You won't find too many liberals running a company or certainly starting a small business.

The private sector is not terribly forgiving of half-baked ideas or concern about ones intentions. 

By contrast, areas where there are few, if any, metrics for determining quality tend to be filled with liberals. Entertainment and academia for example.  Areas where quality is in the eye in the beholder. Areas where natural talent are king.

I don't think one is better than the other. You really need both. Without liberals, the world become a cold gray treadmill of output. Without conservatives you are left with anarchy and material poverty.

Yeah, both sides have their purposes. My oversimplified view: I think that liberals help keep society up with the times (by pointing out what needs to be changed) while the conservatives help stabilize society. However, sometimes some liberals want to change unnecessary things and some conservatives want to resist change that would be good.

I love the way you think MM.
I think it is great that you worded this in such a way that others have to understand that this is not open for attack becouse they may dissagree. How could anyone fault an obvious concept such as this? You have succeeded in writting an article that is based on an "opinion" but it is knowledgable and insightful enough to almost convince an otherwise disbeliever.
Your "opinion", in my eyes has become each sides "Mission Statements" or requirements.

(My reply is not about liberals, it's about conservatives. We've already heard enough of the impressions that liberals give conservatives in recent weeks, so here's the other side of the coin. Since many of you have taken great cares to confuse ideology and character, maybe I'll do the same (or maybe I won't).

One other thing I've noticed is that hateful conservatives tend to prefer threats of murder and hell, slang labels like 'nigger', 'faggot', and 'commie', and the occasional use of violence against people they don't like. Often times, just like the communists and stereotypes they oppose (myself included: please consider me a commie faggot, not a liberal), the conservatives forget about the importance of liberal dialogue, and lash out in unpredictable ways. Of course we are currently living in a brief period of Civil-Bushdom, so conservatives are really digging this democracy thing for the time being. Conservatives relish the opportunity to wag their fingers disdainfully at the left, portraying them as hopeless, rabble-rousing malcontents. When the Civil-Bushdom subsides, and the government see-saws back to democratic control, we'll have an opportunity to see the hopeless, rabble-rousing malcontents of the right go berserk, bomb federal buildings and abortion clinics (Remember Tim McVeigh and that Rudolph dude both stood for limited government and traditional values). Oftentimes conservatives will murder atheists and bury them in tupperware. Less intelligent and motivated conservatives will simply listen to hateful talk radio and think that because the evils of liberalism are recognized, they are being defeated. Realistically, liberalism is only defeated with bombs, lies, and corruption.

Conservatives also have a tendency to excuse the criminal, immoral, and destructive tendencies of people like Tom DeLay, Ronald Reagan, and the Bushes. Conservatives know that there is a line between what they need to know about their government and what they don't need to know about it. What they need to know is its symbolism and its outward character. What they don't need to know is its operation: who finances it, who benefits from it, how it reaches its decisions, etc., etc. If the a republican 'stands' for personal responsibility and the rule of law, it doesn't matter if he is simply a corrupt ex-businessman who would like to help corporations be less responsible and laws be less enforcable. If he 'stands' for America, it doesn't matter that he sells his service to the pro-Israel lobby or compromises security in his dealings with Saudi Arabia. Conservatives are concerned with gestures, but not with consequences. The appearance of defending one's country is much more important than doing the thing which will make the country safer. Many conservatives can't tell the difference, but they insist on 'sending messages to the terrorists' or 'causing the terrorists to be destroyed by a domino effect... what a cool idea, a domino effect'.

Conservatives are very emotional and idealistic creatures who will often ignore reason. Granted, many conservatives and libertarians are very reasonable, but only when it concerns their individual needs, never when it concerns some of the needs of society (like regulation, law, welfare, education, environment, etc). Given the choice between giving a woman a fish and teaching a woman to fish, most conservatives will lash at out the woman for her irresponsibility in not knowing how to fish in the first place, tell her she's not strong enough, and freak out if the government uses their tax-money for the purposes of either giving her a fish or teaching her how to fish. The best way to deal with such a woman is to let her be, allowing her the dignity of being helpless, hopeless, and poor. Very reasonable.

Conservatives are value oriented, and have a great deal of contempt for those who have either surpassed the need to be value oriented (radiating goodness without touting or identifying values) or are oriented to different values than their own. Conservatives coallesce into large social value brigades, and have a remarkable affinity for those who preach values loudly and obnoxiously, but in reality are complete hypocrites and counterproductive to their cause. Liberals tend to associate their values with historical, sociological, and natural phenomenon, wheras conservatives associate values with tradition and social inheritance. When faced with the onslaught of those 'unclear' and 'unpronounced' values inherent in any human experience, conservatives will idealize selective impressions of 'traditional' value systems that may or may not be functional or applicable to modern experience. There is always an accute desire for 'things as they used to be', and this desire is projected through the condemnation of those who demonstrate the validity of a particular logical argument: "I did not have traditional values, therefore I acted in an immoral fashion". Conservatives are fixated on these instances to the point of irrational idiocy, and they love to identify all of society's ills with this ethical paradigm. They do not consider the alternative phenomena: "I do not have traditional values, I acted immorally, but my actions have nothing to do with my different values", or "I have traditional values and I acted immorally because of them", or "I have traditional values and I acted immorally/morally in spite of them", or "I do not have traditional values, and/therefore I acted morally". Nor do they consider cases in which the values espoused by something were traditional, but the outcome was negative, or the values espoused by something were not traditional, but the outcome was positive. Naturally, such thinking makes it very difficult for the conservative intellect to process reality when it refutes their assumptions, yet they retain strong faith in the unerring correctness of their beliefs.

gay darkskinned suicidal schizophhrenic constitutional-convention-attending sole-proprietor cannibal self-destructive, self-loathing suicidal fish-bellied heathens

bingo

little whip, im thinking you're a ten year old hick from colorado in white america, or some trailer park with nazi and confederate flags? although you have SOME intelligence for a ten year old, little whip, you seem to contradict yourself a lot, a WHOLE lot. I can go on and on in this post detailing everything you said in this topic, but it wont do any good. You'd just tell me im liberal crap and that i should back to my gay darkskinned suicidal schizophhrenic constitutional-convention-attending sole-proprietor cannibal self-destructive, self-loathing suicidal fish-bellied heathens roots and just shut up?

I applaud saint ying and kingbee for some awesome posts. As for little whip (which is a funny name), Im not against you cuz your conservative (or somewhat extreme), but cuz your stupid and ignorant. I don't really care if you follow up with some insults, cuz it doesn't matter. My perception of you is CLEAR (although you won't care).

House Negro" (Powell)

im curious as to whether you actually saw this in person or a photograph or was it described?

Hey Saint Ying... nice post

On the left, I find people too quick to scream racism, sexism, classism, etc., which has a chilling effect on any debate. The left is generally, in my opinion, less intellectually honest, though it's a close call these days. As an example, I think Bowling for Columbine was intellectually dishonest. I think a lot of lefty social policy is baloney.
On the right, I may be alone here but I generally see more emotion, specifically anger and hate, in the articles written by so called right wingers. It just seems like the LImbaughs and such have a simmering cauldron of seething hatred which is barely concealed by a thin veneer of civility. I find the so called righties are quick to resort to cheap punditry, highly inflammable rhetoric, strawman arguments, and that sort of thing. It's like their hatred blinds them from seeing straight and clouds their minds beyond reason. Again, the left is guilty of this too, it's just my observation that the level of anger and hatred is substantially higher on the right.

I would love to hear to some examples of

"Often the "facts" presented are either flatly untrue, or more often only "half truths" taken out of context and skewed to support an argument that otherwise would be unsupportable."

"The right appears to me to be far more supportive of the ideas of personal responsibility and self-sufficiency."


And on this:
"I see a far more rational argument style from the right, and a good deal more tolerance of the opposition's views."
Two words: John Ashcroft

Did you know that the first thing Bush did as president, and I do mean the first, was to remove all federal funding from organizations like Planned Parenthood that so much as mention the word abortion? If they wanted to keep their funding they had to remove all references to the idea. Tolerant?

And finally, do you really think "The biggest thing I have noticed from the left is a venomous intolerance of opposing views." this is a democratic stance? Republicans and Democrats will take this stance on any issue when its the best way to play the political game. For instance, Tom Delay and John McCain were acting like they never heard of each other and suggesting each others comments must have come from some individual with no understanding the "right" side of the Iraq war. By the way, that all started because McCain was critical of Bush's handling of the war on Iraq.

Here is another good one for you:
"the right does tend to rely more on verifyable facts"

in response: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

There is a whole host of evidence that this was not simply dubious information but information previously shown to be false used to attain a specific political agenda.

I don't see conservatives using words like "nigger" and "faggot".  In fact, it's usually the left using the big N word these days to describe African Americans who they don't like.

I don't see conservatives using words like "nigger" and "faggot". In fact, it's usually the left using the big N word these days to describe African Americans who they don't like.

Thats putting words into people's mouth... I haven't seen that once around here.... especially from those I know that represent the left....

Good article Mason...

BAM!!!

Okay Muggaz, how many times have you used the term Nazi or fascist to describe your opponents? How many times have I used a hateful epitaph in my writings? How many times has Little Whip? or Dharmagirl?  Yes, on this site, the nasty name calling is pretty one way.