RandFan said:
Hmmmm.... something tells me you would never consider voting Republican anyway. Have you ever considered voting Republican? Why?
I was a big Reagan fan when I was young. I think it was the strong anti-abortion rights movement that pushed me the other direction when I became voting age. Also, I met a lot of very poor debaters on the Republican side, and some very intelligent democrats (a lot of very dumb dems, too.)
I was a political moderate at my California university, I despised radicalism.
About this time, the Republican party started a fierce anti-gay push, and I had it up to here with them when Buchanan declared cultural war on the first night of the republican convention. The way the crowd booed and hissed after he sneered the words "Gay rights", I fumed.
I had a lot of gay friends and family. This was the era of AIDS and gay bashings. This was the era when the LAPD couldn't be counted on to patrol West Hollywood, and walking to your car wasn't safe, nor was it intended to be. I remember fear of harm walking down the sidewalk with a friend.
And to see the republican crowd hiss and boo and sneer the very idea of "gay rights," openly and unashamedly, I wanted to vomit.
So that's when they just about lost me for good. The republicans used to be about better ideas than that. Ronald Reagan stood up for gay rights as a governor, and the Log Cabin Republicans were born.
Republicans don't love the bill of rights or have contempt for those who do? Do you really believe this?
Not all. But when they do things like the Flag Burning Amendment, the School Prayer Amendment, the Anti-gay Marriage Amendment, etc... I move further from ever supporting them.
I do wonder, with crap like the Communications Decency Act if they've ever read any First Amendment law.
So, only the right would ever infringe on rights?
Sounds specious to me.
Your words, not mine. I never said "only the right".
To be fair, Republicans tend to be security and law enforcement minded. They favor victims rights whereas Democrats tend to favor the rights of the accused.
I think that is a fair phrasing. Although in political talking points on Crossfire it's usually phrased as "Democrats tend to favor the rights of the criminal". Which is why "innocent until proven guilty" seems to be antithema to the indefinate detention without charge or access to a lawyer era of Ashcroft.
You see the world with blinders and make judgments in a vacuum. You should read more than just left leaning propaganda. Being a bigot is poor way to go through life.
To paraphrase George Will:
If any Americans want to short-circuit complex discussions by recklessly imputing bigotry to those who differ with them, such Americans do not usually turn to the Republican choice in our two-party system.
I've just dropped the proverbial "assload" of instances where my outrage meter was pegged by some attempt to repeal or restrict the already established and expected constitutional rights of individuals by the Republican party.
Is my memory merely selective? Perhaps. What are the current constitutional amendments being floated by the Democrats? Perhaps they're just as bad, or worse. But I think they're nonexistant at the moment (maybe one person's got an old copy of the ERA they're pushing).
Any insight as to why it seems like I can pull a huge laundry-list of these bills and laws from memory, but I can't seem to recall very much other than gun control and voluntary industry labeling of record albums from the democrats?
Is it me? Or is there something about the Republican party that makes it the party of the Proposed Constutional Amendment?
