All Americans are right to be angry about the London bombings and other violence done by some claiming to be acting on behalf of Islam. But it is wrong for area residents to blame all Muslims for such heinous acts, or to try to link them to the Islamic Society of Wichita, which so proudly opened a new mosque this month. So it was encouraging to see more than 50 people of various faiths come together Tuesday in Wichita to condemn the hateful, bigoted, anti-Muslim statements made locally since the July 7 attacks. As The Eagle editorial board said on Sunday, “members of the local Muslim community have provided no reason — none — to either question their allegiances or fear them.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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53 Comments
The problem is a sick twisted sense of patriotism.
Somebody once said to me, “All racists are republicans, but not all republicans are racist”.
Just thought I’d throw that out there.
Way to go, Tara. Start right out with a blatantly bigoted comment claiming that your political opponents are bigots. The self-defeating intellectual poverty of your kind is entirely laughable.
Tara,I don’t think it is fair to say all racists are republicans, but a large majority are. I have a relative who is a racist, but DEFINITELY is not a republican. I doubt he is the only one. I believe not only are republicans more likely to be racist, but are more likely to have other prejudices, like Muslims, other ethnic minorities, and especially gays. I bet the Fred Phelps clan are all Bushies.
Wow! Barbie–sorry, I mean Tricia–reappears on the scene, predictably defending the right to hate!
Well, Tricia, the obvious rejoinder is that over the last 40 years, the politics of racial hatred have cut in one direction, and it hasn’t been toward my side. Lee Atwater, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond–they’re YOUR boys. And considering the current climate in which scum like Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado argue that a terrorist nuclear strike against U.S. cities should be answered by bombing Mecca, I’d be careful who you accuse of ‘intellectual poverty,’ Barbie.
Sorry, I meant ‘Tricia.’
Interesting how Tara and brown are both entirely comfortable using the act of bigotry to call others bigots. It seems to come very naturally to them.
As for CF — well, his unvarnished hatred speaks for itself. I’m not familiar with Tricia, but I didn’t see anything in her comment about a right to hate. That certainly puts CF’s comments into the highly suspect caregory.
What a healthy intellect sees as facts and arguments, Dean sees as ‘unvarnished hatred.’ It’s a tip-off to his intellectual bankruptcy, as is his tendency to employ mixed metaphors. All of this is pretty typical of garden variety conservative polemic. Yawn. Wake me when it’s over.
I’m familiar enough with Tricia’s positions to be able to invoke them here. Evidently, that’s more than Dean can say.
Sorry, real Tara here. This is actually the first time I logged on today.
As for the fake Tara post, I agree with the first sentence, but am a little hesitant about the quote. When I lived in GA, I knew a Regan bashing Democrat who loathed Mexicans.
But CF does have a good point. Republicans aren’t really the poster party of tolerance and acceptance…
I just remembered this: I was researching for a paper on interracial marriages last year, and I use to go to the site, http://www.amren.com. American Renaissance, you know, white power and white culture and everything.Everyone (this, I am not exaggerating) posting in that groups was consistently hardcore Republican. And many of the news posts had a not-so-subtle right slant to them.So why are these two unseemingly unrelated objects (racism and Republicans) always being grouped together? Is there a speck of truth in the blanket phrases like “All racists are republicans, but not all republicans are racist”? Or is it just a coincidence?
Tara, here’s my riff on the first sentence of the faux-post attributed to you:
“All name-stealing trolls tend to espouse conservative viewpoints, but not all persons who espouse conservative viewpoints are name-stealing trolls.”
I wonder if Dean thinks that my pointing this out makes me a bigot.
As for American Renaissance, before Sam Francis died, I engaged in a flame war with him. It was my pleasure to suggest to him that he and his brethern secretly wanted to be sodomized by a black man. In response, he said (jokingly–I think) that he’d discuss my approval of interracial marriage at his next Klan meeting.
However, a number of the folks on that site object to the GOP because it is not racist ENOUGH.
With some people, you just can’t win, I guess.
Actually I find Liberals racist as well.
Dean,I don’t see where you get the “bigot” and “bigotry” label. This administration has wanted to do profiling as an anti-terrorism tool. Profiling is an excuse for someone who doesn’t want to take time to do the job right (like research and collecting evidence). Republican controlled Kansas wanted a constitutional amendment to limit gay rights, like some other red states. So again I ask, where is the bigotry?
Joe Williams,
It would be appropriate to provide some specific instances of Liberal racism.
Southern Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights… The beloved Liberal leader Robert Byrd is a known KKK member. They opposed Civil Rights, Right for Women to Vote, Inter-racial marriages, desegregation of the schools and military. All-in-all, the Liberals have a really bad track record. That is the reason why I don’t align myself with Liberals.
The Republican Party is the one that ended Slavery! The Liberals wanted to keep it going. We fought a brutal civil war for the rights of freemen, that includes everybody.
Anyway, all foreign efforts at terrorism against the USA have been done by muslim men. The terrorist bombings in England apppear to have been done by indigenous muslim men.
What conclusion am I to make about muslims based on these facts — watch out for muslim men?
Of course not, I am to conclude that — well, what?
Alica,Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were white men. Anybody can be a terrorist. All it takes is somebody with an agenda and the means to get it done. Since they were mad at the Clinton administration over the raid at the Branch Davidian compound, does this mean they were right wing extremists? I know you refered to foreign terrorists, but domestic terrorists kill you just as dead. Right wing terrorists also bomb abortion clinics and kill abortion doctors. Right wing terrorists are primarily white men in this case. These people claim to be on a mission from God. Does this have a familiar ring to it? Like Muslim men getting their orders from Allah? Terrorists have no tolerance for anyone who opposes them.
Also! Don’t forget the Liberal terrorist during the civil rights struggles, who bombed churches, burned crosses, lynched and hang people. They were terrorist.
Joe,I don’t think the people you are refering to conform to the term liberal. Some of the people you may be refering to were southern democrats, but they were by no means liberal. Most of the “southern democrats” later became republicans because the liberals welcomed the civil rights movement. I doubt you will ever see Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton endorsing a republican candidate. Probably one of the more famous southern democrats in Congress today is Zell Miller, who ran as a democrat, and switched parties.
Groan. I hate it when people bring up the “Southern Democrat” argument. Say it with me. DIXIECRAT. Dems from the Old South who are now conservative republicans.
Hey all,If memory serves, it was a Southern Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, who, much to the horror of the dixiecrats, managed to push through most of our civil-rights legislation, when no one else could.Republican, Democrat, makes little difference; very few people look in the mirror and see a racist, but there sure seem to be a lot of ‘em out there!
I’m going way out on a limb here, but I’m going to agree with Alicia. It’s all well and fine to complain about profiling when we’re talking about Blacks being pulled over by white cops, but this is a little different, I think. Mcvey and Nicholson aside, the fact remains that most of the variety of terrorist we’re dealing with now are young Arabic Muslim males.
Brown, you said:Profiling is an excuse for someone who doesn’t want to take time to do the job right (like research and collecting evidence).Um, that’s what profiling is about. It’s a short-cut. Let me ask you this? How many non-Muslim young men have hijacked and flown airplanes into the WTC or the Pentagon?How many non-Muslim Arabic young men (or women) have strapped bombs to themselves, walked into a crowed place, and detonated themselves, taking bystanders with them?How many non-Muslim Aribic young men (or women) are hard-core Islamic extremists willing to kill themselves to take out a few soldiers?
You want the authorities to do the research and collect the evidence? I want them to catch bad guys.Ask yourself: Who’s more likely to be a terrorist, my 97 year-old grandmother pushing her walker through the airport, or that swarthy Aribic-looking guy carrying a knapsack? If you knew one of the two was a terrorist, which one would you search first?
If the Muslims don’t want to be profiled, they need to put a lot of pressure on the people who cause them to be part of the profile.
Actually the Southern Democrats, and the Republicans of the South today are COMPLETELY different people.
One! Is that the Southern Republicans are not racist, like their liberal Democrats were of the past. When blacks begin to freely vote and other people with Republican views after the Voters Rights Act, then Republicans started slowly getting seats in office.
When the democrats were around it was cigar filling back-rooms, good ole boy system, slap on the back racist liberal Democrats who imposed more restrictions, more government control, and keeped people poor.
Many black people affliate with the Democratic Party, because of the era of Civil Rights in the 1960. During that Decade, Democrats had control of the Presidency and Congress, and to get attention, you had to focus on Democrat leaders, and so it because popular to align yourself with the winning party of the time.
But now that blacks in America are stepping up, becoming more and more emerging into the middle class, college educated, and the removal of stigmas, that are progressivly moving towards the Republican Party more and more each election cycle.
People in activist groups tend to switch sides all the time to the winning majority party.
You want me to give you a Southern Democrat that is still in Congress from the time period I’m talking about? And he is a staunch liberal. Robert Byrd. He is a classic condescending racist liberal. He was and is the Liberal Southern Democrats that controlled the South during that time. He also voted against Civil Rights too.
Check the congressional voting record of the 1960’s and you will find that virtually all Republicans voted for Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, while many liberals voted against it.
When the Republicans took control of Congress and the Presidency in the 1920’s, they made sure they pushed for the 19th Amendment. Because they belive in Equality.
Look! People look at Republicans today as religous Christan zealots, and they have every right to, because the crazy fundlementalist hijacked the Republican Party. Only because it is a winning team. If the Democrats were in control, they would be with the Democrats, like they were in the past. That is what makes it so frustrating to progressives and true Republicans.
Just like how some Democrats are frustrated that Liberals hijacked their party. So now the partisan is between the religous nuts and the imperial liberals.
It will all play out though. Just will take awhile.
JoeWow. That’s some serious make-believe, revisionist history. But I’ll be nice because I believe you’re sincere.
Southern Republicans aren’t racists? Well, Joe, I lived in Memphis for six years, and I’m here to tell you they are. If they aren’t, why do they run race-baiting campaigns? Why was J.C. Watts the only black African-American Republican in Congress for so long? Why do so few African-Americans run as Republicans? Answer: they don’t make it through the primaries when they run against white opponents. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott–all Southern, all Republican, all racist.
Your version of history and the Voting Rights Act, frankly, is silly. As pointed out above, it was Lyndon Johnson who pushed it through, and if I were a cynic, I’d say that his success has hurt Democrats ever since. Think about it, Joe. If Democrats are so bent on keeping down black men and women, it would pretty damn stupid of us to tie our political fortunes to their support, now wouldn’t it? Supporting them has cost us white votes in every election. That doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do. To the contrary, it was right then and it’s right now.
Your argument only works by ignoring that last forty years of history, and the sea change by which Civil Rights, the late 1960’s, affirmative action, and busing drove away blue-collar white voters from the Democratic Party.
I prefer to start my narrative in 1980 when Ronald Reagan started his campaign Philadelphia Mississippi by advocating for “States’ Rights.” All the southern Democrats–who are NOT liberals, by the way, in your equivocal use of the term–perked up their ears and heard echoes of Strom Thurmond, Governors Fabus, Bilbo, and Wallace, and signed on the dotted line. Reagan was their man because he’d keep black folks at a distance.
Finally, your tired, tired, tired invocation of Robert Byrd shows the bankruptcy of your argument. You equivocally use ‘liberal’ as if it encompassed Hubert Humphrey and Robert Byrd. Byrd started out as a reactionary and has migrated toward a liberal position. Look at his voting record, oh, sometime in the last 35 years. It’s phony, this argument from the Right that tries to equate party structures from before and after the Voting Rights Act. It just doesn’t work. The demographics, and the meaning of terms, both have changed.
Oh, and by the way, Joe, Republican Senators, particularly those from the midwest, were every bit as obstructionist toward civil rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Read the second volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson for the details. No smoke filled rooms in the Republican Party! Please. Use facts, Joe, not cliches.
Finally, it is worth noting that W upped his share of the black vote from 9% to a whole 11%. Yipee. Hope that offsets the recent shifts in white voter identification away from Republicans toward Democrats. But the larger subtext, that education inclines one to vote Republican, is undermined if one considers that the most educated folks in America, those with advanced degrees, tend to identify and vote Democratic.
All in all, Joe, your argument only succeeds if one ignores the last forty years, and misunderstands the period that preceded them. I choose not to.
“But the larger subtext, that education inclines one to vote Republican, is undermined if one considers that the most educated folks in America, those with advanced degrees, tend to identify and vote Democratic.”
That’s true. It’s really hard to find a Republican college professor, even in this red state. And most of the students I’ve met tend to turn towards the left as they further their education.I’ve always wondered about this pattern. I think it would make a good paper.But I’m rambling, it’s noon and I still haven’t had my coffee. My bad.
A higher percentage of republicans in the US legislature voted for civil rights laws than democrats. Without the republican push in support of Johnson’s civil rights legislation, the laws would have failed.
The republican party was started to oppose slavery, and in the landmark issues of recent years, it has been more solidly in favor of civil rights than democrats.
President Bush has named more minorities and women to high government positions than any previous president.
Democrats still make excuses and dissemble for Byrd, while always having a major hissy fit over any minor mis-statements by republicans.
The hidden agenda of democrats — to keep minorities beholding to them as a victim class — is being soundly attacked by a growing number of minority thinkers, who have seen liberal efforts to keep them on the liberal plantation as a major detriment to their progress, both culturally and economically.
The real racists — the real bigots — are the democrats who exploit minorities and women with the bigotry of low expectations.
I haven’t seen any wingnut responses to my previous post—just the shifting of topic to Dixiecrats and such. So I’ll copy and paste this one more time:
“I just remembered this: I was researching for a paper on interracial marriages last year, and I use to go to the site, http://www.amren.com. American Renaissance, you know, white power and white culture and everything.Everyone (this, I am not exaggerating) posting in that groups was consistently hardcore Republican. And many of the news posts had a not-so-subtle right slant to them.So why are these two unseemingly unrelated objects (racism and Republicans) always being grouped together? Is there a speck of truth in the blanket phrases like “All racists are republicans, but not all republicans are racist”? Or is it just a coincidence?”
Any takers?
Back to the topic – thank you, Hammer, for participating…
The problem muslims have is that muslim countries continue to support muslim terrorist cells both in their countries and in ours, and they support a web of cooperation among those cells.
The problem muslims have is that hatred and violent jihad are preached in mosques around the world, and the major muslim media seem to also support violent jihad. The voice of peace is barely heard among muslims.
The problem muslims have is that their increasingly violent elements also believe in the tactical use of taqiyya to hide their true intentions, thereby making infidels believe they are peaceful until they are strong enough to subdue the infidels.
The problem muslims have is that the conditions in muslim countries are abominable. There is no way to whitewash their largely 8th century existence, though apologists keep trying.
It does no good to talk about bad Christians or Sikhs or Hindus or whatever. Those religions do not widely preach anything like the death and destruction widely taught by many muslim sects, even in this country. Western soldiers do not shout “God is good” after shooting a muslim.
Muslims have a lot of problems. The worst appears to be the fact that they, too, are afraid of the radical elements who live secretly among them and do nothing to root them out.
So why are we to feel good about muslims in our midst? How are we to know we can trust them? The burden of proof is in their hands, not ours.
Dean, are you going to share your drugz?
Dean,
With Johnson, it is indeed true that many Republicans voted for the legislation. And then the Democrats who voted against it migrated to YOUR party: Strom, Jesse, and all the rest.
Republicans are ‘more solidly in support of civil rights’ than the Democrats? Maybe if you regard the Patriot Act as civil rights legislation. You’ve had to be dragged kicking and screaming to extend the Voting Rights Act. And then there’s the little matter of Bush v. Gore in the Florida recount with the mass disenfranchisement of African American voters, and the antics of Katherine Harris the filthy c**t. Even the Bushes have backed away from her.
Watching folks like you run the reverse-racism argument with a straight face, while harboring real racists in your camp and appealing to them for votes, is always amazing. Your only option is to try to redefine racism and spin the issue.
So I want slaves who owe me one more than I want electoral victories, eh Dean? That makes as little sense as most right-wing think-tank spin. If you’re going to accuse liberals of playing the ‘plantation’ game, be very, very careful: who’s the bigger Uncle Tom, Rep. John Conyers or Clarence Thomas?
Regarding Bush’s appointments, big deal. Skin color alone doesn’t equal diversity. His appointees all represent the same cookie-cutter ideology that trades in racist stereotypes.
And finally, who has EVER benefitted more from ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ than George Bush? I’d be embarrassed to allow bought and paid for right-wing think tank spin like that to pass my lips. You, however, have already demonstrated a complete lack of shame–and honesty.
Hey Folks,Let’s ease up on the generalizations!Just a few days ago, I watched as a troop of Islamic Boy Scouts performed the Flag Ceremony at the new Mosque. If any of you had seen the pride on the faces of those kids as the colors were presented, I don’t think you could make those blanket statements about Islam! Remember too, that a lot of these same kids have been attacked by “Good Americans” just for being Muslim.At some point, and I hope it’s soon, we have to admit that each and every one of us, on some level, constitutes a minority of one, and leave it at that!
My post above implied that Rep. John Conyers is an ‘Uncle Tom.’ This is not at all my view, and I will be careful to heed my own advice regarding the ‘Preview’ function.
We are not Murdering the Hindu, but rather the Muslim. Are you all nuts or blind?
Tara makes reference to Liberals as College Professors, thats because they can’t make it in the private sector. The Liberal College Professors are also in Liberal Arts or as Law Professors teaching the next crop of Ambulance Chasers.
You won’t find Liberal Professors in Business, Economics, Engineering, Biology, Medicine, or any of the producing fields of education.
Joe, sometimes I think your world must be about 3 inches deep.
Joe Williams,
Boy, he’s just a cornucopia of right wing spin on academia, now isn’t he? He parrots it like a professional.
As someone who actually WORKS IN ACADEMIA, I can authoritatively say that Joe doesn’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about. I know liberal biologists and conservative classicists and professors of literature. As usual, caricature is as far as Joe’s arguments go. But his point is to discredit universities because that’s where people think and Joe, well, he doesn’t trust that newfangled thinkin’. He wants someone to tell him what to do, whether an appointed ‘President’ a CEO, an evangelic pastor, or a Pope.
I also worked for a corporation for four years. And let me tell Joe that it didn’t take nine years of graduate schooling to be able to function in that environment.
Joe, you’re ignorant. As my hero Hank Hill says, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know.’ You want competitive? I applied for an entry-level Assistant Professor position at a Regents university here in Kansas. It was a crummy job: 4/4 teaching load (four courses per semester). Guess how many applications came in? 200. That’s 200 people with Ph.D.’s or close to completing, many of whom have published books. So academia isn’t ‘competitive’? Give me a f*****g break, Joe.
Finally, this distinction between the ‘producing’ fields and the liberal arts just shows how frightened Joe is by thinking. The Liberal Arts teach folks how to think, Joe. There’s more to being a human being than technical expertise and instrumental rationality: ask Joseph Mengele or Werner von Braun. Or better yet, don’t, since they are precisely the sort of intellects that a narrow, skill-based, unreflective education will thrive at producing.
Joe wants people who make stuff and follow orders. Thank God Joe’s sphere of influence is confined to a blog that originates in Wichita, KS.
Considering Joe’s total ignorance, you’d think he’d be embarrassed. But people like Joe wear their ignorance as a badge of authenticity.
CFYou and Joe would be two of a kind, except that Joe’s facts are right and your attempts at logic are pathetic.
Oooh, nice zing, Alan. You sure showed him (sarcasm).
Considering Alan’s evident pride in his own ignorance and inability to construct anything like an argument, when he says ‘pathetic,’ I hear the word ‘cogent.’
What a wet-dick you are, Alan.
Aw, come on, CF. He won’t know what cogent means.It means persuasive in an intellectual sense, using facts and logic rather than emotion or rhetoric. Am I close?
It seems that a lot of people are scared of intellectual people in politics. I, however, would prefer that the leader of the free world be much more intelligent than I am. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Tara,
Indeed, I figured he wouldn’t. That’s why I called him a wet-dick.
You’re still a wet-dick, Alan.
Name calling doesn’t sound to intellectual. I guess you call everybody ingnorant if they are not liberal.
Well! Just have to say that the world doesn’t revolve around your ideology. I completely disagree.
We can spin all day, we can disgree all day, but whatever the case, we will never change our minds or win points in debate by stooping so low as name calling.
If saying somebody is a “liberal” is name calling, then I’m guilty, but from my understanding of liberalism today (not in the classic sense), it is an ideology I will never adhere too. But just because I do not believe in liberalism, that does not make me an idiot or ignorant.
Would you call somebody who is christan or muslum ignorant, because they believe that religion? Let people believe what they believe and debate in the arena of ideas. If you go towards name calling then your entire aurgument has no merit.
If you are in the academia field, and you call total strangers idiots, what does that say about you? Are not students seeking answers, discovering wisdom, and making up their own minds about what the world means to them? Or do you discount students achievements and give them failing grades because they are not liberal like you?
It’s scary, to know that CF (will not give out his real name) is in academia. What do you exactly do? I hope you don’t teach, because you are a liberal propagander and not an educator.
And by they way. I graduated from WSU with a liberal arts degree, so to say that people who engage in liberal arts are free thinkers, well… Bada Bing! I guess I’m one of them.
At least I have one, wet or otherwise. CF unleashes hostile, aggressive, antisocial behavior in a feeble attempt to cover the fact that “he” doesn’t.
Alan,
Well, everybody, Alan has a dick. Or at least he says he does. Sounds like whistling past the graveyard to me.
You’re like a little kid who throws a punch and then runs to hide behind somebody else for protection. Until you offer an argument that’s substantive or give reasons for your views, you’ll go on being a ‘feeble’ wet-dick. Your choice, not mine.
Joe Williams,
When somebody’s contribution to the discussion is nothing more than a polemical spitball, I throw it right back at them. That’s true of Alan, and also true at times of someone like Nathan, who pretends not to have seen evidence contrary to his position, and then disingenuously hides behind his religious views.
As for your views, Joe, I respect them enough to offer lengthy critiques. I don’t deny your right to hold the views you hold. But I do deny your right to announce, as fact, sweeping generalizations that are inaccurate and have no basis in reality, and to impugn my character and the character of my colleagues. You don’t know the first thing about being an academic, Joe, and when you make ignorant claims I have every right to challenge you.
As for what’a appropriate here and what isn’t, does this look like an academic setting, Joe? This is a blog. It’s a combination of the soapbox in the town square, a satellite uplink, and a hollow log where one can leave messages for others. The mode of comportment that is called for in the classroom doesn’t work here, because the goal here isn’t truth, but persuasion. And as conservatives well know, persuasion and victory in political arguments have very little to do with facts and logical argumentation, and everything to do with force and appeals to emotion. All the facts are against most aspects of the reactionary GOP world view, and yet they go on getting their political way by not quitting.
Not that my arguments aren’t logical: my reasoning is more solid and explicit than many other folks here, I document my claims, and I respond to counterclaims. But if someone like Alan is going to to try to sidestep argumentation by making a claim and then refusing to elaborate or substantiate it, he makes himself fair game for ridicule in the most appropriate terms available.
The only thing I’ll EVER apologize for are factual errors, and when I misspeak. That fact that I have issued both sorts of apologies is evidence that I am quite scrupulous in employing the tools of reason. Beyond that, I won’t apowogize foh houting yow widdle feewings, Joe.
It’s also interesting that Joe has no response to any of the arguments or points of refutation. Is his claim REALLY that out of the engagement here, minds will be changed? If so, this is contradicted by his practice of ignoring evidence to the contrary and refusing to offer counterarguments–a practice of which all who post here are, to some extent, guilty. Joe just wants to be able to run his mouth and ignore views to the contrary. There’s nothing wrong with that. But don’t go on to invoke some phony argumentative standard against me when you aren’t observing it yourself.
Finally, it’s amusing that he castigate me for making judgments about ‘total strangers,’ and then go on to speculate that my class persona is that of an ideologically liberal ‘propagander.’ If it were, I probably wouldn’t still be teaching here in Wichita, now would I? In class, students merit absolute respect for their views, however much I mdisagree. The search for Truth has its own timetable, and my job is to be a midwife, not a force-feeder. Are you really so naive that it never occured to you that it might be possible for the same person to adopt two different personae in two different contexts?
And Joe, CF my real name. Those are my initials. Feel free to put that liberal arts education (shudder) to work sleuthing me out.
CF, sometimes you really amaze me. I hope you’re in a position that a lot of Wichita’s kids get exposed to you.
Hammer,
That’s a very generous thing to say, and I appreciate it.
CF, It takes a very special kind of person to be a teacher. I was fortunate in that I had some of the finest teachers growing up and was greatly influenced by some of them. To this day, one of my favorite sayings came from a 7th grade English teacher. It distresses me to see what goes on in classrooms today. Personally, I couldn’t do it. They’d have me up on murder charges. I’ve only lately discovered “Opinion Line” in your local paper, and some of the comments about teachers are enough to make you grind your teeth. Wake up people, Teachers are probably the greatest influence your kids will ever have.
CF is nothing more than an empty headed, liberal sycophant. His entire thought process depends on the Kos and move on, without whom he’d have nothing to say. If he were my teacher, I’d write him up for incompetence.
Tracy C.,
Wrong on both counts. I rarely read Kos and don’t belong to MoveOn.
As for ‘empty-headed’ syncophancy, do YOU have anything more substantive to say than ‘I don’t agree with CF’s so he’s dumb?’ Try making an argument, Tracy–show us you can!
Pathetic. And with your unisex name I don’t know whether you’re a bimbo or a him-bo.
Actually CF, you make statements like “my reasoning is more solid and explicit than many other folks here, I document my claims, and I respond to counterclaims”
I don’t see it. I read every post you made on the topic thread, and all you do is make blatant attacks against people who disagree with a liberal standpoint. You have made no contribution to the topic at hand, and you seldom do in any other topic. All you do is say GOP’s are racist. Where is your proof?
I posted that I found liberals racist as well. I didn’t say all, just liberals are racist as well. Because there is bound to be a liberal that is racist. Not all people who subscribe to the liberal ideology is all high and mighty, brilliant, educated, clean of unpure thoughts, and completely right.
You ask for proof, I gave an answer, Tara challenge it, I countered, and so on. Great debate. There are racist who are liberal democrats as well. If you do not believe me, thats fine, you don’t have too.
Am I wrong? I don’t know, but you have not put up any proof. You just resort to name calling and make racist statements like Clarance Thomas is an Uncle Tom. You are the type who will discount a person of color who is not liberal. Condoleeza Rice and very accomplished and brilliant person in your mind is an idiot, because she suscribes to the Republican Party and does not believe in Liberalism Ideology. To me I find it very offensive and racist in itself.
So ok! You’re a teacher. I guess that makes you better and smarter than everybody else. And everybody and anybody who belongs to the GOP is an idiot, bigot, homophobe, crook, and racist. They have no right to live on this earth. They are destorying the country. Since you are a teacher, that gives you the authorty to say so and everybody else can kiss your butt.
And you wonder why Liberalism hasn’t caught on in this country like you want it to. You have no idea what you really sound like to people. If you are the definition of liberalism, then you are really extreme.
I disagree with Liberal viewpoints, but I don’t hate them. I welcome them in debate all the time. I like Liberals like Tara. She has a clear head, good debater, and has a clear sense of intelligence.
Since you really have no substantial thing to say, I believe I will just passover every one of your post for now on.
Joe Williams,
It’s just laughable, really, that you either do not or will not recognize an extensive set of counterarguments developed in response to your original statement. Seriously. I wrote a number of paragraphs that contained factual and interpretive claims, none of which you could be bothered to respond to. And then you say provide no proof? If arguments and factual claims aren’t proof, or at least substantiation, Joe, what is?
I won’t say he always does so, but in this exchange, Joe hears what he wants to hear and ignores things that conflict with his picture of reality. And despite his self-proclaimed libertarianism, which, to be fair, I have seen operating in a number of his posts, this is a habit of mind that shares the ‘if I refuse to see it, then it doesn’t exist’ argumentative strategy of modern conservatism.
You’re going to pass over my posts? Fine by me. God forbid you might learn something. But when you run your mouth about things of which you are ignorant, equivocate on the meaning of basic terms, and offer grandiose and improbable narratives like your account of liberal racism, I would be remiss if I didn’t set the record straight as I see it.
The more I read CF’s stuff, the more I realize what a dogmatic party-line liberal he is. Unable to make a full or real argument on his own, he always resorts to weak talking points and cheap name calling. Worst case of “pot calling the kettle black” I’ve ever seen. His hatefulness is palpable.
Too many years of hatred or drugs, I suppose. How sad that he is a teacher, able to infect young minds with his failed ideas and disconnected attempts at logic.
Anger rules him.
Don’t feel bad Tara, he want’s to throw me out of the party because I don’t agree with him on Jane Fonda. Do we have our own brand of Nazi here?
Sorry CF, it’s jr that wants me trown out. My bad.