Don't Biatch Conservatives

[ScottL]

I have a friend that reads Talk Polwell almost daily, but does not want to create an account for himself. He says that you need to mind your own F*cking business in your own F*cking country, and leave commentary on American Politics to Americans.

He says that when he gets on some comment board in Austria and starts bitching and whining about what is wrong with Austria, and Austrian politics, then you will have a legitimate reason to criticize him for meddling in your business.

I'm not sure i'm accurately conveying the degree of anger he feels towards you and other foreigners regarding your tendency to interfere in what he regards as the business of Americans, but I assure you it is plenty. Were he to see you in person, the least you could expect would be quite a lot of loud yelling at you.

We have quite enough problem with American idiots such that we have less than no use for the opinion of foreign idiots on our politics.

Not sure if you've noticed this but... "SURPRISE THE U.S. IS FOUNDED BY FOREIGNERS AND THEIR PRINCICPLES."

Do go on. What foreigners and what principles?

Your founding fathers, while many born her, does not make them native to the land nor their possession legal. As per their princicples they are largely those of various previous republics in history. There's a strong lack of originality, not that you can knock what works. Our country is founded on thievery, biased, and the desire to pay less than a tenth of a cent in taxes on imports.

[williatw]

I'm not sure i'm accurately conveying the degree of anger he feels towards you and other foreigners regarding your tendency to interfere in what he regards as the business of Americans, but I assure you it is plenty.

Tell him that I dont give a rats ass about what he thinks about me. You guys are discussing foreign politics here just as much as american ones, alright.
Also, I have pointed this out before. Both my wife and my son are american citizens. So it is at least to some extent my business as well.
And finally, the politics of the US, like it or not, are in many ways influencing the politics and the fates of other countries and even the EU. I think that all this does give me a right to have an opinion on it.

As far as I am concerned Skipjack your posts/comments are welcome. I am not so insecure in my own position that the idea of hearing a foreign perspective bothers me, whether I agree with it our not. Also anything that angers diogenes must have something good to be said about it. I would also strongly suspect that "friend" he is referring to are the voices he doublessly hears that no one else can.

[ScottL]

I'm not sure i'm accurately conveying the degree of anger he feels towards you and other foreigners regarding your tendency to interfere in what he regards as the business of Americans, but I assure you it is plenty.

Tell him that I dont give a rats ass about what he thinks about me. You guys are discussing foreign politics here just as much as american ones, alright.
Also, I have pointed this out before. Both my wife and my son are american citizens. So it is at least to some extent my business as well.
And finally, the politics of the US, like it or not, are in many ways influencing the politics and the fates of other countries and even the EU. I think that all this does give me a right to have an opinion on it.

As far as I am concerned Skipjack your posts/comments are welcome. I am not so insecure in my own position that the idea of hearing a foreign perspective bothers me, whether I agree with it our not. Also anything that angers diogenes must have something good to be said about it. I would also strongly suspect that "friend" he is referring to are the voices he doublessly hears that no one else can.

Personally I think Diogenes absorbed a little too much RF in his days. Now if consciousness could be transferred via RF, we'd have our selves a Dr. Who episode.

[williatw]

Personally I think Diogenes absorbed a little too much RF in his days. Now if consciousness could be transferred via RF, we'd have our selves a Dr. Who episode.

Or maybe he's just off his anti-psychotic meds. That "friend" sounds a little suspicious to me.

[GIThruster]

Your founding fathers, while many born her, does not make them native to the land nor their possession legal. As per their princicples they are largely those of various previous republics in history. There's a strong lack of originality, not that you can knock what works. Our country is founded on thievery, biased, and the desire to pay less than a tenth of a cent in taxes on imports.

Scott, while the details of what you write may be true, the spirit of rebuke in which you offer them misses the mark. Those "native" to North America fought over land too, and killed one another for as long as those in Eurasia. They had no legal system and no "right" to the land either. It is only a modern phenomenon that land is owned by something other than might, and to use modern standards to make moral judgements of a time before those sensibilities existed is pretty confused behavior. "Manifest Destiny" did predate all significant notions of racial and sexual equality and the Europeans and native born Americans (who lived here for centuries before the Indian wars) were modern industrialists supplanting stone age peoples. If you can't sympathize with how that might happen, you're not thinking clearly about our history. By moderns standards, morally reprehensible but surely not by the standards of the day.

And too, you're mischaracterizing the spirit of the rebellion in the American colonies. A "country based on thievery" of what? The country itself? You don't think those who stole America had a right to their own governance? And surely you can't believe what you write, that it was a desire to not pay once tenth of a penny, when all history shows it was not refusal to pay a tax, but to pay it to those who were not their elected representatives.

Twisting the fine points of these arguments like this, in order to make a complaint is unseemly and forces one to wonder what dog you have in the hunt to so malign the facts.

[MSimon]

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. Clive Staples "CS" Lewis

America is full of moral busybodies. Democrats and Christian Democrats (Republicans).

[Skipjack]

As far as I am concerned Skipjack your posts/comments are welcome. I am not so insecure in my own position that the idea of hearing a foreign perspective bothers me, whether I agree with it our not. Also anything that angers diogenes must have something good to be said about it.

Thanks, buddy!

Diogenes, I would love for my son to participate in the discussion, but he is only 15 months old. I apologize for me being concerned about his future. My wife is participating indirectly in the discussion. A lot of the positions that I take in my posts are actually hers. She just does not feel the urge to post them here.
Also worth noting is that Diogenes and I do sometimes have the same opinion on matters (though often not). So really dont get why is he so hostile.

[seedload]

I'm not sure i'm accurately conveying the degree of anger he feels towards you and other foreigners regarding your tendency to interfere in what he regards as the business of Americans, but I assure you it is plenty.

Tell him that I dont give a rats ass about what he thinks about me. You guys are discussing foreign politics here just as much as american ones, alright.
Also, I have pointed this out before. Both my wife and my son are american citizens. So it is at least to some extent my business as well.
And finally, the politics of the US, like it or not, are in many ways influencing the politics and the fates of other countries and even the EU. I think that all this does give me a right to have an opinion on it.

As far as I am concerned Skipjack your posts/comments are welcome. I am not so insecure in my own position that the idea of hearing a foreign perspective bothers me, whether I agree with it our not. Also anything that angers diogenes must have something good to be said about it. I would also strongly suspect that "friend" he is referring to are the voices he doublessly hears that no one else can.

While his opinions should be welcome, I wish he could come to terms with the context from which he is launching his moralizations about the United States and why this context brings out so much anger in some of the people on this forum (or in silent readers). Instead he just obliviously blunders on.

This is the man that mercilessly condemned our dunking of a few terrorists and when it was pointed out that his nation butchered millions of innocent people, he actually took offense.

This is the man who actually said he was tired of Jews crying Hitler. When it was pointed out that there were only about 9000 Jews left in his country to be tired of, he took offense again.

This is the man that moralizes about the amount of money we spend on our own defense while acting oblivious to the fact that a large part of the reason we spend so much is directly related to the disgustingly immoral actions of his nation. Point it out and he gets offended.

This is the man who moralizes about our actions in the middle east and when it is pointed out that a large part of the reason for our involvement in the middle east is a direct result of his nations actions and the resulting problems with Israel, he takes offense.

This is the man who actually commented that we are the only country that has used Nuclear weapons, forgetting that he had previously defending his nation of butchers under the grounds that it had happened a long time ago, and apparently forgetting that it was his nations butchery that led us to the horrible decision of dropping the bomb in the first place.

This is the man who just a few threads ago laughed at the comedy of a stupid American not realizing that vouchers might be used to pay for Muslim schools and thinking that only Christianity mattered. I suppose Skip forgot his own railing against the problems of Muslim immigration in his own country. No, stupid american republicans don't know to keep religion out of government and aren't capable of religious tolerance. But Austria is going to get ruined by the invading Muslims.

This is the guy that continuously tells us how to improve our country with sentences that always start with "In my country..." When it is pointed out that his country has the population of a small state, he blunders on with railings about how the US should follow his countries lead.

Yes, Skip's opinions should be welcome. Yes, they are always interesting for reasons he may not intend. But, he is completely oblivious to the context from which he launches them. Whether he knows it or not, the world was greatly affected by WWII and the current predicament of US foreign policy is greatly affected by his nations actions. He may be tired of Jews crying Hitler, but I am not. And his morality lessons to the US with his country and nation held up as shining examples that we should follow is disgusting to me.

Finally, his further bumbling attempts to dissect our internal politics with dimwitted ultra religious right wing nuts obviously dominating his perception of what America is all about, I find it really hard to even consider him seriously.

[ScottL]

Your founding fathers, while many born her, does not make them native to the land nor their possession legal. As per their princicples they are largely those of various previous republics in history. There's a strong lack of originality, not that you can knock what works. Our country is founded on thievery, biased, and the desire to pay less than a tenth of a cent in taxes on imports.

Scott, while the details of what you write may be true, the spirit of rebuke in which you offer them misses the mark. Those "native" to North America fought over land too, and killed one another for as long as those in Eurasia. They had no legal system and no "right" to the land either. It is only a modern phenomenon that land is owned by something other than might, and to use modern standards to make moral judgements of a time before those sensibilities existed is pretty confused behavior. "Manifest Destiny" did predate all significant notions of racial and sexual equality and the Europeans and native born Americans (who lived here for centuries before the Indian wars) were modern industrialists supplanting stone age peoples. If you can't sympathize with how that might happen, you're not thinking clearly about our history. By moderns standards, morally reprehensible but surely not by the standards of the day.

And too, you're mischaracterizing the spirit of the rebellion in the American colonies. A "country based on thievery" of what? The country itself? You don't think those who stole America had a right to their own governance? And surely you can't believe what you write, that it was a desire to not pay once tenth of a penny, when all history shows it was not refusal to pay a tax, but to pay it to those who were not their elected representatives.

Twisting the fine points of these arguments like this, in order to make a complaint is unseemly and forces one to wonder what dog you have in the hunt to so malign the facts.

First GIT, I think you should get your facts straight. Native peoples did not fight over land, they fought over food sources. Land did not become an issue until the settlers attempted to claim it, therefore there wasn't a demand, it was shared originally. While you can cite manifest destiny as an old and root cause of the land grab, that does not make it right. Might does not make it right and committing a genocide where whole tribes were displaced and/or wiped out is a sad and pathetic point in our history.

We like to talk about it as "our" land but it's not our land. It was taken like any bully takes things. There was no great war, just murder, and when they stood up for themselves, we scoffed at their audacity. By your account though, if I so choose, and I have the might, I can simply take from you. Why? Because I'm stronger and I want what you have. That's the mentality of a 3 year old. Congrats.

[GIThruster]

Well that's a serious reading comprehension failure. I'll say it again, without the window dressing in hopes you will understand where your very childish, self-righteous and inappropriate anger is not warranted:

"It is only a modern phenomenon that land is owned by something other than might, and to use modern standards to make moral judgements of a time before those sensibilities existed is pretty confused behavior."

You are attempting to make moral judgements about our ancestors based upon modern sensibilities that did not exist at the time they lived, died and fought for the land that now makes up America. That is true of virtually every scrap of land on every continent in the world, save Antarctica. Yes, we are sensible folk who don't believe "might makes right", but "Manifest Destiny" was the rational used to justify "might makes right" at that time when people were only just beginning to understand the latter was wrong.

If in a thousand years, humanity comes to adopt the view that eating animal flesh is wrong, and essentially gives up on using it's canines; do you think it will be right for people to make moral judgements about you, based upon their "modern sensibilities" as a horrid "flesh eater"? Of course not. There's nothing morally wrong with eating a cheeseburger now, and it won't become retroactively wrong in the future no matter what someone then decides about it.

But really apart from that is the emotional distress that would cause you to act out as so wantonly judgmental.

And just so you have your facts straight: precolumbian native societies were horrifically violent just like all stone age peoples. There's no evidence they didn't fight over land. Those that progressed to agriculture certainly did have people take what they grew by force. You're using a very childish distinction to assert that Native Americans didn't own or fight over land. Of course they did, just as they fought over thousands of other issues, in all the same ways that every other group of ancient people fought with those around them.

[ScottL]

GIT, you reiterated exactly what I said at first. I pointed out that although that may have been the case then, we have a chance to make amends for it now, but we don't. It's a blemish we pretend didn't happen much like slavery.

As per your Native American history, since I'm assuming here, you're full white, I'm willing to grant you don't really have any background in North American native traditions, cultures, or warring. Since I am part and registered (although identify white) I have taken the time to read up on histories of native peoples (admittedly mostly Eastern North American tribes) and can attest that what you have said is not true of them. They were a united peoples who rarely attacked one another and when they did it was over food sources, not land. This is verified repeatedly in any history book.

[GIThruster]

We have a chance to make amends for atrocities done generations ago to people who are all long dead?

Are you serious?

Where does this stupidity you're suggesting end? There isn't even a way to count which tribe settled where first and was later supplanted by another, and another and another, because they were all illiterate and kept no records. Thousands of homogeneous units in flux over centuries. You want to take those who were European, and industrialized, and hold their ancestors to accounts for what they did to indigenous populations hundreds of years ago? How does that make any sense? I don't owe some nameless native American anything because of what some distant relative of mine did to some distant relative of his.

The only amends that can be made for groups of peoples killing each other, is to stop the killing. And as you might have noticed, since the Indian Wars here in the States, the killing is done. Decades before the Europeans decided they'd had enough of fighting over land, the Americans had had their fill and finished up. Just who is it you think owes whom what?

Seriously Scott, you usually sound more reasonable than this.

And to answer your question, my mother is a genealogist and can show our family line back in places about 11 generations. She swears we have American Indian blood in our line but I find the evidence pretty skimpy. I'd be thrilled if I had native American blood, but even if I did, that doesn't mean I think I should tell someone, anyone alive today, they somehow owe me something for what was done to their distant relatives.

It is entirely true, that Great Britian colonized at great expense to the indigenous peoples of their areas, in more than 3 dozen places. It's also true that in every one of those places, the people were violent before and after the Brits arrived. There's no way to say the indigenous peoples of those places would have been better off if the Brits had not colonized. We don't know what would have happened. We can guess though, that there probably would be far less medicine, far fewer if any railroads, very little technology or learning of any sort from Australia to the Bahamas, from Burma to Sierra Leon.

And of course the Brits were only one of many countries that colonized like this. Do you want to suggest somehow today's modern British citizen owes a debt to the average village dweller in Nigeria, because of what you consider a wrong done them more than a century ago? And should we ask the Norwegians to pay off the Irish for all the pillaging in the 8th century? And those pesky Persians, surely we can harass them for the land grabs of 2,500 years ago.

How absurd.

[Skipjack]

While his opinions should be welcome, I wish he could come to terms with the context from which he is launching his moralizations about the United States and why this context brings out so much anger in some of the people on this forum (or in silent readers). Instead he just obliviously blunders on.

This is the man that mercilessly condemned our dunking of a few terrorists and when it was pointed out that his nation butchered millions of innocent people, he actually took offense.

This is the man who actually said he was tired of Jews crying Hitler. When it was pointed out that there were only about 9000 Jews left in his country to be tired of, he took offense again.

This is the man that moralizes about the amount of money we spend on our own defense while acting oblivious to the fact that a large part of the reason we spend so much is directly related to the disgustingly immoral actions of his nation. Point it out and he gets offended.

This is the man who moralizes about our actions in the middle east and when it is pointed out that a large part of the reason for our involvement in the middle east is a direct result of his nations actions and the resulting problems with Israel, he takes offense.

This is the man who actually commented that we are the only country that has used Nuclear weapons, forgetting that he had previously defending his nation of butchers under the grounds that it had happened a long time ago, and apparently forgetting that it was his nations butchery that led us to the horrible decision of dropping the bomb in the first place.

This is the man who just a few threads ago laughed at the comedy of a stupid American not realizing that vouchers might be used to pay for Muslim schools and thinking that only Christianity mattered. I suppose Skip forgot his own railing against the problems of Muslim immigration in his own country. No, stupid american republicans don't know to keep religion out of government and aren't capable of religious tolerance. But Austria is going to get ruined by the invading Muslims.

This is the guy that continuously tells us how to improve our country with sentences that always start with "In my country..." When it is pointed out that his country has the population of a small state, he blunders on with railings about how the US should follow his countries lead.

Yes, Skip's opinions should be welcome. Yes, they are always interesting for reasons he may not intend. But, he is completely oblivious to the context from which he launches them. Whether he knows it or not, the world was greatly affected by WWII and the current predicament of US foreign policy is greatly affected by his nations actions. He may be tired of Jews crying Hitler, but I am not. And his morality lessons to the US with his country and nation held up as shining examples that we should follow is disgusting to me.

Finally, his further bumbling attempts to dissect our internal politics with dimwitted ultra religious right wing nuts obviously dominating his perception of what America is all about, I find it really

A gross missrepresentation of my personality my intentions and my motives. You should not rip things out of context in order to use them for ad hominem attacks. And with THAT I do take offense!

[choff]

When I went to public school back in the day, we were taught to mind our own back yard before complaining about the neighbours. These days the kids are taught we live in a global village and what happens over the fence affects us all. It's partly true, if the U.S. economy were to collapse the rest of the world would get pulled into the black hole.

That said there's more danger from the European economy pulling N. America into a black hole. Perhaps Americans should complain more about the neighbours back yard.

[Skipjack]

That said there's more danger from the European economy pulling N. America into a black hole. Perhaps Americans should complain more about the neighbours back yard.

I think that the US economy had a part in that as well... It is not so easy to separate things anymore.