Weholt.
Quite the contrary. I concede nothing.
The quotes did NOT support his assertons about my beliefs.
What I find puzzling, Patrick, is that the quotes do not support your accusations such as that I am a warblogger and the Bush administration etc etc Little could be further from true, based on my own words.
Patrick,
Get a grip.
I'm saddened, Patrick, that you feel the need to lie.
You are deliberately misreading what I wrote.
Your statement (below) is falsehood and untruth.
"Raw Data's posting history on Making Light, however, consists of repeated attempts to get people hereabouts to sign onto the latest shibboleths of the 101st Fighting Keyboard Brigade, while implying (or, as seen above, outright stating) that if we don't snap to order, we're slacker layabout nogoodniks whom nobody could trust. As opposed, of course, to the upstanding, highly credible people who have, in the last six years, wrecked America's military and ruined our standing in the world."
Patrick. (and others)
Did you actually read my posts?
Rather than simply reacting?
I don't think so.
For example, why do you characterize me as a war-blogger (Whatever you even mean by that.)
"Islamofascism : Use of this word indicates a wingnut perspective."
Nonsense. But there's your problem. If attitudes like that are common among grass-roots Democrats, the Republicans are a shoe-in. What does it take to convince you that there is a danger?
Graydon,
While I disagree with your assessment & characterization of the threat, I do agree that part of the fix is taxing oil so that people will conserve etc etc.
The tragedy is that Joe Sixpack (if you really want to trivialize our fellow citizens) is not ready for the truth about gas prices and neither party at the local level is able to persuade them.
Where I live -- and it's a deep blue region -- local Democrat politicians oppose mass transit and favor roads.
"I am far less worried about Islamofascism than I am about the home-grown fascism..."
Why do so many people have to set up a comparison?
Can't both be a danger?
Why do so many feel the need to compare and usually, of course, by concluding that Bush is more dangerous than Osama bin Laden?
I hear this from both left and right. If on a right-wing blog one says that "Bush is ineffective and leading us the wrong way...etc etc.." then people attack you as "soft on Islamofascism."
Here it's the opposite: Bush has to be 100% wrong and that there is no danger from Islam.
It's always set up a binary choice: "Bush is a bad President" and "There is no problem from Islamfascism."
Why not both? (He asked rhetorically.) i.e. Bush is a bad President AND there is a great danger from Islamofascism.
Btw, I don't want to give the impression that I think it would be better if the Republicans kept control. Obviously (I hope) that would be further disaster.
All I am saying is that the Democrats have a long way to go before they even _appear_ to be speaking with clarity on national defense. Of course there are exception...(I hope.)
I am probably just responding to the idiocy of my local Democrats, many of whom are so guilt-ridden that they would offer suggestions to the hang-man on how to knot the rope.
It will be interesting to see how the parties will deal with Ayaan Hirsi Ali moving to the USA. Neither party has been clear or thoughtful on how to deal with immigration, much less Islamic immigration. (Not to suggest that Ali is a typical immigrant but nevertheless she raises the issue.)
The problem for the Democrats (as it has been for several years) is to explain coherent policies for dealing with Islamofascism. The Republicans have obviously failed in substance though they are still convincing that they know national security.
Local Democrats (so far as I can judge from reading local political bloggers) haven't figured out is that while Bush was terribly, tragically wrong about Iraq there is indeed a danger from Islamofascism (which of course the Iraq war has done nothing to lessen but simply worsened.)
The grassroots of the party still seems to be in denial that there is a problem and that trickles up to the leadership.
No one -- that's NO ONE -- has a good handle on how to deal with radical Islam but the Democrats present themselves as singularly inept and confused.
"Is it not the case that the majority of the present Europeans are, by and large, the descendants of the first post-glacial populations (of the European continent, not necessarily of the part of it they currently inhabit)?"
I was implying (at least) your last clause -- "not necessarily of the part of it they currently inhabit.." -- which makes my point clearer. There has been so much pushing and shoving and moving into others' territories in Europe (by Europeans, Asiastics, Arabs etc) that it gives a lie to what I took to the basic sense of your quote -- i.e. that Europeans have some higher right to the land because "we took it from nobody."
At some point or another, everyone's ancestors probably displaced someone and now, as it always has been, the right that Europeans have is as long as they can -- and we'll see about it -- hold the land against what I know many/most people on this blog thinks is a right-wing fantasy: Islam. The battle of course now must be to integrate those which are there and unfortunately, because Europe doesn't have our melting pot myth, it will be much tougher for them.
And if I got it wrong, then what did you mean?
•••
And btw, of course those post-glacial migrations happened (I believe) in waves over many generations with succeeding waves making room for themselves by force if needed amongs people who may have gotten there just 50 years before. So I guess I was puzzled that you would be trying to tease out some moral superiority from our ancestors, all of who were at some time or another pretty capable of killing other humans.
"...We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice lefty..."
Untrue. (Or meaningless.) But definitely dangerous fantasy because it allows someone (I don't know who is speaking in that passage) to claim moral superiority. (Of course that's my sense of this blog -- enormous sense of moral superiority...not merely justified anger at an idiot President but a real sense that we here are pure and clean and moral. The quote above is just so Making Light)
And that line about the Amerian Century being "so over." You may well be accurate. And who would you prefer as top dog? Or would you prefer multi-polar world of rough equals...say China and India and Russia and some Moslem coalition based in Indonesia? You'd prefer any one of them? No, I think that for all our American stupidity and bumbling, we'd look back on a world with one bully -- the USA -- as a golden age.
There shouldn't be too much surprise here -- though hope springs eternal -- if you read Woodward's "Plan of Attack" which paints a portrait (undisputed by anyone quoted in the book) that of a President who doesn't encourage discussion or ask question.
What I found most extraordinary is that GW never asked, discussed, consulted etc the wisdom or even the conduct of the war with his own father, a man so uniquely situated to give advice on warring with Saddam Hussein that if it weren't fact, one would simply call the situation amongst those three men fiction...too amazing to be credible.
Is there any sort of consensus here about how to respond to Iranian claims that they have (or will very soon have) a nuclear weapon and the ability to deliver it?
".....The problem is figuring out what exactly constitutes a useful act in this regard...."
Interesting how that seems to be a sentiment shared both left and right.
I've been reading a bunch of the more intelligent right-wing blogs recently -- and yes, there are quite a few and no, no matter what you may want to imagine I am not a right-wing wacko -- and the picture that I get is that the Right doesn't know what to do either about what it considers to be the major issue -- Islamofascism. And they are slowly becoming aware that the Iraq war has nothing to do with fighting Islamofascism and, as well, that GW Bush is somewhat of a dunce when it comes to effective action.
I am not sure if that is good news or not from the point of view of people here but I think it's interesting.
C'est moi, friend Sam.
And btw, you don't have your facts straight.
I am with you Alau in your brave call.
I, too, raise my voice against "ignorance and bigotry."
In fact I will go much further and announce, publicly, boldly and for the whole world to read, that I am against all bad things!
Oh, I'm around Electric Landlady. Never fear.
I did look at that Doug Saunders interview. Thoughtful, though I wonder if a bit naive in his optimism that the vast majority of Moslems truly desire to integrate? It's hard to judge these things but it seems that they have only tepid interest in embracing western values such as the rough-and tumble of public conversation, women's rights, free speech, tolerance etc etc
But thanks. Was there something in particular which caught your eye?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 25 |
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