"Liberals and socialists hate individual freedom. You can't have grand social engineering if people are actually free to associate as they please and do as they please. "
bobbdobbs - c'mon man, i can tell by your many other posts that you are an intelligent and discriminating guy, self qualifiying and unresearched statements like this just reveal a knee-jerk response and i know that's not your style. to say that all socialist theories involve destroying the freedom of the individual not only demonstrates a total lack of understanding about socialist theories in general, but also a general disgreement with the fellows that founded our country and their intellectual models.
"Many people in this country do not want a fully socialist or fully capitalist government. There is a happy medium. This is what liberals, including myself, want. "
- amen brother, anybody that thinks they can put a solid defenition on what a true conservative and a true liberal think about what is pure capitalism and pure socialism, and can prove how the two aproachs are diametrically apposed, in a reasonable, academic, and well informed fashion, as well as an explanation of how our super-successful economy is somehow not a mixture of the two, please go ahead and do so. otherwise drop the issue, because we're all novices when it comes to discussing this and at best only have a conceptually functional grasp of economics, which is hardly enough for anybody to make an informed statement on what is best for the most powerful country in the world to operate by. and if you think you know for sure just because, then you're not just an asshole, you're an arrogant asshole. we all know what we think is best, what actually is best is a whole other matter, don't forget it.
bigbutnottoobig - i don't mean to always be critical of you man. you seem quite intelligent and you can express your thoughts very well, but don't blind yourself with your own rhetoric. using a limited, statistacally convenient example to express a point about a political view is not only useless, but ridiculous. i'm referring to your village example. c'mon man, that shit might get you a passing nod from a 101 level professor just looking for any depth of thought, but that shallow level of contemplation and self-supporting burden of proof isn't shit in a idealogically (sic) complicated debate. i'm still in high school, and if i dropped somtething like that in my argumentative writing class sophomore year, i would have gotten slammed so hard it wouldn't have even been funny. there's a reason you don't see things like that in formal acadmeic papers, and according to your description of your education you have seen at least a few of these, peer reviewed, and i think you know why. raise the level of the debate man, don't lower it with stuff like that, you can do better. pet scenarios about villages with no factors other than those that support your end statement are just out of line. you're a lwas student, you know no arguement where somebody creates their own statisitcs to support a logical conclusion based on distribution can be supported logically: i know you took the LSAT's and understand the nature of logic games, and i know deep down that your example is just a ploy to support your views in a compact and superficially convincing fashion. not bad at all, but not good enough either.
sorry if my tone seems angry, but i see the same kind of aruments being churned out here. everybody just combs each others posts, looking for a reason why the opposition is wrong. fuck all, maybe i'm guilty of the same thing, but i strive to escape my intellectual prejudices. honestly, after carefully reading all the posts, i see that the conservatives are most prone to misquoting and putting words in the mouth of the liberal supporters. it seems the conservatives are more likely to flat our attack liberal thought and make what are whoely unture, or at best, estimated staements about liberal thought, where as liberals generally offer more burden of proof.
when liberals on this thread have made a valid or somewhat damgaing point against the conservatives, they have merely ignored it and made further accustations (liberals hate freedom, liberals hate liberty, liberals hate successful people, liberals want to fund the lazy poor people at the exclusive expense of the successful,, liberal hate society at large, liberals hate just about everythiing, blah blah blah lie lie lie). the liberal posters, on the other hand, have decried their oppositon, while offering not only statistics, but well reasoned and objective support for the intrinsic value of their political slant. meanwhile, the main burden of proof for the conservatives seems to be that liberal thought is stupid and somehow damaging to society.
i've said it before and i'll say it again. if you actually think that your political philosophy is the best for governing all of man, then fuck you because you're a moron and vote accordingly. presuming that kind of understanding is so ridiculous i shouldn't even have to mention it. one thing about liberal rhetoric though; liberal ideas presume to help all people succeed, and look at a long term cost benfit ratio, which, since so many people here are appearently scholras of economics, is alomst always more successful for ANY long run scenario, i.e. governments, like our own. conservatives base at least half of the rhetoric on indicting liberals (not an exact figure, argue all you want, but think about it before you do), and they base their beliefs, at least in good part, on the assumption that liberalism is foolish and can't work. founding your knowledge on the certain ignorance of other ideas is an intellectual mistake of the greatest magnitude, and if nothing else, i feel that it devalues the opinions of most conservatives i know, based on this criteria alone.
hopefully you all don't presume the value of liberal politics to be in any way associated with the lack of run-on sentences . . . otherwise i may be fukt
