In July, I cited Ben Smith’s observation on Politico that “MSNBC scours the tea party movement for racist elements, which one could probably find in any mass organization in America.“
Why is it, I wonder, that so many are determined to define conservative movements by their most extreme elements, yet most conservatives (and libertarians) who define left-of-center movements by their extremes do so, as Glenn Reynolds recently did in his Washington Examiner piece, in a tongue-in-cheek manner?
He’s merely pointing out the absurdity of the attempts to grandstand on violent actions by right-wing nutbags (or nutbags whom the MSM has determined to be right-wingers since their targets are members of approved victim classes). As Don Surber, via Glenn Reynolds, put it in commenting on that prolific blogger’s column:
Of course there are zealots on both sides.
Only one side is tarred with its nutjobs — the 50 million Americans who oppose abortion in any form are somehow all responsible for Dr. Tiller’s death — while we should not judge Islam by an organization that trains thousands of terrorists for hits all over the world, including the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Oh, gee, I don’t know–how come certain people interpret the slightest deviation from unfettered free market capitalism as Communism or Nazism? I couldn’t possibly mean anyone on this blog would do that, of course–no one here would ever, ever willfully misinterpret someone’s post or slander their reputation based on a conscious misreading of something they said. I hope the rest of this thread will focus what evil, mean people like MSNBC and the Gay Left are doing instead of wasting time looking for any of that kind of behavior here.
The answer is pretty evident; it is a useful tactic and it often works.
It’s obviously easier than dissecting and logically refuting the other’s sides positions; especially when so much of conservatism is irrefutable.
There are extremes on both sides of the political spectrum. The Extreme-Left is “100% Tyranny” while the Extreme-Right is “100% Anarchy/No Government.”
Extreme-Left includes the Communists, Nazis, Socialists, Religious Theocratic (ie. Islamists, etc.), Left-Wing Activists (Leftists), and so on.
Extreme-Right has no Constitution, there is no Government present in the land or society, and its all Anarchy. Elitists will take over and send Anarchy towards the Extreme-Left.
This is the reason why we have the United States Consitution. Supreme Court Justices are supposed to be ‘Constitutional Moderates’ by their nature.
There are Leftists and there are Liberals. Let’s take back the word liberal and return it to its ‘Classical Liberal’ definition. Because the word liberal, today, is associated with Progressives and Leftists, shame! That is why Leftists are anti-American just like the Islamists.
Anti-American means an individual or organization whose great ambition (political agenda) is to subvert and take over America from within – destroy its Capitalist Democracy, completely control its social institutions (ie. Government, Economy, Education, Marriage and Family, Religion, mainstream Media, etc.), and America’s exceptionalism, culture, and national history.
So where does having a 10% flat tax like Ireland or many of the Balkan states fall on the scale of extremes? Where does wanting to use that flat tax to pay for a social infrastructure including health care, social security, schools, roads, food inspection, military protection, etc., and things that would contribute to the general welfare of all citizens fall in terms of extremes? Because here it’s treated like Nazis who beat kittens.
Now $oro$, the NAALCP, MediaMorons, ThinkPropaganda etc. have a new website monitoring “racism and other forms of extremism within the Tea Party movement”. I would wager that they’re completely disinterested in Congress critters who physically and verbally assault people, eco-commies who take hostages, fake “hate crimes” etc.
They won’t repudiate their own, but they demand Tea Partiers repudiate “extremists among their ranks”? Screw ’em.
http://tinyurl.com/38lzxjh
It’s almost as if this columnist read your blog posting today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06douthat.html
#5: Ash – not sure where you got the idea that a flat tax is frowned upon by conservatives. (By the way, if the right tends towards anarchy then I guess conservatism isn’t right-wing. I see government as an essential part of civilization – when it respects the rights of citizens, operates within its constitutional limits, and isn’t used as a tool by self-serving pols.)
The tax issue is one of the things that drives absolutism on both sides – the reason being that taxes are used to push agendas and control. Tax-and-spend liberals see this as a way to takes things from people who have them and give them to people who will vote for them (be it a welfare mother or bank CEO).
A flat tax will never happen here because politicians on both sides would have to cede too much power.
Human nature: the right does the same thing. See it on blogs all the time. You know, social security is communist, anyone left of Glenn Beck is a leftist,
MSM is a vast conspiracy, etc. Great fun, but fuzzy
thinking.
Because the flat tax was frowned upon when I brought it up.
I see it working in various countries, including Ireland and Russia, both of which also support a foundation of social programs with their taxes. Once the tax is paid, you’re free to make as much money as you want, so it seems an ideal compromise solution. But zealots from either side don’t seem to want to look at it.
“social infrastructure”
That’s a bullshit term invented by leftists to confuse. Welfare benefits are not infrastructure, social or otherwise. The only social infrastructure that one might legitimately talk about are the social ties that bind a society; natural, organic ties created by free people (as opposed, say, to institutions imposed by a ruling elite.)
This comparison (liberals do this; conservatives and libertarians do not) is not supportable. That some on the left identify conservatism with its more extreme proponents is true, but the phenomenon you are talking about here is a human one, and not a liberal one. Isn’t it the same thing when a conservative slams the entire environmental movement just because there are some environmentalists whose positions are extreme? Or when some libertarians decry all regulations, just because some are overly complicated and restrictive and difficult to understand? As far as conservatives and liberals having their tongues in your cheeks when they identify liberals by their extremes, well… all I can say is that I’ve put out some mildly liberal comments in this blog, and if the excoriating and snarling comments I’ve received in response were from members whose tongues were in their cheeks, God save me when they start to really mean it.
The Democrat liberal meme of Republicans, conservatives, tea party goers being right wing nutts rings hollow now.
The people know that for 8 years the Repubs spent almost like Democrats. They hoped they learned their lesson. Compared to this crop of socialists, they’ve decided there is no contest. The extremeist label isn’t sticking.
Todays polls are amazing!
Rand Paul up 13% (remember when the media said the Republicans may have given away their chance to win in KY?). Toomey up 12% in PA. (“Toomeys a club for growth guy, out of the main stream….”), Rasmussen has the Democrats behind now 12% in the generic ballot!!
Rasmussen has Obamas key approve disapprove number at -20, almost his record low!
Many many races are starting to break wide open. MO, OH, PA, I think this could be a record shattering election. I’d now predict the Dems have lost WI and WA. Amazing. Has Obama raped and pillaged the Democrat party? Leaving them with just the unions?
I am sad to see the Democratic party crashing and burning because of Obama. Although there is a liberal wing of Democrats, Democrat and Liberal are not synonyms. I see myself as a Democrat and not a liberal. This means that I believe government has a responsiblity to use tax money to build a social safety net. But once that’s built, people are free to earn as much or as little as they want. I also think that corporations tend to put profit ahead of worker safety and health, so government needs to monitor corporations on behalf of workers to some degree. However, once we have fair and safe workplaces, corporations are free to make as much as they want.
I realize that this is seen as the most extreme form of Stalinism on this board, but it’s actually pretty mainstream America. And the Democrats have chosen a left-wing nutjob to lead them out of the mainstream into oblivion.
Bring the Democrats back to America! Hillary 2012!
A pet goldfish, a pet hamster, a pet frog……….these are the things that need to be taken care of. These are the creatures that require a “safety net”. But leave them in their natural habitat, and they can take care of themselves.
Do citizens exist solely for the amusement of government?
Would wild animals fare better under the protection of an ‘owner’, than in natural world?
.
I believe government has a responsiblity to use tax money to build a social safety net. But once that’s built, people are free to earn as much or as little as they want.
Because all those massively expensive, bureaucratically administered services are FREE once the safety net is built, and so there is no need for a voracious bureaucracy to demand ever greater amounts of what citizens earn.
Hey, Check in #7, thanks for the link. MIght have missed it otherwise!
Wasn’t Socialist Stupidity supposed to be a golden “safety net”? Where the hell is that money? Why not save your OWN money and do with it as you wish? What’s more, what’s the ROI with Socialist Stupidity?
When the position being slammed is the dominant one within the subculture. . .
And because, after all, taxes come prior to earnings, both logically and morally. The State has first claim on the fruits of everyone’s labor. Each person’s life belongs to the State. Each person must live for the State. Each person will gladly labor for the State until *it* decides that *it* has been fed enough (to create a so-called “social safety net” or whatever the new excuse is, blah blah blah), then happily set about earning whatever crumbs are left to them. The State being paid first is morally right and will not demoralize or dis-incentivize anybody.
It’s what Hitler, Stalin, Castro and Kim Jong Il thought. So it must be right.
Now here’s the part I find funny. I read and responded to V’s comment. Of the original comment, what he answered, I only saw the bit he blockquoted. I didn’t see who the original commentor was. I said, “That bit which V blockquoted and refuted, it is so deeply stupid that it could only be from one of the blog’s three most pretentious-but-stupid commentors, either Levi, Serenity or Ash.” I only checked now, i.e. after the fact, to see if I was right. I was.
And, just to spell out my point for those three: Taxes are NOT morally or logically prior to earnings. Without earnings, there would be no taxes. Earnings come from motivated people, people working to better their own lives and their families’. People’s lives do not belong to the State. The State is not morally entitled to anyone’s earnings: whether for building a costly, bureaucratic, inefficient so-called “social safety net” or any other purpose. And certainly not to the first/best part of anyone’s earnings.
Taxes may be the only practical way to fund a parasitic, over-grown government such as America already suffers from, but that doesn’t make taxes right. The government is supposed to be the servant of the People – a lowly and humble servant. As a lowly servant, the government has a duty to make itself as small, silent and inobtrusive as it possibly can. Government should take the last of what people earn, not the first. A culture in which “once [government is fed], people are free to earn” is an immorally perverted culture of death.
“immorally perverted culture of death”
Is that a great example of the kind of problem this thread addresses, or what?
No Ash, only the truth. You just don’t want to hear it.
Now what I came to say. Dan Blatt: Why do you think Glenn Reynolds’ piece was “tongue-in-cheek”? I can’t see that it is. He says, with validity to back up his apparent seriousness:
Ya know who else needs a “social safety net”? Convicted criminals!
Upon conviction for a crime that merits imprisonment, inmates can enjoy; FREE food, FREE shelter, FREE clothing, FREE entertainment, FREE legal services, and when they overdose on drugs that were smuggled into the prison, FREE health care.
Progressives are turning the United States into the “ideal” (simulated) human environment, and WE are the zoo exhibits.
Before we ever get to the question of ‘What’s Best For’ the American community, we should ask ourselves; ‘What gives us the right?’. Even if i could run my neighbors lemonade stand better than he ever could, what gives me the right to seize my neighbors property, and prove my claim?
.
The ‘Flat Tax’ is distasteful to come conservatives, myself wholeheartedly included, because among other points, it still leaves many people, transactions and situations out of the mix and free from sharing in the wonder that is taxation! ‘The Fair Tax’,
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main
however, does not.
Yet, neither is this one likely to gain support from the same individuals who would have to surrender a sort of power (nearly all) in order for the rest of us, yea, all of us, to be fairly taxed and treated by our government’s tax system.