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PoliticalGround >> attn: thirdleg, marck, and other neocons
| 11/4/08 11:49 PM | |
Buddhadev
12 
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3399 |
Now that McCain is going down in a richly deserved humiliating defeat, do any of you regret the roles that you and others of your ideological bent had in trying to marginalize Ron Paul and defeat his nomination? In this country, there are three major issue-positions in the public that have roughly 60% support: Iraq War(anti), Immigration(restrict), Bailout(against). Ron Paul was on the side of the majority of the public on these issues. John McCain was against them. You might be able to quibble and rationalize, but you can't deny that there's a compelling argument that Paul would have been the stronger general election candidate purely on the strength of his views. So let me ask you, are you happy with an Obama presidency or do you maybe feel some regret about opposing the man who might have stopped him? |
| 11/5/08 6:02 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3401 |
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| 11/8/08 6:10 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3406 |
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| 11/19/08 10:49 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3413 |
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| 11/24/08 10:12 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3419 |
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| 12/1/08 11:27 AM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3423 |
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| 12/2/08 4:41 AM | |
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Joe Ray
Member Since: 8/24/00 Posts: 51843 |
They are ducking this thread just like they have all ducked meeting me in the ring to settle our differences in no- holds-barred mortal combat. |
| 12/4/08 1:58 AM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3425 |
I know. :-) |
| 12/4/08 9:32 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3426 |
Hi Info: The reason I left you out of the subject line is the fact that in another discussion we had you were honest enough to admit that you weren't a conservative of any sort. Neocons are characterized by the fact that they sell themselves as conservatives (and usually let loose outraged wails at the application of the prefix). I'm not surprised at all that YOU prefer Obama. Information - No. Ron Paul's ideology is fatally flawed and potentially devestating to our country. OK, I guess from my point of the view the antecedent to "our" in "our country" isn't Georgia or Israel. ;-) Of course I can deny that. It's a ridiculous assertion. I stated my premises (public opinion on the three arguably biggest issues of this election cycle and the fact that Ron Paul is closer to the popular positions on them than John McCain is). Where's the ridiculous part? Or is it just ridiculous because you say it is? |
| 12/8/08 5:34 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Edited: 12/08/08 5:35 PM Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3428 |
So where are Thirdleg, Marck, and, for that matter, Big Eyed Fish? Are all of you going to be honest enough to admit your socialist leanings as Info has by saying that you prefer Obama over Paul? |
| 12/9/08 5:04 PM | |
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Squatdog
11
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 23658 |
According to forum member 'Information', he is really a Liberal and his slavish devotion to neo-conservatives such as William Kristol, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz are merely a fantastic coincidence that can't be adequately explained. Also, Wolfowitz isn't really a neo-conservative and the PNAC isn't really a neo-conservative organisation, despite expressly stating to the contrary. |
| 12/9/08 5:14 PM | |
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Squatdog
11
Edited: 12/09/08 5:20 PM Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 23660 |
So I am incorrect in stating that you have supported Cheney, Kristol and Wolfowitz on numerous threads and that you stated that Wolfowitz wasn't a neo-conservative and the PNAC wasn't a neo-conservative organisation? |
| 12/9/08 8:29 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Edited: 12/09/08 8:29 PM Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3430 |
Info: I hope you don't mind me taking Squatdog's tangent a little further to defend you a bit. :-) Squatdog: I don't think he's being at all dishonest about his views if he calls himself Liberal. I think he's generally to the left of neocons on non-foreign-policy issues (he's on the record in favor of socialized medicine). I think his views are more in line with, say, The New Republic magazine: establishmentarian foreign policy (interventionist) and immigration (open borders) views and Democrat-base views on economic issues (I'm pretty sure the average Democrat is in favor of socialized medicine) with a very strong, hyper-devotional support for Israel--about as diametrically opposed to Ron Paul or, for that matter, me, as one can get. Info isn't quite a neocon himself, but probably found a considerable amount of common cause with them throughout the Bush administration years. |
| 12/10/08 4:46 AM | |
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Squatdog
11
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 23662 |
Information - So I am incorrect in stating that you have supported Cheney, Kristol and Wolfowitz on numerous threads and taht you stated that Wolfowitz wasn't a neo-conservative and teh PNAC wasn't a neo-conservative organisation? There was an extensive thread on the OG in which a number of Kristol's comically naive pre-war quotes were listed and you immediately leapt to his defence. It eventually ran to over a hundred posts altogether, so I would find it surprising that you seem to have forgotten. As far as 'spam' goes, it was two sentences in response to the previous poster's statement regarding your political affiliation. |
| 12/19/08 12:27 AM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Edited: 12/19/08 12:27 AM Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3437 |
Squatdog - I actually think this is a very important point for me to contend with. Information IS indeed a liberal and the extent to which he seems like a neocon isn't so much him being dishonest, but the fact that neocons and liberals are ideological cousins. Have a look at the following exchange in this thread: http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/mma.cfm?go=forum_framed.posts&thread=802748 In this thread, Info and I argued about the positions of intervening in Darfur. Info was pro, I was con.
As you can see, a left-wing poster affirmed an ideological kinship with Mr. Info, and this is entirely unsurprising. The idea that America needs to have an interventionist foreign policy is fundamentally a liberal one. If you're my age (29) or older, you may recall how "main street" type conservatives were rabidly denounced by both the Clinton administration and neocons (specifically Kristol and "The Weekly Standard") for their "isolationism" due to their opposition to Clinton's interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. As Randolph Bourne said, "War is the Health of the State" and liberals are happy to engage in war for the reason that they love big government and government programs. Wars and nation-building are the biggest, most expensive government programs of all. What's more is that an expensive intervention in a foreign country kind cuts the legs out from under any conservative policy on the domestic front. How can a conservative argue for cutting social programs domestically while America is spending billions on schools and hospitals in Iraq? That's how establishment Liberals use war -- to promote big government: as LBJ did with Vietnam to push the Great Society agenda. That's also why it's so much easier to find Democrats that voted for the Iraq War than it is to find Democrats who are, say, pro-life or anti-Social Security, why Obama's prosposed cabinet is overwhelmingly stacked with pro-Iraq war people, and why he chose a pro-Iraq war VP. I predict that an Obama administration will have just as many American troops on foreign soil as the Bush administration did (or maybe even many more). The idea that the American people owe the rest of the world a favor and should be bled and impoverished to make good on it is fundamentally a liberal one. Bush's foreign policy of fighting expensive wars to spread democracy and enforce UN resolutions wouldn't be acceptable to an America where schoolchildren grow up reading Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, or an America that studied Charles Murray and Phillipe Rushton's research on race differences in IQ and temperament (anyone who did study them wouldn't have been sold on the idea that hot-headed Arab Muslims would greet a force of foreign invaders with flowers thrown to their feet). However, it WAS acceptable to an America that's been brainwashed with a steady stream of internationalist ("Winning WWII was America's crowning moral achievement!"), egalitarian ("MLKjr was a saint!"), and statist ("FDR saved us from the depression!") propaganda. So, basically, if you're of the Left and you're looking for someone to blame for making the Iraq war politically feasible, for the rise of the neocons, and for ideologies like Info's, you might want to start by looking in the mirror. |
| 12/24/08 2:14 AM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Edited: 12/24/08 11:56 AM Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3441 |
When you took this ideology selector, your top result was neocon--as reported by you. If this is incorrect, can you point to a major ideological departure that you have with what is commonly considered neoconservatism? |
| 12/24/08 2:15 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Edited: 12/24/08 2:54 PM Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3442 |
(I fixed an HTML bug in my earlier post which was cutting out a lot of the text.)thirdleg - I think you may be confused because I joke and play on people's perceptions on here. Too vague. My fault for asking a vague question. Do you support the Iraq war, believe that the United States should guarantee Israel's security and support it financially, support the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act, and believe that America should use military force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? Who did you vote for in the primary and in the general election? In the interest of full disclosure, my votes, were Ron Paul (GOP Primary) and Chuck Baldwin (general election) and my answers to my own questions from the previous paragraph are all "no". |
| 12/28/08 9:32 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3449 |
Thirdleg: OK, I was wrong in my original assessment of your ideology. If I could edit the thread title, I'd replaced your name with Big Eyed Fish's or someone similar. In any event, I'm still curious about who you'd prefer in a hypothetical Paul vs. Obama election. Thanks, Buddhadev |
| 12/29/08 2:26 AM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3450 |
By the way, I don't blame you for avoiding the forum. When I was a more active OGer from about 1998-2001, I used to think that a PoliticalGround was a great idea and would "heighten" discussion. Now I think politics is a subject that people, for various reasons, want to discuss on the OG's main index. |
| 1/8/09 5:17 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3469 |
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| 1/18/09 6:08 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3471 |
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| 1/24/09 2:50 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3477 |
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| 2/15/09 1:59 PM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Edited: 02/15/09 2:00 PM Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3495 |
I want to further explore something else Information said.Information - No. Ron Paul's ideology is fatally flawed and potentially devestating to our country. I would rather have Obama as President than I would Ron Paul. Info, between mass immigration, big government, increased socialization of medicine (Bush's prescription drug plan), and heavy-handed foreign policy interventionism, America has essentially been testing your ideology under laboratory conditions for eight years (arguably for 20 or even 45 years, but let's leave it at eight). And look where it's brought us. You attack Paul's ideology as "fatally flawed" and "potentially devastating" and yet here we are with our country genuinely faced with devastation. We have a daunting, paradoxical combination of monetary inflation, unemployment, AND a credit crunch. We have all of this after years of policies that you whole-heartedly approve of with more such policies (I imagine you're pro-TARP and pro-stimulus, correct me if I'm wrong) to come. Will there ever come a point when you're willing to entertain the idea that globalism might be a bad idea and that America should live smaller, be more cautious, make less trouble, accept the rest of the world the way it is, and focus on its own survival and financial sustainability? Or does America need to turn into Zimbabwe or Argentina before you'd ever consider the fact that Ron Paul might be right? |
| 2/21/09 2:00 AM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3497 |
I'll be out this wek with guard stuff. I'll get back to you after that. |
| 3/5/09 12:06 AM | |
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Buddhadev
12
Member Since: 1/1/01 Posts: 3501 |
Where has it brought us? The largest, most advanced and diverse economy in the world? Yes, what a horrible position to be in. No, what it's done is SQUANDER the largest, most advanced, etc., economy in the world--especially over the last eight years. Between pissing off the rest of the world and maintaining a leviathan at home, you people have eaten the seed corn. Further, you're committing the most basic of economic fallacies-- connecting unwanted results with unrelated causes. To imagine that globalization had much if anything to do with the current crisis is completely ridiculous. I didn't say "globalization" (free trade, et. al), I said globalISM -- the ideology that America can't just be a normal, quiet country that pays its bills, minds its own business, and leads by example, but rather, has to be the engine of a new world order. What makes you believe that I am not continuously re-evaluating my beliefs? Because I'm not reaching your conclusions? Because you stubbornly cling to your views in the face of the havoc your ideology has wrought. My advice to you is to lay off the hyperbole and settle in to some rational and reasonable lines of thought. You're attempting to conflate temporary economic weakening with structural deficiency and then utilizing that conclusion to pimp for your candidate of choice. That's fairly weak. Condescension isn't an acceptable substitute for logic. Have you put your money where your optimistic mouth is and thrown your savings into the stock market? If you have, then I genuinely feel sorry for you as someone who I personally like since you would have bled tremendous amounts of money in the time between your last post and my response now. The sad thing is that if it is "temporary" what we'll likely see is the same sort of bubble-driven false prosperity and false recovery that we had from 2004-2007: debt/inflation-fueled, unsustainable, marked by record numbers of bankruptcies, weak employment numbers (that the government will continue to pretty-up by shuffling the long-time unemployed into its numbers for the "permanently discouraged"), and ridiculously high living and housing expenses. Oh Jesus, you are in high pitch at this point. Zimbabwe? LOL. America's devastation that I worried aloud about previously isn't a complete immolation, but us turning into an Argentina, Brazil, or (god forbid) Zimbabwe. We're steadily becoming a country of gated communities of wealthy one side and the poor and desperate on the other with no one in-between. Recessions are one thing, but what will really destroy the middle class are the false recoveries of the sort we saw during the Bush years and the housing bubble. People of middle class means and sentiments will find that they can't afford to settle down, buy houses, and raise families while maintaining the levels of material comfort they've come ot expect. So they won't: They'll live single, with roommates, or as married DINKS and they'll be replaced by Mexicans who are willing to stuff 16 people into a three bedroom house. And America as we knew it will not persist. It is ridiculous to believe that the "whole man" concept is not taken into consideration when choosing a candidate for office. While in your world those three issues represent the defining criteria for choosing a candidate, to most normal people choosing someone with a limited, fairly homogeneous support network based only upon his positions on three topics is simply ridiculous. I didn't say ANYONE with those positions would have been stronger than McCain, I said Ron Paul would have been. And...lol...you don't even want to start comparing their "whole man" elements. Ron Paul has led the most clean, wholesome, accomplished, and skeleton-free life of virtually any politician in America today. He compares favorably with John McCain's liasons with Charlie Keating, his dumping of his first wife because she wasn't pretty anymore after her accident, and his John Kerry-esque careerist giggoloing to rich heiresses with well-connected fathers. McCain's ideology was almost a caricature of anti-Main Street opinions that were not only foolish, but unpopular as well: - "security" from terrorism through aggressive war, but open borders and liberalized immigration. - "anti-Socialist" but pro-bailout, pro-tax, pro-war, and pro-regulation - "pro-freedom" but not in terms of political speech or the right to criticize politicians (McCain-Feingold) You know, it's entirely possible that Sarah Palin wasn't as stupid as she seemed, but that she was just bamboozled by trying to defend the confusing clusterfuck that is McCain's ideology. Info, I certainly appreciate all the sage advice you're offering. Let me give you some in return: your political views will return to some level of sanity when you stop looking at America as a vehicle for your Utopian ideology and learn to see individual Americans as people worthy of being left alone to pursue their own dreams in peace. It's good enough for them to tend to their families and communities without having to be bled dry to support Israel, Georgia, Darfur, or NATO expansion. |
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