>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Martin Luther King managed to create protests and a movement that DIDN'T get in people's faces or disrupting the business of innocent bystanders who have nothing to do with what you're protesting. He did it with a positive, uplifting, inspirational message that people of good sense could not help but agree with. These yahoos are doing the exact opposite. They couldn't be driving people AWAY from their cause any better if they were trying.


wrong wrong WRONG!
martin luther king jr knew full well the only way a peaceful protest would be effective was by interfering with business.
any protest that was even moderately successful interfered with business and the everyday machinery of government.
now we have "free speech zones"(see:RNC 2008 st paul MN) which are many times far distances from the very thing being protested.....how convenient.
this is where the protesters can be marginalized and ignored but get in the way of everyday business and NOW you will get noticed.
and the government will send its goons in to strong arm and intimidate because the business class scream bloody murder.
there will be arrests.
there will be macings.
there will be violence and yes,even sometimes murders.
all of which can now be clandestinely videotaped from a phone exposing the strong arm tactics of the government all in the name of "keeping the peace".

this aint rocket science.it is effective and it works.
your obedient slave solution just leaves the protester flaccid and ineffective.
you have the RIGHT of redress.
you have the RIGHT to assemble.
and the police are within their powers to cite or detain you for civil disobedience.
they are NOT within their powers to:maim,torture,brutalize and disregard the laws in which they were sworn to uphold.
this is about challenging power and authority and the only way to do that properly is to disrupt the machinations of power and authority.

Related: Police arrest Amy Goodman at RNC

>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^VoodooV:
The sooner we abolish parties, the better. Party politics is what got us here.

How exactly would you do that?
You'd pretty much have to take away people's right to freely assemble, or forbid politicians from saying what they think about the issues before they're elected...

Uhh...no, not quite taking it that far. Not interested in slashing the Bill of Rights. There will always be unofficial groups and coalitions and there will be nothing you can do to stop that, nor should you. But what we can do is just refuse to recognize people as Reps or Dems, we can abolish any sort of official backing. Disband the RNC and the DNC. Simply refuse to give it legitimacy. When the state of the union happens, refuse to give a "opposition party rebuttal" At the very least! abolish this whole "reps sit on one side of the aisle, dems sit on the other side" nonsense. There is nothing wrong with people getting together, but the gov't doesn't have to recognize it and give it legitimacy so that the party eclipses the person as it is now.
The founders were definitely wary of parties and rightfully so. I don't see any problem with a concerted effort to at the VERY LEAST, discourage parties. We're seeing first hand the damage that can be done when party comes before country.
That and make all elections publicly funded..period. You'd see some drastic changes for the better


I guess my point is you're not being realistic about the dynamic at work. What's that going to cure? Are blankfist and I going to accidentally start voting for the same candidates? Probably not. Will liberals and conservatives generally refuse to organize into voting blocs to maximize their influence? Definitely not.

More to the point, what mechanism would prevent unofficial voting blocs from forming in the House and Senate? Once they form, are we really making things better by forcing them to pretend they don't exist? By refusing to let people come up with some shorthand word for them like Democrat or Republican (or Green, Monster Raving Looney, etc.)? By refusing to give TV air time to someone who wants to rebut the President?

It'd be a bit like trying to ban "alliances" in the game of Survivor. You'd have to intervene in almost every conversation to successfully do it, and even then people will still constantly be trying to do it under the radar, because the advantages are just too great. And that's a situation with at most 20 people under the most Orwellian level of surveillance possible...

Publicly funded elections on the other hand are a great idea, but that's wholly different from trying to kill organized parties. Publicly funded elections are about trying to neutralize the effect of money on the electoral process, and that's the real issue, IMO.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^VoodooV:
The sooner we abolish parties, the better. Party politics is what got us here.

How exactly would you do that?
You'd pretty much have to take away people's right to freely assemble, or forbid politicians from saying what they think about the issues before they're elected...


Uhh...no, not quite taking it that far. Not interested in slashing the Bill of Rights. There will always be unofficial groups and coalitions and there will be nothing you can do to stop that, nor should you. But what we can do is just refuse to recognize people as Reps or Dems, we can abolish any sort of official backing. Disband the RNC and the DNC. Simply refuse to give it legitimacy. When the state of the union happens, refuse to give a "opposition party rebuttal" At the very least! abolish this whole "reps sit on one side of the aisle, dems sit on the other side" nonsense. There is nothing wrong with people getting together, but the gov't doesn't have to recognize it and give it legitimacy so that the party eclipses the person as it is now.

The founders were definitely wary of parties and rightfully so. I don't see any problem with a concerted effort to at the VERY LEAST, discourage parties. We're seeing first hand the damage that can be done when party comes before country.

That and make all elections publicly funded..period. You'd see some drastic changes for the better

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

“What I think is different about things like what Angle and Bachmann said is that are incitement of violence”
This claim has been made several times and I have yet to see any substance to it beyond personal opinion and interpretation. Obama, Frank, Ried, Pelosi, Grayson, Franken, or other liberals make outrageous statements that imply violence on a routine basis.

This claim has been made several times, and I have yet to see any substance to it beyond the mere assertion of your conclusion.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Every major point here is based on interpretation and opinion. “I see… Big lie… Armed insurrection”… There is even a statement of agreement that Bachman DIDN’T mean it ‘that way’. But the comment is held to a different standard than Obama’s. HIS rhetoric is ‘not a lie’, ‘traditional electioneering’, and a ‘transparent metaphor’. Bachman bad; Obama good; Motivation – bias.

Stating your subjective view of my motivation isn't proof that my claims of objective qualitative differences are false.

This is another of my frustrations with the way you conduct yourself here. I'm trying to depersonalize this, and not question your motives, while still making the case that my viewpoint (which obviously differs from yours) is based on things that are supported by objective facts.

The burden of proof here is not entirely on me -- you're the one who provided the Obama quote as equivalent to Bachmann's. I think the strongest objection to it is the first one I listed, namely that it's out of context. How do we know whether Obama's meaning was "overwhelm the Republicans with volunteers and ads" and not literally "I want you to bring guns to kill Republicans with" without the context surrounding it?

My point here is that not all gun metaphors are created equal. "We're going to stick to our guns on health care" is pretty different from "If ballots don't work, bullets will".

Obama's quote was a tick more inciteful than the first, Bachmann's was only a couple ticks less inciteful than the latter. I'm saying the bounds of civil conversation lies inbetween.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I see… So – just to make this clear – calling Obamacare’s rationing a ‘death panel’ where Grandma takes a pain pill and gets end-of-life counseling instead of medicine (Obama said this) is over the top.

Yep. Part of your issue here is that you're not talking about anything in legislation, but something Obama said.

The other issue is, you're quoting him waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of context:

But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that
exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is
loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence
shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let
doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't
going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but
taking the painkiller.

And those kinds of decisions between doctors and patients, and
making sure that our incentives are not preventing those good decision,
and that -- that doctors and hospitals all are aligned for patient care,
that's something we can achieve.

It takes removing the context to make what Obama said sound even remotely sinister. Even then, it's clear he's not saying "I reserve the right to compel doctors to pull the plug on your grandma if she doesn't meet my subjective standards on her value to society".

He's saying that we can pull the plug on paying doctors for performing treatments that have been shown to be medically ineffective, so that doctors don't have a monetary incentive to try to convince patients to undergo treatments they don't really need.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
But Grayson saying the Republican plan of privatization (a system that worked for decades)

What Republican plan of privatization that worked for decades are you talking about? The employer-based insurance system that arose as an "unintended consequence" of FDR's wage controls? The one everyone was happy with, could afford, and never left anyone out?

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I’ll be honest. I see this as a classic example of distortion bias. “It’s fine when WE do it because we’re RIGHT, but not when THEY do it because they’re WRONG!”

You say "classic example of distortion bias" as if that's some named phenomena. What you mean to say is that it's a double standard.

But see, you're just asserting that, not making a case for it.

I mention Grayson as an outlier. He's unusually inflammatory for a Democrat, and even what he said wasn't particularly inciteful. He didn't say "Republicans are coming to kill you" the way the right often says of Democrats, he merely said "Republicans will leave you for dead."

That's pushing it in my view, but not because I think it runs the risk of sounding like an endorsement of violence against Republicans, but because it's an exaggeration that I think stretches the truth a bit too much.

I say stretch, because Republicans never put together a fully formed plan of their own, and a lot of the rhetoric was based on the idea that there is no need to address the issue of people not being able to afford medical care.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Second, when have Democrats accused Republicans of starving people?
1990s Contract With America. Democrats accused Newt Gingrich and the GOP congress of starving children because they wanted to make cuts in education that would have had some impact on school lunch programs.

Good on them then.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Similarly in 2010, Alan Grayson accused the GOP of starving children and women, and selling people into slavery for black market organs because they wanted to stop the fourth extension of unemployment.

I demand a source on this one. It's gotta be sifted here as a YouTube clip if that's accurate.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
But this is a great teaching moment. This is the origin of your bias. You – Netrunner – AGREE with Grayson. So when he says, “GOP is starving children”, you don’t have a problem with it. You agree with him - so when Grayson is incendiary and egregious in his rhetoric you give it a pass as ‘electioneering’ or ‘metaphor’ or a ‘joke’.

Actually no. Here's an alternative hypothesis: When someone says "So and so is murdering babies", I think it's inciteful. I don't think it's a joke, I don't think it's a metaphor, and I think you better back up your claim.

If you can't, I think you've done something wrong by saying it.

If you can, I think you've probably done something good.

"Cap and trade will be the end of freedom as we know it." Can't be backed up.

"The Republican health care plan is: 'Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." This one's debatable for the reasons I said above. But I think that the accuracy of the statement has a lot to do with whether that comment was okay or not. This one's at the edge, either way.

"George W. Bush ordered the torture of Guantanamo detainees" is true, by his own admission.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I can see both sides of the debate. I disagree with liberals, but I can mentally grasp their OPINION (even if I reject it) that the conservative method (smaller government, private solutions) ‘takes away’ from social programs. So when liberals get vociferous, I am willing to cut them a little slack.

I don't think you understand the liberal side of arguments at all. I also don't think you are willing to actually engage in any sort of reasonable discussion about their criticism of the right, either. For example:

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Here I personally went one click further and suggested that perhaps this is an intentional strategy to rile up the crazies, so they'll physically intimidate liberals.
So – is leftist rhetoric intentionally done to rile up the crazies so they’d physically intimidate conservatives? You know – stuff like the threats against Ann Coulter that caused a college speech to be cancelled. Or when a liberal man bit off a guy’s finger because he disagreed about healthcare. Or when liberal Amy Bishop killed her co-workers. Liberal Joseph Stack flew a plane into the IRS. Liberals destroyed radio towers in Seattle. Liberals torched Hummer dealerships. Liberals beat up a conservative black man at a Tea Party. A liberal brought bombs to an RNC meeting. Liberals attacked police in Berkley. Liberals threw rocks at animal researchers. Liberals stood outside polling stations with nightsticks. A liberal shot up the Discovery Channel. A liberal said, “You’re dead!” to a Tea party leader. Liberals made death-threats against Palin. Liberals made death threats & assassination movies about Bush. A liberal shot up the war memorial. And let us not overlook the fact that Loughner is a 9/11 truther and that the left is the source for that particular 'rhetoric'.

Litanies like this make it pretty clear that you're you're not interested in examining your own prejudices about liberals.

In case that all by itself wasn't enough:
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
OK – I’ll take one glove off here. I have not accused you of making crap up, and you aren’t providing sourcing either.
[snip]
[Y]ou can find the sources for ALL the examples of liberal violence I listed above. I’ve got the links for EVERY one of them and dozens more, but I don’t go around assuming you're an intellectual cripple that can't find them. Nor do I want to play dueling link banjos here. I extend the courtesy in an online discussion of not forcing the other guy to cite every freaking thing they say because 99 times in 100 the source just gets attacked and ignored anyway.

So what do you think you've done with the combination of these paragraphs?

I see someone essentially saying "I'm right, you're evil, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise".

That's not winning an argument, that's refusing to present one because you're so prejudiced you don't think you need to when dealing with people like me.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I typically don’t jump in a thread until intolerant liberal rhetoric has already reared its ugly face. Liberal intolerance is there before I say a single word. So I don’t care a fig about the leftist vitriol I get, because it is generally only a continuance of the intolerance that was there before I showed up. They don't hate 'me'. They hate the fact that I have dared to hold a mirror up on own intolerance. What they really want to be doing is feeling self-righteous as they spew intolerance at things they hate. Ol' Winstonfield popping up and spoiling the fun wasn't in their plan, and they react badly. Boo hoo.
But you are specifically accusing ME of being vitriolic. I stridently reject that position. I do no more than calmly, fairly, and accurately present an opposing point of view. I may do it sarcastically. I may point out hypocrisy. But I attack philosophies and public figures – not Sifters. Therefore the personal vitriol against myself is unwarranted and unjustified. I bring no vitriol or intolerance to the table here. The only vitriol and intolerance that exists is directed towards me.


To be frank, you're delusional about why people get mad at you. People would respond differently if you tried to actually make an argument for what you believe, instead of just telling people they're wrong and/or evil, that it's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, and there's no point in trying to deny it. You just did that to me here with your litany of supposed liberal crimes against humanity, with the follow-up that sources don't matter because any questioning of the veracity of your sources is proof of the dread liberal bias.

Another example: I gave 4 different reasons why I think the Bachmann and Obama quotes aren't equal. 4 distinct reasons that could all be examined and definitively addressed without making this about me personally. Instead you chose to ignore them, and accuse me of using a double standard.

If you want to show that I am engaged in a double standard, you need to make that case. You need me to define exactly what my standard is, and then show that I'm inconsistently applying it. To prove an overall bias, you need many examples where I've done so. You didn't even try to do any of that. You just leveled it as a personal attack.

My sense is that you don't know (or don't care) about the way legitimate arguments get made. Think Geometry proofs, or science papers. Do they just say "The sum of the internal angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees, and anyone who disagrees with me is just doing so because they hate mathematicians!" or do they lay out a proof that clearly states the assumptions and the deductive steps they followed to reach their conclusion?

The topic of what rhetoric is worthy of condemnation is going to be a little more slippery, but it's not impossible to have a civil discussion about what the important factors are in deciding whether a comment is appropriate or not.

“What I think is different about things like what Angle and Bachmann said is that are incitement of violence”

This claim has been made several times and I have yet to see any substance to it beyond personal opinion and interpretation. Obama, Frank, Ried, Pelosi, Grayson, Franken, or other liberals make outrageous statements that imply violence on a routine basis. They are dismissed as a joke… A ‘metaphor’… But when a conservative says something, it is a call for violence. If that’s how someone chooses to roll then so be it, but let that person hold no illusion about their fairness or the justness of their cause.

Case in point…

“I see the word revolution being used literally. I see talk of losing the country, of losing freedom, in the context of saying "I want people armed and dangerous"… the Obama quote isn't well sourced, doesn't involve a lie, was pretty transparently a metaphor for traditional electioneering activities, and I suspect if Obama was asked about it today he'd say it was a poor word choice. Bachmann's quote we have audio recordings of, involves a big lie, was pretty clearly about armed insurrection …”

Every major point here is based on interpretation and opinion. “I see… Big lie… Armed insurrection”… There is even a statement of agreement that Bachman DIDN’T mean it ‘that way’. But the comment is held to a different standard than Obama’s. HIS rhetoric is ‘not a lie’, ‘traditional electioneering’, and a ‘transparent metaphor’. Bachman bad; Obama good; Motivation – bias.

“First, medical care is a scarce resource, and any system by which we choose to distribute it is by definition "rationing", whether it's a market, or something else, so saying "Obamacare" has "rationing" is a meaningless statement.”

I see… So – just to make this clear – calling Obamacare’s rationing a ‘death panel’ where Grandma takes a pain pill and gets end-of-life counseling instead of medicine (Obama said this) is over the top. But Grayson saying the Republican plan of privatization (a system that worked for decades) equates to “don’t get sick or die quickly” is fine? I’ll be honest. I see this as a classic example of distortion bias. “It’s fine when WE do it because we’re RIGHT, but not when THEY do it because they’re WRONG!”

Second, when have Democrats accused Republicans of starving people?

1990s Contract With America. Democrats accused Newt Gingrich and the GOP congress of starving children because they wanted to make cuts in education that would have had some impact on school lunch programs. Similarly in 2010, Alan Grayson accused the GOP of starving children and women, and selling people into slavery for black market organs because they wanted to stop the fourth extension of unemployment. Every time the GOP wants to cut any social program they get accused of starving people. This is not unusual.

But this is a great teaching moment. This is the origin of your bias. You – Netrunner – AGREE with Grayson. So when he says, “GOP is starving children”, you don’t have a problem with it. You agree with him - so when Grayson is incendiary and egregious in his rhetoric you give it a pass as ‘electioneering’ or ‘metaphor’ or a ‘joke’. You refuse to give conservatives the same kind of leeway. If a GOP guy says Barak Obama is jacking up the national debt to fund his vision of social justice, and calls it an ‘assault on freedom’? They are ‘inciting violence’ - even though they have just as much 'evidence' of their argument as Greyson.

I refuse to live in such a black and white world of selective bias. I can see both sides of the debate. I disagree with liberals, but I can mentally grasp their OPINION (even if I reject it) that the conservative method (smaller government, private solutions) ‘takes away’ from social programs. So when liberals get vociferous, I am willing to cut them a little slack. It’d be nice if that went both ways.

Here I personally went one click further and suggested that perhaps this is an intentional strategy to rile up the crazies, so they'll physically intimidate liberals.

So – is leftist rhetoric intentionally done to rile up the crazies so they’d physically intimidate conservatives? You know – stuff like the threats against Ann Coulter that caused a college speech to be cancelled. Or when a liberal man bit off a guy’s finger because he disagreed about healthcare. Or when liberal Amy Bishop killed her co-workers. Liberal Joseph Stack flew a plane into the IRS. Liberals destroyed radio towers in Seattle. Liberals torched Hummer dealerships. Liberals beat up a conservative black man at a Tea Party. A liberal brought bombs to an RNC meeting. Liberals attacked police in Berkley. Liberals threw rocks at animal researchers. Liberals stood outside polling stations with nightsticks. A liberal shot up the Discovery Channel. A liberal said, “You’re dead!” to a Tea party leader. Liberals made death-threats against Palin. Liberals made death threats & assassination movies about Bush. A liberal shot up the war memorial. And let us not overlook the fact that Loughner is a 9/11 truther and that the left is the source for that particular 'rhetoric'.

You then support your argument with a litany of asserted facts...that you don't source, and are in direct contravention of what was said elsewhere (regardless of whether it'd been sourced or not).

OK – I’ll take one glove off here. I have not accused you of making crap up, and you aren’t providing sourcing either. I have no interest in making you treat everything you say like you are writing a white paper. You also support your arguments with litanies of asserted facts which you don’t source which are in direct contravention of what is said elsewhere. Why the hypocrisy on this?

I’m an intelligent enough fellow and I can find links myself. I don't need you holding my hand in that regard. I assume you have fingers because you can type. Therefore you can find the sources for ALL the examples of liberal violence I listed above. I’ve got the links for EVERY one of them and dozens more, but I don’t go around assuming you're an intellectual cripple that can't find them. Nor do I want to play dueling link banjos here. I extend the courtesy in an online discussion of not forcing the other guy to cite every freaking thing they say because 99 times in 100 the source just gets attacked and ignored anyway.

I think you should examine the way you're presenting yourself rather than assuming it's all the result of some sort of universal liberal intolerance

I typically don’t jump in a thread until intolerant liberal rhetoric has already reared its ugly face. Liberal intolerance is there before I say a single word. So I don’t care a fig about the leftist vitriol I get, because it is generally only a continuance of the intolerance that was there before I showed up. They don't hate 'me'. They hate the fact that I have dared to hold a mirror up on own intolerance. What they really want to be doing is feeling self-righteous as they spew intolerance at things they hate. Ol' Winstonfield popping up and spoiling the fun wasn't in their plan, and they react badly. Boo hoo.

But you are specifically accusing ME of being vitriolic. I stridently reject that position. I do no more than calmly, fairly, and accurately present an opposing point of view. I may do it sarcastically. I may point out hypocrisy. But I attack philosophies and public figures – not Sifters. Therefore the personal vitriol against myself is unwarranted and unjustified. I bring no vitriol or intolerance to the table here. The only vitriol and intolerance that exists is directed towards me.

>> ^Januari:

Anyone else just knock down stunned not one (let alone all) didn't use "The Bible".


Sure they did, someone said the "Reagan Diaries" didn't they? You mean they're not the same thing?

>> ^blankfist:

"I like the new George Bush book."
Wow.


She can't even name it!

Literacy is clearly not a requirement.

Paid for by the RNC
and 70% of the DNC.

Beauty.

"I'm the gift that keeps on giving."

-- RNC Chairman Michael Steele, quoted by David Corn, "almost as if he were proud of that."

source

So, up until the 8 minute mark this sounded utterly correct. In particular around 7:20 or so, he mentions that the system of ownership breaks down when you get a fair income distribution, and see a middle class start to emerge.

I agree.

Then he takes a really stupid rightward turn, and insists that it's unions who're doing the hatchetwork for our owners. Please. Unions don't work for governments, or for companies. They work for us livestock.

Government, on the other hand, can easily wind up doing all the hatchetwork for the owners. Take the ultimate libertarian government -- one that only enforces ownership rights. What more could our owners want than that? Here is the natural endpoint of such moronic ideas. All the better if people come to believe that such slavery is really freedom. After all, freedom only belongs to the owners, and limits on their freedom so you can have some is wrong.

That's why income equality is such a threat to the owners -- once people get to the point where they're not constantly in a struggle to provide the basics for their family, and get a taste of real disposable income, they realize how very little money they really need, and they get very, very dangerous to the system.

They're right that economic growth attracts thieves -- the capitalist kind, who demand tax cuts and a continued maintenance of welfare to keep their livestock healthy and educated. That leads to debts, debts that they don't have to worry about paying, because they can just use their ill-gotten gain to keep bribing politicians and brainwashing the ignorant livestock into thinking it's us livestock who've been living lives of undeserved excess.

PS: The other 1984 slogans were "War is Peace", "Ignorance is Strength", along with "Freedom is Slavery". They'd fit nicely on the RNC front page.

PPS: George Orwell was a democratic socialist.

@blankfist, I think you're mistaking Constitutionalism and Originalism. Constitutionalism is a little more general. Basically, it's just the belief that governments derive their power from a contract with the governed, and should be bound to that contract.

I agree with that assertion.

Modern day people who tout themselves as classical liberals aren't really classical liberals, they're libertarians who want to engage in the revisionist idea that the founding fathers were libertarians.

Even if you go by the libertarian definition, all that means is that you believe in property rights, civil liberties, individual freedom, equality under the law, limited government, and free markets. There's nothing there I don't support, I just don't define "free market" to mean "without regulation of any kind" nor property rights to mean that no man can be taxed. I more mean it in the sense that it's a market economy with decentralized and open decision making (like we have today), as opposed to centrally planned (like they had in Mother Russia in the good old days).

As for voluntarism, I think as a constitutionalist that all government is done in accordance to a consensual social contract with the governed. Meaning, no one forces you to live here, and unless you are wanted for arrest, you're free to leave at any time, and rescind your citizenship. However, unless you do those things, you're expected to hold up your end of the bargain by obeying laws and paying taxes, and the government needs to hold up its end of the bargain by defending your civil rights, common defense, and promoting the general welfare.

Like I said, I don't think anything I believe is incompatible with those words. It's the people who consider themselves adherents of those -isms who really just have an overall "conservative" philosophy that isn't about the Constitution, Voluntary associations, or what Jeffersonian/Jacksonian liberals believed. Instead, it's just a group of people who want to pervert all of the above arguments to mean that there's an overt, longstanding prohibition against elements of social democracy like a welfare state, policies aimed at reducing economic inequality, and (oddly) against laws aimed at conserving the environment.

They're wrong, of course.

The group of people who self-identify as a "classical liberal" as opposed to "constitutionalist" as opposed to "Voluntarist" as opposed to "RNC hack", only really differ in the kind of bogus arguments they most like to use against progressives.

This is so last week.

Mine explosion!

Polish president died in plane crash!

Justice Stevens to retire!

RNC lesbian bondage club!

Tiger Woods's new Nike ad!

*news
*politics

My guess is that the RNC is working internally to get Steele fired. He's served his purpose, and since the "We've got a black guy too" ploy failed, he's now just in the way.

It's a hatchet job.

@Stormsinger: You know, you seem like a pretty decent person. I agree with most things I've seen you comment on. You don't have to be hostile. Yes, I read the letter. Yes, there is nothing explicitly assigning blame. I still think this is a pretty blatant attempt to score political points. NR's link says that Steele already spoke out against it anyway. What's the point of sending a letter, from the Democrats' point of view, if not to score points? The violence works in their favor.

Honestly, I'd say that he probably expected (and wanted) Steele not to sign. It'd be a minor victory if he did sign: Kaine would get to say, "We got the RNC to speak out against violence, go us!" And they'd get to score points by pointing out hypocrisy whenever a Senator started quoting Limbaugh.

Since he refused to sign it, this is a huge win for the DNC. They can run around saying that the RNC supports violence, despite them (apparently?) having already said to stop it.

I think that it probably would have been prudent to sign it, from Steele's point of view--but whatever. He's the cow on the tracks.