Re: We are all Slave now.
 

https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-08-2016/suqo5E.gif

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Who knew that TM stands for Triggered by GraMmar?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

My boyfriend was born in the USSR (in the Ukraine) and grew up in post-Soviet Ukraine. As he told me, as soon as Ukraine was no longer a Soviet Socialist Republic, other countries dropped the article when referring to it. It never had the article in Russian/Ukrainian because those languages don't have articles.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

My most mundane legal issue ever is whether this - in a Japanese patent is a negative sign (my side) or a hyphen. Today we received an opinion from a translator that the character preceding the - was an article meaning both "a" and "the," and it would be incorrect to have an article before a hyphen. I credit you, and dtb (sniff) for my understanding the opinion.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Great lecture. Normally I’d expect such an educated thing to come from someone in The New England.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

There are no degrees or caveats anymore. You're all in on one side or all in for the other.

We've been in this imbecilic dilemma since Bush's edict that one was either with us, on the side of good, or an enemy, on the side of evil.

Thankfully, Cheney never got to see his planned genocide on the Swiss.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

My favorite superfluous "the" is "the gays." Nothing like an old, straight conservative man explaining hoe "the gays" think or act.

I could be totally daydreaming (as often is the case when old folks talk politics near me), but when I hear that, I'm paying full attention. Because what's going to follow is going to be spectacularly wrong, and cringe-worthy hysterical.

I look forward to relatives stopping by for Easter. I'll get at least one Gervaisian moment, where I'll get to say, through tears, "Bullshit. You're talking out your ass there. Out your ass. Stop it. I can't take it."

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

If that's the broad age differential it could be, based on the info provided, I salute you.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

There is one good conservative idea out there which will never become liberal: Avoidance of the law of unintended consequences.

Liberals tinker, and with tinkering comes more tinkering. That's not a criticism. They seem to believe intervention is the best initial approach. If it doesn't work, or it causes a problem, it can be cured with further interventions.

Hence we have pages of rules, laws, regulations, etc. that could loop the world a dozen times.

Conservatives are greedy pricks a lot of the time, and they're too reactionary, allowing themselves to be defined not by what they stand for, but what they oppose (even if they originally wrote it). But they do inject a necessary wisdom... The intellectually honest of them question the ripple's effects before chucking the stone in the pond.

Of course, the intellectually honest wing of conservatism is maybe 20% of them, so this comment is even more academic than usual. (And the hypocrites comprising 80% of the party throw conservative caution out the window on matters like the Iraq intervention and conservative use of the environment.) But that 20% does serve a noble purpose. Somebody has to say, "'Embracing complexity' breeds endless complexity... and here's where endless complexity ends."

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Your post makes a lot of sense if you apply a meaning to "conservative" that has nothing to do with what animates current conservatism, and pretend itself that it is a pragmatic, intellectual engaged, empirical approach to formulating optimal government policy, an approach that cannot be found in the wild. That, by the way, is the Mike Konczal piece to which Delong was reacting in my original post.

If conservatism was anything like what you described, conservatives would want to figure out how they got it so wrong with Iraq and the WMD, or the financial collapse in 2007-08, or the predictions of disaster around the 2009 stimulus and Dodd-Frank, or the Kansas tax cuts, etc. Or the predictions that Obama would seize everyone's guns and that acceptance of LGBT civil rights would be a existential threat to society. Being a conservative means you never look backwards (once you looked backwards to Reagan, but now that they have found an even Greater Communicator to the white working class, he can be forgotten). The only thing in your rearview mirror is the nostalgia that you keep exalting as you drive away from it.

Conservatives don't really care about policy. They care about reaction. When Kevin Williamson writes that women who have abortions should be executed as murderers, he's not really thinking that women who have abortions should be executed. It's a pose, but it's real in the sense that the expressive value of reaction in politics is what matters most to them, not the effects. (Except for the very rich, who want their tax cuts.)

This is what the left often does not understand: Conservatives are not alone in seeing an expressive value to politics, one that usually trumps discussions of policy and its effects.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Clearly, you haven't read any of the family planning regulations out there. Or the latest tax bill.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

"It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself."

Richard Dawkins

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Maybe he tried other stuff first. Like turning himself into a bull and raping teenagers. Or dropping in on people with an eyepatch and some ravens. But it didn't work, so he had to try something else.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I will not be sacrificing the traditional iguana to the Moai this year.

No more agnostic hedging. I’m full atheist.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I’d like to think the 20% I mentioned wasn’t in on that. But even the intellectually honest ones can be bought off for tax breaks.

Re family planning, conservatives are the most officious of liberals. They’ve never seen a sexual more on which they didn’t have an unwelcomed and unneeded view.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Then he came back to life as the Zombie Jesus, but in a twist anticipated by few, it is the faithful who, in a weekly celebration of his gruesome torture and murder, cannibalize the Zombie Jesus and not vice versa.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Last year I had dinner with some Jews. They were bragging about how, back a long time ago, Jews wanted to take some property from the Egyptians. but the Egyptians were like, "no way." So the Jews launched biological and chemical warfare on the Egyptians, but still the Egyptians held on to their stuff. THEN the Jews killed every Egyptian family's oldest son; not 1 or two kids with a bus bomb. EVERY FAMILY'S SON!. So the Egyptians had to give up their property.

Worst part? Know who told the Jews to do it? One of the Bushes.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Speaking of, this is helpful for the observant - https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-is...-jews?ref=home

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The problem I see here is that many of you use the term conservative to refer to wings in the GOP coalition that are not conservative. I maintain that Trump is not conservative, though I admit that you’d have to be delusional to think that a GOP cleansed of all populist influences is larger than half a dozen white guys.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Just a chance to share my new favorite Trump quote / evidence of ... something:

“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think the problem is that conservatism has been taking over by people with different priorities.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You fly with the wings you're given.

The problem is, there are very few conservatives left. We have two classically liberal, interventionist parties. And this use of interventionist is not limited to foreign policy. I mean in the classic sense of seeking to intervene in everything they can, from the bedroom to the bathroom to North Korea.

They only differ in terms of targets and goals. Progressives/liberals are more benign because they err on the side of tolerance. Conservatives long ago conceded this ground, choosing imposition of narrow moralities of the moment over "mind your own business" and "live and let live."

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

SPOILER


SPOILER


SPOILER

Half dozen is power!

At the end of Episode 8 there are about 6 rebels left alive. I assume in 9 they'll destroy the bad guys and put the galaxy back on the right course. 6 rebels.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Indeed.

I am no longer in denial that my people are the silent majority of the GOP. And the small numbers of our #NeverTrump remnant slapped me in the face last week when Bill Kristol became one of my 100 Twitter followers.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

A lot of #NeverTrump folks are not particularly clear about what it is about Trump that pushes them to that view -- not that they won't criticize him, but I'm not seeing a ton of effort to articulate what it is that he stands for that conservatives should reject, and to make that case to conservatives. Often it's just assumed as self-evident, which supplants the hard work of articulating (what should be the) key conservative values. Not saying this about you, btw -- I think you've been much clearer about it than most.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Who takes out Sessions first, Trump or Mueller?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I really need a scorecard as to what which conservatives consider conservative anymore.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

For most, the key is sticking it to liberals. Everything else follows from that.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Sigh.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I also have not been appearing in West Texas - http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions...17-50218.0.pdf

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Coming here more often than I do does not give you license to take my shit.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Wait a second, blowing a .337 AFTER giving an hour-long closing argument is damn impressive.

"0.35 BAC: Coma is possible. This is the level of surgical anesthesia. "

http://www.brad21.org/effects_at_specific_bac.html

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This had me bent over belly-laughing for 30 seconds.

"All prominent firms now have in-house general counsel to whom firm lawyers go for ethical advice. "

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Trade, immigration, and debt. That's it. The NeverTrumpers are classic Rockefeller republicans on trade, believe (admirably, and based on historical, factual proof) that immigration improves this nation, and fear growing govt debt.

They used to also detest Trump's isolationist rhetoric, many of them being neocons. The installation of Bolton fixed that problem.

I think a lot of NeverTrumpers also believe Trump is simply too indecent to hold high office.

Apropos, here's Bill Kristol being brutally honest about why we need immigrant intellectual and cultural capital. I usually find him near nauseating, but he's right here, and it's pretty funny when he realizes he's mic'd.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

We never had many. They just used "conservatism" as cover for the things they thought they couldn't say out loud anymore.

Was there ever dumber moment in time to say this? No, the current GOP and its leader are not in any way classically liberal. That's actually the break that just happened.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I meant liberal in terms of acting, versus conservatism's bias toward inaction.

Then wording could have been much better, as you are correct, the current parties are not anywhere near classically liberal. I just hate settling on "interventionist" or "prone to interfering" in private or commercial matters.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Why would he be self-conscious about what he's saying there? I understand being ashamed he's sharing a stage with Murray, Harvard's own white nationalist, but anyone who grew up even half-sober anywhere in lily white Red America understands that.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

That's not a terrible list. Trade is a pretty big issue, and I would say that conservatives lament the loss of any party that even pays lip service to the concept of limited government. A lot of it is just the intellectual dishonesty among the Trump faithful. If I would freak out if something were done by a Democrat, I am not going cheer when it is done by a Republican. It seems intellectual honesty is in depressingly short supply.

I am also even more angry about the attacks on amazon, and the fact that such attacks are based either in ignorance or lies. I find that the president attacking amazon is equally distasteful to the flushing of taxpayer money down the crapper with Solyndra.

You all know that I have drunk the Kool Aid of conservatism, and that I am if nothing else a True Believer. It's been dispiriting to see how many former conservatives have debased themselves by allegiance to their troll king. I believe that enacting conservative principles could do a great good for contemporary American society, but we don't have the numbers.

I also believe that such discussions should be had honestly, and as the much despised Kevin Williamson (whom I met last month at a National Review Institute event honoring the 10th anniversary of the passing of WFB) recently said in his piece called The Epidemic of Dishonesty on the Right: "And we should be ashamed of ourselves if we come to accept this kind of dishonesty in the service of political expediency. If conservative ideas cannot prevail in the marketplace of ideas without lies, they do not deserve to prevail at all."

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/...esty-epidemic/

Unfortunately in "conservative media" you get paid a lot more to be a spineless shill than you do to be intellectually honest. Sean Hannity is a hack and this is probably the best money he is capable of making. OTOH, people like Laura Ingraham know better, but still choose to ring the cash register instead.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Buckley's directive was to "stand athwart" liberal interventionism. The current GOP is comprised of people who seek to intervene everywhere they can, from foreign policy to transgender troops.

One cannot stand athwart the forces that would meddle in society, politics, and the economy, while seeking himself to meddle in all of those things in different ways. This person stands for nothing. And to the extent he seeks to prohibit individual liberties, which many modern "conservatives" do, he's anti-conservative.

I cannot not think of one pure conservative off the top of my head. It might be because it's impossible to be so, which I think it might be. But it's also because most conservatives, and liberals, fall into the following category:

People who want to compel or incentivize other people to do certain things they like, and prohibit or incentivize other people from doing things they don't like.

We have two weak tents filled with people who want to move others to live as they think best. These are advocates, meddlers, busy-bodies, and many other things. What they are not is conservatives. Or, truly, liberals.

ETA: The gun control advocates in the press are routinely called Liberals. I think this is incorrect. Nobody interested in personal liberty would propose gun control. I'd say these people are Concerned Pragmatists. (I happen to fall into that group myself. I do not think I have any business telling anyone he can or cannot have a gun. However, I do think it just makes good sense, and is necessary, to allow reasonable background checks, and to try to limit the prevalence of mass-killing assault weapons.)

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Because it's a third rail. I can say that to you. You can say it to me. We can say it among each other all day long. But you can't say that in mixed company, or on a mic where it'll be broadcast online.

It's heresy to say what Kristol did in most of America.* Why?




_____
* See Obama, "God, guns and gays." See also Hillary, "basket of deplorables."