I could drink half a bottle of Talisker 10 yr. old and still ‘defend myself’ against your polemics. Otherwise all is forgotten.

Dugger

But it s a risk. Luckily I never married one but I do have friends that did. From what I have seen, conservatives make poor husbands but they can become good fathers if you divorce them soon enough”

You are a sad, sad person if you have come to view people that do not share your political views in such a manner.

Semanticleo comes in a close second to you.

From what I have seen (there, I’ll say it again because apparently you didn’t read it the first time), conservatives do not make good husbands. Theories abound, but my own personal one is that the problem stems from their hierarchical world-view.

It has been observed on many occasions, by people much smarter than me, that one of the key differences between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives believe society is best organized in hierarchies while liberals prefer egalitarian models. It is my personal theory that hierarchical model is not conducive to happy family life, which is why we see such otherwise counter-intuituve results as the fact that the “red states” have higher than average divorce rates.

Semanticleo, so sorry you came in second to me! Don’t feel bad it’s just the “new kid” effect. They’ll get tired of me as soon as a fresh face comes along. Mwahh! (big kiss a la Miss America kissing her runner up)

Would be proud to share the crown !

….and your substantive, documented point you assume has been proven?

Proving my point handily.

When all else fails, flail wildly, eh Frank?

As if conservatism were genetic, you moron.

If you cannot defend your philosophy, it’s your problem not mine. I have no personal animosity towards you. I got a little annoyed with you because you won’t talk about reality, you prefer to lecture us all on the fevered dreams of Milton Friedman. I took a cheap shot and apologized for it. There is no venom here.

My advice is, if you can’t defend your worldview against all comers, it might be time to change it.

It seems semantics (as always) is in play;

‘Seizing’ by the government could be interpretated thrugh it’s tax incentives for charitable giving. Public relations requires corporations to be sensitve to the opinions of it’s customer base. How is it voluntary for companies who make contributions to tax-exempt organizations, when it is primarily dictated from a position of self-interest . How is that an independent decision?

‘Created’ wealth means….? How do corporations create wealth? Don’t they also ‘facilitate’ rather than create wealth? If you are going to argue that the government (by making the labor playing field a little more fair) does not create wealth when it makes workers more productive, then you must also conclude that a start-up small business with a ‘niche’ soda pop flavor is not creating wealth either. It is merely ‘facilitating’ the transfer of wealth from Coca-Cola to ‘Barney’s Root Beer”.

I’ve actually been reading this column for a few months and only started commenting recently because my other Troll Holes dried up. I hate it when that happens. So I checked in here and saw the trolls were plentiful, big and slow. It’s perfect, I like it very much.

You won’t let me down by punking out, will you?

Stick your apology. Your venom will start to taste bad even to you after a while. Been here a lot longer than you, will be here after you have moved on.

JK,

Great points – would be even more effective if they represented what I said. “raping the taxpayer” is a phrase you intitiated, not me. I make the argument that the governments, not just Democratic government, do not create anything, they seize it from citizens. Now if you had paid attention, you would have seen that I have said that government is necessary and that enforcement power is necessary, but that give away programs such as discussed by Edwards need to be viewed in the context that what he is promising is actually ’stuff’ he is seizing from other citizens.
D*mned easy, isn’t it, for Edwards to promise (mostly) his constituents to seize stuff from (mostly) his non-constituents and give it to them? Is that the visionary leadership being prasied here?

Semant,

Your class distinction bear no resemblance to life as I have seen it. It seems grounded in an older era when manufacturing dominated employment. For the most part the so-called laboring class today are in non-manufacturing jobs and OWN their own houses, OWN at least one car, and usually much more. They are also owners – just not owners of businesses. Nevertheless, in your example, with which mostly I agree, the government acts as a referee to permit a more equitable private market place between (to use your world view) labor and business. Still it is not government creating, but facilitating the creation. And still, when the government “gives” something, it came from somebody else.

Dugger

I am saying good conservatives should raise orphans intead of having their own children. That would be true christian conservative compassion in two ways.

1) They would (by adopting some child whose mother was forced to give birth and doesn’t want the child) increase the ‘compassion cache’ with people like me. And they would provide a meaningful context to the values they espouse.

2) At the same time they cease contaminating the human gene pool .

My point was that Libertarians don’t care about people who are here, now. It is probably too much of a stretch to ask them to care about people who don’t exist yet.

And Frank, no I’m not saying conservatives shouldn’t have children. Actually, I think if a conservative is ever going to grow into full humanity, children are one of the few things that might make that happen.

But it’s a risk. Luckily I never married one but I do have friends that did. From what I have seen, conservatives make poor husbands but they can become good fathers if you divorce them soon enough. For some reason, it takes a divorce before they realize they love their children and want to spend time with them. What was “babysitting” before divorce becomes “visitation” afterwards, and all of a sudden they can’t get enough of it.

Conservative men could spare themselves and their families a lot of heartache if they could see this ahead of time.