IOKIYAR
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:38 am
How can you tell when a liberal is scared shitless?
He’s talking about Sarah Palin.
Is that flop sweat I see on your forehead? Can j00 smell teh pwn4g3?
I know how you feel; two weeks ago the uninspired cardboard cutout was going to get stomped by the charismatic youngster who had fired up the base. Today? Same, but different…
September 4th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Tam:
Watch the video, then get back to me.
As I’ve said before, not only am I not “scared shitless” about the Palin pick, I’m thrilled with it. Seems to me that the people who are scared shitless are the ones hiding behind whines about sexism to dodge legitimate criticism.
[Edited comment to fix dumbass mistake referred to in subsequent comment.]
September 4th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Interestingly, the words “sexist” and “sexism” haven’t been used on my blog since July, almost two months B.P.
I like the fact that she’s young, charismatic, articulate, and (with the exception of a whiff of Fundyism) largely on the same page as me. The fact that she’s also a woman is just the cherry on the icing of the cake of the whole thing.
I’ll confess, though, that it gives me no end of schadenfreude to know that this is the election where identity politics will come back to bite your team on the ass. See ya at the polls!
Sincerely,
Yet Another Libertarian Who Was Going To Sit This One Out Until Last Week’s News.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Who said you were whining about sexism? That allegation was directly at the McCain campaign and its surrogates (such as Fox News).
And if Palin has “a whiff” of fundyism, then SayUncle has “a passing interest” in guns. 🙂
Again, I’m not worried about Palin. She’s an opportunistic politician like all the rest (including the ones I support), and if she makes it to national office, she’ll betray you on issues that matter to you the very moment it becomes politically convenient for her to do so.
Anyway, it doesn’t surprise me that you like Paln — she’s pro-gun, and that’s all that matters. If the McCain/Palin ticket wins, you libertarians will be anxiously waiting for McCain to resign or die. 🙂
Sincerely,
Yet Another Democrat In A State So Deeply Red His Vote Doesn’t Matter Anyway
September 4th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Heh, my first comment should, of course, read:
I would normally give me untold crap for a goof like that. So fire away! 🙂
September 4th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Is it sexist to say that the only good female candidate is a female candidate with a (D) after her name? Or is it, to coin a word, party-ist?
When I parse the attacks on Mrs. Palin, that’s the best explanation I can come up with for a majority of the attacks.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:25 am
karrde,
The attacks: The *sentiment* or root cause may be “party-ist” but sure as hell the METHOD is sexist.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:32 am
And welcome the new talking point: “She’s just another politician.”
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
karrde, the best part of it is that for being supposedly so damn well educated, they can’t seem to wrap their head around a well-known phrase:
The Liberals do protest too much, methinks.
[paraphrased for effect]
September 4th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
drstrangegun:
Exactly which attacks on Palin are sexist? Other than a crackpot maternity allegation from an internet rumor that has only gotten MSM attention because the McCain campaign keeps bringing it up, what prominent Democrats are attacking Palin using sexist methods or on sexist grounds? Questioning her association with a secessionist group is “sexist?” Wondering why her relative lack of experience isn’t important to people who have been arguing all along that experience is the most important thing is “sexist?” Asking questions about her alleged abuse of power is “sexist?” Questioning her policies on family planning issues like abortion and sex education is “sexist?” I’m not buying it, not for a minute.
Those are the questions that are being asked about Palin, but rather than address them, they’re hiding behind allegations of sexism and obscure internet rumors. It wasn’t cute when Hillary did it, and it’s not cute now.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Well, the ones that Fox News and its apparent fellow travelers actually keep bringing up, rather than the ones you prefer to focus on, would be such brilliant examples as asking whether the woman is all right working outside the kitchen when there’s a baby in the house, even where a certain other candidate happens to have young children of his own. How about calling her a “conservative man”, thank you NOW.
I actually would consider that sexist, as the attacks seem rather based on the matter of her gender. A lot of fairly anti-Republican feminists seem to feel that way, as well, and Instapundit has had a field day linking to them.
On an aside, I like the “alleged abuse of power” part. Don’t bother detailing the whole facts of the case, just make it sound as bad as possible. “Alleged abuse of power” sounds so much more useful than “canned an asshole who thought a short suspension was a huggy balanced punishment for drinking while on the clock as a state trooper, tasing an eleven-year-old for ‘like a second’, and threatening an innocent third party with death”.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Wow, gatt, you’re a lot more up to date with the GOP talking points than I would have expected.
If you have a less-bad-sounding description of the ongoing investigation against Palin that doesn’t presume guilt or innocence, I’d love to hear it. I don’t know about where you come from, but where I come from “alleged [offense]” is a pretty standard way of saying “someone has been accused of [offense]” without implying guilt or innocence.
In any case, if it were a Democrat accused of such abuses, I defy you to tell me with a straight face that GOP proponents wouldn’t be all over it like flies on shit. Again, IOKIYAR.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
True, I was assuming guilt. It’s quite possible she just fired the man for doing a bad job elsewhere or other unrelated reasons. I don’t really find the matter meaningful one way or the other.
If you could find me a Democrat accused of using his or her own power to can the sort of people The War On Guns features as The Only Ones or police officers campaigning against Article I, Section 19 of the Alaskan Constitution, I wouldn’t use those to attack the Democrat. It’d be a damned good reason for me to vote for them.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
karrde Says:
September 4th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Is it sexist to say that the only good female candidate is a female candidate with a (D) after her name? Or is it, to coin a word, party-ist?
When I parse the attacks on Mrs. Palin, that’s the best explanation I can come up with for a majority of the attacks.
First off there aint no good candidate, female or otherwise, with a (D) after their name.
Secondly, if Sarah Palin did have a (D) after her name she’d have a list of accomplishments that accomplished nothing to her credit, would only have 1 or 2 kids having aborted the others, and would be using examples like; “I was a community organizer in my hometown” or “I was a member of the PTA” to show that she has “executive experience”. She’d be a darling of the demlibs if she was like that.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Hey, at least the conservative punditocracy is all fired up about Palin!
September 4th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
When I parse the attacks on Mrs. Palin, that’s the best explanation I can come up with for a majority of the attacks.
what “attacks” are you referring to? The business about can she be VP with 5 kids is lame. OTT, tell me which of the following are sexist:
-her lying about her opposition to the bridge to nowhere
-her hiring a lobbyist to get more free federal funds for her city and then saying she’s against earmarks.
-her affiliation with a party that has at times called for separation of Alaska from the union
-her extreme views on abortion
-the investigation of her firing of the public safety commissioner
-her wanting to ban books from the library
-her record of mass firings both as mayor and governor
September 4th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Manish,
If you’d picked up your talking points from a better source, you’d realize that for half of those there’s no “there” there, and the other half are considered features, not bugs, by most of America. See you at the polls! 🙂
September 4th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
A) I doubt very many on the ‘conservative’ side are wishing John McCain any ill will at all, although I’ll admit there have been quite a few who’ve wished he would retire.
B) Even those who might wish him gone don’t want it to happen for at least 2 years and day into his Presidency.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Thanks for reminding me why I do not watch that crap anymore. All down-hill since craig kilborn left, although it was not that good even then.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Great shades of Allen (sp?) Colmes. I think I’ve figured it out. They are under contract. The liberals here are contracturally obligated to fill a quota of “stupid shit to say”.
If you some criticisms of substance post them, but this constant yammering of crap proven to be false or even non-existent is just silly.
And no, I won’t be voting for Palin because I would have to vote for a man who gutted the first amendment to do so. But damn! Are you afraid to fight a woman fairly. Good damn thing you don’t acutally have to face then, isn’t it?
September 4th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I like the fact that there are actual lefties on here with which to debate. Most of them I know just run away, or immediately flame out and embarrass themselves.
Yeah, I would have just LOVED the Daily Show– about 30 years ago. I mean, wow, what a knee slapper! Today, I can occasionally watch it for a few minutes. Then I start feeling like I’m back in jr high school with a gathering of C students who think they’re really smart and want to be the life of the party. Ah, youth! Sometimes I do laugh, but usually I roll my eyes and turn it off.
tgirsch; You see this “clash of the two Americas” as a debate. I see it from the point of view of having fully embraced the lefty point of view, and then grown out of it. There is not one thing you can say that I haven’t heard all my life (I’m 50). I hear people come up with things they think are SO clever and I can go back 30 years and remember it coming from the equally ill-informed back then. It just never changes. It is truly amazing. Nor is there any attitude toward this or that economic class, or the use of the military, etc., that I have not felt myself, one way or the other.
Be careful what you say now, and look into things a bit more, because 20 years from now you’ll read your own writings and it’s going to embarrass the hell out of you. Other people won’t care so much, but it’ll make you cringe. Been there, done that.
I believe McCain is a mental case– a bitter, frustrated, confused man who, if he understands the American principles of liberty at all, doesn’t ever show it. And Obama is ten times worse. What’s a poor man to do when faced with two poor choices? Yes tgirsch, McCain will disappoint us, just as Bush did for eight years, by utterly failing to lead that libertarian (staunchly anti-socialist) movement this country needs so desperately. But we knew that before we voted for him– he’s a Bush, after all. He’s going to try to please everybody– those who favor liberty and those who’ve made a life’s work out of destroying it.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Uncle; you’re moderating comments now?
September 4th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
nah, the spam filter kicks in sometimes.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
It seems there are two sets of arguments against Mrs. Palin.
One set is something along the lines of “she’s a mother, she ought to be taking care of her kids; she’s too emotional for the job; etc”.
Another line of arguments is along the lines of “I’m trying to twist the available facts to make her look as bad as possible”–the Bridge, dealing with that one policeman.
A third line of arguments is something like “She’s wrong about abortoin/taxes/foreign policy.”
If argument type (A) is answered with “That’s sexist”, then the charge is just. If argument types (B) or (C) are labeled sexist, then that is equivalent to Obama’s campaign calling some voters racist because they prefer Hillary to Obama. (Perhaps they were sexist…or perhaps they think Hillary is a better candidate…or something.)
It is right and proper to respond to sexist arguments with the observation that those arguments are sexist. It is not right to respond to non-sexist arguments as if they were sexist arguments.
Of course, political discourse is a tangled mess, and the arguments are easy to confuse.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
karrde:
I think you’ll find I’ve never been guilty of type (A), and I don’t think anyone from the Obama campaign has been, either.
As for type (B), I think your presentation of that type of argument is a weeeeee bit biased. 🙂
Lyle:
Oooh, dripping condescension, my favorite! Yeah, yeah, you’re old, and therefore you know better. I have no idea when conservatives became union-minded (more seniority = better), but whatever. 🙂
In any case, having a sense of humor about yourself is the most important thing — if you can’t laugh at yourself, you shouldn’t laugh at anyone else. The Daily Show is pretty much an equal opportunity offender — they’ve picked on Obama and Clinton alike — and I laugh at that just as much as this stuff.
What amazes me is that I’ve yet to encounter a single self-professed conservative or libertarian who’s the slightest bit bothered by the blatant double-standards in the clip. That seems only to prove my IOKIYAR point.
I suppose it’s possible that a few years from now, I, like you, will give up on the country and adopt libertarianism’s “fuck everyone else” politics (I actually flirted with them once in the late 90’s), but I certainly hope not. I’ve been saying for a while now that libertarians are just anarchists without the cojones to admit it (or, alternatively, who lack anarchists who lack commitment), and I’d hate to become one of them. 🙂
P.S. — I look into my writings from a dozen years ago, when I was a knee-jerk Republican, and I am embarrassed as hell, so I know exactly what you mean.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Tam:
An instalanche ate this comment, which I tried to post earlier today:
Extreme pro-life views, lying about support for earmarks, book-banning and secession are “features” with most of America? Wow, I really am disconnected with most of America. I thought a consistent majority of Americans wanted abortion legal in all or most cases. But then, I live in a goofy left-wing world where 53-56% constitutes a majority. (Of course, Palin also supports overturning Roe vs. Wade, a position opposed by a paltry 63% of Americans…)
Say, here’s Palin expressing her principled opposition to the bridge to nowhere. And here she is fighting big gub’mint earmarks in general. Yep, you libertarians sure have found a principled warrior for your cause.
Oh, yeah, that’s right: she’s pro gun. She could abort fetuses with federal dollars and then eat them, and it wouldn’t matter. She likey the boomsticky.
(Was that over the top? Almost certainly! But by the way she dishes it out, I’m pretty confident Tam can take snark, though… In fact I’m sure she’ll have plenty to throw right back at me!)
September 5th, 2008 at 7:01 am
tgirsh:
Oh right. Let’s see, double standard based on a highly selective editing of political extremists or and extreme political commenters. Right.
Maybe if you stepped a couple feet out of the fever-swamp left and actually looked at reality you might see that not all Libertarians or Repugs follow you preconceptions.
Oh and while you’re at it, try pulling that beam out of your own eye.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Hey, where “my team” is guilty of blatant double-standards, I encourage that it get pointed out far or wide. We need an end to that bullshit, no matter who’s guilty of it. And as for the “highly selective editing,” I fail to see what additional context there could be that would excuse condemning someone for whining about sexism and then turning around and whining about sexism, or Rove’s obvious flip-flop on whether experience matters in a VP candidate.
But at least you’re willing to acknowledge that Fox News analysts (including Bush’s former chief political strategist), McCain’s chief energy policy adviser, and Sarah Palin herself are “political extremists” or “extreme political commenters.”
September 5th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
tgirsch; It’s not that I’m old– plenty of old people are socialists. It’s that, once having embraced your ideology and then, after years of thought and serious debate, rejecting it, there’s no way any of your arguments which I’ve heard all my life are going to change my mind– they’re all based on premises that are easily rejected from the get go– call it condescension if you like. I call it knowledge. You can call it closed-mindedness, which again, I heard a million times, but I call it “having reached a sound conclusion after much investigation”.
Capital “L” Libertarians can be kooky, and even anarchists it’s true, but I was using the small “l’. I suppose it could also be called “Jeffersonian Liberalism” to distinguish it from the Democrat Party’s definition of “Liberal” which is the exact opposite.
As for the “fuck everyone else” assertion; yes, I understand (I did say that I was on your side for much of my life didn’t I?) that that’s how you see it. I see it in the exact opposite way now– I want a government (as did the Founders) constrained to its Constitutional duties, and I want the protection of human rights which has that other name—capitalism (which leftists can pronounce only with a spitting contempt). You can call it “fucking everyone else” but I call “respecting everyone else”. Opposites. Socialism is the universal “fuck everyone, we’ll decide how their lives should be run” system. It shows zero respect for the individual.
See, we could argue like this all day, and I suspect I could make your arguments at least as well as you could make them (done it) but it comes down to how you see the world– we’re either a bunch of rubes who need to be ordered around for our own safety (I refer to it as having been declared incompetent– a danger to ourselves and others), or we are basically decent, capable individuals with certain rights– rights which over-rule any assertions or claims against them.
I like debating you—you keep after it. Look for my upcoming post on joehuffman.org later tonight, regarding the practical application of principles. I don’t have a title yet, but you’ll recognize it.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Yep. Now will any on the left say the same about CNN or MSNBC or PBS for that matter? I’m highly skeptical. But they must look fairly neutral to those who stand knee deep in the fever swamp left. (Well except for maybe Olbermann who is standing next to you.)
As for Rove’s statements, no shit he’s saying what he did. He’s knee deep in the alkaline desert of the right as apparently most of your heros are in the fever swamp of the left. But using him to make a point on Repugs being hypocrites is just fascinating in that you can’t or aren’t willing to see that he doesn’t represent conservatives in general.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Nyl:
I’ll sure as hell say it about Olbermann. As for “Rove doesn’t represent conservatives in general,” I’m frankly tired of people hiding behind that shit. The conservatives that have been fucking everything up for years are doing so because they’re not really conservatives. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. Own it, or don’t. Democrats do all sorts of shit to piss me off, but when they do, I don’t try to hide behind “well those Democrats aren’t really liberals…”
Lyle:
I guess I come from a carbon-copy background of yours. I started off in conservative and libertarian ideology, heard all the arguments, and ultimately rejected them. I’ve long since decided that “small-l libertarianism” is just a trite way of saying that the government shouldn’t do anything except the shit that I want them to do. Well no shit you feel that way — so does everyone else. Now if you could put three small-l libertarians in a room and get them to agree on what the government ought to do beyond ultra-vague things like “defense” and “let me keep my guns,” maybe I’ll take it a little more seriously. But until then, I hear “small-l libertarian” and I think “a libertarian who doesn’t want to be associated with libertarians.” 🙂 (Or, alternatively, “South Park Republican.”)
As for “fuck everyone else,” yes, it’s trite, but that’s what libertarian philosophy boils down to at the end of the day. If we lived in a magical world where everyone started off with the same advantages and disadvantages, and life truly was no more and no less than what they themselves made of it, I’d actually be inclined to agree with you. But we don’t live in that magical world. Pick Random Kid X whose parents were pieces of shit who did a piss-poor job of raising him. If we could say “fuck the parents” without adversely impacting the kid, I’d be all for it. But the libertarian answer boils down to something in between “not my problem” and “fuck him, he should have picked better parents.”
I’m not so naive as to think that government can cure all the world’s ills, but that doesn’t mean it has absolutely no place in trying to ensure social justice. Unlike the stereotype of liberals, I don’t want hand-outs or welfare or anything of the sort — at the same time, I think it is the government’s place to do what it can to remove barriers to success for people whose start is disadvantaged — they should still have to work to get ahead and succeed, but the act of working hard should actually give them at least a decent shot at success. Right now, that simply isn’t the case. By far the best predictor of whether someone is rich or poor is whether or not their parents are rich or poor. If we can improve social and economic mobility, everyone benefits.
And although I understand that it’s Standard Operating Procedure for conservatives and libertarians to dump everyone who doesn’t 100% agree with them into the “socialist” bucket, but in real life it’s not that simple. I have argued repeatedly in the past that both capitalism and socialism are bad in and of themselves — if we want to live in a decent society, they have to exist in constant tension with neither gaining too much of an upper hand. If either one does, they ironically lead to identical results: a wealthy corrupt few controlling everything.
Final note: to say that capitalism, in and of itself, is a guarantor of human rights is naive in the extreme. History of littered with example of human rights being trampled to dust in the interests of turning a quick profit. Without watchdogs with clout, we wind up with robber barons and black lung.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Oh, side note: When I talk about the way things ought to be, I don’t much care whether or not the constitution allows it. Which isn’t to say that I think we should disregard the constitution — just that I don’t pretend that it’s a perfect document or that the framers were all-wise and all-knowing. People tend to give the constitution more reverence than it often deserves. A document that counts indentured servants and slaves as 3/5 of a person is self-evidently flawed. Where the constitution needs fixing, we should fix it. But I didn’t take this as a constitutional debate. I’m speaking from a “how things ought to be” perspective.