<!--QuoteBegin-Rat12321+Nov 11 2004, 12:31 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Rat12321 @ Nov 11 2004, 12:31 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> yeah, thats what i tell everyone... and they never have anything to backup why they think bush is a **** except "well bush is a ****"...
its just someone saying "man lookit bush hes a retard" and now everyone else does it....
quite annoying really <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> To be fair, one of the most common reasons that many Republicans would quote for voting Bush was "Kerry is a puts". Its just that there is no way in hell that would fly as reason on these boards, so consequently all of you have developed stronger reasoning, partially because you had to, partially because you were bombarded with other people's good reasons.
<!--QuoteBegin-Swiftspear+Nov 11 2004, 07:45 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Swiftspear @ Nov 11 2004, 07:45 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-Rat12321+Nov 11 2004, 12:31 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Rat12321 @ Nov 11 2004, 12:31 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> yeah, thats what i tell everyone... and they never have anything to backup why they think bush is a **** except "well bush is a ****"...
its just someone saying "man lookit bush hes a retard" and now everyone else does it....
quite annoying really <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> To be fair, one of the most common reasons that many Republicans would quote for voting Bush was "Kerry is a puts". Its just that there is no way in hell that would fly as reason on these boards, so consequently all of you have developed stronger reasoning, partially because you had to, partially because you were bombarded with other people's good reasons. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Revelation of the day: These boards are a good influence! <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I thought I was willfully rotting my mind every day I came here <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-illuminex+Nov 11 2004, 06:28 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (illuminex @ Nov 11 2004, 06:28 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> The USA is a Republic, thank the forefathers. Democracy is simply mob rule anyways.
But yeah, it definitely is a fad among non-voting young people to simply hate Bush, instead of investigating both sides of the coin. Thanks to crappy tours spreading ignorant messages, we can now say that the average rock loving child is actually a complete political tool, made by political tools. They must know that, and don't vote <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> The western model of democracy consists of republics, no? (with the odd nominal monarchy-actual republic states)
A fad and genuine resistance toward an administration's policies have a lot in common. You could say that any major power shift is a result of a fad, like for example the civil rights movement, the vietnam war demonstrations and the **** rights movement. All of them have in common the few visionary leaders and the many sometimes very ignorant followers. It simply is impossible to have a mass movement without the mass. It is patently bizarre that even though a person should be derided for his or her inability to present a case for the issue they support, that kind of people are actually the pillars upon which any organized political institution stands.
But yeah, it definitely is a fad among non-voting young people to simply hate Bush, instead of investigating both sides of the coin. Thanks to crappy tours spreading ignorant messages, we can now say that the average rock loving child is actually a complete political tool, made by political tools. They must know that, and don't vote <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> As a voting citizen who watched all three debates, is up to date on most issues, and made high marks in every history course I've ever taken, I take offense to that. There are many legitimate reasons to hate Bush, and those on the upper crusts of society who do so do it with a reason. FDR's restructuring of the Democratic party in the 30's allied the interests of intellectuals with those of the poor (and with them groups such as Jews, Catholics, blacks, and labor unions)--thus driving out the Southern element that had hitherto affililated with the Democrats. So there were elements of high society (the educated elements) supporting the progressive cause long before MTV and Blink-182. Today's deluge of musicians and artists speaking out against Bush is simply an extension of that. Contrary to what misleading conservatives would have you think, these people do you know what they're talking about.
It's no coincidence that most artists are liberal and most businessmen conservative. College professors too (at least the ones I know) tend to be against Bush, as do NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS ( <a href='http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-33250_48_Nobel_Prize_Winners_slam_Bush.html' target='_blank'>http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-332..._slam_Bush.html</a> ). The problem is that the current American generation has somehow gotten it into their head that qualities such as intelligence and creativity don't matter in politics (when in fact nothing could be more important). They see it as no problem that Bush, using the best word I can think of, is an idiot. Part of the problem is that they find it easier to listen to his rhetoric ("pro-America", "pro-freedom", "morals") than to reason through what such words mean. They trust him because he's the president, and assume he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't.
It's also no coincidence that the Klu-Klux-Klan, in the height of their power, were staunch conservatives. They still are. So is your average rich beyond belief CEO, and you can bet those boys who spend their time beating up *** in Texas love Mr. Bush. Lest these examples sound unfair, know that I'm only bringing them up in response to the complaint that too many musicians supported Kerry. They are examples of partisanship in the most extreme sectors of society, and so are these. Given the choice, who would you rather support?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->There are many legitimate reasons to hate Bush, and those on the upper crusts of society who do so do it with a reason. FDR's restructuring of the Democratic party in the 30's allied the interests of intellectuals with those of the poor (and with them groups such as Jews, Catholics, blacks, and labor unions)--thus driving out the Southern element that had hitherto affililated with the Democrats. So there were elements of high society (the educated elements) supporting the progressive cause long before MTV and Blink-182. Today's deluge of musicians and artists speaking out against Bush is simply an extension of that.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So whose the upper crust of society? The Bush supportin business boys, or the university intellectuals?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Contrary to what misleading conservatives would have you think, these people do you know what they're talking about.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The ratio of liberal idiots to conservative idiots seems about the same. As I am forced to wade through a liberal cesspool everyday at uni - I meet more of the leftwing idiots than the general population, but I'm sure they're about equal.
Its also disturbing that liberals claim to be intelligent in one minute, and then the next quote Micheal Moore.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->It's no coincidence that most artists are liberal and most businessmen conservative. College professors too (at least the ones I know) tend to be against Bush, as do NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS ( <a href='http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-33250_48_Nobel_Prize_Winners_slam_Bush.html' target='_blank'>http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-332..._slam_Bush.html</a> ).
It's also no coincidence that the Klu-Klux-Klan, in the height of their power, were staunch conservatives<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He's right, it is no coincidence. Is it a coincidence that these artists are also more likely to be communist? No. They dont live in the real world, unlike business people/the rest of us plebs who face reality. Two words that should strike dread into the heart of college liberals everywhere: Ivory Tower. I also fail to appreciate the genius of these "artists". You can draw good - congratulations. Now explain to me why that makes your political opinions somehow more weighty than mine.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The problem is that the current American generation has somehow gotten it into their head that qualities such as intelligence and creativity don't matter in politics (when in fact nothing could be more important). They see it as no problem that Bush, using the best word I can think of, is an idiot. Part of the problem is that they find it easier to listen to his rhetoric ("pro-America", "pro-freedom", "morals") than to reason through what such words mean. They trust him because he's the president, and assume he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->A week from today, the sun will rise on the second Bush presidency in a generation, in what for some may be a day of trepidation. Does Bush the Younger have what it takes to lead the nation in the new millennium?
It's a question that transcends concerns about George W. Bush's conservatism or a path to power marred by youthful indiscretions. It's not about ideology or character; it's a question of cognitive capacity.
The Spanish physician Juan Huarte in 1575 proposed one of the earliest recorded definitions of intelligence: learning ability, imaginativeness and good judgment. Undoubtedly, the mantle of the modern U.S. presidency imposes a steep learning curve and demands vision, wisdom and discretion.
Equally clear is this: Sheer intellectual brilliance does not cut it in the Oval Office.
In terms of brute brainpower, the smartest postwar presidents were Richard Nixon, a Duke Law School graduate with a reported IQ of 143; Jimmy Carter, who graduated in the top 10 percent of his Naval Academy class; and Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton, a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School. Deeply flawed presidencies all, despite their potential.
In contrast, take high school graduate Harry Truman — railroad worker, clerk, bookkeeper, farmer, road inspector and small-town postmaster — or Ronald Reagan, sports announcer and B-list actor with mediocre college credentials.
Despite their intellectual limitations, both achieved substantial political success as president. And, to press home the point, there is Franklin D. Roosevelt, a top-tier president in rankings of historical greatness, whom the late Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes branded "a second-rate intellect but a first-class temperament."
Huarte's notion of intelligence comprises a mix of mental acumen and emotional discernment that provides a sound foundation for modern-day presidential success.
To put it bluntly, the president need not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he does need a full deck of cards. He must be comfortable in his own skin, free of emotional demons, and surround himself with competent people. With apologies to Saturday Night Live's Stuart Smalley, the successful president need not be a towering giant, he just needs to be good enough, smart enough — and, doggone-it, people must like him.
George W. Bush can be likable and charming. But, as the New York Times pondered in a front-page article on June 19, 2000, "is he smart enough to be president?"
Unlike John F. Kennedy, who obtained an IQ score of 119, or Al Gore, who achieved scores of 133 and 134 on intelligence tests taken at the beginning of his high school freshman and senior years, no IQ data are available for George W. Bush. But we do know that the young Bush registered a score of 1206 on the SAT, the most widely used test of college aptitude. (The more cerebral Al Gore obtained 1355.)
Statistically, Bush's test performance places him in the top 16 percent of prospective college students — hardly the mark of a dimwit. Of course, the SAT is not designed as an IQ test. But it is highly correlated with general intelligence, to the tune of .80. In plain language, the SAT is two parts a measure of general intelligence and one part a measure of specific scholastic reasoning skills and abilities.
If Bush could score in the top 16 percent of college applicants on the SAT, he would almost certainly rank higher on tests of general intelligence, which are normed with reference to the general population. But even if his rank remained constant at the 84th-percentile level of his SAT score, it would translate to an IQ score of 115.
It's tempting to employ Al Gore's IQ:SAT ratio of 134:1355 as a formula for estimating Bush's probable intelligence quotient — an exercise in fuzzy statistics that predicts a score of 119. If the number sounds familiar, it's precisely the IQ score attributed to Kennedy, whom Princeton political scientist Fred Greenstein, in "The Presidential Difference," commended as "a quick study, whose wit was an indication of a subtle mind."
As a final clue to Bush's cognitive capacity, consider data from Joseph Matarazzo's leading text on intelligence and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: The average IQ is about 105 for high school graduates, 115 for college graduates and 125 for people with advanced professional degrees. With his MBA from Harvard Business School, it's not unreasonable to assume that Bush's IQ surpasses the 115 of the average bachelor's-degree-only college graduate.
George W. Bush has often been underestimated. Almost certainly, he's received a bad rap on the count of cognitive capacity. Indications are that, in the arena of mental ability, Bush is in the same league as John F. Kennedy, who graduated 65th in his high-school class of 110 and, in the words of one biographer, "stumbled through Latin, French, mathematics, and English but made respectable marks in physics and history."
The feisty, sometimes-irreverent Bush's mental acuity may lack a little of the sharpness of his tongue, but plainly it is sharp enough. The real test for the president-elect will be whether he possesses the emotional intelligence — the triumph of reason over rigidity and restraint over impulse — to steer the course. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Given the choice, who would you rather support?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hrmmmm... This is a tough one. Succesful business men or a group of people who EPITOMISE irresponsibility - the drug users, the foul mouthed, the alcoholics, the promiscuous, the multiple failed marriages lot under the auspicies of "entertainers".
Marine01, the article you quote equates political success with being a good president. Reagan may have been popular, but his policies were undoubtedly harmful to the national economy (not to mention the numerous social programs his budget cuts affected).
When I mentioned the upper crusts at the beginning of my post, I was referring to the upper class in general, and pointing out that there are groups within this upper class that support Bush and his ilk (the businessmen) and that have their heads on straight (artists, professors, etc...). And until you find proof, I can't agree that the ratios of conservative idiots and liberal idiots are the same. All I can call upon are examples that seem to be general indicators. John Kerry speaks 8 languages, Bush made C in political science. Out of all the people in my High School history class, the only two who did their homework were I and my friend (who went to Harvard, also a Democrat). The rest, conservatives, cheated their way through the semester. Looking at general tendencies, I notice conservatives have a harder time than liberals in seeing the necessity of seperation between church and state. They seem to want to legislate their beliefs, not realizing that by putting their religion into law they make the U.S. similiar to the Middle East Islamic controlled states they think are so in need of invasion. Conservatives also tend to advocate supply side economics, a theory which has been disproven time and time again throughout history. Any argument you make doesn't disprove that the spirit of the conservative movement is the same spirit which drove them to perpetuate racism, sexism, to lock up the Japanese in World War II and to arm Saddam before they decided he was a threat.
And I don't recall quoting Michael Moore--though it would be hard to quote his last film, considering it was comprised nearly entirely of news footage and archival videos. Still, if we're going to talk about controversial celebrities, I could bring up that wicked **** Ann Coulter. I won't, though. In good taste.
You speak of communism as if it's a bad thing. Could it not be that these people simply have more faith in the human capacity for cooperation than you do? In his Manifesto, Marx showed how communism could be a natural evolution of capitalism. He was wrong, of course, but not completely--and his intentions were noble enough. Those who say that we have reached the pinnacle of human civilization--capitalism--have obviously not taken the time to peer into the past and notice the vast and still continuing progression of human sociopolitical evolution. What is it that makes capitalism the pinnacle of all this achievement? What is it that makes this age, and not any other, the stopping point for all our reforms? Commusim is dead, perhaps, but it's spirit lives on in the hope for a post-capitalist society superior to the one we still inhabit. We still have our poor, our opressed, and our downtrodden, and as long as we do (likely forever) there will still be room for improvement.
Returning to the article you linked to, I do concede that there are other factors at work with a good president than their intelligence. Perhaps I should have said what a president really needs is a LACK OF STUPIDITY. During Bush's 4 years in office, nearly ever facet of our national and international status went down. We lost face with other countries which is unpardonable because threats such as nuclear proliferation and terrorism can NOT be tackled unilaterally. We lost jobs, the environment (despite what others may say) lost SIGNIFICANT protection, and we went to war for a lie. These are facts, not rehetoric and not speculation. The tragedy is that America failed to make use of them.
I now apologize for not multi-quoting. Such a useful tool for these online debates, but alas, I personally find it annoying as it disrupts my stream of conciousness and forces me to thinking about formatting my post rather than formulating my arguments. Aside from this, they work differently here than on the board I'm used to posting at, and I don't feel like learning the new system. But allow me to regularly quote something you said here, because I think it especially needs responding to:
"Hrmmmm... This is a tough one. Succesful business men or a group of people who EPITOMISE irresponsibility - the drug users, the foul mouthed, the alcoholics, the promiscuous, the multiple failed marriages lot under the auspicies of "entertainers"."
You must know that your generalizations are misleading. People lead troubled lives on both spectrums of political thought. The difference is whether these troubles are harmful to other people--the Enron fiasco comes to mind, or Microsoft's splendid little monopoly, not to mention cancer causing antics of big tobacco's CEOs or our favorite historical example, Standard Oil--or are of a more personal nature. Ghandi led a troubled familial relationship, as did Martin Luther King. Bill Clinton, whom your article makes an example of, was certainly in the wrong when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But was he more in the wrong than George Bush when he was convicted of drunk driving, something that threatened not just a marriage but people's lives? I happen to think not.
Finally, you babble on about being foul mouthed (I'm not sure what the **** that's about) and promiscuity... could this be a reference to a certain press conference where vice president **** told a reporter to "**** off," or am I just drawing conclusions? Then there's Thomas Jefferson, very near the origin of the push for small government in America (and thus a prototypical conservative), who had quite a good time banging the **** out of his slave girl and keeping her children in bondage. I'm not trying to make a big point about the corruption of conservates here (that was in my last post when I talked about the KKK and such), but just illustrating that EVERY tree has it's bad apples, yours and mine included. And also, that these percieved moral deficits (of course based on subjective values) have little or no bearing on one's political career.
Realize that when I speak of artists, I refer not just to the MTV set but to the entire literary, visual, and musical spectrum of creative expression.
That's all I have to say for now. I'm going to play NS.
<!--QuoteBegin-Marine01+Nov 11 2004, 08:59 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine01 @ Nov 11 2004, 08:59 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Hrmmmm... This is a tough one. Succesful business men or a group of people who EPITOMISE irresponsibility - the drug users, the foul mouthed, the alcoholics, the promiscuous, the multiple failed marriages lot under the auspicies of "entertainers".
Easy. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Excuse me, but you are missing a point in here, our current presedent counted as one of those people you listed as epitomising irresponsibility. In college, and during his military career, it is well known that Bush was a cokehead. If he didnt have the judgement to stay off those kind of substances then, why would he have adequate judgement now, after years of substance abuse?
Well these arguements really couldn't be avoided I guess. It's like Freshman Year English classes in high school; boring, repetitive and drawn out. I wonder how long before the whole thing dies off.
<!--QuoteBegin-Marine01+Nov 11 2004, 08:59 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine01 @ Nov 11 2004, 08:59 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Hrmmmm... This is a tough one. Succesful business men or a group of people who EPITOMISE irresponsibility - the drug users, the foul mouthed, the alcoholics, the promiscuous, the multiple failed marriages lot under the auspicies of "entertainers". <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Let me fix that for you:
"Succesful businessmen who epitomise irresponsibility"
There, now it looks truthful. A surprisingly high number of top-level executives are drug abusers, crooks and sugar daddies to local prostitutes (or "escort services" as the more expensive are called) and S&M workers. My friend used to work as a dominatrix in an S&M studio and told me that very often her skills were hired by a plain-looking guy in an expensive suit who paid well to get to do something he wouldn't ever have dared to ask his wife to do with him.
Which is better: openness about one's sexual practices and morality, or double standards?
<!--QuoteBegin-Scinet+Nov 11 2004, 03:16 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Scinet @ Nov 11 2004, 03:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Damn, wouldn't it be cool to have a government that was really democraticand not just one of the euro-american plutocracies dressed up as "the people's will". Seriously, the current western government model has very little in common with the intent of democracy. We just keep holding up an illusion of everything being peachy and fine and everyone being equal and having equal opportunities.
The good news is that western democracy will eventually go the way of the dinosaur, just like communism, autocracy and many others have already gone. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I'm quite convinced the main function of democracy is to turn revolutionaries to the more peaceful ways of overthrowing a government rather than have them pick up rifles and try to shoot the president. And for that intent, it works perfectly well. There's not a darn lot of revolutionaries fighting in America to overthrow the government, compared to what you'd see in another form of government.
<!--QuoteBegin-xect+Nov 12 2004, 05:12 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (xect @ Nov 12 2004, 05:12 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I'm quite convinced the main function of democracy is to turn revolutionaries to the more peaceful ways of overthrowing a government rather than have them pick up rifles and try to shoot the president. And for that intent, it works perfectly well. There's not a darn lot of revolutionaries fighting in America to overthrow the government, compared to what you'd see in another form of government. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> The intent and function are not to be confused with eachother. The intent of parlamentary democracy is indeed to embrace all political stances (with the exception of national socialists, whom nobody seems to be inclined to play with) and attempt to form a functional government from this mess. The practice is quite far from the intent, which is not very unique - one needs only to take a look at Marx's theories and compare them to the late Soviet Union.
The current party-based model blocks major reforms unless they benefit the economy in some way. Democracy in its current form advocates complacency where maintaining status quo becomes a goal in itself, rather than improving the society, as in "we're just fine and dandy now, why change?" Why indeed? Maybe change our economic structure so that our welfare is not dependent on less-than-minimum wage "employees" (slaves is more like it) in China and the Philippines. There's tons of stuff to be done and some people have very good ideas on how to do it. Unfortunately, they haven't the money to do it.
Communism died of its own impossibility. Capitalist democracy needs to go the same way. What's needed is a free market system that is based on benefiting all sides of the trade. Only with fair trade policies is it possible to advance the cause of social and political equality.
When you talk about rifles and revolutions you are right. The time of armed insurrections and revolutions is past. History has shown that a revolutionary government is very rarely any better than the one it deposes. Rifles do not beget good social reforms, nor do bricks and sticks and broken windows on the streets. Stupid kid rioters ruining the credibility of an entire movement for change... grumble.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->When I mentioned the upper crusts at the beginning of my post, I was referring to the upper class in general, and pointing out that there are groups within this upper class that support Bush and his ilk (the businessmen) and that have their heads on straight (artists, professors, etc...).<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Artists and professors have their heads on straight. Do you actually go to uni? I do - and nothing you are saying has any reference to my reality. Artists are the most F'd up people I've ever met bar none - angry, bitter, sick and drug addled people: these are the people that elicit the most sympathy from my.
Professors arent much better - they know heaps about their chosen field, but seem to think that a Doctorate of Chemistry makes their political opinions so much more valid and informed than mine or anyone else.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> And until you find proof, I can't agree that the ratios of conservative idiots and liberal idiots are the same. All I can call upon are examples that seem to be general indicators. John Kerry speaks 8 languages, Bush made C in political science. Out of all the people in my High School history class, the only two who did their homework were I and my friend (who went to Harvard, also a Democrat). The rest, conservatives, cheated their way through the semester.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Right - you pick out Bush's weakest score, compare it to knowledge of language for 2 people and feel comfortable extrapolating that over the worlds population. Oh wait, silly me, its also the people in your highschool class.... Sorry, but that is the worst standard to judge relative proportions of idiots I've ever seen. You made the claim about idiots and proportions, I fail to see why I should be the one to provide serious data, unless me listing all the liberal twits I've argued with is sufficient for you.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Looking at general tendencies, I notice conservatives have a harder time than liberals in seeing the necessity of seperation between church and state.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here it is folks - the liberal disease, diagnosis is easy: The characterisation of anything your opponent believes as evidence of their stupidity... otherwise known as "anyone who disagrees with my political views is an idiot". On behalf of us at the Howard/Costello and Bush/Cheney04 camp - we thank you for delivering us another term. Keep treating us like we're idiots and we'll keep winning.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->They seem to want to legislate their beliefs, not realizing that by putting their religion into law they make the U.S. similiar to the Middle East Islamic controlled states they think are so in need of invasion.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ahahahahahah. No. Public morality is what is supposed to regulate a nations laws. It just so happens that religion influences a persons morality - and you cant handle that most of Americans dont want g4y marriage, as demonstrated by support by a wide margin for a constitutional ban on g4y marriage on Issue1 on the ballot paper. No one wants to put "Everyone must love Jesus or bant" in the constitution.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Conservatives also tend to advocate supply side economics, a theory which has been disproven time and time again throughout history.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow, conservatives just won the economics war here in Australia, so I'd love to hear what this theory is and why its so evil. Liberal zealots screamed for years about economic rationalism here until the benefits started flowing so no one would listen to them. Lets hear about supply side economics.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Any argument you make doesn't disprove that the spirit of the conservative movement is the same spirit which drove them to perpetuate racism, sexism, to lock up the Japanese in World War II and to arm Saddam before they decided he was a threat.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Two can play at that game. Any argument you make doesnt disprove that the spirit of the liberal movement is the same spirit which drove religious persecution in Communist Russia under Lenin and the mass killings of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and friends. Fair? Balanced? You threw balance out the window.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You speak of communism as if it's a bad thing. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow. You tried to claim the intellectual high ground and then come out with a statement like that. There are a couple, just a couple mind, who suffered Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Cambodia, Tibet and Cuba who beg to differ.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Could it not be that these people simply have more faith in the human capacity for cooperation than you do? In his Manifesto, Marx showed how communism could be a natural evolution of capitalism. He was wrong, of course, but not completely--and his intentions were noble enough.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are people with more faith than I - they live in Universities, which is the only place divorced enough from reality for ideas like communism to still fester. Damn straight Marx was wrong - I might be wrong about the price of milk at the corner store, but thats just peanuts to the magnitude of Marx's blunder.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Commusim is dead, perhaps, but it's spirit lives on in the hope for a post-capitalist society superior to the one we still inhabit. We still have our poor, our opressed, and our downtrodden, and as long as we do (likely forever) there will still be room for improvement. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not perhaps. It's dead, its biggest supporter was left on the ash heap of history by those dirty conservatives coughreagancough
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Perhaps I should have said what a president really needs is a LACK OF STUPIDITY. During Bush's 4 years in office, nearly ever facet of our national and international status went down. We lost face with other countries which is unpardonable because threats such as nuclear proliferation and terrorism can NOT be tackled unilaterally. We lost jobs, the environment (despite what others may say) lost SIGNIFICANT protection, and we went to war for a lie. These are facts, not rehetoric and not speculation. The tragedy is that America failed to make use of them.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ahhh Americans pretending they used to have friends in the international community. You lost all your European friends the moment they realised that they didnt have to worry about the Communists anymore, and no longer needed the US to protect them - it just took a while for an issue where their interests went directly against US interests to come along. Iraq was exactly that. France had been cultivating a lovely little friendship with Saddam for over 30 years, building them nuclear reactors, selling them weapons etc French, German, Chinese and Russian UN officials were rorting the hell out of the weapons for food program - I wonder why all these guys didnt want to see an end to Saddam?
They'll help you with nuclear proliferation because that is in their best interests. That is the first and last word in international politics - your. best. interests. Face means nothing.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You must know that your generalizations are misleading. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I thought misleading generalizations were the order of the day sorry.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Bill Clinton, whom your article makes an example of, was certainly in the wrong when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But was he more in the wrong than George Bush when he was convicted of drunk driving, something that threatened not just a marriage but people's lives? I happen to think not. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Clinton lied clearly, slowly and deliberately to the people who elected him and trusted him. It wasnt a political lie, something that could have been true, could have been dependant upon what people told him - it was something he did personally and physically, so he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was a complete lie. What he did was disgusting on both as the President of the United States and as a human being. What George Bush did was disgusting as a human being.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Finally, you babble on about being foul mouthed (I'm not sure what the **** that's about) and promiscuity... could this be a reference to a certain press conference where vice president **** told a reporter to "**** off," or am I just drawing conclusions?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, you drew conclusions. The wrong ones. Entertainers are defined by their indiscretions and loose morality, politicians are scandalized by it. Entertainers make the worst role models period.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Then there's Thomas Jefferson, very near the origin of the push for small government in America (and thus a prototypical conservative), who had quite a good time banging the **** out of his slave girl and keeping her children in bondage.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wrong. Jefferson had consentual sex with a slave girl after his wife died, and he freed every single one of his 5 children. That woman was at his bedside when he died. Dont make me link you <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->!
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Realize that when I speak of artists, I refer not just to the MTV set but to the entire literary, visual, and musical spectrum of creative expression.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fair enough - I couldnt get a the picture of Greenday out of my head when you mentioned liberal artists......
But even then, the rest of them dont impress me that much. Writing a book, shooting a film doesnt make you smarter or more understanding of the world and how it works.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Excuse me, but you are missing a point in here, our current presedent counted as one of those people you listed as epitomising irresponsibility. In college, and during his military career, it is well known that Bush was a cokehead. If he didnt have the judgement to stay off those kind of substances then, why would he have adequate judgement now, after years of substance abuse?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, I didnt miss the point - you refuse to acknowledge it. The point is Bush has done these things in his past, turned his back on them (long before his political career), and has since campaigned against those same things he did in his youth. Would you complain if a reformed alcoholic lead an AA support group? Doubt it - so why complain about the current President.
NB Hilarious how opponents of the war on drugs laugh at the way most proponents havent tried them, calling them ignorant and saying stuff like "dont knock it till you've tried it" - yet Bush actually has and they are always the first to point it out
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Let me fix that for you:
"Succesful businessmen who epitomise irresponsibility"
There, now it looks truthful. A surprisingly high number of top-level executives are drug abusers, crooks and sugar daddies to local prostitutes (or "escort services" as the more expensive are called) and S&M workers. My friend used to work as a dominatrix in an S&M studio and told me that very often her skills were hired by a plain-looking guy in an expensive suit who paid well to get to do something he wouldn't ever have dared to ask his wife to do with him.
Which is better: openness about one's sexual practices and morality, or double standards?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Let me fix that for you: Entertainers who epitomise irresponsibility. Entertainers do so on the international arena, impact on young minds and actually seem proud of it. Which is better? Neither. You can screw a dog on stage or in your backyard shed and I still hold the same view.
<!--QuoteBegin-Dr.Suredeath+Nov 13 2004, 12:17 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Dr.Suredeath @ Nov 13 2004, 12:17 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> 9/10 college professor leaned toward democrats.
While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.
And there's no shame in questioning your government. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> College professors are the flower children of the 60's and 70's, I'd expect nothing less.
<!--QuoteBegin-Marine01+Nov 12 2004, 07:03 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine01 @ Nov 12 2004, 07:03 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Let me fix that for you: Entertainers who epitomise irresponsibility. Entertainers do so on the international arena, impact on young minds and actually seem proud of it. Which is better? Neither. You can screw a dog on stage or in your backyard shed and I still hold the same view. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Screwing a dog in public is quite different than screwing a dog onstage. In public you'd admit to having a penchant for bestiality, on stage it would just be a Marilyn Mansonesque shock stunt aimed for maximum publicity.
When you do something in public you set yourself up as a target for any and all opposing views. When you do the same in private while advocating the opposite of such behaviour in public, you simply don't dare to come out showing what you are in fear of being branded as a pervert. That is unacceptable.
You seem to assume that all people who enjoy watching entertainment superstars are drooling idiots who act on the whim of their chosen patron saint of guilty pleasures. Most of the time this doesn't quite go like this since any person with more than two functional brain cells is capable of understanding the controversy of someone being an icon of rebellion and change while being backed by a major corporation (yeah, Rage Against the Machine, I'm talking about you here you pansy product band). The entertainers can speak as much as they want, their effect is not very notable.
As for your comment about university professors... it was just like saying that anyone who makes above $12000 a year is a rich conservative capitalist pig with no heart. Stop trying to go the childish way by annoying others until they are so tired of you that the debate.
<!--QuoteBegin-Marine01+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Marine01)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Here it is folks - the liberal disease, diagnosis is easy: The characterisation of anything your opponent believes as evidence of their stupidity... otherwise known as "anyone who disagrees with my political views is an idiot". On behalf of us at the Howard/Costello and Bush/Cheney04 camp - we thank you for delivering us another term. Keep treating us like we're idiots and we'll keep winning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> You realize of course that essentially, simply by pointing that out, you are being hypocritical.
On the other side of things, I have yet to see a conservitive show evidence of seriously considering a liberal point of view, so as far as reality is concerned, you are discribing a universal human trait, not the "liberal desease". Taking a wild guess, I would theorize that most people when discribing an issue such as that make no attemt to hide thier bias, and because they have spent some time thinking about it, they don't bother talking about thier reasons why they belive thier opinion is greater, they simply state it as fact. It's not nessicarly that they assume that the opposing opinion is stupid by default, they just assume that because they have logically processed the issue, anyone who disagrees with them must not have thought it out quite as thourhoughly, which may be true, but may not be as well.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> You are just loving this aren't you Lorn...
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> In the united states in 1994.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> And there was that other chart elsewhere which showed a greater percentage of college graduates characterized themselves as conservatives, while a greater percentage of those with post graduate degrees considered themselves more liberal (i'm paraphrasing here, and I'll look for the percentage).
Lumping <i>all</i> graduate degrees in with undergraduate degrees masks this, but you were aware of that, weren't you? <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Edit: Here's <a href='http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html' target='_blank'>CNN'S</a> exit poll from the most recent election. I know you're not a fan of exit polls, so if you can find something better, be my guest to post it.
By the way, based on the mileage you've gotten from that chart, and the number of times you've cited it, I trust you're burying that "Show me a young Conservative . . . " quote for good? Good God, I should charge you royalties . . . <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Edit 2: It's hard to find polls tracking education level directly to ideology (and not party affiliation or voting patterns), but I <i>will</i> say that I've found some people on the far right who have dealt with the issue by simply re-labeling post graduate holders as '<i>over</i>educated' and chalking up their differing political opinion to confusion and arrogance caused by absorbing education above their natural intelligence level.
Comments
its just someone saying "man lookit bush hes a retard" and now everyone else does it....
quite annoying really <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
To be fair, one of the most common reasons that many Republicans would quote for voting Bush was "Kerry is a puts". Its just that there is no way in hell that would fly as reason on these boards, so consequently all of you have developed stronger reasoning, partially because you had to, partially because you were bombarded with other people's good reasons.
its just someone saying "man lookit bush hes a retard" and now everyone else does it....
quite annoying really <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To be fair, one of the most common reasons that many Republicans would quote for voting Bush was "Kerry is a puts". Its just that there is no way in hell that would fly as reason on these boards, so consequently all of you have developed stronger reasoning, partially because you had to, partially because you were bombarded with other people's good reasons. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Revelation of the day: These boards are a good influence! <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I thought I was willfully rotting my mind every day I came here <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Oh well, off to the Steam forums.....
But yeah, it definitely is a fad among non-voting young people to simply hate Bush, instead of investigating both sides of the coin. Thanks to crappy tours spreading ignorant messages, we can now say that the average rock loving child is actually a complete political tool, made by political tools. They must know that, and don't vote <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
The western model of democracy consists of republics, no? (with the odd nominal monarchy-actual republic states)
A fad and genuine resistance toward an administration's policies have a lot in common. You could say that any major power shift is a result of a fad, like for example the civil rights movement, the vietnam war demonstrations and the **** rights movement. All of them have in common the few visionary leaders and the many sometimes very ignorant followers. It simply is impossible to have a mass movement without the mass. It is patently bizarre that even though a person should be derided for his or her inability to present a case for the issue they support, that kind of people are actually the pillars upon which any organized political institution stands.
But yeah, it definitely is a fad among non-voting young people to simply hate Bush, instead of investigating both sides of the coin. Thanks to crappy tours spreading ignorant messages, we can now say that the average rock loving child is actually a complete political tool, made by political tools. They must know that, and don't vote <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
As a voting citizen who watched all three debates, is up to date on most issues, and made high marks in every history course I've ever taken, I take offense to that. There are many legitimate reasons to hate Bush, and those on the upper crusts of society who do so do it with a reason. FDR's restructuring of the Democratic party in the 30's allied the interests of intellectuals with those of the poor (and with them groups such as Jews, Catholics, blacks, and labor unions)--thus driving out the Southern element that had hitherto affililated with the Democrats. So there were elements of high society (the educated elements) supporting the progressive cause long before MTV and Blink-182. Today's deluge of musicians and artists speaking out against Bush is simply an extension of that. Contrary to what misleading conservatives would have you think, these people do you know what they're talking about.
It's no coincidence that most artists are liberal and most businessmen conservative. College professors too (at least the ones I know) tend to be against Bush, as do NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS ( <a href='http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-33250_48_Nobel_Prize_Winners_slam_Bush.html' target='_blank'>http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-332..._slam_Bush.html</a> ). The problem is that the current American generation has somehow gotten it into their head that qualities such as intelligence and creativity don't matter in politics (when in fact nothing could be more important). They see it as no problem that Bush, using the best word I can think of, is an idiot. Part of the problem is that they find it easier to listen to his rhetoric ("pro-America", "pro-freedom", "morals") than to reason through what such words mean. They trust him because he's the president, and assume he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't.
It's also no coincidence that the Klu-Klux-Klan, in the height of their power, were staunch conservatives. They still are. So is your average rich beyond belief CEO, and you can bet those boys who spend their time beating up *** in Texas love Mr. Bush. Lest these examples sound unfair, know that I'm only bringing them up in response to the complaint that too many musicians supported Kerry. They are examples of partisanship in the most extreme sectors of society, and so are these. Given the choice, who would you rather support?
So whose the upper crust of society? The Bush supportin business boys, or the university intellectuals?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Contrary to what misleading conservatives would have you think, these people do you know what they're talking about.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The ratio of liberal idiots to conservative idiots seems about the same. As I am forced to wade through a liberal cesspool everyday at uni - I meet more of the leftwing idiots than the general population, but I'm sure they're about equal.
Its also disturbing that liberals claim to be intelligent in one minute, and then the next quote Micheal Moore.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->It's no coincidence that most artists are liberal and most businessmen conservative. College professors too (at least the ones I know) tend to be against Bush, as do NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS ( <a href='http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-33250_48_Nobel_Prize_Winners_slam_Bush.html' target='_blank'>http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-332..._slam_Bush.html</a> ).
It's also no coincidence that the Klu-Klux-Klan, in the height of their power, were staunch conservatives<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He's right, it is no coincidence. Is it a coincidence that these artists are also more likely to be communist? No. They dont live in the real world, unlike business people/the rest of us plebs who face reality. Two words that should strike dread into the heart of college liberals everywhere: Ivory Tower. I also fail to appreciate the genius of these "artists". You can draw good - congratulations. Now explain to me why that makes your political opinions somehow more weighty than mine.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The problem is that the current American generation has somehow gotten it into their head that qualities such as intelligence and creativity don't matter in politics (when in fact nothing could be more important). They see it as no problem that Bush, using the best word I can think of, is an idiot. Part of the problem is that they find it easier to listen to his rhetoric ("pro-America", "pro-freedom", "morals") than to reason through what such words mean. They trust him because he's the president, and assume he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You live in your world son.
<a href='http://www.csbsju.edu/uspp/Election/bush011401.htm' target='_blank'>owned</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->A week from today, the sun will rise on the second Bush presidency in a generation, in what for some may be a day of trepidation. Does Bush the Younger have what it takes to lead the nation in the new millennium?
It's a question that transcends concerns about George W. Bush's conservatism or a path to power marred by youthful indiscretions. It's not about ideology or character; it's a question of cognitive capacity.
The Spanish physician Juan Huarte in 1575 proposed one of the earliest recorded definitions of intelligence: learning ability, imaginativeness and good judgment. Undoubtedly, the mantle of the modern U.S. presidency imposes a steep learning curve and demands vision, wisdom and discretion.
Equally clear is this: Sheer intellectual brilliance does not cut it in the Oval Office.
In terms of brute brainpower, the smartest postwar presidents were Richard Nixon, a Duke Law School graduate with a reported IQ of 143; Jimmy Carter, who graduated in the top 10 percent of his Naval Academy class; and Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton, a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School. Deeply flawed presidencies all, despite their potential.
In contrast, take high school graduate Harry Truman — railroad worker, clerk, bookkeeper, farmer, road inspector and small-town postmaster — or Ronald Reagan, sports announcer and B-list actor with mediocre college credentials.
Despite their intellectual limitations, both achieved substantial political success as president. And, to press home the point, there is Franklin D. Roosevelt, a top-tier president in rankings of historical greatness, whom the late Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes branded "a second-rate intellect but a first-class temperament."
Huarte's notion of intelligence comprises a mix of mental acumen and emotional discernment that provides a sound foundation for modern-day presidential success.
To put it bluntly, the president need not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he does need a full deck of cards. He must be comfortable in his own skin, free of emotional demons, and surround himself with competent people. With apologies to Saturday Night Live's Stuart Smalley, the successful president need not be a towering giant, he just needs to be good enough, smart enough — and, doggone-it, people must like him.
George W. Bush can be likable and charming. But, as the New York Times pondered in a front-page article on June 19, 2000, "is he smart enough to be president?"
Unlike John F. Kennedy, who obtained an IQ score of 119, or Al Gore, who achieved scores of 133 and 134 on intelligence tests taken at the beginning of his high school freshman and senior years, no IQ data are available for George W. Bush. But we do know that the young Bush registered a score of 1206 on the SAT, the most widely used test of college aptitude. (The more cerebral Al Gore obtained 1355.)
Statistically, Bush's test performance places him in the top 16 percent of prospective college students — hardly the mark of a dimwit. Of course, the SAT is not designed as an IQ test. But it is highly correlated with general intelligence, to the tune of .80. In plain language, the SAT is two parts a measure of general intelligence and one part a measure of specific scholastic reasoning skills and abilities.
If Bush could score in the top 16 percent of college applicants on the SAT, he would almost certainly rank higher on tests of general intelligence, which are normed with reference to the general population. But even if his rank remained constant at the 84th-percentile level of his SAT score, it would translate to an IQ score of 115.
It's tempting to employ Al Gore's IQ:SAT ratio of 134:1355 as a formula for estimating Bush's probable intelligence quotient — an exercise in fuzzy statistics that predicts a score of 119. If the number sounds familiar, it's precisely the IQ score attributed to Kennedy, whom Princeton political scientist Fred Greenstein, in "The Presidential Difference," commended as "a quick study, whose wit was an indication of a subtle mind."
As a final clue to Bush's cognitive capacity, consider data from Joseph Matarazzo's leading text on intelligence and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: The average IQ is about 105 for high school graduates, 115 for college graduates and 125 for people with advanced professional degrees. With his MBA from Harvard Business School, it's not unreasonable to assume that Bush's IQ surpasses the 115 of the average bachelor's-degree-only college graduate.
George W. Bush has often been underestimated. Almost certainly, he's received a bad rap on the count of cognitive capacity. Indications are that, in the arena of mental ability, Bush is in the same league as John F. Kennedy, who graduated 65th in his high-school class of 110 and, in the words of one biographer, "stumbled through Latin, French, mathematics, and English but made respectable marks in physics and history."
The feisty, sometimes-irreverent Bush's mental acuity may lack a little of the sharpness of his tongue, but plainly it is sharp enough. The real test for the president-elect will be whether he possesses the emotional intelligence — the triumph of reason over rigidity and restraint over impulse — to steer the course. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Given the choice, who would you rather support?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hrmmmm... This is a tough one. Succesful business men or a group of people who EPITOMISE irresponsibility - the drug users, the foul mouthed, the alcoholics, the promiscuous, the multiple failed marriages lot under the auspicies of "entertainers".
Easy.
When I mentioned the upper crusts at the beginning of my post, I was referring to the upper class in general, and pointing out that there are groups within this upper class that support Bush and his ilk (the businessmen) and that have their heads on straight (artists, professors, etc...). And until you find proof, I can't agree that the ratios of conservative idiots and liberal idiots are the same. All I can call upon are examples that seem to be general indicators. John Kerry speaks 8 languages, Bush made C in political science. Out of all the people in my High School history class, the only two who did their homework were I and my friend (who went to Harvard, also a Democrat). The rest, conservatives, cheated their way through the semester. Looking at general tendencies, I notice conservatives have a harder time than liberals in seeing the necessity of seperation between church and state. They seem to want to legislate their beliefs, not realizing that by putting their religion into law they make the U.S. similiar to the Middle East Islamic controlled states they think are so in need of invasion. Conservatives also tend to advocate supply side economics, a theory which has been disproven time and time again throughout history. Any argument you make doesn't disprove that the spirit of the conservative movement is the same spirit which drove them to perpetuate racism, sexism, to lock up the Japanese in World War II and to arm Saddam before they decided he was a threat.
And I don't recall quoting Michael Moore--though it would be hard to quote his last film, considering it was comprised nearly entirely of news footage and archival videos. Still, if we're going to talk about controversial celebrities, I could bring up that wicked **** Ann Coulter. I won't, though. In good taste.
You speak of communism as if it's a bad thing. Could it not be that these people simply have more faith in the human capacity for cooperation than you do? In his Manifesto, Marx showed how communism could be a natural evolution of capitalism. He was wrong, of course, but not completely--and his intentions were noble enough. Those who say that we have reached the pinnacle of human civilization--capitalism--have obviously not taken the time to peer into the past and notice the vast and still continuing progression of human sociopolitical evolution. What is it that makes capitalism the pinnacle of all this achievement? What is it that makes this age, and not any other, the stopping point for all our reforms? Commusim is dead, perhaps, but it's spirit lives on in the hope for a post-capitalist society superior to the one we still inhabit. We still have our poor, our opressed, and our downtrodden, and as long as we do (likely forever) there will still be room for improvement.
Returning to the article you linked to, I do concede that there are other factors at work with a good president than their intelligence. Perhaps I should have said what a president really needs is a LACK OF STUPIDITY. During Bush's 4 years in office, nearly ever facet of our national and international status went down. We lost face with other countries which is unpardonable because threats such as nuclear proliferation and terrorism can NOT be tackled unilaterally. We lost jobs, the environment (despite what others may say) lost SIGNIFICANT protection, and we went to war for a lie. These are facts, not rehetoric and not speculation. The tragedy is that America failed to make use of them.
I now apologize for not multi-quoting. Such a useful tool for these online debates, but alas, I personally find it annoying as it disrupts my stream of conciousness and forces me to thinking about formatting my post rather than formulating my arguments. Aside from this, they work differently here than on the board I'm used to posting at, and I don't feel like learning the new system. But allow me to regularly quote something you said here, because I think it especially needs responding to:
"Hrmmmm... This is a tough one. Succesful business men or a group of people who EPITOMISE irresponsibility - the drug users, the foul mouthed, the alcoholics, the promiscuous, the multiple failed marriages lot under the auspicies of "entertainers"."
You must know that your generalizations are misleading. People lead troubled lives on both spectrums of political thought. The difference is whether these troubles are harmful to other people--the Enron fiasco comes to mind, or Microsoft's splendid little monopoly, not to mention cancer causing antics of big tobacco's CEOs or our favorite historical example, Standard Oil--or are of a more personal nature. Ghandi led a troubled familial relationship, as did Martin Luther King. Bill Clinton, whom your article makes an example of, was certainly in the wrong when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But was he more in the wrong than George Bush when he was convicted of drunk driving, something that threatened not just a marriage but people's lives? I happen to think not.
Finally, you babble on about being foul mouthed (I'm not sure what the **** that's about) and promiscuity... could this be a reference to a certain press conference where vice president **** told a reporter to "**** off," or am I just drawing conclusions? Then there's Thomas Jefferson, very near the origin of the push for small government in America (and thus a prototypical conservative), who had quite a good time banging the **** out of his slave girl and keeping her children in bondage. I'm not trying to make a big point about the corruption of conservates here (that was in my last post when I talked about the KKK and such), but just illustrating that EVERY tree has it's bad apples, yours and mine included. And also, that these percieved moral deficits (of course based on subjective values) have little or no bearing on one's political career.
Realize that when I speak of artists, I refer not just to the MTV set but to the entire literary, visual, and musical spectrum of creative expression.
That's all I have to say for now. I'm going to play NS.
Easy. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Excuse me, but you are missing a point in here, our current presedent counted as one of those people you listed as epitomising irresponsibility. In college, and during his military career, it is well known that Bush was a cokehead. If he didnt have the judgement to stay off those kind of substances then, why would he have adequate judgement now, after years of substance abuse?
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Let me fix that for you:
"Succesful businessmen who epitomise irresponsibility"
There, now it looks truthful. A surprisingly high number of top-level executives are drug abusers, crooks and sugar daddies to local prostitutes (or "escort services" as the more expensive are called) and S&M workers. My friend used to work as a dominatrix in an S&M studio and told me that very often her skills were hired by a plain-looking guy in an expensive suit who paid well to get to do something he wouldn't ever have dared to ask his wife to do with him.
Which is better: openness about one's sexual practices and morality, or double standards?
The good news is that western democracy will eventually go the way of the dinosaur, just like communism, autocracy and many others have already gone. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm quite convinced the main function of democracy is to turn revolutionaries to the more peaceful ways of overthrowing a government rather than have them pick up rifles and try to shoot the president. And for that intent, it works perfectly well. There's not a darn lot of revolutionaries fighting in America to overthrow the government, compared to what you'd see in another form of government.
PS: Support me for dictator. Breakfast cereal will be replaced with Bacon .
The intent and function are not to be confused with eachother. The intent of parlamentary democracy is indeed to embrace all political stances (with the exception of national socialists, whom nobody seems to be inclined to play with) and attempt to form a functional government from this mess. The practice is quite far from the intent, which is not very unique - one needs only to take a look at Marx's theories and compare them to the late Soviet Union.
The current party-based model blocks major reforms unless they benefit the economy in some way. Democracy in its current form advocates complacency where maintaining status quo becomes a goal in itself, rather than improving the society, as in "we're just fine and dandy now, why change?" Why indeed? Maybe change our economic structure so that our welfare is not dependent on less-than-minimum wage "employees" (slaves is more like it) in China and the Philippines. There's tons of stuff to be done and some people have very good ideas on how to do it. Unfortunately, they haven't the money to do it.
Communism died of its own impossibility. Capitalist democracy needs to go the same way. What's needed is a free market system that is based on benefiting all sides of the trade. Only with fair trade policies is it possible to advance the cause of social and political equality.
When you talk about rifles and revolutions you are right. The time of armed insurrections and revolutions is past. History has shown that a revolutionary government is very rarely any better than the one it deposes. Rifles do not beget good social reforms, nor do bricks and sticks and broken windows on the streets. Stupid kid rioters ruining the credibility of an entire movement for change... grumble.
Artists and professors have their heads on straight. Do you actually go to uni? I do - and nothing you are saying has any reference to my reality. Artists are the most F'd up people I've ever met bar none - angry, bitter, sick and drug addled people: these are the people that elicit the most sympathy from my.
Professors arent much better - they know heaps about their chosen field, but seem to think that a Doctorate of Chemistry makes their political opinions so much more valid and informed than mine or anyone else.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> And until you find proof, I can't agree that the ratios of conservative idiots and liberal idiots are the same. All I can call upon are examples that seem to be general indicators. John Kerry speaks 8 languages, Bush made C in political science. Out of all the people in my High School history class, the only two who did their homework were I and my friend (who went to Harvard, also a Democrat). The rest, conservatives, cheated their way through the semester.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Right - you pick out Bush's weakest score, compare it to knowledge of language for 2 people and feel comfortable extrapolating that over the worlds population. Oh wait, silly me, its also the people in your highschool class.... Sorry, but that is the worst standard to judge relative proportions of idiots I've ever seen. You made the claim about idiots and proportions, I fail to see why I should be the one to provide serious data, unless me listing all the liberal twits I've argued with is sufficient for you.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Looking at general tendencies, I notice conservatives have a harder time than liberals in seeing the necessity of seperation between church and state.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here it is folks - the liberal disease, diagnosis is easy: The characterisation of anything your opponent believes as evidence of their stupidity... otherwise known as "anyone who disagrees with my political views is an idiot". On behalf of us at the Howard/Costello and Bush/Cheney04 camp - we thank you for delivering us another term. Keep treating us like we're idiots and we'll keep winning.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->They seem to want to legislate their beliefs, not realizing that by putting their religion into law they make the U.S. similiar to the Middle East Islamic controlled states they think are so in need of invasion.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ahahahahahah. No. Public morality is what is supposed to regulate a nations laws. It just so happens that religion influences a persons morality - and you cant handle that most of Americans dont want g4y marriage, as demonstrated by support by a wide margin for a constitutional ban on g4y marriage on Issue1 on the ballot paper. No one wants to put "Everyone must love Jesus or bant" in the constitution.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Conservatives also tend to advocate supply side economics, a theory which has been disproven time and time again throughout history.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow, conservatives just won the economics war here in Australia, so I'd love to hear what this theory is and why its so evil. Liberal zealots screamed for years about economic rationalism here until the benefits started flowing so no one would listen to them. Lets hear about supply side economics.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Any argument you make doesn't disprove that the spirit of the conservative movement is the same spirit which drove them to perpetuate racism, sexism, to lock up the Japanese in World War II and to arm Saddam before they decided he was a threat.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Two can play at that game. Any argument you make doesnt disprove that the spirit of the liberal movement is the same spirit which drove religious persecution in Communist Russia under Lenin and the mass killings of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and friends. Fair? Balanced? You threw balance out the window.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You speak of communism as if it's a bad thing. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow. You tried to claim the intellectual high ground and then come out with a statement like that. There are a couple, just a couple mind, who suffered Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Cambodia, Tibet and Cuba who beg to differ.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Could it not be that these people simply have more faith in the human capacity for cooperation than you do? In his Manifesto, Marx showed how communism could be a natural evolution of capitalism. He was wrong, of course, but not completely--and his intentions were noble enough.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are people with more faith than I - they live in Universities, which is the only place divorced enough from reality for ideas like communism to still fester. Damn straight Marx was wrong - I might be wrong about the price of milk at the corner store, but thats just peanuts to the magnitude of Marx's blunder.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Commusim is dead, perhaps, but it's spirit lives on in the hope for a post-capitalist society superior to the one we still inhabit. We still have our poor, our opressed, and our downtrodden, and as long as we do (likely forever) there will still be room for improvement.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not perhaps. It's dead, its biggest supporter was left on the ash heap of history by those dirty conservatives coughreagancough
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Perhaps I should have said what a president really needs is a LACK OF STUPIDITY. During Bush's 4 years in office, nearly ever facet of our national and international status went down. We lost face with other countries which is unpardonable because threats such as nuclear proliferation and terrorism can NOT be tackled unilaterally. We lost jobs, the environment (despite what others may say) lost SIGNIFICANT protection, and we went to war for a lie. These are facts, not rehetoric and not speculation. The tragedy is that America failed to make use of them.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ahhh Americans pretending they used to have friends in the international community. You lost all your European friends the moment they realised that they didnt have to worry about the Communists anymore, and no longer needed the US to protect them - it just took a while for an issue where their interests went directly against US interests to come along. Iraq was exactly that. France had been cultivating a lovely little friendship with Saddam for over 30 years, building them nuclear reactors, selling them weapons etc French, German, Chinese and Russian UN officials were rorting the hell out of the weapons for food program - I wonder why all these guys didnt want to see an end to Saddam?
They'll help you with nuclear proliferation because that is in their best interests. That is the first and last word in international politics - your. best. interests. Face means nothing.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You must know that your generalizations are misleading. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I thought misleading generalizations were the order of the day sorry.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Bill Clinton, whom your article makes an example of, was certainly in the wrong when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky. But was he more in the wrong than George Bush when he was convicted of drunk driving, something that threatened not just a marriage but people's lives? I happen to think not. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Clinton lied clearly, slowly and deliberately to the people who elected him and trusted him. It wasnt a political lie, something that could have been true, could have been dependant upon what people told him - it was something he did personally and physically, so he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was a complete lie. What he did was disgusting on both as the President of the United States and as a human being. What George Bush did was disgusting as a human being.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Finally, you babble on about being foul mouthed (I'm not sure what the **** that's about) and promiscuity... could this be a reference to a certain press conference where vice president **** told a reporter to "**** off," or am I just drawing conclusions?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, you drew conclusions. The wrong ones. Entertainers are defined by their indiscretions and loose morality, politicians are scandalized by it. Entertainers make the worst role models period.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Then there's Thomas Jefferson, very near the origin of the push for small government in America (and thus a prototypical conservative), who had quite a good time banging the **** out of his slave girl and keeping her children in bondage.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wrong. Jefferson had consentual sex with a slave girl after his wife died, and he freed every single one of his 5 children. That woman was at his bedside when he died. Dont make me link you <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->!
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Realize that when I speak of artists, I refer not just to the MTV set but to the entire literary, visual, and musical spectrum of creative expression.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fair enough - I couldnt get a the picture of Greenday out of my head when you mentioned liberal artists......
But even then, the rest of them dont impress me that much. Writing a book, shooting a film doesnt make you smarter or more understanding of the world and how it works.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Excuse me, but you are missing a point in here, our current presedent counted as one of those people you listed as epitomising irresponsibility. In college, and during his military career, it is well known that Bush was a cokehead. If he didnt have the judgement to stay off those kind of substances then, why would he have adequate judgement now, after years of substance abuse?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, I didnt miss the point - you refuse to acknowledge it. The point is Bush has done these things in his past, turned his back on them (long before his political career), and has since campaigned against those same things he did in his youth. Would you complain if a reformed alcoholic lead an AA support group? Doubt it - so why complain about the current President.
NB Hilarious how opponents of the war on drugs laugh at the way most proponents havent tried them, calling them ignorant and saying stuff like "dont knock it till you've tried it" - yet Bush actually has and they are always the first to point it out
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Let me fix that for you:
"Succesful businessmen who epitomise irresponsibility"
There, now it looks truthful. A surprisingly high number of top-level executives are drug abusers, crooks and sugar daddies to local prostitutes (or "escort services" as the more expensive are called) and S&M workers. My friend used to work as a dominatrix in an S&M studio and told me that very often her skills were hired by a plain-looking guy in an expensive suit who paid well to get to do something he wouldn't ever have dared to ask his wife to do with him.
Which is better: openness about one's sexual practices and morality, or double standards?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Let me fix that for you: Entertainers who epitomise irresponsibility. Entertainers do so on the international arena, impact on young minds and actually seem proud of it. Which is better? Neither. You can screw a dog on stage or in your backyard shed and I still hold the same view.
While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.
And there's no shame in questioning your government.
While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.
And there's no shame in questioning your government. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
College professors are the flower children of the 60's and 70's, I'd expect nothing less.
Screwing a dog in public is quite different than screwing a dog onstage. In public you'd admit to having a penchant for bestiality, on stage it would just be a Marilyn Mansonesque shock stunt aimed for maximum publicity.
When you do something in public you set yourself up as a target for any and all opposing views. When you do the same in private while advocating the opposite of such behaviour in public, you simply don't dare to come out showing what you are in fear of being branded as a pervert. That is unacceptable.
You seem to assume that all people who enjoy watching entertainment superstars are drooling idiots who act on the whim of their chosen patron saint of guilty pleasures. Most of the time this doesn't quite go like this since any person with more than two functional brain cells is capable of understanding the controversy of someone being an icon of rebellion and change while being backed by a major corporation (yeah, Rage Against the Machine, I'm talking about you here you pansy product band). The entertainers can speak as much as they want, their effect is not very notable.
As for your comment about university professors... it was just like saying that anyone who makes above $12000 a year is a rich conservative capitalist pig with no heart. Stop trying to go the childish way by annoying others until they are so tired of you that the debate.
You realize of course that essentially, simply by pointing that out, you are being hypocritical.
On the other side of things, I have yet to see a conservitive show evidence of seriously considering a liberal point of view, so as far as reality is concerned, you are discribing a universal human trait, not the "liberal desease". Taking a wild guess, I would theorize that most people when discribing an issue such as that make no attemt to hide thier bias, and because they have spent some time thinking about it, they don't bother talking about thier reasons why they belive thier opinion is greater, they simply state it as fact. It's not nessicarly that they assume that the opposing opinion is stupid by default, they just assume that because they have logically processed the issue, anyone who disagrees with them must not have thought it out quite as thourhoughly, which may be true, but may not be as well.
While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.
And there's no shame in questioning your government. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From the 1994 census:
<img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/uploads//post-28-1096919926.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Notice the bars for repubs going up with more education?
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
You are just loving this aren't you Lorn...
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
In the united states in 1994.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->While conservatives yelled liberal bias, I see educated reasoning.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And there was that other chart elsewhere which showed a greater percentage of college graduates characterized themselves as conservatives, while a greater percentage of those with post graduate degrees considered themselves more liberal (i'm paraphrasing here, and I'll look for the percentage).
Lumping <i>all</i> graduate degrees in with undergraduate degrees masks this, but you were aware of that, weren't you? <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Edit: Here's <a href='http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html' target='_blank'>CNN'S</a> exit poll from the most recent election. I know you're not a fan of exit polls, so if you can find something better, be my guest to post it.
By the way, based on the mileage you've gotten from that chart, and the number of times you've cited it, I trust you're burying that "Show me a young Conservative . . . " quote for good? Good God, I should charge you royalties . . . <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Edit 2: It's hard to find polls tracking education level directly to ideology (and not party affiliation or voting patterns), but I <i>will</i> say that I've found some people on the far right who have dealt with the issue by simply re-labeling post graduate holders as '<i>over</i>educated' and chalking up their differing political opinion to confusion and arrogance caused by absorbing education above their natural intelligence level.
Sheesh.