Reply #239: Un-alerting and welcome [View All]

[The Traveler]

Really, I think it silly to ban all conservatives from DU. Liberals enjoy a vigorous exchange of ideas, so long as it doesn't descend into the silly or the assassination of character.

But if you want to know me, know where I stand, bud.

1. I spent 12 years fighting commies. I did not do so in order that some pencil necked, limp dicked allegedly born again type can persecute gay people. I am (I have been told) incorrigibly straight, have no fashion sense, and cannot dance. (Fuck off to all my gay friends. You are all absurd. Barbecue at my place next weekend?) Gay rights are human rights and are NOT NEGOTIABLE.

2. I am a defense hawk. I have seen some real evil crap out there in the world, and I do not want to ever see it get the upper hand. Flip side. We cannot defeat that kind of evil by emulating its tactics. That just turns us into them, and that threatens things worse even than defeat. When we turn Iraqi prison guards loose to anally rape the young sons of Iraqi mothers in the presence of said mothers because we THINK they MIGHT be involved with someone we don't like ... well, fuck, dude. Why don't we just all don Soviet Army uniforms? Because our actions have, at that point, become indistinguishable from those of the Evil Empire so many of us here at DU fought so hard. Thanks for pissing all over the graves of my friends ...

3. Freedom is a two edged sword ... one edge being Liberty, and the other edge being Responsibility. I have a responsibility to my fellow citizen, and they to me. We spend far too much money on Extenze dick extension pills and far too little elevating our brothers and sisters. We have the Largest Prison Population in the world. That to me is symptomatic of the conservative inability to address the responsibility that we have to each other as a people. Bud, it seems to me conservatives want an America where women are not free to decide matters of conscience for themselves, a position largely on based an interpretation of Christianity that has no Biblical basis (the notion that ensoulment happens at conception) and which requires a dismantling of a fundamental American right (the right to privacy) to legally enforce. We have systematized the penalization of sexual preference. We have declared outlaw those who dare alter their consciousness chemically as they see fit (the so-called War on Drugs) while subsidizing a for profit branch of the health care industry that has put half the boys in America on ritalin. Widows of non-Christian faiths have had to file suit simply to mark the graves of their loved ones with the religious symbols expressing their beliefs. I am trying to figure out where the freedom in the Conservative vision of freedom is ... the freedom to shop at Wal Mart, perhaps?

Those are my opening salvos. There are more. So, like, if you want to thrash over this kind of stuff please do hang out. But if you are expecting some kind of free pass, I suggest you go else where.

Don't mean to be nasty ... but if you think conservatives are the only ones who have principles held dearly, you are incredibly naive.

Trav