.
Voter ID: If you think Indiana's voter ID law is discriminatory, I challenge you to offer a single instance where it has denied a qualified citizen the right to vote.
Taxes: I do agree with you about the tax code, which I think is prima facie evidence of corruption in the US Congress. So if you're saying that the politically favored rich don't pay their fair share, I won't argue that point. But the current proposal to effectively punish the small businesses and farmers who don't have access to the political gifts is not only wrong, but will do even more severe harm to the economy.
Obamacare: You're information on the bill being written by Republicans is way off. I won't discount that some republicans may have lobbied for the deal Obama eventually cut with the insurance companies to gain their support, the actual bill was written by Democrat staffers behind closed doors to the exclusion of the Republican opponents.
The bill as it stands is one of the top 2 or 3 reasons the economic recovery has stalled.
Deficits and Debt: I was only talking about the rhetoric here. Everybody in Washington is culpable, but the Dems doubled down on it. It's true that Soc Sec & Med and the wars are the largest budget items. Solving it is probably too hard for either party as long as both are more interested in getting and keeping power. The only hope now is that they go ahead and start with the low-hanging fruit, like freezing government salaries & hiring, eliminating earmarks, cutting ineffective agencies, etc. The other focus is revitalizing the economy, which is the long-term solution.
There's no arguing with Christianists on gay marriage... if your God told you so, then it's so, but here in the real world, the right to marry ought not be denied without cause.
Kids have MORE, not less access to weed now. The "think of the children" argument, as usual, is fallacious. http://www.casacolumbia.org/articlefiles/380-2009%20Teen%20Survey%20Report.pdf
The actions Obama has taken on illegal immigration are pretty similar to the things I suspect you'd choose, believe it or not. Record numbers of deportations and unprecedented levels of employer accountability: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/26/politics/washingtonpost/main6715205.shtml
Voter ID is tee-ball: The NAACP reports 40% more complaints about disenfranchisement after voter ID laws are implemented in Georgia and Michigan: http://www.alternet.org/rights/67161/
The current tax proposal - a compromise from what would have been the original *Republican* sunsetting plan - actually effects fewer than 3% of small businesses, an umbrella which includes independent farmers. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/09/boehner_concedes_only_three_pe.html
I should admit that "drafted by Republicans" was somewhat hyperbolic. However, the idea of an individual mandate as an alternative to single-payer was drafted by Mark Pauly for the H.W. Bush administration in 1991, and the idea was championed by Republicans as an alternative to single-payer proposals during the Clinton era. I still think it's wanton stupidity distilled into law, but it's emphatically *not* Obamacare, unless you believe everything Hannity says.
Everyone in Washington is *absolutely* culpable for the massive budget imbalance. But the Republicans coming into office are, by and large, saying that defense and entitlements are off the table! The math just doesn't work out. The "low-hanging fruit" won't even get us fractions of the way there. In order to reach fiscal equilibrium, the country is going to have to either *massively* cut *both* war and entitlements, or increase taxes, or (most likely) both.
It's very clear that you spend a lot of time with Fox News, because your sentiments mirror theirs. Get out of that circuit more often. Critically evaluate the things they say against other perspectives. There's a lot of propaganda that you're way invested in, clearly.
Post a Comment