Republican Self LoathingFollow

Linky.

Republicans Down on Their Own Party
Almost 4 out of 10 Republicans have unfavorable image of their party



This lead me to think about something: Just what is the Republican Party nowadays?

When I was a child = Reagen & Bush Sr were the Republican party.
As a teenager; Newt Gingrich & later on Bob Dole were the Republican party.
Then there was Bush Jr.

Now, I remember Limbaugh being around since Gingrich, but he catered to the "wackos"= Christian Fundamentalists, gun nuts, racists, & the like. It really wasn't until recently that Limbaugh somehow became "legitimate" (in the eyes of a few).

It seems like there's a split now. The Republicans in charge want the public to embrace Michael Steel as their representative, yet the "wackos" (which seem to have grown as a majority) dismiss him & suckle at the teat of Limbaugh.

Now, as a liberal I have some experience with the whole "hating your party but being too lazy to do anything but ***** about it" thing (lol@Kerry). But now that the shoe is on the other foot: what do you conservatives think now?

Are you fed up with your party? Who do you think is going to win the power struggle: the RNC (Steele) or Rush? Who do you think will win the 2012 nomination?

Suppositions?

(Bonus points if you're a conservative not name Gbaji or Varrus that has actual "thought" on this matter.)

I cannot honestly believe I am going to post arguing a conservative viewpoint on a obviously liberal dominated forum. I ask at least, that people do not down-karma me into oblivion out of spite.

Can we at least try to do this without any meaningless name-calling?


Blegh. Limbaugh isn't that "wacko;" there are many people, both liberal and conservative, that are far more "wacko" than Rush is. I still am uncertain where this idea comes from.

He is not a christian fundamentalist, as far as I can remember, he isn't even a Christian anymore, at the most he is a general Deist, he may even be purely agnostic or atheist even.

I can't ever seem to recall Rush being racist; then again, that would make sense, Limbaugh is most definitely not a white supremacist. He is very obviously not bigoted, otherwise he wouldn't be friends with Herman Cain. He may be prejudice, but that is not racism (Despite the common modern misuse of the word). On the contrary, there is not a single human on earth who is not regularly prejudice; it seems to be a basic mechanic of the human brain to pre-judge. The question is not "Are you prejudice?" because everyone is prejudice. The question that you should be asking is "Do you act upon those pre-judgements?" To the best of my knowledge, no, Rush Limbaugh does not act upon his prejudices.

As for discrimination? Well frankly, the Democratic party is vastly more discriminatory than the Republican Party, regular feeling the need to separate people into categories, "blacks" or "hispanics" or "whites" or "gun nuts" or "Christian Fundamentalists" or "The GLBT Community" etc. (Yes, these entire two paragraphs is a paraphrase of Neal Boortz's frequently re-used speech on "The Definition of Racism")

In fact, I am quite certain you have already pre-judged me. I wonder how accurately you have pre-judged me? Perhaps a few of those pre-judgements will be torn down if you continue reading.



Anyway, that was a bit of a sidetrack. Going back to Limbaugh... Yeah, sure he's an ***hole. That doesn't make him a "wacko" though.

He's generally correct on a lot of the things he says (But definitely everything). He's mostly just an ***hole though. As I said in another thread recent...

"You're not wrong Walter. You're just an ***hole."

And I feel that comfortably describes Rush roughly 70-90% of the time. If you want to talk wackos, there is always Micheal Savage.



I'm giving this it's own segment. This term is thrown around way too often. Are there legitimate gun nuts out there? Yes. Do they make up an absurdly small portion of the population? Yes. The vast majority of conservatives are mostly apathetic towards the issue. But it is still an important issue, even if you don't own a gun.

There is an often used saying, that if you ban guns "Then only criminals will have guns." While that is neglecting the fact that law enforcement officers will also have guns, it still is the reason why guns should not be banned.

Look at an example of something that has already been banned in America: illegal drug usage. While the subject of "Should drugs be illegal" is an entirely different subject that I won't go into right now, the fact is we have outlawed the usage of most non-medicinal drugs in America. And yet they are still absurdly common, if not more common than before they were banned. The underground economy will likely never be eliminated.

Even if you remove guns from the law abiding citizens, it is unlikely that you would be able to make even the slightest dent in the number of guns held by the criminals.

Statistically (Insert obligatory "lol statistics on the internet" here), you can look at actual crime rates, in places and countries where gun laws have been tightened very heavily, or in places where they have be banned all together. The simple matter is, when you ban guns, the number of gun related violent crimes, burglaries, and robberies goes up.

It may seem counter-intuitive, until you think from the perspective of a criminal. For the majority of criminals, you do not want to be retaliated against. The majority of criminals want to avoid confrontation and remain in control. As soon as the possibility that "the home you are going to burglarize might have someone inside who owns a gun", enters into the equation, suddenly you are much more cautious and will almost certainly ignore that house all together.

When you remove guns from the hands of law abiding citizens, criminals become more confident and tend to be more willing to commit whatever crime they were considering committing. That is why, even if you do not own a gun, it is in your benefit for guns to remain legal.

Now for a pre-judgement destroying moment: Did you know, that I do not own a gun, nor do I particularly want to own a gun. And that even if I desired to own a gun, I would not be qualified to purchase a gun in most of the United States?

(I'm going to have to break this up into multiple posts I think. Expect the next post, that addresses the main issue of this topic, in 30 minutes or so)

Please tell me English isn't your native language.



This is just so stupid I'm having trouble responding. Do you really believe that it is only, or even mainly, the democratic party that does this? Do you not see why it is useful to do this in studying society? Do you really believe that the democratic party identifies these groups in order to discriminate against them?



This isn't actually true. Cite your sources.



Jesus fucking christ, you're one smarmy cunt. Oh, I just rated you down, too, so I guess I violated both of your requests.

Edited, Jun 13th 2009 12:07pm by Kavekk

Discrimination is not "recognition and understanding of differences"

Where the hell did you get that definition? Oh, you made it up to make yourself sound correct.

Webster:
the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently.
the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually.

Categorizing people into social groups based on their ethnicity, religious believes, sexual orientation, etc, is not discrimination. Treating them differently as a whole because of that category is.




So what does that have to do with Gun Control. You just said yourself that the crime drops were due to lower population and police crackdowns.

I don't see anywhere saying it's due to more people having access to guns.

I pulled it from the New Oxford American Dictionary 2008 edition.

discrimination |disˌkriməˈnā sh ən|
noun
1 recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another : discrimination between right and wrong | young children have difficulties in making fine discriminations.
• the ability to discern what is of high quality; good judgment or taste : those who could afford to buy showed little taste or discrimination.
• Psychology the ability to distinguish between different stimuli : [as adj. ] discrimination learning.
2 the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex : victims of racial discrimination | discrimination against homosexuals.
3 Electronics the selection of a signal having a required characteristic, such as frequency or amplitude, by means of a discriminator that rejects all unwanted signals.

Yes, I included the 3rd definition for completion sake. I know it is irrelevant. Bold and Italics are added exactly as they were in the dictionary.

To sum it up, you are confusing "Discrimination" with "Discrimination Against"


It has to do with: "If you make it so that law-abiding citizens cannot have access to guns via retailers," (which is what the law did) "Then crime rates go up" (which happened in very significant quantities)

Pretty straightforward.

Edited, Jun 13th 2009 9:05am by Karelyn

No he's not. You don't understand how to use a dictionary. In italics are example usages/sentences. The term that is being define is not "discriminate against," it's "discriminate." Well technically discrimination.

You're trying to weasel your way out of looking foolish, but let's give you the benefit of the doubt and use the meaning you have said you meant in the context you provided.

So basically you have said you meant here is that the Democratic part recognizes that black people are not white people, and that gay people differ from straight people. Completely innocent and meaningless with the definition you have said you intended. With the definition you have said you intended the Democratic Party is also discriminatory for recognizing that they are not the Republican Party, and that the number 4 is not the same as the number 5. Also with the definition you have said you intended the Republican Party is equally discriminatory, since they do break down the populace into demographics.

It's foolish either way honestly.

Edited, Jun 13th 2009 8:17am by Allegory

That's because classifying people into demographics is discrimination. You are saying that "white people" are different from "black people" because of the color of their skin. That is discriminating between two things.

Discrimination =/= Discriminating Against

The thing is? Discriminating based on race is absurd anyway. There is nothing different between a white person and a black person. There is a difference between the culture people are raised in, and a person raised in a negative culture, will gravitate towards a negative lifestyle, regardless of their race. The same is true of a person who is raised in a positive culture.

It's a sad thing that we discriminate based on race. It shouldn't be "Black People" or "White People" it should just be "people".

But meh. Even if you separate people into different demographic categories, it's still not necessarily discriminating against them. That's the thing about the English language. "Discrimination" and "Discriminating Against" are two radically different, and almost entirely unrelated things.

I blame it on "Discriminating Against" being a phrasal verb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb

Enjoy your English language lesson for the day.



I don't even know why I'm defending Republicans. I'm not even a Republican -_-;


No, you are regressing the definition of the phrasal verb "Discriminating Against" into the definition of the very different verb "discrimination"

I am shocked and appalled that anyone would want to be gbaji.

Your chart is pretty meaningless in the absence of any correlation. Adding your opinion about when and why rates went up and down doesn't really add to the validity of your claim. Fact is crime rate in DC has gone done in the last decade and a half. Add to this the fact that DC is only one city plopped into the center of a highly urbanized region with no restrictions on entry or exit from it's neighbors. Those neighbors have different (less restrictive) gun laws.

Personally, I'd rather protect individual rights than try and control the overabundance of firearms through ineffective laws, but, I also disdain the smell of ****, please try and refrain from dumping yours in this forum.



Edited, Jun 13th 2009 3:23pm by Elinda

These forums don't use moderators like that.

It's a phrasal verb. The English language is unfortunately full of them. As far as the language is concerned, it might as well be a completely different word, because it's definition is radically different from the original definition of "Discrimination."

Unfortunately, American English is regressing the definition of the phrasal verb "Discrimination Against' back into the word "Discrimination".

Ugh, I shouldn't have called the OP on his incorrect usage of the word "Racism." Now the entire thread has devolved into a discussion of the English Language.


A phrasal verb is when you combine a verb and a preposition into a single verb with a radically different meaning. It does magically change the definition, unfortunately.


Ugh. I should know better than to attempt to have a mature discussion on this forum.

I hope ya'll realize I haven't been hostile at all, nor have I insulted anyone. It's a shame ya'll refuse to give similar courtesy.

People don't have to agree. But it would be nice if people could agree to disagree, and actually have a discussion.


Good to know. I've been moderated on other forums before for having quoted something which got moderated, just was being cautious.

Edited, Jun 13th 2009 9:32am by Karelyn

May I just point out that most people, including most liberal people, do not want to ban guns altogether? That's an absurd assumption, and I am tired of having the discussion framed in those terms.

The problems are hand guns and military grade automatics, like Uzis and AK-47s and that class of guns.

No one, at least no one I know, wants to ban hand guns or even the autos. Access to them needs to be tightly controlled - no more buying them from a "dealer" who picked up a truck full at a gun show - and licensed. It's ridiculous to require a background check in some places but not others. It's ridiculous that we don't require proof of competence before handing out guns to anybody off the street.

I grew up around guns; I'm not anti-gun. I'm very much pro-regulation of machines that are made specifically to kill people.

What I am tired of, and I'm positive that many conservatives are tired of the mirror problem, is being lumped in with the most radical and rabid examples of progressives. We need to revive the idea of respectful debate; unfortunately the degradation of the public discourse is one thing that certainly can be laid at the door of Mr Limbaugh et al. (and his mirrors on the left, but their audience frankly tends to be minuscule - witness the abject failure of Air America).

Didn't really read the rest of your manifesto yet. I'll get to it later.

Eh, hate to be going into a discussion with another conservative, I'd rather have a discussion with a person who disagrees with me. But maybe it can be a nice restart to an actual discussion.

It's interesting that you should say that. I've noticed that many members of the Republican party are making a mass exodus to the Libertarian party. Myself included.

Libertarian party seems to uphold conservative politics (Which the Republican party has been failing marvelously at for decades), without having the general stupidity of the religious fundamentalists impacting their positions.

It's kinda a sad thing, that people who still believe they can talk to their childhood imaginary friend are allowed to vote. I swear, religion that believes in a sociable god is almost akin a medical mental disorder. The main difference being that religion is reasonably non-impairing to their daily function, unlike more traditional mental disorders which require medication in order to be socially stable.


He's still an ***hole. There is no other word for it. Even if it is just a television/radio personality that he dons, it is rather shameful that he cannot take a more mature approach to his job.


It would be prejudice, not discrimation.

I have respect for a fair portion Rush's political view (though I have greater respect for several other conservatives). But I have very little respect for the childish way he behaves.



Not really. They seem to exist very uncomfortably together. It's a marriage of convenience, that is ultimately harming conservatism.

There are many conservatives who are pro-gay-marriage, pro-choice, or pro-taxing the church, and many other things which would offend the christian fundamentalists greatly.

Now to be "smarmy" again, as Kavekk (probably accurately) described my attitude earlier in the thread...

Now for a pre-judgement destroying moment: You already know that politically I'm a conservative. But did you also know that, despite stereotypes to the contrary, I am a lesbian who happens to be politically conservative? I am an adult woman who's lifelong partner is another woman. My partner is so butch that most people tend to think we are heterosexual, to which my partner find great amusement. I am also pro-choice to an extent; while I do not approve of surgical abortion, I believe that the "Morning-After-Pill" should be as easy, if not easier to acquire, than Tylenol or Aspirin.

The reality is, Christian Fundamentalism should not be a part of Conservative Politics.


Considering the fan following that Twilight had...

...You must made me cry in real life, for you are probably right.