It Is The Veteran;

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher,
who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the VETERAN, not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the VETERAN, not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer,
who has given us freedom to assemble. !
It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the VETERAN, not the politician,
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the VETERAN, who salutes the Flag,

It is the veteran who serves under the Flag,

It is the veteran who dies for his/her country,

ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM O LORD,
AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.

And I am proud of each and everyone of them!:thumb:

 

Veterans deserve enormous credit. But I think you understate the importance of preachers, poets, reporters, organizers, lawyers and politicians. If we had all veterans, and none of the others, this nation would never have become or remained a democratic republic. Not all of the founding fathers or great political thinkers were veterans. It takes many differnt skills to ensure liberty.

 

Yes, but many preachers, poets, reporters, organizers, lawyers and politicians are now working to ruin our country.

 

Are you Moen by chance under a different e-mail address?

Anyway I heard reporters often state that the story was bigger then their nationaliity
and national security is not their issue, the story is.
So how is that for patroitism. What ever happened to the logic,"Loose Lips Sink Ships"

 

Could be, they do agree with each other a lot , but I doubt it because Moen is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, and Cloud seems to be a constitutionalist(meaning liberals don't follow the constitution of their own country).

Sadly, "Loose Lips Sink Ships" is a throwback to the time when most reporters and politicians were patriotic citizens, not constant law-breakers.

 

Thank you Andy! A left-handed compliment is still a compliment.

 

Moen, you seem to be left but not far left. So we cool on my end for total agreement of a nation would mean a nation of non-thinkers.
I am friends with liberals, moderates, and conservatives.
The only people I wish not to deal with socially are the far left and the far right which in my book are the one and the same.

 

You mean people like Midas?

 

Midas is no where near the far right.
I can not speak for him but based upon his posts I have the view point that,
he believes in freedom of religion, women's rights, freedom of the press, etc.
things you would think liberals would also want, yet when he points out that Islam is at war with these noble ideas and is killing to end them, people look at him as being the bad guy.

After all:
How can we pick on one billion and two hundred million people who control the majority of oil weath.
How can we pick on a people that pray for our deaths,
How can we pick on a people who are actively at war with us and have been at war with the world since the inception of the religion.
How can we pick on people who blow each other, Shia and Sunni, up because of slight differences and zero toleration.
etc...
Why is it that those who point out the truth are called bullies,bigots,brain dead.
When all they wish to do is defend good vs evil.

Go figure.

 

I don't know what your criteria is for determining whether someone is far right or far left but I have come to the conclusion that your criteria is not my criteria. Extreme views that advocate draconian solutions are a pretty clear signal to me that someone is far right or far left. Is it possible that some folks out there have no idea that they are on the fringes and think of themselves as centrists because they erroneously believe a majority of others believe as they do so they must be in the center? Hum?

 

Moen,

Andy is using 20th century criteria that don't really fit today's political landscape [it may have had some validity in the 1980s]. Also, it isn't really proper to use the word "extreme" in describing either the left or right. The word implies that a value judgement has already been made about political ideologies that can and should be explained in more neutral and objective terms if someone wants to have any intelligent discourse about them and their relative merits. Most of what is called "far anything" is neither left nor right in most cases. If someone thinks they are left, they call it right, and vice versa. If they think they are just plain old common sense centrists, they need to demonize both simultaneously by saying they are basically the same. What it boils down to is an attempt to discredit any thought that doesn't fit with a person's personal ideology without having to come up with reasons. It's easier to use labels and just attack what is not understood. It's easier than thinking.

 

:rolling: :rolling: :rolling: whoa:rolling:

 

I guess being a fiscal (that means being accountable) conservative who is strong on national defense supporting the defeat of islamic radicals is "far right"...fine with me!

Big differance is that many people think people on the far right are only "bible thumpers" and part of the "new-vast-right-wing-Christian-coalition". Me...I could care less who you pray to. BTW...meetings of the "far right" are held every Tuesday behind your local Post Office. The last Tuesday of the month is "gun" night where we all show off our hardware. :whistle:

BUT...when your religion starts infringing on MY rights and MY well being (i.e., islam's quest for world domination), then I will support our defense efforts and take you task.

At least the vast majority of our veterns understand these basic principles. It is pretty much the purpose of our federal government which is to protect and defend these United States, NOT to hand out entitlements for votes.

 

Midas, this is a good example of how labels break down. Fiscal accountability [presuming you mean something along the lines of balancing the budget] combined with support for an interventionist policy intent on ensuring that radical islamic elements do not dominate the Middle East is not "conservative" by any traditional definition of the term. This doesn't make you a bad person, and doesn't make your policy preferences wrong. It just doesn't label it properly. You are closer to Jack Kennedy than Barry Goldwater. But this is why the labels don't work. Nobody defines them consistently or uses them correctly.

 

I understand your point of view Cloudy even while disagreeing with it. Of course there are extreme points of view on either side of the political spectrum. It isn't so much an issue of labeling as it is identification of a point of view that is so outside of the mainstream as to be extreme. People like abortion clinic bombers, eco-terrorists, and the like certainly qualify as extreme political views. I do agree that the term is used as a catch-all to label anyone with an opposite point of view but that doesn't make its legitimate use a value judgment.
Labels are a way for some people to see other people as they already believe them to be regardless of how they really are. Midas is the master at using this type of perception in my opinion. That and globalizing everything to be either black or white with no middle ground. I believe that people that are unable to see the middle ground or gray area are definitely prime candidates for extreme view points. It's like trying to debate someone with absolute values. It’s a useless exercise when there is no chance for movement on one side of the argument. Absolute values make relatively complicated choices much easier because they don’t require the individual to think beyond a simple set of value judgments. Once someone has been firmly placed on one side of a moral issue that person is a prime target for labels, generalizations, and stereotypes. This happens continuously in this forum and cheapens the debate we could be having and reduces the conversation to ideological camps and even threats of violence in some cases.
Only a handful of people here qualify as being truly extreme but they are often enough to throw the dialog into a death spiral and take the debate so far off topic as to be meaningless. Take a look at the last post in most of the heated arguments and it is clear that the posters just get tired of hearing the same points over and over. The conversation usually grinds to a halt under the weight of it’s own irrelevance and lack of cohesiveness.

 

Cloudsweeper, you speak of labels and if I am reading you correctly you are stating that labels don't fit anymore. I am not going to agree or disagree with that, I am just confused with where you are coming from for I thought you stated that you are from the far right in another post.

All
I should have stated with my response to what I think Midas stands for is that it seems as if we both seem to be on the same page on many issues so in retrospect if I seem to be defending him I am actually defending my viewpoints as well.
Of course the degrees may vary but we both pretty much see a world in great peril.

After all we now have a muslim nation making what seems to be daily threats to destroy another nation with nuclear bombs yet the UN and the democrat leadership is slient about it.
Even if they do not care about Israel or the Jewish people and christian heritage shouldn't they at least care about trying to prevent a nuclear world war III.

 

Honestly, you're not as extreme as Midas but you certainly live in the same neighborhood. As an aside, you are much more conservative and less of a centrist than you perceive yourself to be.

 

Andy, you are correct that I used the label far right for myself, which I shouldn't have in that context. That was before I had a full understanding that nobody here really had a clear or common understanding of the political spectrum. So I withdraw the comment. It doesn't really matter.

I don't really see the world as being in great peril. Maybe that is a product of growing up in an age where tens of thousands of nuclear warheads were pointed at me, and participating in many civil defense drills as a child. I recall days when people were warned to stay indoors as radioactive clouds from above ground nuclear tests drifted by. I remember the days when there were bans on milk sales because radiation got into the product through consumption of fallout covered grass by milk cows. The Cuban Missle Crisis was infinitely more dangerous than some guy in Iran holding up a couple of grams of 5% yellowcake. So things are pretty peaceful today compared to most of my life. Except for the few instances where we go looking for trouble, things are better than they have ever been. If Iran and Israel want to threaten each other, I guess they both have a problem. We don't, unless we choose to. There isn't going to be a nuclear World War III without US participation, so I say the noninterventionist route is the way to go.

 

I think we all can agree on one label for every single one of us: human being(except maybe danr )