Boy, those family values people have no problem aborting their “babies” if they’re not perfect:
It’s not exactly a sign that the floodgates are opening, but the “family values” outfit called Public Advocate will hold a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court Wednesday morning to demand that George W. Bush withdraw his nomination of John G. Roberts.
The reason? Roberts’ pro bono work with gay rights activists in the mid-1990s.” […]
… The organization’s president, Eugene Delgaudio, criticized Dick Cheney last year after the vice president, in a discussion about gay marriage, said, “Freedom means freedom for everyone.” Delgaudio’s clever comeback then: “‘Freedom’ is not embracing perversion.” (Salon’s War Room)
Embracing perversion. That’s a new one.
I figured they would hang themselves on this one. Let’s watch it unfold as they start battling each other. If they turn against each other it will give us more opportunities in ’06.
Tee hee.
Oh, I caught a Roberts speech the other night on C-SPAN. It was from a few years ago. He’s boring, stiff, and slightly creepy. And he smacks his lips when he talks… that drives me nuts.
Sometimes the way you think really scares the crap out of me because it is exactly what I am thinking. This happens often here with you. He has one weird eye and skinny little lips and that smirk…CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPY.
I’m so glad you see the same creepiness. Gonzales gives me the creeps badly… that mouth… truly frightening person.
Those two haven’t got a sincere bone in their bodies.
There’s a phrase to ponder — it illicits such explict images. But, that IS what freedom means. Freedom for me means freedom for thee to be a completely disgusting nutter. As long as someone is not hurting anyone else, why should I care if they spend their days jacking off to porno movies and smokin’ crack.
Maybe it should read, “John Roberts is Being ABORTED” 🙂
Real “perversion” is allowing men and women and children to be killed over anything Bush “believes” in.
So, if people are free and with no restriction to follow their own paths, that is the equivalent of embracing perversion? The real perversion is what has been done to religion by these folks.
Yes, actually. In their eyes, at least. The reasons for this are pretty simple: in the social realm, they refuse to recognize the difference between permitting something and encouraging or requiring it. I have had moments where I’ve just stopped talking and stared in awe at one of these people as they told me, with an expression of absolute seriousness on their face, that a pro-choice stance was indeed the same thing as the Nazi government’s obligatory eugenics program because both lead to abortions happening. The distinction between personal choice and government coercion seems to be a foreign concept to them on “social” issues – which is doubly odd, as their economic philosophy relies upon it.
I think it’s just an expression of how illogical and – dare I say it? – perverse the modern conservative movement has become. It’s to the points where they have to tie themselves in knots to justify their beliefs… And think this is a good thing.
BINGO!
You nailed it.
They really don’t make any distinction between
Which is really, really odd. To them, there is a right way, and a wrong way — and the government’s job is to 100% support the right way, and criminalize the wrong way.
They want people fined and imprisoned for not living the lives they want everyone to live.
Exactly how is that American?
That’s Taliban. Applying Taliban tactics with the “right” ruleset does not make it right.
The Religious Right is neither.
It’s even stranger than that. They make no such distinction for social matters. To them, it’s the government’s job to enforce the right behaviour in the social realm. However, in the economic realm, their entire philosophy relies on the distinction. Specifically, they say that the government must allow certain things from businesses (environmentally friendly processes, say) and may even encourage them, but must not ever do anything that looks like requiring them.
If you apply their social philosophy to economics, you wind up with a centrally planned system, as businesses must be forcibly and thoroughly prevented from doing anything wrong.
The tired old cliches about Hitler/abortions/eugenics is factually wrong. These kind of people just make up this stuff cause it sounds good. Hitler in fact was against abortion-for all good Aryan women and it was a crime punishable by prison time. Experimenting on non German women(and men)was altogether different of course.
As for eugenics, our country itself had a fairly robust eugenics program sickeningly enough and I think didn’t really stop it until late 60’s or early 70’s?
Not that I think even mentioning this to the assholes who bring the whole Hitler crap up would believe any of those facts but you might try that some time..unless you’ve already done so.
Oh, I know they’re wrong. I think they are, however, historically accurate. Specifically, they’re referring to the Third Reich’s euthanization and abortion of “unfit” people – those with mental or physical handicaps, or who are too old and frail to take care of themselves, or who were simply the wrong race/religion. They claim that if the right to die and right to choice movements get what they want, it will be absolutely equivalent to Hitler’s actions in all ways, because the same types of people will be killed off. (IE, the old and frail will be euthanized, children with severe mental handicaps will be aborted, etc.)
There are holes in this claim big enough to fly a Death Star through, but the most obvious is the difference between allowing free choice and denying it. The Third Reich’s policies were evil not strictly speaking because of the methods they used, but because they were performed without the consent of the individuals in question. There’s a world of difference between allowing a frail individual to request that their life support be turned off and simply telling them that it will be turned off. And there’s a world of difference between allowing a woman to choose to abort her fetus, and telling her that it will be aborted.
In fact (and I have argued this to them – the effects are, needless to say, interesting) the pro-criminalization position is closer to the position of the Third Reich than the pro-choice position. The pro-choice position advocates leaving these decisions up to individuals. The pro-criminalization position and the Third Reich’s position both advocate giving control of this matter to the government – the difference between the two is quantitative (positive/negative) rather than qualitative (kind).
or some such cliche.
Roberts catching flak from the wingnuts. Cindy Sheehan showing the world what a chickenhawk Dim Son is. Universal disgust over Bolton at the U.N. Continuing dreadful and dismal news from all over Iraq. The continuing investigation into Plamegate and Rove and Libby and Cheney. Judy Miller in the clink, and Fitzgerald going after the senior types at the NYTimes. Occasional Repub congresscritters speaking out, for attribution, against Dear Leader’s ideas/policies/nominees.
Blowback.
Karma.
“‘Freedom’ is not embracing perversion.”
Whatever. Conservatives don’t believe in freedom to begin with, at least outside a very narrowly defined economic sense, and only for the benefit of an equally narrowly defined social class. “Freedom”, for a conservative, is the freedom to conform, to obey without question religious and secular leaders, and to be undisturbed by the spectral apparition of real freedom.
If one needed any more proof that the God of the conservatives does not exist, it is that they are not struck down by lightning from the heavens whenever one of their ilk mouths the word “freedom”.
The perplexing thing about conservatives is that they remain in this country at all. Granted, things are slowly becoming less free and therefore more conducive to raising their larvae, but there were already many nations more to their liking long before the liberals lost their nerve and stopped manning the barricades. It can’t be the money — there were atrociously rich industrial dictatorships before WW2 that didn’t embrace communism. Why? Why are they here? Is it that they do not believe the world will be safe for crypto-fascist neo-feudalism if so much as a single free country remains?
Sheesh. I wish the flag-waving “love it or leave it” crowd would, indeed, love it or leave it. American freedom has suffered enough at the hands of these conservative subversives. I am coming to wonder whether the liberal ethic of toleration makes sense when it is extended to the haters of freedom and democracy.
They haven’t left because, anywhere else, they couldn’t pull the shit they pull here. Anywhere else, THEY would be the foreigners, the under-class, the outsiders. Sure, they adopt that pose here for its political/PR advantages, but as has been pointed out, what it translates to is that their control is not absolutely 100%.
This is the only country in the world where they can take advantage of freedom to argue for its elimination. I was covering an anti-Clinton rally back just before the 2000 election (Okay, it was supposed to be pro-Bush but this is Texas and they were out of things to be pro-Bush about.) and the cop standing at the gate, a good guy and slightly to the liberal side of moderate, commented “Y’know, in the country they want to build, if they were to talk about the President the way they’re talking about the one in this country, I’d have had to imprison every last one of them….”
The next nominee will be worse. Far worse. Guaranteed. I’m sure the WH is highly displeased with this gay-rights issue. If Roberts is withdrawn, they’ll vet the next nominee all the way back to his or her preschool days to find someone so conservative they shit states’ rights.
This could actually go either way. These guys have two MOs. In the one you’re describing, they start slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun and proceed rightwards from there. In the other, they start far to the right of where they want to end up and proceed leftwards until they hit their goal. I could see them grabbing someone more conservative… Or going for someone a little less conservative (say, doesn’t have Roberts’ anti-environment credentials, but still has his anti-freedom credentials) to try and divide the opposition and unite their base.
Or going for someone a little less conservative (say, doesn’t have Roberts’ anti-environment credentials, but still has his anti-freedom credentials) to try and divide the opposition and unite their base.
I don’t expect them to do this because the few times they’ve gone that route they were unhappy with the result. Examples: Colin Powell, Paul O’Neill. I think that to the White House, Roberts probably is a compromise candidate.
I think the proper response to that goes something like this:
Excuse me, but I will not be lectured on what ‘perversion’ is by someone who condones this administration’s complicity if not active approval of acts such as attaching electrodes to prisoners’ genitals or sodomizing prisoners with household objects. Your moral and ethical principles are, quite frankly, deranged and dangerous, and there is no place for them in contemporary political discourse.
To which their response will be to call you a Communist and reach for a gun, baseball bat, or glass bottle. Women may reach for a vase, lamp, or hot casserole.
To which my response will be:
BRING IT ON!!!
(Sorry, couldn’t resist 🙂
Do not be confused by this. I am not discounting the possibility of a strategic rejection, by a group that ACTUALLY does not oppose Mr. Roberts, but is doing so for SHOW to “centerize” him.
Roberts is coming under more and more assault from the left, for supporting clinic bombers and for some issues involving his children (I don’t support the latter issue). So, what to do? Find a way to push him to the center, by questioning his credentials on the right. That’s what’s going on here, IMHO.
Dataguy, I think you’re right on the money. I think rove is certainly capable of doing this. As I commented in judybrowni’s diary on Roberts:
Bush actually might not mind a little opposition on the right, as he can use this as “proof” that he has selected a “moderate.” This will also provide cover for those of the right edge of the Democratic party to sit on their hands and allow Roberts to slide through: “He’s well qualified,” “He has no skeletons in his closet from our perspective,” “He’s probably the best we could hope for from Bush,” etc.