posted
Well, in that case, I agree with Thor that she is not a nice woman, although...what a way to put it.
Posts: 99 | Registered: Aug 2007
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"Liberals hate religion, except for Islam, and they didn't like Islam until after 9/11."
Seriously, how on God's green Earth can ANYONE make such a stupid ass statement? I was raised Lutheran, a liberal religion by nature, and believing in God and Jesus was probably the most natural thing that ever happened to me. It has always felt right, and I have never wavered in my belief.
So just because I don't worship George W. Bush as a god, that means i am godless and i hate religion? that's retarded.
Posts: 2752 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Of course she isn't a nice woman. The people who buy her stuff like her because she is not a nice woman. They also support her because she provokes such as response from the people they dislike.
She wants you to get outraged and attack her, preferribly in an infantile style, which, you, Thor, are great at. It's money in the bank to her.
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quote: "Liberals hate religion, except for Islam, and they didn't like Islam until after 9/11."
Although you can't lump all liberals into a single group anymore than you can lump all conservatives into a group, that's certainly the impression that liberals AS A GROUP give off.
Just like conservatives, AS A GROUP give off the impression that they all hate gay people.
A liberal over here fights against christianity in schools while a liberal over there fights to have children in public school all pick islamic names and pray to mecca 5 times a day (YES, that REALLY happened!) The gestalt impression is that "Liberals hate christianity and love islam."
Ms Coulter just oversimplifies it for the purposes of $$$.
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quote:Although you can't lump all liberals into a single group anymore than you can lump all conservatives into a group, that's certainly the impression that liberals AS A GROUP give off.
Just like conservatives, AS A GROUP give off the impression that they all hate gay people.
I don't think that's an apt comparison. Conservatives, as a group, actively support legislation that is counter to gay interests. There is no equivalent broadly-supported liberal activity in support of Islam.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
But there's broadly-supported liberal activity against the war and President Bush, which must mean they all support Islam since absurd either-or dichotomies are all that idiot political commentators can hear.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Silverblue Sun: Seriously, how on God's green Earth can ANYONE make such a stupid ass statement?
Because Colter's smart enough to realize that inspiring strong feelings, whether positive or negative, is an excellent way to attract attention. And the key to being successful in her field is to attract attention.
Look at how much success Rush Limbaugh's had, and a large portion of his daily audience tune in only to yell at their radios.
quote:Although you can't lump all liberals into a single group anymore than you can lump all conservatives into a group, that's certainly the impression that liberals AS A GROUP give off.
Just like conservatives, AS A GROUP give off the impression that they all hate gay people
I may be biased since I guess I'm a "liberal", but to me there seems to be a fundamental difference. Liberals seem to be against the mixing of church and state or of "pushing" religion. I don't know many liberals that are out to abolish/crimilize religion in general - the attitude seems to be one of "do what you want and believe what you want but leave the rest of us out of it".
On the other hand some/many concervatives don't seem content to take the "you live your life and I live mine" approach when it comes to homosexuality.
Posts: 409 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote: "Liberals hate religion, except for Islam, and they didn't like Islam until after 9/11."
Although you can't lump all liberals into a single group anymore than you can lump all conservatives into a group, that's certainly the impression that liberals AS A GROUP give off.
Just like conservatives, AS A GROUP give off the impression that they all hate gay people.
A liberal over here fights against christianity in schools while a liberal over there fights to have children in public school all pick islamic names and pray to mecca 5 times a day (YES, that REALLY happened!) The gestalt impression is that "Liberals hate christianity and love islam."
Ms Coulter just oversimplifies it for the purposes of $$$.
There's a huge difference between fighting prayer in school and hating religion, and it's a stretch to generalize that liberals appear to love Islam over actions that, quite frankly, I doubt most people have even heard about. I don't think anyone can, in the interest of intellectual honesty, claim that liberals appear to hate religion.
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posted
Sure they can claim it. I must have read a dozen stories over the past few years of how Democrats are losing people that would otherwise vote for them because of the perception that they are contemptuous of religion. One of the main stories of the 2004 election was that if you went to church more than twice a year, you probably voted for Bush.
Whether or not it is true I am not prepared to say, but it is absolutely possible for someone to "claim that liberals appear to hate religion" and be completely honest (ESPECIALLY with the "appear" in there). I'm a little puzzled that you would think otherwise. Did you miss all those multiple news stories?
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: Sure they can claim it. I must have read a dozen stories over the past few years of how Democrats are losing people that would otherwise vote for them because of the perception that they are contemptuous of religion. One of the main stories of the 2004 election was that if you went to church more than twice a year, you probably voted for Bush.
Whether or not it is true I am not prepared to say, but it is absolutely possible for someone to "claim that liberals appear to hate religion" and be completely honest (ESPECIALLY with the "appear" in there). I'm a little puzzled that you would think otherwise. Did you miss all those multiple news stories?
What I meant to say was that nobody can honestly (honestly as in objectively) analyze the facts and conclude that liberals hate religion. There is just no evidence to support the claim.
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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posted
Maybe it isn't a good idea to label those who disagree with you as "dishonest."
You can disagree with the conclusion, but someone coming to a different conclusion than you doesn't mean they are stupid or dishonest. It means they came to a different conclusion.
I'm not going to argue the case, but an honest case could certainly be made.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote: Just like conservatives, AS A GROUP give off the impression that they all hate gay people
They do? The impression is that they hate gay people? Your statement is different than Ann Coulter's statement of "liberals support Islam" how?
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: What I meant to say was that nobody can honestly (honestly as in objectively) analyze the facts and conclude that liberals hate religion. There is just no evidence to support the claim.
If a connservative opposes gay marriage then the conservative hates gays. When a liberal opposes the Ten Commandments being posted then they must hate religon. Blanket statements don't work in either case
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
"I must have read a dozen stories over the past few years of how Democrats are losing people that would otherwise vote for them because of the perception that they are contemptuous of religion."
Perhaps there's a little more to this, but as stated, that's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Anyone willing to retract their vote for a party because of a perception of that party's collective motives is just plain stupid.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
That doesn't make sense. It is ALL perception.
quote:Anyone willing to retract their vote for a party because of a perception of that party's collective motives is just plain stupid.
Did you read this before you posted? Of COURSE people will change their votes if they percieve a party's or candidate's motives to be hostile to something important to them. I'd be a little ashamed of them if they didn't.
If you don't want people to vote on their perceptions of the candidates/parties, then what would you prefer? Ouji boards? Tarot cards? Randomness?
It is all perception.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Ideally, I'd like for candidates to lay out their specific plans and stances and stick to them afterward, and I'd like for voters to study those plans and stances when they decide who to vote for.
Most don't - on both sides. I'm guessing because of pragmatism on one side based on the laziness of the other.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
The more than twice a year part is obviously hyperbole, but it's no secret that Bush won the Bible Belt and the Bible thumpers.
The problem with liberals and religion isn't that they aren't religious or that they hate religion, it's that liberal politicians are out of practice with being honest about their faith in public. For awhile now, maybe just since Kennedy, they haven't talked about religion the way that FDR did, when he spoke of "righteous might" and said God in every other statement.
So now whenever you do get a Democratic candidate who actually does speak about their faith with openness and honesty, they are pinned as being fake by the Right. I think to many of them, it's a combination of wanting to keep their faith a private personal thing, and honestly not knowing how to share it with people or weave it into speeches and make it sound natural because they A. Don't talk that way on a daily basis and B. Aren't from a place where people conversationally talk like that. That's going to naturally make it kind of awkward.
John Edwards and Barack Obama are the only two candidates I've seen since Bill Clinton that are even marginally good at weaving their religion into their speeches. And I think a lot of that has to do with the communities they grew up in.
DK -
I sympathize with your point. Saying conservatives give off the impression that they all hate gay people is similar to what Coulter said, but not the same thing. She states things as fact, whereas Pix I think was stating, generally, an oft held and voiced concern about the Right. Personally I don't think they "hate gays," but as a group, I think they have a very well earned reputation for being anti-homosexual. Take that as you will, but if they aren't, why do they keep supporting legislation that limits gay rights? At some point your track record catches up with you.
But I agree with you in that hyperbole serves no purpose. Pix could probably have said "give off the impression that they are anti-homosexual" and I think it would have rang a lot truer and been much easier to defend, but she was close enough to the public perception anyway.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I mean, most voters don't do extensive research and base their votes on the material found there, so most politicians campaign in a manner that hopefully appeals to the voting decision-making process of most voters - casual perceptions, group loyalties, personableness. Image and group ties, basically, I think.
So, the politicians are pragmatic because voters are generally not extensive researchers.
Alternatively, maybe it's all the economy. Or the war. There's a world of theories about this and many people, including my roommate, spend their lives studying how to influence the way people vote.
Whatever the details, I do NOT think that changing one's vote because the party or candidate seems hostile to something important to you is stupid. I think it's very normal and understandable, and it makes more sense changing your vote because of a candidate's laugh.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Kat, I think our disconnect is in the use of the term "perception". I also wasn't talking about the candidates themselves, but of generalizing perceptions of a particular party, as if that party is some entity that exists solely for its own sake.
I prefer that people vote for the person that best represents their ideals. Period. Allegience to a party should depend solely on those common ideals. I don't think we disagree on this. But what I got from your statement is that people would abandon a party, and thus any candidate associated with that party, based on a public perception (not their own) that that party promotes some ideal that they disagree with.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: Maybe it isn't a good idea to label those who disagree with you as "dishonest."
You can disagree with the conclusion, but someone coming to a different conclusion than you doesn't mean they are stupid or dishonest. It means they came to a different conclusion.
Yes, and evolution and creationism are, after all, just theories.
I understand your point in the general sense, but it's fallacious to assume that all viewpoints deserve equal merit. The idea "liberals hate religion" has a lot of baggage to overcome before it can be taken seriously. There aren't nearly enough atheists in this country to account for all the liberals, and there are very few atheist liberal congressmen (I don't even know of any offhand). Those two facts alone should be good indicators that the idea is dubious.
You don't even need to look very deeply to realize that the cases that cause this idea to be raised don't support it at all (I feel I could phrase this sentence much better but thats life).
Here are some examples: (1) No dedicated prayer time in school (2) Removing "Under God" from the pledge of allegiance. (3) Removing the ten commandments from a courthouse
Freedom from religion is very different from hatred of religion. There is nothing in any of those cases that would suggest that liberals hate religion in general. Maybe you can find a person who supports one of those examples and does hate religion. Whatever. That doesn't justify a sweeping generalization of liberals.
Sorry if I come off as very aggressive but I've seen this issue come up many times and it makes no sense to me. I can name over thirty liberals from various clubs in my school and I don't know of any that hate religion. Obviously personal experience is not proof of anything but I think my case is very strong when combined with the points above. The idea that somehow my town is just a bubble of weird liberals who don't hate religion just doesn't click.
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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posted
I am uncomfortable in general with people voting for a party instead of a candidate, but I can't deny that people do it and there's a long and storied history of it.
I'm guessing that when people abandon a party because of a public perception of hostility to something important to them, it is because they agree with/have bought into that public perception.
It all comes back to the problems of a large republic and an imperfect press and politicians who mold their views to fit in with a party or change their views to fit in with what they think voters want and generally there is mistrust and miscommunication on all sides. Candidates and voters have to fight through the noise to be heard and to hear, and sometimes it's too hard or impossible and so voters fall back on general stereotypes and general perceptions and they are in the voting booth and remember reading that a "liberal" spokesperson said relgious people were stupid and THEY'RE religious and that's not cool and then: they voted for someone who isn't liberal.
It happens. It's messy. It's regretable, but I don't like calling that voter stupid for doing so.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:makes more sense changing your vote because of a candidate's laugh.
Is that a reference to Hillary's recent laugh-capade?
To be perfectly honest...she creeped me out a little bit. The laughs didn't necessarily sound fake, but some of them seemed a little out of place, and further, I kind of thought she was high on something. Even Wolf Blitzer looked confused and amused at one point.
I think she spends way too much time forcing her personality into a mold of what she thinks voters want and not enough just being herself. I think she was fine as First Lady, and she was fine even up to the 2004 DNC when she introduced Bill, but ever since then I think you can see a lack of natural spontanaity.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I'm not a big fan of Hillary necessarily, but the laugh-capade is driving me crazy.
I think that it makes her MORE human than otherwise. People laugh at the weirdest times. We laugh when we're nervous, we laugh to fill empty space, we laugh when we can't think of what to say, we laugh to buy ourselves social time, and we laugh hysterically at our own jokes.
I also think the criticism is a little sexist.
There's nothing harder to pull off when you're in the spotlight than "natural spontaneity."
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:makes more sense changing your vote because of a candidate's laugh.
Is that a reference to Hillary's recent laugh-capade?
To be perfectly honest...she creeped me out a little bit. The laughs didn't necessarily sound fake, but some of them seemed a little out of place, and further, I kind of thought she was high on something. Even Wolf Blitzer looked confused and amused at one point.
I think she spends way too much time forcing her personality into a mold of what she thinks voters want and not enough just being herself. I think she was fine as First Lady, and she was fine even up to the 2004 DNC when she introduced Bill, but ever since then I think you can see a lack of natural spontanaity.
The Daily Show episode on her laughs was hilarious. They placed robot voices in the pauses between her laughs and had a funny montage of all her laughs Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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quote:Why not? Is it simply because of the word's socially evolved connotations? I suppose I can respect that. But they are being stupid.
No, it's lazy. Lazy does not equal stupid.
Seriously - it is many things, and maybe you can wander around and come back to stupid if you consider that it's our government we are talking about and it's dumb to not take it seriously, but really - that's stretching it.
It's like calling an embezzler stupid. Well, maybe, but that's a remarkably unprecise assessment. There is something more complex going.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Just because they’re stupid in that respect doesn’t mean they’re stupid in every respect. Nor does it mean they have to continue to be stupid.
The difference between being stupid and acting stupid is just semantics, but I won’t argue any more about that. It's not a big deal, really. I'm sorry if my first post sounded like an aggressive assertion. It was just a comment.
"and come back to stupid if you consider that it's our government we are talking about and it's dumb to not take it seriously"
That's more or less where I stand, especially when it's a voting citizen that chooses to be so ignorant.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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If stupid means almost everything, then it means practically nothing. There are also a load of connotations connected to it that should maybe make not want to use it when talking about people who vote in part based on their religion. It's... lazy to use that word when a more precise one would do.
But we don't have to argue about it anymore. I think I like political discussions better when terms like 'stupid' and 'dishonest' are not tossed around casually.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I disagree that "lazy" is necessarily a more precise descriptor than "stupid". Also, while I agree with your last statement when those political discussions are intellectually honest, when a person is being stupid or dishonest, I think it's practically our obligation to call them out on it.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I think changing a political discussion about ideas into ad hominem attacks of 'stupid' and 'dishonest' changes the discussion from a useful and interesting one to yet another tiresome polemic.
There are better ways to discuss ideas. Ad hominem attacks are not necessary.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Again, I agree. But if a person is being stupid or dishonest, exactly what kind of discussion do you think is going to take place?
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
"Then prove their ideas wrong - show contrary evidence, make a better argument, bring up other examples, put their comments in context."
Of course. I never disagreed with this. This is essentially what I mean by calling them out on their stupidity.
"All or any of that would be better than just calling them names. Name-calling is not an argument."
And again...of course. Calling someone stupid to their face may not be very effective, tactful, or polite. But I don't go around calling people stupid (though I don't deny I might resort to it if I feel being blunt might be effective. But such a scenario isn't very likely.).
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I think I like political discussions better when terms like 'stupid' and 'dishonest' are not tossed around casually.
