What Made You A Conservative?

Lord Invictus said:

I’m sorry, I could never take the Proud boys seriously. Like their great guys and all, who love America, but didn’t one of them stick something up his butt in front of a bunch of republican delegates or something?

Maybe there was a reason, but I can’t take your organization seriously if you do something like that.

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That was Gavin McInnes, who I think did officially start the Proud Boys but isn’t really that closely associated with them. He is a weird guy, who did claim to stick a buttplug up his butt during his radio show supposedly to talk about how weird it is. I don’t know, that alone destroys a lot of his credibility for me, but the idea behind the Proud Boy movement is very good even if the founder is strange.

Now, I say he’s strange, not that he is violent, a fanatic, a criminal, or anything like that.

AnimalNoodles said:

Proud boys....fascists? lol. 😂

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Yep. You don't have to be smart, competent, or have fashion sense to be a fascist.

Hlaalu Agent said:

@mesonoxian No, defending people from being attacked by thugs is not showing up to attack people. I know it might seem like an attack since the left isn't used to people defending themselves, but it is not.

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Beating people up isn't the defintion of fascism. That said, my very limited experience of them is that they are always looking to cause violence, but seldom against people capable of fighting back. Apparently they get a merit badge for beating people.

Battlegrinder said:

Ok, so it's been a bit since you mentioned this, but I really can't let this bit go unanswered. As I've said before on Atwater:

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Given that Reagan went to Mississippi to talk about "turning power back over to the states" just over a decade after the state/federal conflict over segregation, starting supporting gun control because black people were arming themselves, ignored the AIDS crisis which disproportionately affected black men (and gay men, of course), and campaigned dogwhistling about "welfare queens", I'll respectfully disagree with the conclusion.

Zachowon said:

Why? He is more trustworthy then MSM. He also has sources to back up his claims.

What is wrong with that video btw?

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I didn't watch the video. I don't see a lot of point since the mere association with Crowder is enough to taint it, snd frankly I can't stand the dude. He's like the most unfunny guy at an open mic night and he's a scum bag.

This is something I don't get about the right. YouTube isn't a source for anything. Neither is Twitter. They can be interesting and engaging and even educational, but they are not evidence. Like Project Veritas just edits the hell out of videos until they are showing something completely other than what happened and tosses them up on YouTube. Alex Jones had a YouTube channel, hell, I have a YouTube channel. If a clip has been edited, narrated, has words on the screen to tell you what is happening, or in general isn't raw footage without a cut, you can't trust it to be unaltered. Even then you have to be careful. People will post video of completely unrelated events. Video of "Portland rioters" went around for a while before people noticed the signs were all in French.

Twitter is even worse. Anybody can post any out of context video, slap some totally false comment on it and put it up. That's where Gohmert claimed to hear about the supersecret German server full of crime votes. Remember the horror of the November 4th attacks? Surely they can only be rivaled by the terror of the Bowling Green Massacre. Seriously a bunch of people got convinced Antifa supersoldiers were going to launch an attack on Nov 4 because a comedian (going by KrangTNelson) posted a joke. And when nobody showed up, the Proud Boys (or Patriot Prayer, one of that bunch) congratulated themselves on having scared them off.

My mother in law sent me a Facebook meme as evidence of something once for the love of Pete. And people, grown adult people, believe Qanon on the basis of zip and fuckall except it is a story they want to believe.

The "mainstream media" is corporate controlled and slants its stories, but not especially to the left. If anything, they are deadset on acting like "both sides have a valid perspective" even when one side is factually incorrect. Reality isn't fair and balanced. Climate change is real and putting on a climate change denier for "balance" just creates the illusion of equivalence when one side is objectively backed by the facts. And they'll never give a solid story about workers rights or public resistance to corporate influence. Scares their advertisers and their bosses. But they operate vaguely within reality. The won't give you the whole truth, and they won't give anti-corporate voices a fair hearing, but the bulk of what they report at least vaguely conforms to reality. You want to check multiple version, or look for first hand sources, but it is rare they are just completely making something up. With stories on social media, there are more fakes than truth.

Abhishekm said:

Guys maybe get back to the topic? Leave the "thats not real socialism" guy alone. There are other threads for socialism discussion.

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Fair enough. I didn't want to let those posts sit without replying, but I'll stop posting in here.

Later, y'all. It's been real.

mesonoxian said:

Given that Reagan went to Mississippi to talk about "turning power back over to the states" just over a decade after the state/federal conflict over segregation, starting supporting gun control because black people were arming themselves, ignored the AIDS crisis which disproportionately affected black men (and gay men, of course), and campaigned dogwhistling about "welfare queens", I'll respectfully disagree with the conclusion.

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So, let me see if I get this straight. Atwater is a reliable source when he describes the use of certain tactics in the 1968 campaign, even though he was not involved in that campaign and had no insight into it's tactics, and so despite the mystery of how he knew this information he is to be trusted. But when he says, in that same interview, that such tactics where not used in the election he actually did have direct knowledge of, then suddenly he's not reliable anymore and you will instead take a mishmash collection of policy positions Reagan held across about 30 years of politics (with a healthy dose of partisan spin) and base your assessment on that.

It kinda sounds like you've just decided republicans are all racists and are cherry picking evidence in support of that.

I kinda wish I could go back and punch Atwater in the face. A few questionable sentences from him decades ago about a time period decades before that is considered absolute proof that everything any Republican says is secretly a racist “dog whistle.” Those lines from Atwater are gospel truth but the words and writing of thousands of other influential Republicans who repudiate racism are completely ignored.

mesonoxian said:

The "mainstream media" is corporate controlled and slants its stories, but not especially to the left. If anything, they are deadset on acting like "both sides have a valid perspective" even when one side is factually incorrect. Reality isn't fair and balanced. Climate change is real and putting on a climate change denier for "balance" just creates the illusion of equivalence when one side is objectively backed by the facts.

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“Don’t trust your lying eyes, trust the journalists who work for and are subservient to mega corporations. They hold the truth.”
-an anarchist, apparently.

Hmmm interesting topic. I think I will have to make a thread. What made you a Moderate. Because Liberals and Conservatives follow the Ashla and the Bogan. We Moderates are Bendu. We are the middle path.

I tend not to see the right versus the left as the Dark Side or Light Side of the Force. That’s too dualistic, too equal but opposite. The left is an extreme totalitarian ideology of socialism, equality, social justice, post-modernism, globalism, and anti-western ideas. There is some variation within the left, but it’s still closely clustered and often varies in degree. The right isn’t a single ideology, but a broad conglomeration of belief systems that are in danger from leftism’s power and extremism.

That is why there are so many different groups that get called right wing - traditionalists, libertarians, highly religious people, classical liberals, nationalists, Anarcho-capitalists, populists, traditional republicans, even fascists and numerous other ideologies I have probably forgotten. They are all very different from each other, why are they all right wingers? Because they all oppose the left.

I will generally identify as being on the far right, because in today’s political climate I essentially am. Really though, I think that the truth is that I’m a moderate in a world horribly skewed to the left.

I’m an atheist, I’m alright with homosexuality, I think that drugs should be legalized, I support nationalized health care, I’m a moderate on abortion, I’m anti-war, I’m a moderate on the environment and environmental regulation, I think that colonialism was wrong, and I’m even critical of corporations, the national XY remedy wealthy, and the power they have in society - though apparently that is a right wing belief now. Some would say that only a left winger could support the policies I list above, someone else might say that regardless of the right wing beliefs I might have, that I’d be a moderate. I’m not though, because moderation is contextual and in our modern civilization where the left not only has all of the power but is increasingly extreme, I’m on the far right because being right wing means to oppose the left and I do so very staunchly.

ShieldWife said:

I kinda wish I could go back and punch Atwater in the face. A few questionable sentences from him decades ago about a time period decades before that is considered absolute proof that everything any Republican says is secretly a racist “dog whistle.” Those lines from Atwater are gospel truth but the words and writing of thousands of other influential Republicans who repudiate racism are completely ignored.

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Not only that, but an election he was a bloody teenager for. And when he explicitly says that the Reagan campaign in 1980 wasn't based on that ... they ignore him and say it was!

I've changed my mind. We're more like ants with their different cousins. Termites are just ugly.

Random Username said:

I've changed my mind. We're more like ants with their different cousins. Termites are just ugly.

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Honestly, if people want to compare Jews to anything, compare them to Beavers. Hard working, can build great things and can kick ass when needed.

@GoldRanger Would you say Beavers are a fairer comparison (especially since due to being Canadian I'd be positively inclined to them)? Animal comparisons when they are meant to evoke the positive qualities (like lions, tigers, etc.) are not considered offensive right?

Figure it would be best to argue against such comparisons by making a more loving ones, "No they are not like termites, they are like beavers. Beavers are cool."