I am against radical moonbat democrats. I am a moderate.

[readmoreoften]

Radical moonbat democrats want a bunch of horrible things that I refuse to stand for. For example:

Soviet-style communism
forced gay marriage
forced abortion
the abolition of the family and the creation of state orphanages
pulling out of perfectly good just wars that are going swell
everyone forced to eat only tofu and vegetables 24 hours a day.
the end of fashion-- all outfits are military and state issued.
100% of your income goes to the poor, who are now the new superwealthy ruling elite.

I am against ALL these things. In exchange, as a moderate democrat, I support the following:

(1) Optional same-sex marriage. Gays and lesbians can be married, but straight men and women can have opposite sex marriages if they choose. I also don't believe in mandatory transgender behavior, but I think that we can pass laws to make sure than transgendered people are respected as human beings.
(2) People who have children can raise them as long as they aren't really really fucking up.
(3) Abortion for woman who choose it only.
(4) As a moderate, I think that we shouldn't start wars for profit and that we should pull out of all the wars that we have already started for profit. But I don't think we should pull out of WWII retroactively.
(5) As a moderate Dem, I don't think we should give 100% of our income to the poor while standing in bread lines ourselves, but I believe that we can all put money into the pot to make sure all citizens have equal access to education and health care.
(6) Healthy, safe food supplies.

So, get it? Can we reframe the debate? Why can't "I" be moderate? Why are my ideas so goddamn radical?

[ClassWarrior]

1. Brilliant.

Excellent.

We ARE the mainstream, my friend.

Never Give Up.

[Clark2008]

5. Well, except for gay marriage.

That's not quite mainstream, yet, as much as it saddens me to say. Only one state voted against a ban - Arizona - while the other states with measures on the ballots didn't.

I think THAT should be reframed as CIVIL UNIONS and it would go a lot further.

[readmoreoften]

14. I didn't say mainstream. I said moderate. Gay marriage is a moderate position.

No one is suggesting mandatory polyamory. That's a radical position.

[mongo]

19. But would optional polyamory be a moderate position?

Maybe someday?

And yeah, I agree on all points above.

You moderate!

[readmoreoften]

21. Of course. /nt

[Porcupine]

38. Um, can I still marry my box turtle? It's really cute...... nt.

.

[tavalon]

39. My form of marriage is even less mainstream

I agree that civil unions for all, hetero, homo, mono or poly would be a good idea. Why we ever thought mixing state and religion in the bedroom was a good idea I'll never know.

[madmusic]

2. That's good, real good.

Yeah, turn their mind games around on them.

EDIT: took out the n/t, lol.

[ulysses]

3. sell out.

;-)

Recommended.

[PassingFair]

4. Leftist moonbat!

We need to move to the CENTER, or we will
be CRUSHED as witnessed by our big defeat
at the polls this election!

Gays, women, secularists -- UNDER THE BUS!

Sit down! Roll Over!

:sarcasm:

[stepnw1f]

6. LOL... Yeah... Down with the Oppressive Hippies!!!!! (nt)

[HappyWeasel]

9. hahahahahahahaha....therye ya go!

Make us look like the dead center....that will make the Neo-clowns REALLY look like Nazis.

[ClassWarrior]

22. Hey! I resemble that remark!

NGU.

[wellstone dem]

7. k& r, we need one more r

nt

[luckyleftyme2]

12. JUST HANG IN THERE

We need some good family values. like it don't make no difference we want new energy now!
like wean us from petroleum products now.
AND the extreme right can't move us in that direction,remember they said "al gore" was crazy
there is no global warming.
SO those ice fields melting is just tricks from the liberals.

MAN WE ARE GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD,AT LEAST WE'LL CHANGE COURSE!

[philosophie_en_rose]

8. I'm against radical moonbat moderates. I'm a Democrat.

:)

[boolean]

10. You are not a moderate.

You are a LIBERAL!!

Wear it proudly.

[readmoreoften]

15. Liberal is, by definition, a moderate position. It is not at the extreme left nor is it at the

extreme right of the political spectrum. The Bush administration are radical right wing, authoritarian extremists. We are liberal moderates.

[bluedogyellowdog]

40. Bingo

Liberalism grew out of the Enlightenment and Renaissance, finally brought Europe out of the Middle Ages, and was the basis of all those radical moonbat ideas. You know: "We, the People..." instead of "I, King So-and-So Defender of the Faith by the Grace of the Almighty, Conqueror of Blah Blah Blah...". "All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" instead of "I, the King, am endowed by the Almighty with power over these bloody peasants. Let them eat cake!"

Liberalism is the vital center of modern politics. Liberal is really synonymous with moderate. Progressives are merely liberals who view the state as having a more active role to take in keeping corporate power in check. Progressives still fall well within the broad middle.

The moonbat left (assorted Marxist-Leninist cults, anarchists, obscure post-structuralist academic theorists, and the like) have nothing to do with liberalism. If anything they are the exact mirror image of the moonbat right who would take us back to the Middle Ages and feudalism given the chance. Both reject liberalism and democracy and are true believers for whom ideology is more important than pragmatism.

When the moonbat right makes Liberal out to be a dirty word, they need to be challenged on what exactly they would replace it with, since liberalism is the very basis of all modern democracies and such radical moonbat ideas as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, popular election of representatives through voting, etc.

[emmadoggy]

60. Thanks, good post.

A few months ago, during a heated political debate with my brother, wherein he was accusing me of being a radical liberal - I pointed out to him the simple fact that Democracy, in and of itself, is LIBERAL. That everything that this nation was founded on, is LIBERAL and that I take no shame in the label.
He didn't have much of a response.

[Laelth]

65. double bingo

A liberal is one who favors a market-driven economy but who wants to protect capitalism from its own excesses (child labor, slavery, minimum-wage slavery, no health care, unsafe workplaces, etc.) Liberalism makes market capitalism work for the benefit of all the people and not just the ones at the top of the pyramid. Liberalism is the very reason we're not a third-world country.

:dem:

-Laelth

[annabanana]

11. Thank you!

I have been wondering about the substantive differences between "leftie, radical" Democrats and "moderate" ones ever since the election when the bobbleheads on TV started chattering about it!

[mike_c]

13. all your family are belong to us....

You cannot hide from us, comrade.

[Warpy]

16. People who want the first list you offered

don't exist anywhere but in the fevered imaginations of drug addled right wing hate radio jocks and drug addled, closeted right wing preachers.

After all, Robertson approves forced abortion in China. Apparently abortion is just peachy if men do the deciding.

The rest of that list is just plain stupid. I defy you to show me ANYONE who wants ANY of that shit, let alone all of it, and I defy you to find them in the Democratic Party.

[readmoreoften]

23. Correct. I've never met one. All the democrats I've ever met are liberal moderates.

Not left wing Soviet extremists like the right wing believes.

[VelmaD]

24. left wing Socialist extremists don't believe...

in that first list in the OP. I should know, I am one.

[readmoreoften]

28. No. I said Soviet, not socialist.

Socialism is left of center on the political spectrum, but not the extreme left.

[VelmaD]

29. My bad...

Chalk it up to me being distracted 'cause I still kind of have the urge to throttle the OP. :) I'm sick to death of the moonbat meme. I'm not a fucking moderate. The OP obviously never met Texas' greatest current liberal, Jim Hightower, who said, "there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos".

[readmoreoften]

30. Do you really think the things that you stand for aren't moderate and reasonable?

As far as I'm concerned Socialism is a moderate policy. Reading, for example, Upton Sinclair, one gets the feeling that the only reasonable thing to do is make sure that all the denizens of a region get the benefits of their natural resources. Nothing extreme about that.

Moonbat is a joke.

[VelmaD]

31. Given the current political environment...

I have no desire to be called a moderate. Not with what moderate has come to mean. And I haven't really much appreciated all the posts recently trying to redefine liberal positions as moderate or even conservative. I'm going to bow out of this thread now because I feel like you were trying to be funny and I'm just not in a funny place right now. :hi:

[readmoreoften]

32. I gotcha.

My point is that if we keep letting these motherfuckers name the debate we'll always get to choose between hard right policies and fascism. Feel better :hi:

[hfojvt]

58. unfortunately I find a little bit of truth in the moonbat meme

Unfortunately the OP was not a discussion of that.
And I'm not saying that you fit that, except in the sense that part of the meme is that moonbats are 'very angry'. But I find the Hightower quote to be quite funny.

[readmoreoften]

67. God forbid anyone should be angry at what's going on.

How crazy of them. The lunatics.

[hfojvt]

70. Your post serves as an example

Because you are angry with Bush, you feel the need to express some of that anger at me. Thus, it is not necessary to try to understand what I said and respond to that with reason and facts. It's more fun to make a caricature followed by a sarcastic remark.

It's not about being angry at Bush policies, but also at Bushbots and Freepers and Fundies (oh my!). Moderates too. Any of the bigots and religiously insane and hopelessly ignorant (or people who are quickly painted as one of those based on a single word or paragraph) are targets, and anybody who disagrees with either me, or the Liberal Conventional Wisdom, is one of THEM.

[ThomCat]

17. Very nice!

:applause:

[understandinglife]

18. Your "moderate Democrat" fits my definition of a "normal human being."

:thumbsup:


BE AMERICA. ---

[TheWraith]

20. It's not the views, it's the tactics and priorities.

The things that seperate moderates and extremists on DU aren't views, which are largely universal, but the question of what's feasible and what's a priority. I'd love to nationalize the oil industry, but I realistically know that that's not going to happen, so I don't worry about it. The definition of an extremist is that they're unable or unwilling to compromise or simply wait on any of their pet issues, even when it's clear that no progress is going to be made. It's been said that politics is the slow cutting of very hard wood, and to get anywhere, you have to accept that sometimes you're not going to be able to have everything you want. Before the election, for instance, we had people running around here saying that if every Democrat running for office didn't charge the first available camera and endorse gay marriage, it was "throwing gays under the bus," a phrase repeated more than once. The reality, though, is that if all the candidates had complied, not only would we have lost, but the judiciary would have continued to fill up with neoconservatives still in their swaddling clothes, which would have insured that gay marriage wouldn't have happened any time soon. With the moderate judges insured by a Dem hold on Congress, actual justice can take back over. Slow, but it's progress.

[readmoreoften]

26. No that's not a difference between a moderate and an extremist.

That's the difference between a political nailbiter and a political challenger. Neither method is moderate or extreme. At times both are practical and both are impractical.

And let me remind you that all of that political nailbiting was over NJ. And we won NJ. Funny how political nailbiting is usual over issues that the nailbiters don't care for. I didn't see anyone vociferously nailbiting over how our position on gun control is costing us elections.

[upi402]

25. Ya scared me for a second...

whew
Here's one of these for next time.
:sarcasm:

LOL
I know Republicans who actually talk that way, and then tout how much tax Bush has saved them.
$7,000 tax savings will cost his family of 3 $84,000

:wtf:

[readmoreoften]

27. I prefer when people can figure out sarcasm for themselves :)

Imagine what Jon Swift's writing would have looked like with all the sarcasm tags.

[upi402]

34. I'm with ya there actually

but I *have* got into trouble by NOT making it painfully obvious with rolling eyes, etc before.
It kinda ruins the effect really.

[omega minimo]

53. Is that mandatory?

"I prefer when people can figure out sarcasm for themselves :) "

In that case, the modermoonbates will have to work on improved nutrition (no poison in the food, air, water) AND improved public education.



Nice job, readmoreoften. :yourock:

[Swamp Rat]

33. We've only just begun to reframe the debate.

;)

[a la izquierda]

43. ew...

that picture is disturbing.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

35. excellent post.

[tex-wyo-dem]

36. Yeah, the radical moonbat democrats are almost as bad as...

Those horrible "secular progressives," or S-Ps as Bill O'liely likes to call them. They are trying to destroy all the wonderful traditional American values like waging illegal wars for profit, killing hundereds-of-thousands of innocent civilians and thousands of our own and thinking it's right that all Americans, even the rechid poor, deserve good health care and education. They're even trying to destroy Christmas!!!!

Oh, the horror!!!





:sarcasm:

[SeattleGirl]

37. Well, by golly, I guess I'm a "moderate" Democrat too!

Excellent post!

[USA_1]

41. ???

Soviet-style communism
forced gay marriage
forced abortion
the abolition of the family and the creation of state orphanages
pulling out of perfectly good just wars that are going swell
everyone forced to eat only tofu and vegetables 24 hours a day.
the end of fashion-- all outfits are military and state issued.
100% of your income goes to the poor, who are now the new superwealthy ruling elite.





Soviet style communism --- financially supported and entrenched by the likes of Herbert Hoover & Armand Hammer - both Republicans)


forced gay marriage (no such thing)

forced abortion --- promoted by Prescott Bush & Clarence Gamble (both Republicans - the latter promoted racist genocide in Puerto Rico)

abolition of family (non existent except in the novel 1984)

perfectly good war (the novel Rambo was just that --- fiction; and it was written by a draft dodger)

end of fashion - Nazis were not liberals

100 % of income to poor --- another delusion




I haven't read all of the replies to your initial post but it could well be that you are pulling somebody's leg. Indeed, that topic does read like a comedy.







edit note: http://www.amazon.com/phrase/Clarence-Gamble

see link for references to Republican Gamble and his promotion of Nazi genocide in Puerto Rico with help of racist Margaret Sanger

[mcscajun]

49. All the italic stuff is sarcasm.

:)

[USA_1]

66. Yup ...

... that's why I pondered whether he was pulling anyone's leg.

But if you believed any of that crapola expounded by the reich wingers they's say it was all true!

[Danger Mouse]

42. Shh...

Comrade, don't give away secret plan. Is very delicate plan. SOON AMERIKA WILL BELONG TO THE SOVI...er...liberals. Yeah. Ahem.

[Bassic]

44. I'm about center left.

But what the hell are forced gay-marriage and forced abortion?

Edit: I agree with most of your points.

[JanMichael]

45. Oh gawd.

I guess this is sarcasm?

[mcscajun]

48. You guess correctly.

:)

[Rosemary2205]

46. Forced gay marriage sounds like fun.

We shouldn't have too many problems with that one. The RW is already half way there. :)

[Vorta]

51. I have dibbs on Goran Višnji?

[Vorta]

47. IF I may disagree- we should only fight wars for profit.

To catch a rat, you must think like a rat.

If one screams "The war is wrong. Get out of Iraq." the politicians can answer that the war is right, and give support to their position.

If one screams, "The war is unprofitable to the country. Get out of Iraq." the politicians cannot deny that the war is unprofitable to the country, they can only point to those corporations and individuals who are profiting from the war.

[Roxy66]

50. Perfect! n/t

[leesa]

52. You just accepted THEIR framing. By attaching that fantasy list to

"radical moonbats", which are progressives or liberals, you have just given a stamp of validity to their rantings. The fantasy list doesn't exist.

[bertha katzenengel]

54. "all put money into the pot" = TAXES. That's why we're moonbats.

We generally understand that the way government helps the needy is through taxation. Conservatives don't want to be taxed; they want to give to their charities and say "THERE'S your help right there. Don't like it, lump it."

[readmoreoften]

69. But they don't mind taxes when it comes to wars that make them rich.

I'm against the War Tax.

[CJCRANE]

55. Nothing wrong with moonbats.

They eat wingnuts for breakfast.

;)

[Arkana]

56. Ahahahahaha...

[treestar]

57. Huh?

Radical moonbat democrats want a bunch of horrible things that I refuse to stand for. For example:

Soviet-style communism
forced gay marriage
forced abortion
the abolition of the family and the creation of state orphanages
pulling out of perfectly good just wars that are going swell
everyone forced to eat only tofu and vegetables 24 hours a day.
the end of fashion-- all outfits are military and state issued.
100% of your income goes to the poor, who are now the new superwealthy ruling elite.

Who is for any of this? Where did you get this list? It sounds like a freeper's view. Not to say you are one, just that you got your impression of even radical moonbat dems from a right wing source.

[WillyT]

59. Most Excellent Post !!! - K & R !!!

:kick:

[JerseygirlCT]

61. LOL. That's great

I especially like the not pulling out of WWII retroactively. I'm sure that will calm many fears. Nice bipartisan move.

(Shouldn't we also claim incessantly to be true bipartisans?)

[Cocoa]

62. where do you stand on Christmas?

:-)

[readmoreoften]

68. I take a moderate position on Christmas.

Those who are Christians, Fans of Santa, Gift Hogs, and Huggers of Flamboyantly Tinseled Gay Trees are free to celebrate their holiday. I am opposed to all those who would force us to wear Xmas tree earrings, sweaters with tinsel cuffs, vests with crocheted snowman, and the like.

I think Christmas should be between a child and her super-high-action-train-set... the way Santa intended.

[Nostradammit]

63. "100% of your income goes to the poor,

who are now the new superwealthy ruling elite."


:rofl:

[Laelth]

64. Damn moderates!

We have to get these wishy-washy moderates out of the party! :sarcasm:

I like the idea of reframing the debate. That tactic is addressed to the very heart of the problem. When one considers the fact that Richard Nixon proposed a single-payer, universal health care system in 1972, and when one further considers that Nixon signed several key environmental laws, including the much-derided Endangered Species Act of 1973, it is clear that American politics has lurched far to the right in the last thirty-odd years. In fact, readmoreoften, in 1973 you probably would have been a moderate as would most of us here. Now, we're called moonbats.

Any number of theories can be advanced to explain the political right-creep of the nation. Much of it, I think, is a backlash against civil rights. More of it, I think, is a result of the ever-increasing power of women in our society. These days more women than men graduate from college. As of last year, I think, more women than men earn degrees from American law schools. Next year, a woman will become the Speaker of the House of Representatives. We should not be surprised to see a significant backlash against these rapid (though welcome) changes.

Personally, I like to blame Rev. Moon, Ronald Reagan (for eliminating the Fairness Doctrine), and Rupert Murdoch for the nation's political woes. It's easy to brainwash people who watch as much TV as the average American does. In terms of policy, I think the American people are pretty moderate (i.e. liberal). They just don't know it, or can't admit it, because the TV tells them that liberals are bad.

-Laelth


Edit:Laelth--date error corrected.