Republicans..The real allies of African Americans

[Dragon]

Well, it's no problem then because the Patriot Act does not do that.

You will not find universal agreement on that statement.

The point, however, is that whether the Patriot Act violates due process and civil liberties, liberals don't approve of doing so, and thus liberals often approve of limitation of government. The specifics about the Patriot Act are illustrative of this point, serve no other purpose here, and are not worth going into in detail in the context of this thread.

 

[rightwinger]

So of all the democrats in the House and Senate who voted (some more than once) for the Patriot Act, none of them are liberal because of that vote on that one issue? Is that your position? Is this like the "a terrorist cannot really be a Muslim" argument?

Or is it your position that a liberal cannot be concerned with national security?

The Dems who voted for the Patriot act were spineless pussies. In Post 9-11 America, they did not want to be labeled "unpatriotic".

Or maybe in post-9/11 America even they realized their responsibility to uphold the oath they had taken when sworn into office.

They swore to uphold the Constitution. The Patriot act is a travesty of a Constitutional violation

 

[Unkotare]

[

You will not find universal agreement on that statement..

Or any other statement.

 

[Unkotare]

[

The point, however, is that whether the Patriot Act violates due process and civil liberties, liberals don't approve of doing so, and thus liberals often approve of limitation of government. The specifics about the Patriot Act are illustrative of this point, serve no other purpose here, and are not worth going into in detail in the context of this thread.

Conservatives do not "approve" of violations of due process or civil liberties either, and you don't want to go into details because you are wrong.

 

[Unkotare]

[The Patriot act is a travesty of a Constitutional violation

No, it is not and all your emoting will not make it so.

 

[Dragon]

Conservatives do not "approve" of violations of due process or civil liberties either

Often untrue. There are many historical instances of conservatives being willing to violate those principles in the name of national security or law enforcement. Start with the Alien and Sedition Act passed during the Adams administration, and go on through Jim Crow. To the extent that conservatives do support these rights, it's because liberals won the debate on the subject in the past, and as often happens (e.g. opposition to slavery) what was once a liberal cause has been adopted by conservatives as well.

and you don't want to go into details because you are wrong.

I don't want to go into details because I don't want to be diverted into a long debate on a nit-picky side issue, which is of course the entire reason you are talking about it. As it doesn't matter a fig whether I am right or wrong about this specific unimportant detail, I will let you have the last word on the subject, and so defeat your real agenda.

 

[rightwinger]

[The Patriot act is a travesty of a Constitutional violation

No, it is not and all your emoting will not make it so.

Then why did they have to lie and come up with a bogus name like Patriot Act to mask it's constitutional violations?

It is "Patriotic" to give up your constitutional rights

 

[Unkotare]

Conservatives do not "approve" of violations of due process or civil liberties either

Often untrue. There are many historical instances of conservatives being willing to violate those principles in the name of national security or law enforcement. .

Here we see as your position continues to unravel you become more and more generalized. The uselessly broad "many historical instances" could, of course, be applied to liberals as well as conservatives who are actually governing.

All of which drives you back to the "a terrorist can't be a Muslim" fallacy.

 

[Unkotare]

[The Patriot act is a travesty of a Constitutional violation

No, it is not and all your emoting will not make it so.

Then why did they have to lie and come up with a bogus name like Patriot Act to mask it's constitutional violations?

It is "Patriotic" to give up your constitutional rights

The Patriot Act does not violate the Constitution, no matter how hard you try to make yourself cry on cue.

 

[Unkotare]

[

I don't want to go into details because I don't want to be diverted into a long debate on a nit-picky side issue.

= you know you are wrong.

 

[Dragon]

Here we see as your position continues to unravel you become more and more generalized. The uselessly broad "many historical instances" could, of course, be applied to liberals as well as conservatives who are actually governing.

I gave you some specific historical instances (the Alien and Sedition Act, Jim Crow), so your "uselessly broad" assertion is disingenuous (which is a fancy word for "big whopper"). I could add the McCarthy-era anti-communist witch-hunts:

House Un-American Activities Committee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Or I could add the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, which was almost surely unconstitutional and which was promoted by conservatives and opposed by liberals (FDR himself, no liberal but no conservative either, straddled the fence).

Or we could talk about slavery itself if you like, opposed by liberals even when they personally practiced it (e.g. Jefferson) and supported by conservatives as a matter of law even when they personally opposed it (e.g. Adams).

It is not so simple a matter, of course, as to say that all conservatives opposed civil liberties all the time; this is a nation founded on liberal principles and many of those principles have become part of the national mythos and are upheld by everyone. What I do say is that when you find civil liberties being compromised, you will find conservatives at the forefront of the effort to do so and liberals in opposition. To some extent this is a matter of definition, but those who are "conservative" on this issue will also tend to be conservative on other issues, too.

Now, may I ask what this has to do with the history of the Republican Party? Is this entire discussion merely an effort by you to derail the thread?

 

[Unkotare]

I could add the McCarthy-era anti-communist witch-hunts:

You could, but that would be a bad idea since it turns out there actually were quite a number of Soviet-sponsored communist infiltrators at the time.

 

[Unkotare]

Or I could add the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, which was almost surely unconstitutional

Ah, you finally realized you had overlooked that when you made your first ill-considered generalization, eh? And exactly as predicted you were forced to try and portray FDR (of all people) as 'not really a liberal,' to try and salvage the few remaining shreds of your argument. Just as I pointed out, you are left with nothing but the "a Muslim can't be a terrorist" fallacy.















p.s. "almost" surely? wtf?

 

[Dragon]

You could, but that would be a bad idea since it turns out there actually were quite a number of Soviet-sponsored communist infiltrators at the time.

So what you are saying is not that the violations of civil liberties by HUAC and other parts of the Red Scare didn't happen, but that they were justified.

This is more or less supporting my point, assuming you call yourself a conservative.

You still have not answered what any of this has to do with the history of the GOP.

 

[Dragon]

Ah, you finally realized you had overlooked that when you made your first ill-considered generalization, eh? And exactly as predicted you were forced to try and portray FDR (of all people) as 'not really a liberal,' to try and salvage the few remaining shreds of your argument. Just as I pointed out, you are left with nothing but the "a Muslim can't be a terrorist" fallacy.

First of all, I didn't "overlook" that incident, I merely didn't list it, just as I didn't list a lot of other incidents in which civil liberties have been compromised. I neither intended nor pretended to give a comprehensive listing.

Secondly, there are many reasons not to consider Roosevelt very liberal. Years before Pearl Harbor, he was very slow to support the rights of labor unions, preferring a paternalistic approach. The First New Deal was very capital-friendly and amounted to Hoover Term 2. (I wouldn't consider Hoover a conservative, either, by the way.) He resisted through almost his entire time in office the Keynesian argument -- proven true by the war spending -- that massive federal investment was needed to jump-start the economy.

I realize that conservatives like to present FDR as an icon of liberalism or even a socialist, and some liberals present him as some kind of saint, but I'm talking about the real historical Roosevelt now, not the myth, either black or white.

And you still haven't said why any of this has anything to do with the history of the GOP.

p.s. "almost" surely? wtf?

Well, I think it was, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. It's authoritative, I'm not, so even though I think the court was wrong I can only be "almost" sure.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Dragon and Right Winger have pulled Unkotare's arguments to pieces, but Unkotare is as stubbornly immoral as JRK or Jroc when proven wrong: all three stand as if they were a pitcher on the mound having just watched their best pitch get wacked over the center field fence. Then dance around yelling, "I just struck the bastard out!"

They are either simply ignorant, or mentally feeble, or malignatly motivated, or all three.

 

[daveman]

Often untrue. There are many historical instances of conservatives being willing to violate those principles in the name of national security or law enforcement. Start with the Alien and Sedition Act passed during the Adams administration, and go on through Jim Crow. To the extent that conservatives do support these rights, it's because liberals won the debate on the subject in the past, and as often happens (e.g. opposition to slavery) what was once a liberal cause has been adopted by conservatives as well.

Who put Japanese-Americans into internment camps?

 

[daveman]

Or I could add the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, which was almost surely unconstitutional and which was promoted by conservatives and opposed by liberals (FDR himself, no liberal but no conservative either, straddled the fence).

FDR didn't oppose it. He ordered it.

Stop trying to rewrite history.

 

[daveman]

Dragon and Right Winger have pulled Unkotare's arguments to pieces, but Unkotare is as stubbornly immoral as JRK or Jroc when proven wrong: all three stand as if they were a pitcher on the mound having just watched their best pitch get wacked over the center field fence. Then dance around yelling, "I just struck the bastard out!"

They are either simply ignorant, or mentally feeble, or malignatly motivated, or all three.

Oh, look -- Jake coming to the rescue of leftists. Imagine that.

 

[Dragon]

Stop trying to rewrite history.

I'm not rewriting history, nor did I say that FDR opposed the internment. I said he straddled the fence. That's correct.

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/pdfs/internment.pdf

Consider the context of racism and nativism on the West Coast, heightened by the uproar over Pearl Harbor. There was considerable danger of violence directed against Japanese-Americans. The internment was as much for their protection as for national security. Nevertheless, it arose from conservative roots and pressures, and was implemented by a president who was, if not really a conservative, not really a liberal, either.

And again, what does this have to do with the history of the GOP? Whether Roosevelt was a liberal, a conservative, or something else, he was certainly not a Republican.