Things you have to believe to be a Democrat

Drug addiction is a disease that should be treated with compassion and understanding...unless the addict is a Conservative radio host.

The United States should be subservient to the United Nations. Our highest authority is not God and the U.S. Constitution, but a collective of tinpot dictators (and their appeasers) and the U.N. charter.

Government should relax drug laws regardless of the abuse potential, but should pass new anti-gun laws every time a gun is misused by a criminal.

Calls for increased security after a terrorist attack are "political opportunism," but calls for more gun control after a criminal's spree killing is "a logical solution."

"It Takes a Village" means everything you want it to mean...except creeping socialist government involvement in the nuclear family.

Disarming innocent, law-abiding citizens helps protect them from evil, lawless criminals.

Slowly killing an unborn innocent by tearing it apart limb from limb is good. Slowly killing an innocent disabled woman by starving her to death is good. Quickly killing terrorists and convicted murderers & rapists is BAD.

Every religion should be respected and promoted in public schools in the name of diversity, so long as those religions don't include Christianity.

Sexual harassment, groping and drug use are degenerate if you're the governor of California, but it's okay if you're the President of the United States.

Sex education should be required so that teens can make informed choices about sex, but gun education should be banned because it will turn those same teens into maniacal mass-murderers.

Minorities are blameless for the hatred of the racist, but America is entirely at fault for the Jihadist's hatred.

Poverty is the cause of all terrorism...which is why the leaders of al Qaeda are almost entirely U.S.-educated and were raised in wealth and luxury.

The Patriot Act is a horrific compromise of Constitutional rights, but anti-Second Amendment laws and Franklin Roosevelt's Presidential Order 9066 must be regarded "necessary evils."

We should unquestioningly honor the wishes of our age-old allies, even when said allies no longer act like our allies and have vested economic interests in propping up our enemies.

Socialized medicine is the ideal. Nevermind all those people who spend every dime they have to get to the United States so they can get quality medical care...that their nation's socialized medical community can't provide.

Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Natalie Maines are perfectly qualified to criticize our leadership, but Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston, and Dennis Miller are just ignorant political hacks.

Bush's toppling the Saddam regime was a "diversion," but Clinton's lobbing a couple of cruise missiles at Iraq in the thick of the Lewinsky sex scandal was "sending a message."

A president who lies under oath is okay, but a president who references sixteen words from an allies' intelligence report should be dragged through the streets naked.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning Second Amendment rights and shopping the courts for judges sympathetic to causes that wouldn't pass in any legislature.

"The People" in the First Amendment means The People; "the People" in the Fourth Amendment means The People; "the People" in the Ninth Amendment means The People; but "the People" in the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791) means the National Guard (created by an Act of Congress in 1903).

You support a woman's "right to choose" to terminate a pregnancy, but don't believe that same woman is competent enough to homeschool the children she bears.

Proven draft-dodging is irrelevant, but baseless claims of AWOL status is crucial to national security.

Threatening to boycotting Dr. Laura's and Rush Limbaugh's advertisers is exercising Freedom of Speech, but threatening to boycot CBS's "The Reagans" and Liberal actors is censorship and McCarthyist blacklisting.

__________________________________________

Things You Have to Believe to Be a Democrat Today

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Jay D. Dyson (Authored in response to: http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=7800)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was a Republican for the first nineteen years that I was old enough to vote. I've been a Democrat for the past twenty-three years. Not one of these accusations reflects my thinking as a Republican or as a Democrat. I suggest first that Mr. Dyson do some research instead of merely asserting and second that you find a more reliable source for information.

>I was a Republican for the first nineteen years that I was

>old enough to vote.

When you were a Republican, did you believe all - or any - of the things in the list right under this thread entitled "Things you have to believe to be a Republican today?" If not, why didn't you object to THAT - after all, it's been posted multiple times by multiple different posters in the last 3 months alone.

Or are slurs and caricatures and false generalizations only objectionable when directed against Democrats, but perfectly fine with you if directed against Republicans?

I've been a Democrat for the past

>twenty-three years. Not one of these accusations reflects my

>thinking as a Republican or as a Democrat.

Oh - so you're not in favor of abortion? You're not in favor of gun control? You don't think that increased security after 9/11 consitutes "political opportunism"? You don't think that calls for gun control after a crime is committed constitute "logical solutions?" You don't believe that disarming law-abiding citizens makes them safer? You didn't think that Bill Clinton's lying under oath wasn't a serious crime?

If that's really all true, as you claim, then you're not much of a Democrat.

I suggest first

>that Mr. Dyson do some research instead of merely asserting

>and second that you find a more reliable source for

>information.

Actually, the reason I posted this is because I read the anti-Republican list - complete with its distortions and exaggerations and outright falsehoods and caricatures - one too many times here. So I just gave those who posted it - and those who cheered it on - a taste of their own medicine.

Either the anti-GOP list was modelled after this anti-Democrat list or vice-versa, because they mirror each other almost perfectly. How interesting - and revealing - that you and others find the anti-Democratic one so outrageous and false, and yet don't object at all to the anti-GOP one, even though the two lists are different sides of the same coin.

As a liberal I find doug's list reasonably amusing, because I recognise that every major political or philosophical standpoint involves some inconsistencies.

For example I use the failure of prohibition as one reason to relax drug laws - but I recognise that the prohibition on murder or speeding is not 100% effective either. So why relax one law and not the other?

I rationalise that one on the basis of who is harmed by drugs and who is harmed by murder or speeding. But it's symptomatic of the fact that there is no universal set of rules and principles that guides us in every situation come what may. Religions, for example, can tell us about big-picture moral precepts, for example, and quite a few small ones, but they can still differ sharply on important questions - abortion, homosexuality, divorce, the role of women, even the sort of food we can eat.

So doug, I'm quite comfortable with inconsistencies in the liberal position, which includes much of the Democrat policy you've written up. I just wish you could be equally comfortable with the inconsistencies in your own position.

>So doug, I'm quite comfortable with inconsistencies in the

>liberal position, which includes much of the Democrat policy

>you've written up. I just wish you could be equally

>comfortable with the inconsistencies in your own position.

But if you are aware of these inconsistencies, doesn't it compel you to re-examine your positions? If one of your positions assumes X as true, and another position assumes Not X as true, doesn't that make you conclude that one of your positions must be in error? (NOTE TO ADAM SMITH: Please don't pop in with some refernece to the little cliche dictating that "consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind" - thank you ).

I don't really have the same problem that you have because I am not an ideologue. I argue far more here with liberals than with conservatives because there are far more liberals here spouting extreme ideological liberal dogma (which I dislike) than there are conservatives here spouting extreme ideological conservative dogma (which I dislike equally). I have huge disagreements with Republican positions, but since virtually nobody here advocates those positions, I don't argue with them here.

If I see inconsistencies in my views, I would want to get the root of them and resolve them. But I think those inconsistencies come from blindly and reflexively embracing one side's system of thought, and from the belief that the "other side" is so evil and corrupt that everything that comes from it has to be rejected. I don't think that way. For instance:

I am a vigorous proponent of the war in Iraq but am deeply disturbed by the Administration's apparent decision to rely upon any rationale for that war that it thought persuasive, even at the expense of truth, and I think it's vitally important to find out why the Administration seemed to have been so wrong in the statements it made which induced the public and the Congress to support the war.

I think the Administration's domestic policy has been disastrously reckless, with corporate cronyism governing that policy more than any other consideration, and that Howard Dean would be an infinitely better executive when it comes to domestic issues. I could go on and on like that.

I don't blindly embrace any party's line. I try to determine what my political principles are and then follow them consistently, issue by issue, regardless of whose side I end up on when doing that. Why does that seem impossible for you to do?

The first two paragraphs were so stupid I stopped reading. Can you summarize the post, please?

(I didn't read the Republican thread related to this one, because I don't care.)

>The first two paragraphs were so stupid I stopped reading.

>Can you summarize the post, please?

Here's the summary: Liberals are inconsistent and dumb. The things they believe make no sense and contradict other things they believe. They're communist hypocrites. That's the point of the post.

I didn't write it. I just excerpted it. I didn't excerpt it because I believe it. I excerpted it because it's exactly the same as the idiocy in the other thread about "What Republicans believe" which they are cheering. So rather than do the work to show them why that other post is stupid, I thought it would be more efficient just to post an identical post about them, so they would see it.

>(I didn't read the Republican thread related to this one,

>because I don't care.)

If you had, you would understand what I meant.

>I didn't excerpt it

>because I believe it. I excerpted it because it's exactly the

>same as the idiocy in the other thread about "What Republicans

>believe" which they are cheering.

Excellent. Carry on.

I myself am pretty left of center, equally comfortable supporting the murder of unborn children or a multilateral foreign policy. The first because all other arguments fall, in my view, before the primacy of a woman's interactions with her doctor, and the second because I believe multilateralism is the superior long-term economic strategy for developing global interdependency.

I share none of your zest for debate, but I like your spunk. Figurative speaking, of course.

I did not respond to the post below yours because I had not read it; I simply responded to yours immediately upon reading it. Now that I've read the one below yours. I can say that no, I did not believe it when I was a Republian and neither do I believe it now. My advice remains the same.

Oh dear, I knew it was a bad idea to get into a "debate" with doug on this.

Doug, EVERY position has inconsistencies at one level or another, including your own. My example of the inconsistencies in my position (the impracticality of enforcing the law) had a way of actually making it a coherent position nevertheless (the lack of harm to others in abolishing impractical laws that only affect one person).

The inconsistencies you point to with glee are actually superficial analyses of each situation. Equally, a lot of the inconsistencies in the mirror thread for Republicans suffer the same flaw. There is no simple and easy set of rules that will govern all situations in life. I would think that most Republicans who endorse the policies in the Republican thread would have ways of analysing the situation so that the inconsistencies are dealt with by more complex principles.

And that was really my point. At a relatively superficial level every person has inconsistencies in their approach to things. Quite complex and often subtle principles deal with those apparent inconsistencies. The deeper you go into a person's set of guiding principles, the more the opportunity for disagreement. Hence you wil think that my explanation of the superficial inconsistencies in my position is untenable for various reasons, while I will think the same about yours.

Thus it is fairly pointless on both sides of politics pointing to apparent inconsistencies. I think there are some fundamental ones in the wider community that we ought to be discussing. For example, many on the conservative side of politics adopt a hands-off approach to government intervention - except when it comes to morals, when they rather inconsistently seem to want a lot of government intervention.

A true liberal, which is what I class myself as, would prefer to see government not intervening in most situations, whether they be economic or social. That strikes me as a more defensible and consistent position than having to come up with subtle and ultimately indefensible distinctions about various types of "moral" and "immoral" behaviour.

It's the moral inconsistency of many conservatives that leads me, as a foreigner, to prefer the Democrat position overall rather than the Republican, and to be a Labor supporter in Australia. Economically I am less comfortable with some of the Democrat and Labor policy, but I will accept that as the price I must pay for supporting people whose social policies are, in my view, preferable.