Tim Cavanaugh | November 12, 2004
Reason's own Nick Gillespie will be going mano-a-mano with guest host Tony Snow on The O'Reilly Factor tonight. Ostensible topic is what, if anything, President Bush owes Evangelical Christians during this term. The program airs at 5 pm Pacific/8 pm Eastern, 8 pm Pacific/11 pm Eastern and Saturday at 1 am Pacific/4 am Eastern.
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Please be sure you ask Tony if he's taken Pres. Bush's balls out of his mounth now that he's been re-elected.
Ask those Fox guys how they all get that giant, indestructible TV hair. Is it, indeed, hair? Some advanced carbon fiber or polymer? Ballistic nylon? Can it deflect shrapnel and bullets? What's the half-life on that stuff? 5000 years?
78% of Evangelical Christians who make up 23% of the electorate voted for Bush. So that figures to 18% of the 51% of the vote Bush received came the ECs. Or, IOW, the majority of Bush voters, 65%, are not ECs. If my math is right, Bush has a mandate from the non-ECs.
Nick, you're really good on TV.
I think Fox invites libertarians on to argue the progressive side
of social issues that they either side with the progressives on, or
want to show both sides. That way, they won't have to be in the
uncomfortable position of admitting that a Democrat might be right
or winning.
Here is a cul de sac spot, if ever there were, to stick mine,
but what you gonna do?
A recent column from Charles Krauthammer said: "This does not deter
the myth of the Bigoted Christian Redneck from dominating the
thinking of liberals, and from infecting the blue state media. They
need their moral superiority like oxygen, and cannot have it cut
off by mere facts."
The aforesaid to make this point: The death of Turd Sandwich Arafat
is not appreciated by "liberals" other than as a spur to gig stupid
Dubya to carpe diem and produce peace between Israel and the
Palestinians mui pronto.
As I had said earlier, those who truly desire peace need to wait
for more years than Dubya will be Prez for Palestinians to sort
themselves, in the sense of Hatfield and McCoy.
The Hatfield or the McCoy remaining standing, someone may be able
to talk some sense into.
Or not. Probably not.
Jimmy Carter, surprise, is among those setting this inane trap for
Dubya. See his column in the NYT.
"Nick is cute!"
That Catholic guy with the pink shirt, rose-rimmed glasses, and the
lisp was even cuter.
The world according to Joe:
"I think Fox invites libertarians on to argue the progressive side
of social issues that they either side with the progressives on, or
want to show both sides."
Individual liberty is not a 'progessive' social issue. It is a
human necessity. Nick did not do a good job on the show. After
correctly stating that the government's involvement in a social
contract, like marriage, is unwarranted, Nick retreated on a
pragmatic tangent while the sanctimoniuos Catholic stuck to his
principles.
I think Nick's is a good guy and I encourage him to keep spreading
the necessity of reason and liberty in the mass media. But given
the brevity of the debates offered there, Nick's gonna need a cache
of killer, principled, sound bites to be persuasive. Any taker's
?
JDOG, the expansion of civil rights for gay people is, and
always has been, a progressive issue. The opposition to this broad
movement has been a conservative cause. You're playing word games
with your little "individualist" shtick.
Doing away with sodomy laws was certainly an individualist cause,
as well as a progressive one. State recognition of gay people's
marriages is neutral as far as individualism goes. Laws against
discriminatory hiring and firing of gay people would probably be
considered anti-individualistic by most people on this board.
Regardless, all three of those causes are progressive causes, and
the opposition to them is conservative.
And just as progressive issues can pro- or anti-individualism,
individual liberty issues can be progressive, regressive, or
neutral.
Believe it or not, JDOG, some people can actually have more than
one principle.
Joe,
From a libertarian point of view only individuals have rights, not
groups. That means the Gays, the Christrian, the Evangelical
Christians, the Gay Evangelical Christions, and the Gay
Egavangelical Cristions with ADD, all get the same rights. What is
it you don't understand here ? Oh, Never mind.
From a liberal point of view, it's a problem when individuals in
one group aren't granted the same rights as people in other groups.
I hope your determination to ignore any issue related to disparate
treatment of people in different groups hasn't completely blinded
you to the fact that this occurs with some frequency.
And since you asked,there is nothing in your sophmoric politcal
orientation that I don't understand, here.
If this doesn't prove the point of my thesis of 9:21 PM of Nov.
12, I don't know what will.
This is from Thomas Friedman's column in tomorrow's NYT.
"If only President Bush called in Colin Powell and said: "Colin,
neither of us have much to show by way of diplomacy for the last
four years. I want you to get on an airplane and go out to the
Middle East. I want you to sit down with Israelis and Palestinians
and forge a framework for a secure Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and
progress toward a secure peace in the West Bank, and I don't want
you to come back home until you've got that. Only this time I will
stand with you.
"As long as you're out there, I will not let Rummy or Cheney fire
any more arrows into your back. So get going. It's time for you to
stop sulking over at Foggy Bottom and time for me to make a
psychological breakthrough with the Arab world that can also help
us succeed in Iraq - by making it easier for Arabs and Muslims to
stand with us. I don't want to see you back here until you've put
our words into deeds.""
This morning on Scott Simon's Weekend Edition on NPR, he had a
guest who posited that the eighth deadly sin is "speed."
Ruthless, have you considered the possibility that Friedman might genuinely believe this is a rare opportunity that needs to be seized?
I'm still waiting for Nick to turn on a jukebox by hitting it with his fist.
"Ruthless, have you considered the possibility that Friedman
might genuinely believe this is a rare opportunity that needs to be
seized?"
As Ronnie said to Jimmy, joe, "There you go again."
This isn't a rare opportunity. It's just another in a series for
"liberals" to rant.
I think Ron Paul hits the nail on the head: So long as the
"peace process" consists of both sides picking Uncle Sap's pockets,
there is a cash-driven incentive to AVOID any type of peaceful
reconciliation.
As is expected, Bush will be urged to "broker" an agreement. Both
sides will eagerly pay lip service to "peace" and a new list of
"urgent" peace-related expenses will be picked up by the US
taxpayer.
Within months of said agreement, another suicide bombing will set
off "reprisal" attacks against the Palestinian Authority (PA)which
will facilitate "rebuilding costs" for the Palestinians and
"additional security expenses" for the Israelis.
Didn't Einstein define insanity as doing the same thing over and
over in the hopes of achieving a different outcome?
Joe,
A GROUP of individuals does NOT equal separate individuals.
"Group" rights doe NOT equal individual rights, by defintion.
Wouldn't you say, Cletus, that Arafat's death is a "rare opportunity" for the US to not just do something, but stand there?
I didn't write anything about Group Rights, chef. I wrote about
individual rights, and the problem with them being denied to
individuals based on that individual's affiliation with a
group.
Stop arguing with the liberal in your head.
Ruthless:
I think the time has come to offer "moral support" and empty
pockets. So long as the the cash incentive is there, we can look
forward to another round of geopolitical three-card monty...
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