What Media Bias? (Or: Sainted Democrats)

I couldn't quite make it out at first...

But I used photoshop to enhance the background to figure out what denomination they were praying at...

I should have guessed with Edwards being there...

It's the Church of Class Warfare:

Apologies in advance... yes I know I know... I'm horrible.  And I'm not even all that good with photoshop either.

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Glock21 Op/Ed

Interesting note... fascism, if you take Nazi Germany as a prototype, is actually a left-wing ideology.  Let us not forget that Nazi stands for the National Socialist Party.  For instance, Hitler's 25 points, specifically 11-23 could be taken straight out of the Democrat party platform.  Then, of course, there are the three biggest atrocities known in human history, Stalin's USSR (25 million dead), Mao's China (50 million dead), and the biggest of them all, abortion and infanticide... all firmly birthed from liberalism.  It isn't the right that's suggesting human experimentation and growing people like crops, that's the left under the aegis of embryo-destroying stem cell research.

Still want to play that game?

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j
Part-Time Pundit

wayward... indeed.   The left/right wing stuff seems to fall apart once we cross the atlantic as well.  In europe it's more of a spectrum of more populist/democratic to more statist/authoritarian on who is setting policy.  Fascism would be the extreme right and Democratic socialists would be the far left.   Here in the US the scale is completely different... where left is more populist/social services oriented and right is more business/limited government regulation oriented.

It gets pretty humorous though on IRC when we have the euros and the Americans arguing over what is or isn't left or right wing... and they're all talking about completely different birds.

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Glock21 Op/Ed

... specifically 11-23 could be taken straight out of the Democrat party platform. 

Yes, of course!  The Democrats are NAZIS!  It's as plain as day!

One thing we always need to keep in mind when reading history: if there are any correlations at all between the worst dictators the world has ever seen and a political party we don't like THAT means that political party is just like the dictator.

Launching preventive wars, torturing prisoners, suspending the the rights of prisoners, sanctioning illegal searches and seizures, setting up concentration camps that are beyond the reach of law ... THESE Republican measures have nothing to do with the Nazis.  They are logical steps taken during wartime.  But if the Democrats want to "demand a generous increase in old-age pensions." (the only one of the 25 points that even come close to what the Democrats want to do) then they are NAZIS!

Still want to play that game?

I'd play the game but it's based on logic and understanding the difference between liberalism and fascism.  You don't seem to know the rules.

I don't see how historical democrats employing fascist policies is relevant to a current president of either party employing those same policies.

Such policies are atrocities no matter who employs them, and to focus on historical examples while not working to combat the present applications is to be complicit to the atrocities.

In other words, I am in no hurry to defend FDR's concentration camps, but I will certainly vilify anyone who chooses to defend contemporary ones.

Also, I find Bambenek's postering hilarious. Does he know that Hitler also brushed his teeth? Every brushstroke brings you closer to being the most notorious dictator to ever walk the face of the Earth! You better extoll the virtues of war profiteering again to demonstrate how different you are!

We should be able to draw accurate analogies and similiarities without this idiocy. When Hitler said that it didn't matter what the justification was, he just wanted to invade Poland, so what justification propaganda decided to make up was immaterial, it was not too different from the Bush administration's philosophy in regards to Iraq. You might agree or disagree, but it's a valid connection to draw and evaluate on its own.

But regardless of that similarity, it doesn't mean that Bush is planning on murdering millions of people and stealing their hair and suitcases, or he has canisters of Zyklon B in his gym bag and no one should imply that.

After all, the nazis also probably thought that you shouldn't urinate on your grandmother, or eat rabbit testicles to make yourself more potent or slaughter patriotic school children. Just because of the atrocities that they committed, doesn't mean that we must immediately pee on grandma while eating rabbit balls and killing cub scouts.

Eek!  It was bad enough to have one lousy fascist comparison... it's just as bad to have a lousy one going the other direction.  That's certainly an interesting stretch for what Fred Thompson represents... somehow I missed that side of him.

One thing I'm pretty sure about is that Democrats and Republicans are almost nothing like Nazis except in remote ways that make the comparison fairly useless.  The individual issues of whether or not Gitmo is good or bad are worth debating... making the trains run on time... social security... whatever... probably better debated without full-on Godwin's Law.  The differences are just too huge for the similarities to be used in such a broad equating of either of the two to such a repugnant lot.

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Glock21 Op/Ed

Teacher man-

To specifically address your outrageous and factually deficient claims:

What preventative wars?  Afghanistan was housing and finacing Al Qaeda who claimed responsibility for 9/11 and thus engaged in an act of war against us.  Iraq?  We've been in a state of war with them since Bush I.  Yes, even under Clinton, we were in a state of war against Iraq.  Sanctions (at least how they were applied there) is just a polite way of saying seige.  So exactly what preventative war has Bush launched?

Torturing prisoners?  I assume you mean enemy combatants.  Read the Geneva Conventions, there are 4 criteria and all must be met for those protections to apply.  Al Qaeda fails three of them and probably the fourth.  Anyone who has studied international law and has a smidgen of honesty knows that those illegal enemy combatants are entitled to no rights under international law, just like mercenaries and spies are entitled to basically no rights.  That said, I don't think we should be torturing people, but MOST of the purported torture simply isn't torture.  Yes, waterboarding is torture.  Sleep deprivation is not torture.  If that were so, I'd be able to take my 6-month old to the International Criminal Court for keeping me up at night.  Torture has a technical definition, learn it, apply it properly.

Suspending rights of prisoners?  Again, read the Geneva Conventions.  Let's assume they are prisoners of war entitled to full protections... even then the convention allows and encourages the indefinite detention of all enemy soldiers for the duration of hostilies.  Every nation on the face of the earth (that doesn't execute POWs at least) has done this in every war.  Sure, the paradigm is different with terrorism because there isn't a state party, however, that is a far cry from saying it is a mere criminal action, especially when it considers people not in the US, not US citizens attacking US interests outside the US.  We simply don't have jurisdiction to try them criminally except in a paltry few cases (i.e. shoe bomber).  What do you suggest?  We just shrug our shoulders and surrender?  Or do we follow the other allowable choice left by such narrow-sightedness, i.e. take no prisoners and kill everyone?

What illegal seizures?  We can debate the illegal searches, but it appears that the courts said you were wrong on that count already.

Concentration camps?  Seriously, get some historical perspective.  At most we've had no more than 1500 people at Gitmo.  Most captured ON THE BATTLEFIELD.  That's a far cry from rounding up everyone we can find with a yellow star.  This kind of hysterical scare mongering is unworthy of our political debate and exposes the public education system, which you are an employee, as a complete disgrace for giving you access to young mind to corrupt with such shoddy thinking.

You want to play logic games, but all I see is hysterical emotionalism.

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j
Part-Time Pundit

Who said I'm taking anything personally?  I'm just taking a break from reading ancient Greek stuff and needed to engage in passive-aggressive behavior.

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j
Part-Time Pundit

I said BS twice... in a context where yeah, it's kinda rough, but doesn't strike me as particuarly angry language... it wasn't like I was dropping f-bombs.

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j
Part-Time Pundit

Handymom-

Thanks! :)

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j
Part-Time Pundit

"The random Canadian", I googled for that trying to figure out the case... all I found was this...

Again, with the childish characteritures.  "Endless war to win"... you make it sound like we picked this fight... I suppose you could say that if you believe that Bush was behind 9/11... I suppose you could credibly blame our bone-headed foreign policy for the last 40 years too, but that also isn't Bush's fault.  Al Qaeda is here and they want you to die.  What do you suggest we do about it?

Xian, you'll note I specifically said I don't condone torture.  Well, maybe you won't because you only read what you wanted to read, but I did say that.  However, international law is absolutely crystal clear on this issue, terrorists have no rights.  I think common human decency should apply, however.

Do you know what genocide means?  Because you're using it like you don't.  Unless you are actually saying you think the US is out to exterminate an entire race of people.  You aren't saying that, are you?

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j
Part-Time Pundit

Well, I'm not sure these quizzes have any value, but people tout them out as "proving" your political orientation. I'm not sure you can really get such a determination from a quiz anyway... a discussion maybe. I think people can self-identify plenty well on their own. Then again, I've known plenty of people who simply self-identify with what they think they should be and don't really think through the philosophical presuppositions involved. *shrugs*

If I was approaching this from a Limbaughian angle, I'd take a 3 hour block of time to do it and make you listen to commericals for 2 and a half hours of it. :)

I think such rhetorical ploys play in talk radio and "general" debate mostly because they're simple and hard to refute inside 15 seconds.  But that's just the thing... "haven't given a lot of thought to political matters".

I'm thinking about working on a book on the relationship between culture, society, and economics because I think that's a void on the right.  Marxism is an economic, political and social theory.  So is communism.  Capitalism is not.  While capitalism had to necessarily be placed up against Marxism, and capitalism obviously won, it doesn't mean that capitalism suddenly became a perfect social or political theory in the process.  That also shouldn't be read as saying that we should chuck capitalism, just to realize that it has a proper place and that place isn't "everywhere".  Far too many people apply capitalistic analysis to debates where it should have no place.  But that's an aside.  I have a bunch of crap I want to write... but selling writing is kinda like walking into a room full of midgets and asking them to box with your scrotum.  You might put up with it once or twice, but you wonder real fast if the humiliation is really worth it.

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j
Part-Time Pundit

This kind of hysterical scare mongering is unworthy of our political debate and exposes the public education system, which you are an employee, as a complete disgrace for giving you access to young mind to corrupt with such shoddy thinking.

Wow.

Re: Strawmen

I didn't accuse anyone except Hitler and myraid others through history of genocide. I'm not sure how you got that idea. If there was a particular passage please cite it so I can clarify. It might be too late now since you've run with this idea that I believe the U.S. government is currently committing genocide, which I do not.

I was using the genocide progression to argue against creating dynamics that lead to genocide, not that we are causing a genocide. Deep-frying turkeys should be done thoughtfully to prevent house fires. That doesn't mean that all deep-frying of turkeys causes house fires. As you say, not all dehumanization leads to genocide, but that's my exact point--thanks for the support--we should study and learn how to prevent genocide and how we can ensure that human conflict and attacking of those not like us doesn't lead to genocide.

That's my theory. It's a theory. It's not necessarily correct, but you have had no theories on the subject, other than "either genocide is happening or it's not" which doesn't foster hope for preventing it, now does it?

So you may be confused, but that's because you are moving other people's arguments and confusing yourself. That's understandable and it happens, but please don't blame me for it.

"Bombing random people"

I'll stop using the term "random" as it has a number of meanings. I clearly didn't mean it literally, but if it helps the discussion I'll just use a different term. Bombs explode, and kill people. They are dropped or guided into areas that we don't have a 100% ability to determine who will be killed by them.

We have and will continue to kill people unrelated to Al Qaeda or other groups we are targeting. When we do so, that makes their family members angry, even if they initally agree with our cause. This pushes them toward cells and insurgent groups.

It's ironic because you use "random" in the same way in your response post. Unless you really do "google random things" in which case, we should talk about improving your web skills ;P

"Citations"

This is and never will be a site which is exclusive to the posting of papers in APA style. People are constantly referring to events that did indeed happen without citing them. If you wanted a cite, you could have asked for one politely rather than implying that I was fabricating the event. You are asking me for a favor--you have the skills to do your own research--but I would be happy to do so.

Since you responded by insulting me, I thought it might be worth pointing out that your "random googling" was completely insincere. Who looks for a torture case by typing in "Random Canadian"?

You are still not being even-handed in the conversation--the second time, I told you exactly what to google and said there were dozens of sources to support. So unless you have a vested interest in believing that the source is fabricated, it's not fair to attack Wiki. I linked it because it was the first source, I felt no need to provide an academic source, and Wiki, as we teach the children is an excellent starting point to get general information.

Wiki, like any source has its own biases. It tends to be liberal on social issues, but conservative on race and class issues, but that's just in general. With the volume of entries, one must use their ample skills to read each entry for its bias, right?

Finally, I can't agree with your analysis. This man was sent to Syria to be tortured. If you are against torture, it would seem that "whether Syria had anything on him" would be immaterial, as that qualification would require that you:

1) Support torture in some cases

2) Support the Syrian government's ability to fairly and justly judge Canadian citizens.

But that's not you, right?

Here's a CBC summary of the timeline of events:

www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/