ThinkingBlue: Liberal or Conservative, are we really so different. YOU BET!

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LIBERAL AND A CONSERVATIVE are we so different... YOU BET!

I will continue my post of "A thoughtful request from a liberal to a conservative..." of October 5, 2006... with a response from snakelips. I hope no one will find this offensive, it is really just two people trying to explain the difference between two opposing ideologies that have materialized in today's America. My comments are in BLUE... I also, have found some political cartoons called
The Boiling Point, to help make this posting a little more interesting, please click on them to see the original size, easier to read... thanks Carolyn

By snakelips Yesterday at 1:34 am EDT
Wow, I go out of town for a couple of days, I jump in to check out dems.org and this is what I find! I wish I had more time to write, but I would like to comment a little.

It seems to me Carolyn that you are trying to pick a fight with me. I am not mean-spirited. I don't want to fight with you and one of the reasons I responded to Adam's original post was that he sounded calm and reasonable. I think we had an enjoyable worthwhile discussion. You seem to enjoy the nonproductive name calling angle and it doesn't really interest me. I didn't bother to read your cut and paste writings from other people. I'm sure they are very well thought out and interesting, but I more want to know what YOU think in your own words.

Perhaps, if you would have read the "cut and paste" articles you may have learned a little... I use that method because there are a hellava lot of people out there in this big world of ours who have educated themselves in certain subject matters and can say what I feel so much better than I. But NO you don't wish to enlighten yourself by reading "cut and paste" words of wisdom from other people... But don't feel too bad... your leader George W Bush doesn't wish to bother himself with other people's words either.

Speaking of your own words, I don't appreciate being called a bigot. As Yosemite Sam says, "Them's fightin' words!" But, like I said, I don't want to fight, I want to talk and learn, and maybe teach...to a few open-minded types (thanks, Adam).

Maybe, you in particular, may not be the full fledged
bigot but many upstanding conservatives are. But honestly now, if you see a person that may not look like you or share your world view... tell me that you don't think less of them... We are all bigots to a point... black, white, yellow, red, religious, non-religious, irrational or rational. Unfortunately it's par for the course, part of our evolutionary trip through existence. It just is a matter of how severely we are damaged by this human phenomenon and how hard we fight not to allow it to take over our being.

To clarify my thoughts on the "America Dream", of course even if you work your fingers to the bone you may not succeed, but you absolutely will not and SHOULD not if you don't even lift a finger.

I really had to laugh at your "YOU MAY NOT SUCCEED"... look at the statistics man, the percentage of successes are miniscule... When I was a kid it took ONE PAYCHECK to raise a family... now two wages are not enough... e-nof said!

I am not conditioned in my thinking. I think and struggle about this and as I wrote in my reply to Adam's post I sometimes have to make a desision that is difficult and may not make everyone involved happy. I talk to a lot of different people and find that I constantly have to re-evaluate my position. I am still coming up a conservative though.

Well that is sad for you to constantly come up conservative. I am so glad my "conditioning" tilted towards liberal... I don't know why that is, oh here's an idea, maybe it's because I walked a mile in a liberals shoes... I was raised in a family with limited funds... so you see I've been there and done that. I know what it feels like to not have enough food to eat or enough fuel to heat your home. I know what it feels like to be shunned because your clothes are wrinkled and worn-out. I know what it feels like to pretend you are not hungry and only eat half of your ten cent sandwich at school so maybe, just maybe no one will suspect that you are poorer than a church mouse, because in a conservative world, this is something to be ashamed of...

click here if you want to know one of the meanings of
"poorer than a church mouse"... And I know what it's like to come home from school and see a big SHERIFF'S notice hanging on the door of your rented house because your mother ran out of money before the rent was paid. We lived on a fixed social security income (that my mother was getting THANKS TO A LIBERAL PRESIDENT) and received a check once a month due to my father's death, he left Mom with six kids to raise. I guess you might have labeled her lazy, since she could not work outside the home and was part of a government entitlement program.
There are many Liberals who did not walk in my shoes, it doesn't take experience to make someone empathetic. A liberal doesn't exclude, like conservatives, liberals believe we are ALL in the same boat, with similar problems. Not so for a conservative, REMEMBER KATRINA... and Mama Bush's statement. Forgive me for this "cut and paste" but...HERE'S THE ACTUAL QUOTE:“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this [she chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.” Now, I'm sure she didn't mean anything vicious by it, but that’s kind of the point. Anybody who says that the flood is actually working out well for the poor in New Orleans because it allowed them to come to Houston doesn’t have any appreciation for what the working poor goes through in our country. From this site:
donklephant.com

Please don't label me as thinking that all the poor are lazy and all dems are commies. That's a broad statement that of course isn't true. I want to show the poor where the lake is and teach them to fish, not give them one of my fish every time they are hungry. I'll help them on the way, but if they continue to refuse to fish, well.... I think the level of help in that journey is the real issue when talking about the poor. It's a matter of finding the balancing point. In my view I see libs as wanting total wealth redistribution - take it all from those who have it and give it to those who don't. I imagine your view of conservatives is that we don't want to give a single penny. Well, of course, neither is true. Both sides want to help their fellow man. We just have to figure out how much.

That is the difference between you and me, you always assume, there is a lake nearby stocked with fish. There are generational poor and poverty is not their fault, it's kind of a miserable way of life for them... Oh, we have come a long way thanks to the help of liberals who took the chance of losing their power by supporting the civil rights movements... But we have a long way to go, and the way I see it... the conservatives fight tooth and nail to stop those advancements and turn back the clock... They refuse to see the big picture and just pour money into building more prisons.

Every child should be important in our school system but they are not. The cracks these children fall through are big and wide. If they don't make the grade the system just looks the other way and they grow up to live their lives with almost no resources... In a country as rich as ours, we should treat each and every child like he is a winner no matter how laborious this task may be. In the long run, we would have a society with hardly no crime and a productive one to boot and maybe you would see more happy faces with smiles of kindness instead of grimaces of unfulfilled emptiness.

I don't know what your second ammendment rant meant. You didn't really say anything other than it was a myth. If you are interested in more of my opinions, I have talked about that in other posts.

There again, if you would have read the "cut and paste" portions you would not need to ask me about my so called RANT. I cried a million tears watching the killing spree unfold on that Amish farm in Pennsylvania. All those little children murdered with LEGAL WEAPONS. They (the Amish) may forgive BUT I DON'T. If the rifle and gun lobbies weren't so "successful" in their quest to allow weapons to be bought and sold like so many pieces of candy... Those little ones might still
be alive. I don't blame the crazy crackpot who pulled the trigger, I blame the NRA!!!

I thought your reference to the "liberal media" was kind of funny. If you believe in the capitalist idea of supply and demand, it would seem to suggest that there is a lot of demand out there for the more conservative viewpoint. I've listened to Air America to try to learn more, but after a while, the non-productive name calling seems to grab my attention more than any logical
discussions, so I turn it off. But, I'm glad it's there. (Is it still?) Maybe there's not much demand...

WHAT A JOKE... there is not a demand for the liberal point of view...huh?? There is only one side being offered and presented... The capitalist idea has been confiscated by BIG CORPORATIONS who want to narrow down our newspapers, TV shows and media as a whole into one BIG CONGLOMERATE controlled by their one sided ideas... IDEAS really isn't the right word PROPAGANDA is more like it, they want control of the masses so they can manipulate them for the sake of greedy profits... If that isn't fascism, I don't know what is.

I LOVE the reading of snakelips as a psuedonym! It's just a nickname my parents gave me in high school cause I was always "snaking" around with my girlfriend after school. It's just a good screen name, nothing more. LOL I hope, Carolyn, that we can discuss this more. If we really want to make America a better place we have to start talking substance.

I do want to make America better but I have no power, except for my vote and THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS will get that little itty bitty power... The money people can do more but with attitudes like yours "THE WHY SHOULD WE "THE HAVES" SHARE WITH THOSE "HAVENOTS" In other words, MY WORDS, I believe this is how the wealthy would look at the redistribution of their wealth..."I am not worried about America because my part of town is beautiful with green grass that is taken care of by a havenot... I have clear blue clean lakes stocked with fish and have hired many havenots to keep it that way...and I have a big mansion of a house with lot's of servents(havenots) to clean and care for if. Therefore, I live in a beautiful place, so why worry about America, I keep many havenots employed...?"

Just be careful that the HAVES don't need to cross the street for some reason (maybe to find some havenots to work in their factories for as little money as possible... more profits that way...) They may then, get a whiff of the impoverished ghettos on the unbeautiful side of town.

I know I am generalizing but since the Republicans have been in office the ranks of the poor have grown. More and more middle class people have fallen into poverty because of piddling wages. And if the conservative corporations continue to control all the power in our government, we will fast become a two class America with only a handful at the top and many slaves at the bottom for the "top ones" to take advantage of.

No I don't want to fight with you, but I know there is NO WAY that I can change your mind. You are conditioned, mi amigo, just like the rest of us. For you and your conservative friends to see this world without rose colored glasses it would take a catastrophic event... like perhaps, a global warming that dries up your lake leaving it now, stocked with dead fish.

Happy to live in America where one can express dissent and not have a contract put out on one's head... that is for now, anyway. Carolyn

PS: A friend of mine, read my post of the other day and asked me WHAT'S THE POINT, ENLIGHTEN ME. I will tell her there is no need to enlighten her, she has got it right, there really is no point, just a so called "rant" from me to vent some of the anger and sadness I feel living in this NEO-CONSERVATIVE America of today, with all its distress.

One last conservative action in pictures...

UPDATE: I haven't checked my Democrat.org blog for awhile so I missed the snakelips reply to my post of LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE...
It's the same ole, same ole... I think I will tell this conservative that there is no way he will ever take off his rose colored glasses and look at the world as it really is... He might just SCREAM at such a site, so he should keep em on and just go on his merry delusional way... Carolyn

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by snakelips Oct 15th 2006 at 9:46 pm EDT
Hi Carolyn,Sorry I've not written in a while. Let's continue our discussion.

You're right. I should have read some more of your cut and pastes, so I did. There are some valid points that I could would like to dig into more deeply, but as a whole, I mostly disagreed with a lot of it. Please remember, just because I don't agree doesn't mean I'm ignorant of your message. I think that probably holds true for Geo. Bush as well. I assume you are not an angry teenager and understand the difference between "not listening" and "not agreeing". Try to pursuade me that your ideas are better than mine. I'm listening.

Regarding bigots, I had to look up a dictionary definition of the word to make sure that we are talking about the same thing. According to Wikipedia: A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from their own. I am certainly not a bigot in any way. I take people as they come. Just like everyone though, the more I come in contact with them, the more I form an opinion about them. I am very tolerant of other opinions. I welcome them! It's much more interesting talking to those with differing opinions than robots who just repeat back what they think I want to hear.

I am concerned about your prejudices and bigotry though. You assume later in your post that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and wanted for nothing. You don't seem to want to accept and understand my opinion on things. NEVER MIND ALL THAT! I don't want to get into name calling. Let's get back to a discussion on issues.

Ok, so what are you saying when you say that now two wages are not enough to raise a family and the chances of "success" are miniscule. Should we just give up? Should government raise the minimum wage? If so, how much should it be? How about $10...well, why not $30? Hell, why not $300 an hour. That would be great! But who pays for that? Do you think money just magically appears in corporations' coffers? If they had to pay $300 an hour minimum wage, don't you think they'd pass that on to the consumers? And who are those consumers? Why, gee, it's the people they are paying $300 an hour. Now that money doesn't seem like as much. Like I said before, it's all a balancing act. If we could start with as much fairness as possible and rely on people's natural ablilities to succeed or fail, then that's as close as we can hope to be to utopia.

I'm sorry your father died. I have a lot of empathy for your predicament growing up and your family was certainly a worthy recipient for social aid. I don't want to take that away. I want to stop cheats of the system who put a bad taste in the mouths of those funding it. My only question about your family and mother would be: did you grow up on farm? I ask that because I'm curious why you had 5 siblings. If on a farm I could see you would need the labor. Otherwise, it seems a bit irresponsible to have so many kids with no life insurance to provide for them if something catastrophic happened like it did. This may shock you, but I shouldn't have to pay for your family's lack of planning. It's not about bigotry, it's about responsiblilty. Before your head explodes, think calmly about what I've said. I don't want to NOT help people, I just don't want to be taken advantage of. I want people to be responsible for themselves first. If they can't I want to help. If they refuse to, than that's a different story.

Regarding the second ammendment, I read what you pasted, and although that link quoted a lot of case law supporting armed citizens only in relation to a militia, I would bet that there are other cases to the contrary. Regardless of the case law, I am arguing the idea. I believe the second ammendment gives us our last and final guarantee of the remainder of our rights. Without the threat of an armed citizenry, the government would have no fears in abolishing all of our rights as they saw fit. As far as the Amish tragedy, the gun was not the important part of the story. He could have just as easily slashed their throats with a knife. It's horrible and tragic and I'm a little shocked you are blaming the NRA. You might as well blame the Chinese for inventing gun powder.

Well, that's all the time I have to write right now...I'll continue later. Hopefully you're still interested in talking.Thanks, snakelips

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