The lithping too.

Given a choice between Obama and Palin -- I'd take the one who isn't at all a socialist. Which lets out every Democrat leftwards of Joe Lieberman.

Many wish she would just go away, including a lot of conservatives who agree she's just a nutjob.

Yeah, and I wish she'd keep that daughter of hers off the net, too. ;)

Y'know, Classic, I am not very impressed with those. Assorted people, some of them really pretty goddam grubby, run about clanging the cowbells chanting "Palin is a nutjob, Palin is a nutjob," but I just don't see it. It looks much more to me like a cultural clash between stuffy Northeasterners and the necessarily rugged and frontiersy Alaskan than any question of even eccentricity, to say nothing of mental health.

Y'know, people were saying things like "Don't look at her personal life, just her policies". That is not an absolute. The one question I had for her was "Now that you know from personal experience that good teenage girls from good families have sex, have you changed your view on only funding abstinence only education?"

She could say she hasn't and keep her base.
She could say she has which would show the ability to learn from experience and change.

She would probably dodge the question and attack the questioner.

Or just listen for keywords and recite the appropriate talking point.

Yeah because pure right wing ideology creates a perfect government, just ask any nation that has had a fascist in power. Like Germany.

It must be really fun to live in SoCal. People hardly ever run around here clanging cowbells. And when they do, they never bother to chant.

Sorry, but I absolutely had to do it.

Oh really? Have you never ever, not once in your life or your education, ever EVER run across the term "Beefsteak Nazi," nor heard the quip that "Nazism went so far right that it met Communism coming around the other way"?

Fascism is just as leftist as Communism -- both are about government ownership of the means of production, both push the "collective," both expected to create, by legislative fiat yet, a "new class/sort of man," which was expected to be a large improvement over the regular variety, and both had the essential characteristic of the left wing: that a very large, omnipotent, omnicompetent State should run every least aspect of everyone's life. Thus, an immediate tropism to large-scale POWER is evident in both. Leftists really want power, and a lot more than conservatives do.

MTP, mistaking conservative ideas for fascistic ones (Might you be doing that, do you think? -- any risk of it? Can you spot any differences?) is simply lazy -- and exactly the deception the perfidious, dissembling, aggrandized-state Left wishes you to labor under. Ignorance Is Strength? Read that one somewhere? More precisely, your ignorance is their strength. Is that how you want it? If you wish to remain deceived or to remain lazy, then continue in your present view. But could I take you seriously as a thinker until you discontinue this received unwisdom and strike out on your own, with a searching mind? I for one find the ultrastatists' blandishments less and less attractive. I have better values than that. (They hate that.)

I'm not pulling this out of the air; it's von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who was smarter than you and me both together. At any rate, not a philosopher to sneeze at, for all his sentimental fondness for the house of Habsburg and the throne of Austria-Hungary. He clearly thought with Austria-Hungary gone belly-up that Europe began its long slide downhill. Perhaps this had something to do with most of its former territories falling behind the Iron Curtain.

Danggggg... that's just... well, it's terrible.

"We will fight for Bovine freedom,
And hold our large heads high
We will run free with the buffalo
Or die...
Cows With Guns!"

The extreme left and right are equally evil and disgusting. You're an extremist. Wouldn't matter if you were left or right.

You're wrong about me. No surprise there.

How am I wrong? You wrote a certain thing, a certain way. This is the product of your mind and what is in it. Thus, I see and understand you, and have some insight behind the words.

The point I am trying to make here is that the extreme left and the extreme right are not actually distinguishable, and calling me an extremist here is simply wrong and lazy -- therefore, I conclude you haven't any experience at all of conservative -- not radical -- thinking. Not exactly a rare condition.

What's keeping you reticent is you know how difficult it is to try and defend leftist-type beliefs around someone like me, who has a pretty clear idea what ideas are worth keeping, and what is wrong with the ideas that aren't. This is hardly extremism, merely sense. Certain valueless goobers would go, "Oh, he's one of those coots that make MORAL judgements," while dramatically rolling their eyes inviting other people into agreement with their worthless opinion and valueless "values." Not being impressed with such as these, I continue being some description of a moral being, and am not afraid of this. Some people would want me to be. Up theirs.

I wrote a certain thing a certain way. You read it wrong. Also, again, your conclusion about me is wrong.

I am lazy, but not wrong.

Really?

And just how could I have read it "better?" If you can't write what you mean, why did you write at all?? You have fully communicated that you can't distinguish a conservative from a fascist, which I say is a hell of a mistake. You are certainly not communicating any clarification -- of any point. That isn't thinking, and it isn't writing either.

Don't expect me to express frustration. The conversation may pause from time to time, but it need not end.