Is the left engaging in salami tactics? And what should we do about it?

[Chonogo]

My favorite part of this post is the way you're still slut shaming. "Not everyone who uses birth control is like those other sluts and whores!"

How you came to that conclusion I'm not even sure. I'm slut shaming because my wife was in the same situation as a perceived slut(Fluke) by Limbaugh?

I was trying to draw equivalence to Swazi not understanding how birth control works.

---------- Post added 2013-01-11 at 01:10 AM ----------

I'm aware. It is hard to condense the reasons and history of the civil war into a small statement while I'm arguing with people about what the Second Amendment actually means in another thread.

Pretty much, the rich white men in the south realized that they didn't have the power to control their own destinies, and so they decided to secede and make their own southern country where they could. Slavery was a major issue where the north and the south disagreed, and it was instrumental in proving (as was Lincolns election) that the South didn't have the power to dictate terms, or even bargain on an even basis, with the north any longer. Power was the crux of the matter, as it so often is, regardless in the reasons wrapped around it.

Agreed. I wasn't trying to contradict your post, but moreso add some more context to it. I certainly wasn't accusing you of being a "it wasn't about slavery!" kind of guy.

---------- Post added 2013-01-11 at 01:14 AM ----------

This is a strong possibility, no doubt. Most wars are started in a similar way. The catalyst usually isn't slavery, but somebody is upset because they money isn't moving the way it should. But I would point out the great numbers that the confederacy was able to rally to it's cause, and the fervor with which the confederate armies fought. Now again, these were mostly poor farm boys. And they were pissed as all hell at the government. Assuming your theory is correct, this means that whatever the North was doing to shut down those wealthy plantation owners, it was destroying the quality of life for everyone around them. That shows a callous disregard for the people of that region. They weren't just targeting wealthy businessmen; they were demolishing entire economies. The cause was noble, don't get me wrong. But it seems somewhat akin to burning down a village to find a single thief. There are better ways to do it that will hurt less people. Can you kind of see where I'm coming from here?

Certainly do see what you mean. Honestly, we're on the same page once you replied and "revised" your original statement in a way that I agree with. The post I made that you replied to had been written before I saw your correction.

IMO, the tariffs were horrible. What Lincoln did with habeus corpus was horrible. But necessary. The stranglehold of the South on an entire race of people was so tight, it required something drastic, I think. Just looking at the decades after the Civil War, and how civil rights were still trampled on, gives us a good indication of the social structures of those times.

---------- Post added 2013-01-11 at 01:21 AM ----------

WHADAFOK? So you admire brave secessionists yet work for the oppressor? how the fuck does that work out?

I abhor racism, think that secession was wrong, disagree vehemently with the South's position back then, but somehow I find myself rooting for them in the war.

In terms of warfare and tactics, though. I certainly don't want the South to rise again, so to speak. But it's hard for me to look at them as anything but tragic characters in the American story. Misguided Americans, so to speak. But still Americans.

I firmly believe that if Lincoln wasn't assassinated, we would have been leaps and bounds ahead of where we are now today. His assassination allowed the leaders after him to push a punishment strategy for the South. He wanted to invite them back with open arms.

Think of it this way - just think if after WW2 we just left Germany to its own devices after destroying their production, economy, lives, infrastructure. Or adopted a punishment strategy like was done after WW1. It would've only incited anger and resentment, and possibly another Hitler in another 20-30 years. Instead, we adopted the Marshall plan, and rebuilt the country.

[Grizzly Willy]

you're just calling Hitler a loon because he says what he believes. liberals love to attack people for basic freedom of speech

The bulk of my experience hearing the word "loon" has been from Bill O'Reilly calling other people "loons." It's not just liberals.

[smrund]

The Left only engages in turkey tactics.

Salami tactics...plz.

[Wells]

The Left only engages in locally grown tofu tactics.

Fixed that for you

[obdigore]

The Left only engages in turkey tactics.

Salami tactics...plz.

I prefer cold cut tactics with dark mustard and tomato. Maybe some pepperjack... if I could get bleu cheese on a cold cut...mmmmmm

[Raybourne]

But me being an American and saying what I did, it shouldn't be too difficult to understand what I mean. If some random person from Europe used the word liberal, I'd surmise they were using it in terms they're accustomed to.

Well it's hard to tell who's a relativist on definitions of words and who's not

[smrund]

I prefer cold cut tactics with dark mustard and tomato. Maybe some pepperjack... if I could get bleu cheese on a cold cut...mmmmmm

Cold cuts, ewww. Bologna isn't even a real food. But bleu cheese, yeah that'll make everything better, mmmmmm....

[obdigore]

Cold cuts, ewww. Bologna isn't even a real food. But bleu cheese, yeah that'll make everything better, mmmmmm....

Cold Cuts out here are Salami, Ham, and Turkey.

[Chrysia]

I know I'm jumping in mid-convo, but I simply love people who point out that Democrats were the party that supported slavery during the Civil War, all without realizing that the two parties performed a huge switch in which they basically traded places sometime in the early 20th century.

That Republican you love so much, Lincoln? Yeah, he believed in big government, public welfare, and monstrous taxes on the rich. You think anybody has it bad now? Try being a rich white man in the South when the "Republicans" were in charge back then.

Lincoln was a Republican of his time, but would be a Democrat of today.

[smrund]

Cold Cuts out here are Salami, Ham, and Turkey.

Ah, the ones where I am generally have ham, salami and bologna.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I prefer Peanut butter and Jelly tactics myself. But seriously people should stop defining themselves via political parties.

[Helwet]

Swasi spring best troll EU

Infracted

[Bakis]

If you are worried that you might have sex every day, then you might have other problems.

We can add birth control to the list of things you are utterly clueless about.
You dont take a pill each day cos you might or might not have sex it is how the medicine works, you take it daily. It is not a freaking Asperin.
Birth control pills HAS to be taken daily if we exclude the 'day after pills' which also pump the body so full of hormones that it is not adviced to use more than once a month.

[Chonogo]

I know I'm jumping in mid-convo, but I simply love people who point out that Democrats were the party that supported slavery during the Civil War, all without realizing that the two parties performed a huge switch in which they basically traded places sometime in the early 20th century.

That Republican you love so much, Lincoln? Yeah, he believed in big government, public welfare, and monstrous taxes on the rich. You think anybody has it bad now? Try being a rich white man in the South when the "Republicans" were in charge back then.

Lincoln was a Republican of his time, but would be a Democrat of today.

Probably directed at me, but I included those points to avoid the liberal/conservative jargon. My inclusion of the party names were simply to avoid confusion, and to keep things in context of that period of time.

Trust me, I'm no Democrat, but the Republican party right now scares me.

[Aurondarklord]

Okay, before I give my take I should probably disclose my own politics up front so if people engage in ad hominem at least they do it right.

I consider myself a centrist or "compassionate conservative", but modern republicans would probably think of me as a liberal and I tend to vote for democrats these days because current republican candidates are often so far right they scare the hell out of me.

Going back to the original question of whether the left is engaging in salami tactics...I think it's a ridiculous conspiracy theory to believe the left somehow CREATED the current factional strife within the Republican party, by way of infiltrators and some grand media conspiracy or something. I think the right did that to itself, but the left is taking full advantage, which is just smart political strategy. Can you call it salami tactics if the other side didn't CREATE the divide? I dunno, but that's what I think is happening.

As for what I think the Republican party should do about it, I think the solution is for the right to work with the left to get some serious campaign finance reform done, maybe going so far as a constitutional amendment for public funding of elections. I think that would ultimately help everybody, left or right, and bring some sanity back to our process of government. I believe this because I believe the current state of campaign fund raising and lobbying is ultimately responsible for not only the fractures on the right, but the majority of our "broken government" problems.

I think ultimately the Republican Party is split between three groups. I know that's an extreme simplification, but I'm talking broad strokes here. Those three groups are the establishment, the corporatists, and the fanatics (and I don't call them fanatics to slam the right, god knows the democratic party has its share of fanatic too). The establishment is basically the mainstream power structure and the majority of center-right republican voting Americans, what wants to be, and in most times would be, the moderate right. What keeps them from being that is that they're being dragged to the far right by the other two groups.

The fanatics are obvious, they're a mix of often but not always overlapping forms of extremism, the minarchists who believe there should be NO federal role in commerce or daily life and we should go back to a circa 1800 model of federal powers, the conspiracy theorists who think the government is about to steal their guns and put them in FEMA internment camps, or that Barack Obama is a foreign born manchurian candidate controlled by the secret UN one-world government or the global islamic caliphate, and of course the religious right who think Jesus talks to Michele Bachmann and we need a constitutional anti-gay marriage amendment so God doesn't smite the country. These guys are scary, but they're not that dangerous on their own, because they're a vocal minority, and if left to their own devices, they wouldn't have the power or the voting bloc to force the establishment to listen to them.

The real danger, and the cause of the factional problems, I believe, comes from the corporatists, big companies who have latched onto and subverted conservative ideals for their own financial gain, largely by empowering and controlling the fanatics, to use them as a bludgeon by which to control the establishment, in addition to, of course, lobbying it by conventional means. They do this by essentially astroturfing groups like the tea party into prominence. The real trick is to make everything they want sound like it's not only supported by conservative principles, but that ALL conservative principles are tied together, and thus a violation of one is a violation of everything. For example, they don't want environmental regulations to prevent global warming, so they tell us not only that such regulations are an excess of federal power and a violation of the free market, but also that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by evil godless leftist scientists, that it's a capitulation to the UN that goes against our sovereignty, even that believing in global warming is against God because only God, and not man, can end the world. And thus they get the fiscal conservatives, the small government conservatives, the national security conservatives, the conspiracy theorists, and the religious right, all under one banner, fighting with wild abandon to protect the corporate bottom line, even when it's to their own detriment. And they do this successfully on all kinds of issues, by empowering vocal minorities and conflating different conservative ideals together into a mishmash of circular, and often self-contradictory logic, to enforce lockstep ideological purity within the party, and pull it further and further to the right.

[Adam Jensen]

you're just calling Hitler a loon because he says what he believes. liberals love to attack people for basic freedom of speech

Attacking what someone says is not attacking their freedom of speech. Us "liberals," contrary to conservative belief, value free speech. You can say what you want. But don't act with surprise when someone who disagrees with you argues against you.

Rush can continue to bloviate on the radio all he wants. We're not attacking that he has that right, we're attacking the idiotic things he says. He can keep saying them, and we can keep calling him out on his bullshit.

---------- Post added 2013-01-11 at 04:57 PM ----------

He's not that fat. He'd be a small moon, at most

That's no moon . . .

[Grizzly Willy]

Yeah, a lot of people I see calling Rush an idiot aren't calling for him to be taken off the air.

[Decklan]

There is a huge difference between calling someone an idiot for saying idiotic things, and calling for their censorship. On the contrary, I say we do everything we can to make sure more people listen to Rush, that way he can scare even more sensible "on the fence" people away from the lunacy on the right.

[Jackmoves]

Limbaugh is calling the pro-choice Republicans "RINOs"? Sorry Rush, I think you've got that backwards. We libertarians were the original owners of this party. We are the true Republicans. You and your ultra-religious moral tyrants can piss off. I'll stand up for my gun rights any day, but being pro-choice doesn't make you a leftist. It makes you a Republican. If anyone is a RINO, it's Limbaugh and his cronies.

h5 Kalyyn.

As an outsider I think the Republicans could probably have won the election had it not been for lunatics like Rush and his cronies. They ruin their own party and the chance to bring home the gold medal.

[Guilu]

As an outsider I think the Republicans could probably have won the election had it not been for lunatics like Rush and his cronies. They ruin their own party and the chance to bring home the gold medal.

Same deal here. It's an inherent problem of the two party system unfortunately; the people who are against abortion, against gun control of any sort, are not going to be heard if the republicans kick them out like they should. They will likely stop voting as well, and political apathy is enough of a problem.