Those who have followed this blog have observed that while Bruce and I have very different blogging styles, we (very) often have quite similar points of view, he perhaps a tad more polemical than I, I perhaps a tad more philosophical than he.
Now, to be sure, he eagerly embraced Herman Cain’s candidacy while I only appreciated the Georgia businessman’s optimism, energy and vision. Yet, we both love the Gipper, indeed one of our first meetings was at the sacred shrine of freedom named in his honor Reagan Library. Sometimes it’s uncanny how much we think alike. Once unbeknownst to the other, each was working on a post on the same issue. Another time I’ll have blogged about something and then receive an e-mail (or text) from him, thanking me for hitting a topic he had meant to address.
Once he even texted me asking me to blog on an issue at the very moment I was completing a piece on that very topic. Today, while in the car with my youngest brother in the town where we grew up (Cincinnati), I heard that Michele Bachmann had dropped out of the race for the White House. A few minutes later, while he was in a business meeting (and I without my laptop), I scribbled some notes for post.
When I located my laptop and was about to blog about the Minnesota Congressman’s withdrawal, I caught Bruce’s post on the very topic. Uncanny how much his post paralleled my thoughts. Like him, “I am no fan of Rep. Bachmann. I would not vote for her and I believe her social views are out of the mainstream of American conservatism, not to mention mainstream America.”
Like him as well, I was “disgusted at the way Rep. Bachmann was treated by the (mostly left-leaning) media and the political punditry class. She was routinely derided for her faith and for being a female candidate.” And because of that treatment, I found that whenever I blogged about the candidate, I was not addressing her faults (which are many), but faulting the media for treating her unfairly.
I wondered if that negative coverage helped her surge in the polls, with even some liberal pundits agreeing it was unfair. Conservatives were indicating support for her not because they supported her social conservative agenda, but because they sympathized with a female conservative maliciously maligned in the legacy media.
Once they relented in their attacks, her poll numbers began to drift downward. People may have realized she wasn’t the demon some in the legacy media made her out to be, but realized as well she was out of the mainstream of American conservatism.
The folks in the media intended to use her to demonize the GOP, but in the end revealed only their own prejudiced attitude toward Christian women.
(To see how Bruce and I have a different manner of making a similar point, compare and contrast the last sentence in his post and the last in mine — prior to this parenthetical of course. 🙂 )
Her social conservative agenda is quite irrelevant to me, and I assume for many others. Her fiscal policy is where her primary appeal lies.
Bachman’s out of the mainstream of American conservatism? So are you saying, B. Daniel, that social liberalism is the mainstream of American conservatism?
Rattlesnake:
THANK YOU!
That is exactly how I feel.
According to Newt Gingrich, it appears some of you are are one issue voters. In that case, Bachmann, nor Santorum, need your vote. What had been a battle between the Gay Left, the Gay Right and the only federalist/conservative reverts to a battle between the Gay Left and the federalist/conservative. The reality is that due to an irrational hatred of social conservatives, some social liberals will never pull the lever for a social conservative. We can live with that.
Please crack this code concerning Michelle Bachmann:
To wit: In what way(s) was Michelle Bachmann “out of the mainstream of American conservatism?
Are we doing a euphemism dance here? Or am I just dense? I can understand a gay opposing her because of her strong religion based beliefs concerning homosexuality. I can not understand why a gay would oppose her because of those beliefs, yet not openly say so. If GayPatriots can not endorse a candidate who holds strong religion based beliefs concerning homosexuality, please consider making it a clear statement of policy.
Heliotrope — Off Topic, but in the “Santorum’s critique” thread, you asked:
Allow me to direct your attention to this site: The History of Sodomy Laws in the United States (which is a slight misnomer because it extends back to the pre-Revolutionary colonies as well).
I do not endorse all of the author’s political/legal analysis, and there is a clear pro-gay spin*, but it’s the exhaustive footnotes listing hundreds of legal cases over hundreds of years that make the page worth reading.
There are some interesting surprises, too: for example, the intolerant redneck state of Georgia did not get around to criminalizing sodomy until well into the 19th Century! (Although not, mind you, because Georgians loved homosexuality the more, but because they loved “English common law” the less.)
Another surprise: Even in Puritan-run colonial Massachusetts where sodomy was a capital crime and the laws were generally draconian, absence of evidence that actual anal penetration had occurred was an absolute defense against the DP. (Though presumably the offenders would still have gotten whipping and the stocks.) Meanwhile, over in Britain, “buggerus interruptus” — i.e., pulling out before ejaculation — was, at least for a time, also a defense against conviction, until the wording of the law was revised.
Third surprise: Apparently no citizen of the United States was ever legally put to death for sodomy; all of the legal executions occurred in colonial times, even though the laws making sodomy a capital offense remained on the books in some jurisdictions as late as the 1870s.
Anyway, regarding your question above, the website also explains that, U.S.-wide, fellatio (whether hetero or gay-male) did not start being legally “upgraded” to Sodomy under the laws of any state until circa 1900. Prior to that, the term “Sodomy” had legally referred only to anal buggery as well as bestiality, while fellatio had more or less everywhere been prosecuted under some generic rubric such as “Gross Indecency” — which could also cover hetero prostitution, and which typically carried lighter sentences than “Sodomy”. And adding cunnilingus (hetero or lesbian) to anti-Sodomy laws took even longer; that only began in the 1920s, possibly after controversial novels like The Well of Loneliness finally caused lesbianism to ping on the public radar. (At least one state supreme court expressed the deepest regret at being forced to reverse a conviction for the Abominable Offense of lesbian cunnilingus, and urged the legislature to add rugmunching to the anti-Sodomy statute with all due speed — which the legislators did.)
So, at least going by pre-20th-century American legal definitions, NO active lesbians are “sodomites”, and neither are actively gay men who completely avoid anal sex.
Anyway, check out the page, with the appropriate caveats about the author’s possible biases.
* E.g., the main Introduction page fails to give a clear picture of just how unusual it was for sodomy between adults to be prosecuted, despite being technically criminalized. You have to follow the links for the state-specific pages to realize what a huge percentage of the arrests and convictions involved “jailbait” — nearly always men with teenage boys below the age of majority. So it wasn’t Just Because They Were Gay™; it was because they were statutory rapists.
But activists obviously prefer to focus on the (far rarer) horror stories of legally competent and fully consenting adults being entrapped by police or spied upon in their private homes.
P.S. And of course, according to the prophet Ezekiel and a lot of Talmudic analysis, sexual offenses (homo or hetero) were a thoroughly minor part of the Sodom story — so active gays are “sodomites” only to the extent that they are selfish, cruel to strangers, and refuse to aid widows and orphans whilst engaging in buttseckx…
Throbert,
Wow! Thanks for that education. The language is always full of traps.
My “Are active gays “sodomites”?” question is to take Santorum’s language to its natural conclusion for purposes of clarifying the argument.
It has always been my opinion that discussions revolving around the assumption of police hiding in one’s bedroom or rounding up gays and putting them in concentration camps are so beyond the pale that paranoia and its serious treatment are more to the point.
It is more than possible to work productively with people who do not exactly like your skin color or your religious belief or what turns you on. I think the armed services have done a pretty good job of integrating a lot of folks who, given their druthers, would choose their own ghettos to dwell in. (By ghetto, I mean walling oneself off with one’s own kind.)
Which means that any given officer may hold some unstated personal opinions which he buries in order to do his job.
I have voted for people I would not choose to be my good friends, but I trust they are mature enough to carry out their oath of office without going out of their way to kick my hind end over personal differences concerning our value systems or personal equipment.
Good grief! We all have the choice to arm ourselves over the boogie men hiding under the bed or to spine up and refuse to let it infect your mind.
Another Republican that could never have beaten Obama. Perry, Paul, and Santorum included in that group. It’s a shame that Gingrich has so much baggage, but he couldn’t beat Dear Maximum Supreme Leader. Only Romney has a shot at the current commander-in-chief ( I shudder when I write these words).
“Her social conservative agenda is quite irrelevant to me, and I assume for many others. Her fiscal policy is where her primary appeal lies.”
Rattlesnake, I personally think she may have downplayed her social views (or tried to) because she wanted to concentrate on fiscal matters. The problem for her is that her “base” won’t let her.
Again, I don’t give a warm f*rt on a wet January what she thinks about gays. My concern is with her philosophy of government. If she believes social issues should not be legislated, I could have overlooked some dumb remarks from her about gays.
But the subject had to be changed — and quickly — after I called NDT on his lie that I had said Rep. Bachmann should be “banned” from public office. That was where that other thread went merrily to hell on a bobsled. Suddenly, the issue was shifted to whether she had ever said anything negative about gays.
NDT has a real gift for obfuscating spin. Too bad he isn’t a liberal — Obama could use a mind that shifty in his brain-trust.
Which is exactly what should be concentrated on.
Agreed. And based on what I know about her (and I don’t really know very much about her social positions, but that is because I really don’t care) she believes in small government, in general. I don’t recall seing any piece of information about her that would lead me to believe that she doesn’t.
And, just for the record, I never supported Bachmann (not that my support matters, especially considering that I’m not an American). I might have if she were more experienced. But she has about as much experience (from what I can tell) as Obama did prior to his election as president of the US. Maybe she has the natural ability to govern effectively, but it is impossible to say if she’s never had any executive experience.
@ # 10
Really? The liberals are not doing whatever that can to project her as a Neanderthal religious fanatic nutcase? It is her base that is “forcing” her to irritate libertarians and keepers of “common sense” and non-bigoted thinking. Cool. Any explanation in the storm of spin. Go for it. Good on you if you can make that lead balloon soar.
Anyone here read Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass which are both masterpieces of illogical thinking based on the great lie of convoluted language usage. God bless Lewis Carroll, he really understood the “logic” of those who essay to corrupt semantics.
There would have been, Heliotrope, at least one teeny, tiny little thing Rep. Bachmann could have done to foil the liberals’ dastardliness, and that would have been to state — very plainly — her actual philosophy of governance.
You know, sort of like I suggested in that blog post you found so disturbing and subversive.
To you that may seem like “illogical thinking,” but of course it helps that you made it sound as if my last comment came out of nowhere, instead of having a context — albeit one you didn’t like.
You are well on your way to completion of the “How to Distort any Reasonable Idea and Make It Sound Like Something Totally Different” school of blog commentary, taught by Professor N.D. Thirty.
Lori,
I protest. In no way whatsoever did I find your blog post either disturbing or subversive. Not in the least. In fact, I found it enlightening because it cleared up my confusion concerning your ideology and clarified my ability to appreciate your belief system.
Furthermore, I don’t “dislike” your thinking, I simply do not appreciate how you intellectually support your firm feelings. You are under no obligation to justify yourself to me or anyone else. The usual short hand for dismissing someone who irritates you or creeps you out is to slam the door.
This is not about you and/or me, it is entirely about whether either of our points of views have legs and persuade others.
In my experience, the libertarian club is both small and prickly. I think libertarians, in general, do not have much in common with one another other than their ill-defined concept of personal freedom.
I would be delighted to be directed to unified libertarian structure and principle.
Helio, I disagree that our concept of freedom is “ill-defined.” I’ve no doubt that’s what you’ve been told, but it’s actually quite clear.
The government should be restricted to those functions it either needs to do — like law-enforcement or war — or those it does better than any other entity (I can’t think of any, but for the sake of argument somebody might). And laws governing personal conduct between people would prohibit force and fraud.
This means that things like “hurting someone’s feelings” would not be punishable by law. That’s just one example
Some libertarians believe in sudden change (like, apparently, Ron Paul). I think that’s not only unrealistic but downright dumb. It took a long time for the state to become so powerful, and people have become dependent on it — even corrupted by it — in a variety of ways. No libertarian would ever get ahold of enough power to enact changes that quickly. But if he/she did, it would scare the heck out of the public and be such a shock that nobody would ever take a risk on libertarianism again.
Given the prejudicial way I’ve just described the scenario, I’m obviously a gradualist.
I appreciate that you asked that. I hope I was at least a little bit helpful.