3/25/2012 10:14:20 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
I really like the way you split paragraphs and ignore my questions. Sometimes I don't reply to your questions because I agree with their intention. Sometimes I want to avoid an argument. Sometimes a question gets put in storage in my head for future reference. Etc., It depends. Or, you know, NOT. Since I like it so much, I'll try not to do the same. :'( Where do I get the idea.... So IF: Thus, any legitimate critique of the government is interpreted by the Left as a call for Social Darwinism. Giving them a perfect excuse to defend their failed experiment in social engineering. Doesn't that pretty well make criticism of the government "out of bounds" or ineffective at the very least? Or what? Tell me. PLEASE. I don't think so. All that Ernie was saying was that for the Left, they have an excuse to throw mud at the Right. So the question is : Do you want the Left to have an excuse to throw mud ? So you would have me spend my evenings watching MSNBC or Current TV (Al Gore's channel and current home of Keith Olbermann-sadly, it is on my cable line up)? Well, since I watch MSBNC close to 0% of the time, not really. The point, which somehow got lost, or maybe I didn't express it very well, is that there sometimes are worthwhile things to find at the NY times and W Post, or for that matter, at Huf Po or other Lefty journals. TV is very limited, as I see it, for news anyway, its either Fox or CNN. As for MSNBC, there isn't even a pretense of even-handedness, it is all Leftism all the time. Fox makes an effort to be balanced even if it tilts Right. CNN is in the Democratic column but maybe 20% of the time, now and then 25 %, there actually are non-Leftist viewpoints that get broadcast. Not often, but once in a while, plus CNN knows how to present news in ways that Fox still hasn't learned. Like some of Fox's shows, "The Five" being a prime example of a grab bag approach in which everyone argues with each other for laughs, or Redeye, or whatever it is called, in which news isn't taken seriously at all and everything is supposed to be a big joke. Complete waste of time for both shows. I thought you were against torture. :-) It's mostly web surfing and Bill O'Reilly. My wife watches Hannity, and while I used to be able to stand him on the radio, I just about cannot do the TV show. Morning wake-up is local, Drive time to work is Mark Davis of WBAP or a Metallica CD when I drive or NPR Morning Edition when I don't drive, and drive home time is Mark Levin on WBAP or Motley Crue CD when I drive and NPR All Things Considered when I don't drive. Hannity is what he is. Terrific for digging up stuff that everyone else misses, but in terms of viewpoint, he is owned, lock stock and barrel, by the RNC. Granted, this time around, like in 2008 ( for much the same set of reasons ), count me as an "anyone but Obama" voter, but this is not exactly a rave review for the GOP. I'll in all likelihood do what I did 4 years ago, hold my nose and vote for the Republican nominee. Won't like it, but I'll doubtless vote that way because the alternative is so much worse. At work, it is music on the iPhone. Web surfing is usually libertarian or conservative or Christian unless I feel like being insulted, in which case I'll go to lefty sites. Rethuglicans and Repuglicans (thug and repugnant respectively; never mind the union thugs on their side-no projection here) specifically really help them win friends and influence me (usually not to come back). I don't really enjoy being told how stupid I am. Actually I hardly ever visit partisan sites at all, either L or R. That's why I like Real Clear Politics so much. Their editors cull out all the crap and only present substance. So, my posts can be almost anything, the NYT, NRO, you name it. Saves time and spares me a lot of agony. But I access these sites via Real Clear. Otherwise my reading usually consists of the Christian Post ( liberal for conservative Evangelicals, conservative for mainstream Protestants ), the Wa Post, the Jerusalem Post ( moderate or conservative ) and now and then the Times of India , the Washington Times, and sites like the Lexington Herald-Leader out of Kentucky, which is mostly Kentucky news that is irrelevant here. More recently I have started visiting Alltop on a regular basis. Type in "Alltop" and some area of interest, like "philosophy" or "psychology." Its all the good stuff from sites that specialize in such subjects. R or L or something else. Or bad stuff, I have no use for the feminist philosophy site that comes up, which isn't philosophy at all and consists of pure propaganda, but I have about 25 other choices. I would use Alltop for religion or politics but what comes up is EVERYTHING, well in excess of a hundred sites for these subjects, way too much to deal with and my computer is slow anyway. Not as bad for Alltop Economics or Alltop Education. Still a lot of sites but more like 35 or 40 sites that come up. The topics covered have titles and it is easy enough to take a look and if the piece is not something of interest, just click it off. You can use Google as a news service also. I do this every so often. Type in some topic that interests you at the time and see what comes up. Usually by page 2 or 3 you'll find some interesting stuff, a "take" that had not occurred to you until then, or your favorite writer sounding off, or whatever. Its like "discovery," the legal term, you don't know what you'll find when you start looking. Anyway, you have a lot of worthwhile things to say and all I'm trying to get across is that a broader perspective might be a good idea. Besides, where would I be if I didn't need to listen to libertarian type criticisms now and then ? Any number of arguments that I would have missed. I used to like that about the Arizona Republic newspaper when I lived in metro Phx. The paper is more conservative that I like to be, but because it was the prime source of Az news that was the paper I read every day. Learned a lot from it. Still usually disagreed, but I actually did learn all kinds of stuff that otherwise I would not have. I'd say that before starting to read the Az Rep I was in the 70-30 category, the 70 being Left leaning, but after 5 or 10 years this had become 60-40 max and more like 55-45 many days. With that new outlook having taken root, along came an article about RC and the rest was natural for me. Billy ----------- Yes, I know that many on the right do the same thing in the other direction and that doesn't make it right. Some of them, Instapundit for example, try to utilize dry wit, which I'm told I have a bumper crop of. Apparently that's not in evidence here. Sorry to disappoint. David _ "Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."—Neal Boortz On 3/25/2012 10:57 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: 3/25/2012 7:48:25 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) writes: "So the government has been immunized from criticism." Where on Earth do you get this idea ? The point of Radical Centrism is that BOTH government and business deserve their fair share of criticism. However, because either Ernie or myself criticize government at any given time does NOT mean that all of a sudden we have become Libertarians BECAUSE in due course we will criticize the private sector for something else. NEITHER government nor business is immune from criticism. Both deserve it, and both should receive it. This is really, really basic to RC. The impression that is hard to shake is that outside of this group close to all of your "listening" is to Libertarian or Right wing views and, none at all from the Left or "other." The result is that you interpret what I say, or Ernie says, as if, when either of us criticize gvt we surely have seen the Libertarian light, which is false, or that, when we criticize business, why, surely, we have gone over to the dark side and have made peace with the Left, which is equally false. I have a friend who is a hard core Democrat. Exact same problem with him except in reverse image. He just doesn't get the point of RC, that it is independent and centrist and approximately as unhappy with Democrats as with Republicans. For him, any deviation from the Left means that you are a Right-wing zealot or worse. The result is that we never talk politics any more, just other common interests. Sure, I am not at all favorably disposed to BHO and hope for his defeat this November. But the GOP is anything but political salvation and there is almost as much to be negatively disposed about in the Republican Party as the Democrats. RC is a philosophy for political Independents, essentially. It is not an alternative version of the Republican Party. just as it is not of the Democratic Party either. Billy -------------------------------------- By libertarians, or by the media parroting an ultra-libertarian line and crediting it to the Republicans and Libertarians? I doubt that a large number of people are out there combing through Reason Magazine or the Cato Institute publications for this to become the message from libertarian sources. I mean REALLY? The Left Stream Media is for Barack Obama, just like they were in 2008-hook, line, and sinker, and they may have even converted to boat to a submarine as they were so fat in the tank then and even more-so now if that it possible. David _ "Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."—Neal Boortz On 3/25/2012 8:32 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: Hi David, Sent from my iPhone On Mar 25, 2012, at 16:34, "David R. Block" <[email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) > wrote: We have EPA overreach and Globull Warming fraud all around and complaining about it is the distraction??? So we let the EPA strangle the energy supply and kill jobs because government is so saintly??? I cannot believe that I'm reading this. Yes. There are LOTS of valid reasons and positions to criticize the government and excessive regulation. The problem is that the GOP messaging around that has been hijacked by the simplistic: - market = good - government = bad mantra of libertarians Thus, any legitimate critique of the government is interpreted by the Left as a call for Social Darwinism. Giving them a perfect excuse to defend their failed experiment in social engineering. In a wiser GOP, somebody (Huntsman?) would argue coherently for a lean, smaller, modest, yet effective government that also appealed to moderate voters. But the Tea Party/Liberaltarian rhetoric appears to have scared off such candidates, and appears on track to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Which means we will get four more years of exactly the stuff you complain about. I call that a costly distraction. E David _ "Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."—Neal Boortz On 3/25/2012 12:21 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: Hi DRB, Sent from my iPhone On Mar 24, 2012, at 21:46, "David R. Block" <[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: I thought that we were in MORE opposition to the current Presidential office holder. This seems to be a distraction. While Billy's crusade may be overblown, he has a legitimate point. The idolization of the free market and demonization of the government is largely what is making the GOP lose the masses. Yes, we can't blame all that on Rand and the libertarians, but they are the ideological core of those messages. In short: they are the distraction. E -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
