Redstate

As evidenced by my tagline, I wholeheartedly agree. We have to learn to hone and defend our arguments, because Conservatism is, after all, an ideology of ideas.

But we must also go to war, and get downright brutal and ruthless with the power-mad left. And not just blog-dom, not just the leftists in Congress, but that set of nitwits who run the national media outlets. They set the agenda for debate, and we should crush them like grapes.

It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?

trying to argue with my granddaughter who is all of 32 months old. If she can't accept the validity of my arguments, she will start screaming in an attempt to drown out my voice. Any "discussion" of ideas that I have tried with liberals results in the same thing--only they have much worse words at their disposal than my grandchild does. The result of my argument with my granddaughter is that she usually comes and crawls up in my lap and apologizes when she calms down. These folks? Not so much.
Whatever you can think of to at least get to the MSM, count me in. And thank you for doing what you are doing--do we need to pass the hat for your shower-soap bill?

The fight over who will be representing EACH of us - individually, within our City or County or State - is being won by the Liberal Progressive ideology of anger and hate and vitriol and personal attack. They will continue to win so long as their opposition believes sound ideas and good manners are the only tools of American Statesmanship and Democracy.

Oh, come on, cut the victim act. You guys give as good as you get. Tom Delay ran the House with only sound ideas and statesmanship? Perhaps he was called The Hammer because he was an awesome MC, but I doubt it... Rush, Coulter, Falwell, Hannity, Savage, Robertson, O'Reilly? These people don't constantly spew "anger and hate and vitriol and personal attack"? This is a pretty reasonable site, but even here, people that disagree are idiots and traitors.

For any who might be looking for a constructive dialog filled with mutual respect and admiration for the veracity of the other who has engaged you, take note: you will be deeply disappointed. The National Debate over America's future has devolved in to a screaming match, filled with expletives and disrespect, and the winner is fast becoming he who screams loudest and longest...

You can thank the 24-hour news channels for this. Liberal and conservative has nothing to do with it. In any event, I don't think that politics has ever been friendly. The Founding Fathers ran stories accusing each other of all kinds of things.

The issues that confront us are serious ones, and they need to be addressed by ALL of us seriously. Focusing on who has had how many wives, whether the age difference in a marriage has some deeper political implication, or trying to demonize a spouse for playing an active role in a Presidential campaign is not being serious about the problems we face on the coasts, in the heartland, or in the face of the international community.

I guess we can stop talking about Edward's haircuts? About how Clinton is "shrill" or "a harpy" or when she show cleavage? About how Obama's middle name is Hussein or about how he is an "empty suit"?

There is a reason that attacks like this exist. They work. They influence the media's "storylines", which does affect more important things, like policy debates. I think it would be great if these attacks didn't work or if candidates and their proxies refrained from them. Neither side is going to unilaterally give them up, though. It would be political suicide.

...the left will surely get what they have been after, and they won't give a flip about ... how little they care about any of us who may disagree.

I'm pretty sure that Rove is credited with the 50%+1 strategy, not liberals. Welcome to "how it felt to be a liberal between 2001 and 2007".

with regard to language and manners as well. As to outing what the Dems have in mind for us if they take full control in '08, I'm on board with that fully. I was listening to Rep. Marsha Blackburn on one of our local talk radio shows this morning listing all the tax cuts that the Dems are willing to let expire if something doesn't stop them first. It is truly appalling that one of the best economic periods in our history will come to a grinding halt if these people are allowed to run roughshod over those of us who work and contribute--and that doesn't even count the billions that they want to levy on us to pay for more entitlements.

While our efforts to get the message out and to put it in front of all the swing voters and independents will help to some degree, I am hoping with all my Tennessee might that Fred! will come out swinging in Sept. and help us out. The interview that I heard snippets of that he did with David Broder most recently indicate that he intends to levy broadsides in all directions that deserve them--and there are so many! I sense in a lot of directions that business as usual is coming to an end in the political arena. And I think that the immigration fiasco is a huge part of this--never have so many gotten such a clear picture of what passes for "leadership" these days and never have so many on both sides been more disgusted and more ready for change.

So, we've got some harnessing to do to get that energy focussed in the right direction and I am glad that people like you are taking the lead. My next job is to call and politely let my state RNC know my feelings about Martinez. I let them know about my feelings about the immigration deal and they not as politely let me know that they didn't much care. This time I will remind them that they get their paycheck from donations from people like me--and that this election cycle, those bucks are going to Fred and I hope he kicks their a**. (Hold the soap.)

You recommend Tapped? I went there and I found it to be more of the same, really - it's true, I didn't find any f-bombs but I did find breathless headlines such as "FRED THOMPSON HAS NO PRINCIPLES" and "CRAZIANI". The way I see it, they want it both ways - to be a 'respected' blog and still engage in attack politics. That doesn't work for me. If you commit yourself to discussing ISSUES then you must forswear attacking people. Period. Otherwise, it is just Daily Kos with better grammar.

And I always get upset when I hear liberals complain about conservatives "demonizing" the federal government. You just don't get it. Most conservatives don't have this irrational hatred of the government. All but the most doctrinaire libertarian will recognize the proper need and role of a federal government. What conservatives complain about is RELIANCE on the government to solve every little problem, and liberals' constant sanctification of the government as mankind's salvation on earth. For instance, do we really need to spend federal government money on a campaign to stop cyber-bullying? I mean really, is this an effective use of scarce government resources? Where exactly in the Constitution does it empower the federal government to clamp down on cyber-bullying? THIS is the type of thing that conservatives complain about. This is not a 'demonization' of government - this is a SUPPORT of LIMITED government.

3) (I hate to go on the offensive after we actually agreed on something, but...) Republicans have spent a long time attacking and demonizing the federal government. "Abolish the IRS", "dictators in black robes", "bureaucracy and incompetence", "starve the beast", "I'm from the government and I'm here to help", etc. I understand the sentiments that underlay these attacks and, honestly, on some days I'm kind of sympathetic to them. But telling people how horrible government is, isn't necessarily something that gets people interested in government.

Well, I should hope not!

Distain for government is not some Republican or even "conservative" maxim; it is an AMERICAN maxim, and it goes straight to the very core of who we are, why we are here, and where we come from.

As the first successful “by and of the people” form of government we are, as airs to this great and successful experiment, the bearers of a great responsibility to understand and preserve the ideas and the philosophy that has allowed us to prosper, as both individuals and a nation, beyond all measure. At the heart of that philosophy rests the belief that the government exists to protect and serve the people, and NOT the other way around! Government is an impediment to liberty, which has been our goal and ideal for hundreds of years.

This is not my OPINION! It is a fact, and it is supported by thousands of manuscripts, letters, books, articles, and publications from the Founding Fathers to foreign observers like DeTocqueville. Unlike any other nation in the world’s history, this one is based on ideas rather than ethnicity or a bond with the land. If you disagree with these core ideas that have allowed this country to grow and be what it has become, your only claim to being an American must come from the location of your birth, because these ideas were perfected and put into practice here, and they are ours to guard, protect, and cherish.

The only thing that liberal democracy and socialism have in common is a belief in the equality of men. It is the one thing, and this concept comes by way of “fairness” (a morally neutral word at best), that the left in America has with our history, and the beliefs that founded this nation. Liberal democracy achieves equality through a limited government that strives to give each individual the maximum possible amount liberty, and lets each person rise and fall according to their own definition of happiness and drive to pursue it, and socialism uses force and coercion to crush people into the equality of slavery.

The ideas matter and they matter most. If you see someone who cares about ideas get mad, it is not because one person or a group of people lied or did something underhanded in petty politics, it is because who and what we are is under assault because people are too ignorant to understand what, exactly, the other side is standing for, because rarely is one of them honest enough to come right out and say it. Their ideas did not come from American patriots fighting for liberty, but from foreign philosophers ruminating about the human condition, and how best to apply force and coercion to artificially correct it.

It may just be politics to you, but to me it is an ideological fight for our very freedom. I do not exaggerate, but I also do not want to give the impression that I think the other side is an enemy is the physical sense. I simply see them as ignorant through no fault of their own, because as a people we have failed to teach them civics, and we have failed to teach children our history so that they may understand why we are at this place, and what it took our forbearers to get us here. That is despise politics, and consider it an ignoble profession of liars is largely because of socialists trying to pretend to be patriots in the American tradition. It brings bile to my throat, and makes me incredibly angry that in this last century anti-American theories of government have become institutionalized to the point where they are not only considered legitimate, but they actually win elections and proceed to erode our liberty not only with the force of government, but with a sense of moral superiority that would cause our founders to take up arms and rebel. The only thing preventing that now is that people with full bellies and vast material wealth make for poor revolutionaries.

There is one special thing about our system of government that is worth repeating at the end of any discussion. The people will get exactly what they deserve.

Should all opposition to the socialists disappear overnight, and tomorrow if the socialists were allowed to implement ALL their policy proscriptions unopposed, the resulting cataclysm would lead directly to revolution, exactly as the founders predicted it would when the government got too powerful and started believing it could tell the people what to do, instead of the other way around. As it is the left only gets away with it in small measures because the opposition keeps them in check.

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem." - President Ronald Reagan

Its too bad this book has gone out of print. "Rediscovering America's Values" by Francis Moore Lappe. Before you all jump on the author as some kind of leftist/greenie/newSocialist shill, hold on. The book is a very long conversation between two archtetypal voices, one representing what we tend to label "conservative republican" and the other "liberal progressive". Lappe spent a long time on the book and got a lot of feedback from friends she had on both sides of the political divide that her book covers. I think it is very telling that several of her more right-leaning friends told her that they thought she did a better job of representing their perspective than her own.

The reason I consider the book important, or at least this *type* of book important is that it openly acknowledges something that has become very hard to do in our era: that there are people of conviction, intelligence and knowledge who have come to entirely different conclusions than us about the proper role and operation of a government. The book works hard to tease out the fundamental reasons why the two viewpoints presented differ at the deepest level, while treating them both as intelligent and principled.

For myself, I think that Watergate helped to hasten this descent into "the other side are all bastards". Its now incredibly hard to credit those with opposing political viewpoints with much other than self-interest. I do it all the time to people who hold the kind of perspectives dominant here on RedState, and I'm amazed yet not amazed to see it done in reverse. It reminds me of how absurd and how hateful it must fele to someone like Haystack to be accused of advocating a set of views for no reasons other than blatant self-interest. Yet its being done over and over again on sites like this one, like Kos and countless others.

Fundamentally, however, there is a problem. The two viewpoints in Lappe's book really *DO* disagree at a very fundamental level, just as I am sure that Haystack and I disagree on a very fundamental level on just about everything related to the role & operation of a government. Its not realistic to expect an agreement to emerge on the most basic issues. So the question then becomes what do you do about this disagreement? Lappe's perspective (all the way back in the early 1980's) was that an awareness of these different positions, of the nature of the debate and the ability to hold intelligent conversations with those we disagree with were fundamental to making an election useful and perhaps even valid. Because one of the few things on which the disagreement is mild is the idea of an electoral process (although we have seen plenty of arguments even over the details of that).

I think that most people involved in political advocacy suffer from a basic problem that they have a position that they would like to see implemented. This is hardly suprising - you can't be involved in it for any length of time without taking a position on many things. But it really deeply complicates the matter of discussing policy, because the conversation takes on as subtext of "How do I get my ideas implemented?" rather than "Just what ideas are we going to implement?". Rather than a process of exploring the state space of possible approaches, it becomes a struggle to gain control over the whole enchilada.

I don't see any way out of this in the near term (and perhaps evne the long term), and until then RedState will continue to insult Kos, Kos will continue to insult, if not RedState by name then RedState-friendly politicians and things will continue to be as messed up as they are now.

...maybe things were different in the early 80's but, it's been my recent experience that when lefties say they consult "the other side" before formulating an opinion, the ones that they end up consulting are the most moderate RINO voices that they can find, rather than the die-hard conservatives of firm conviction, and it's basically because your typical modern progressive cannot stand even to be around a true-blue conservative, let alone hold an intelligent conversation with one. Again maybe Lappe is an exception, I'll try to have an open mind, but I am skeptical.

And I definitely agree with you on the political advocacy point. Take anthropogenic global warming for example. From my point of view, the left now uses AGW as a very potent weapon in order to implement a broad array of positions, that they would like to see implemented REGARDLESS if the AGW hypothesis were true or not. They have been wanting to tax carbon and wanting us to drive teeny-weeny cars for years now. That is why, IMO, the debate has reached such a moral crescendo - if you disagree with the AGW hypothesis, you are a planet-hater and no different than a Holocaust denier - because if the AGW hypothesis turns out to be substantially false, the lefties pushing the environmentalist positions have lost their most potent weapon. So they must morally coerce people into accepting the legitimacy of their weapon regardless of the status of the science behind AGW. As a scientist myself I find this all completely sad.