[demented20]

1.  Just as you state that O'Reilly isn't representative of conservatives, so I would argue that those who quash free speech aren't true liberals, as a real liberal supports free speech.

I have to agree with Lingster though on this one. Liberals have done much more to crush free speech here in the US in the last 35 of 40 years than they have ever helped spark a healthy dialogue about anything from race to religion to poverty. It seems to me that the liberals here are much more concerned with 'not offending' disadvantaged groups (whatever that means) than they are at really defending free speech. They tend to defend anything that is counter culture or 'not mainstream thinking' and vilify anything that is traditionalist. If I had a dollar for every time the ACLU sued a school district for either allowing religious (ie Christian) speech in school I wouldn't be able to retire, but I would be able to take my family out for a nice steak dinner at Ruth Chris' or Morton's.
Then there's liberal meddling in parental rights, and financial planning.. I could go on…

2.  I always knew you had enough good taste to dislike O'Reilly. 😉  Question is, why do Fox employ him?  Purely as a TV equivalent of a Limbaugh-style shock jock?  Or do you think they think he represents those on the right?

Bill O'Reilly makes his money by claiming to be on the side of the common man, but he is really on the side of Bill O'Reilly. He's not a true conservative and to my way of thinking neither is President Bush or John McCain.
I tend to be pretty even minded about things, I think.. There are things that liberals say that I agree with and likewise for conservatives, but there are also things about both sides that scare the heck out of me.

[Lingster]

FOX keeps O'Reilly on because he gets good ratings; same reason MSNBC keeps the even more vitriolic Keith Olbermann.  Limbaugh has very little in common with either of them – the sort of nightly invective that assclowns O'Reilly and Olbermann spew is vanishingly rare on Mr. Limbaugh's program.

Also, I chose not to use the term "liberal" because it has lost its original meaning in the U.S. and doesn't work well in trans-Atlantic discussions.  By the standards of the term as you mean it, the Republicans are the more "liberal" party.

For example, the Republican Party repealed slavery, supported women's suffrage for 40 years against Democrat obstruction, resisted FDR's attempts to make himself dictator, voted for the various civil rights acts of the 50s and 60s in greater percentages than Democrats and fought communism unreservedly.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a registered Republican.  Democrat Harry Truman called MLK a "damn troublemaker" and Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson ordered the FBI to spy on him.

Europeans and Britons tend to believe that the Republican Party is the equivalent of their Christian Democrats or Tories, because that's what their socialist-controlled media tells them.  That is not the case.

[demented20]

Hmm once again I have to agree with Lingster on this one. I often wonder why the Democratic party is credited with being the party of social change or social justice in the US when it was a Republican (Barry Goldwater) who broke the Democratic filibuster of the Civil Rights bill. And the first president to invite a black guy to the white house for dinner was a Republic, Teddy Roosevelt. Now that I think about it, desegregation of the school system began under a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower. Its funny how things get twisted over time.

[Seldom]

Perhaps it's the parties that get twisted. Old school southern democrats were definitely the most conservative of conservatives in their time. And even as polarized as the parties are now you still get aisle-crossers.

Just to get a little preachy, it's a bit stupid to vote for a party. The Party doesn't love you. Vote for people. They don't love you either, but maybe you'll meet one, and then you can say "I voted for you!" instead of "I always vote for your party!"

[The Muffin man]

Hmm once again I have to agree with Lingster on this one. I often wonder why the Democratic party is credited with being the party of social change or social justice in the US when it was a Republican (Barry Goldwater) who broke the Democratic filibuster of the Civil Rights bill. And the first president to invite a black guy to the white house for dinner was a Republic, Teddy Roosevelt. Now that I think about it, desegregation of the school system began under a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower. Its funny how things get twisted over time.

Yeah but if you try and compare Bush to Eisenhower, I'm gonna have to kick your out of the fucking country.

[TC2]

I just find it silly that everyone feels the need to relate historic achievements to what political party you're a part of over the individual.

Democrat and Republican or even Independent, is just a labeling system so people can have some idea where an individual might stand on certain issues.  It is by no means a representation of an entire person, nor is it by any means a representation of the entire political party.

Just because certain presidents just happened to be Republican during certain key moments, does not mean it is representative of ALL republicans who were also in office at that same time.

I personally do not see the logic in attributing great historical achievements to "Oh it's because we had a republican president."  Or even "Oh it's because we had a democratic president."  It's because the society as a whole has understood and realized that certain changes needed to be made.

After all let's not forget that Republicans also had Nixon who had to claim that he "wasn't" a crook.  Republican and Democratic parties are not freaking superheroes, all they are is a place to stand so that people can identify you, but not necessarily know exactly what you are all about.

That's just my rant for today.

[demented20]

I should attempt explain my position. There is a line of bull being fed that basically one party(Democratic) has been historically good for civil rights, voting rights, etc. and that the other party(Republican) is only out to keep people down.
That crap has been shoveled for years and has kept entire groups of people voting as blocks for whoever the democratic party throws out as a candidate instead of looking at each individual candidate and making a personal decision based on the merits of the person. The truth is that there are good people and bad people in both parties, and both parties have some history that they would rather people not remember.

Also I don't want to give off the idea that I am a Republican or a Democrat. I decided a long time ago that I would not join a part officially or unofficially because it would keep me from being truly objective when I go vote. Its like trying to be neutral in the World Series when your home town team is playing. You might not like the players, or the manager, but you want them to win anyway.  Same thing with political parties.  Even if you hate your party's candidate you'll probably vote for him/her because you don't want the other party to win even if the other candidate might actually be better. On a side note, I tend to like a split government. I think too much power in the hands of one party is an overall bad thing. Sometimes a government doing next to nothing is just fine when alternative is them screwing everything up.

And last, I don't compare Bush to Eisenhower or any other president. I can't think of a president quite like good old George W. I would say Andrew Johnson, but that doesn't quite fit. He was just the wrong man for the wrong time. Maybe Herbert Hoover, he pretty much sat by and let the US economy go down the toilet, but no not him either. Bush is… hmm well.. I don't know.  I do know one thing though, George Bush is president of the United States for only 8 more months.

[cpbell0033944]

FOX keeps O'Reilly on because he gets good ratings; same reason MSNBC keeps the even more vitriolic Keith Olbermann.  Limbaugh has very little in common with either of them – the sort of nightly invective that assclowns O'Reilly and Olbermann spew is vanishingly rare on Mr. Limbaugh's program.

Also, I chose not to use the term "liberal" because it has lost its original meaning in the U.S. and doesn't work well in trans-Atlantic discussions.  By the standards of the term as you mean it, the Republicans are the more "liberal" party.

For example, the Republican Party repealed slavery, supported women's suffrage for 40 years against Democrat obstruction, resisted FDR's attempts to make himself dictator, voted for the various civil rights acts of the 50s and 60s in greater percentages than Democrats and fought communism unreservedly.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a registered Republican.  Democrat Harry Truman called MLK a "damn troublemaker" and Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson ordered the FBI to spy on him.

Europeans and Britons tend to believe that the Republican Party is the equivalent of their Christian Democrats or Tories, because that's what their socialist-controlled media tells them.  That is not the case.

OK, here goes:

1.  O'Reilly must be good for ratings in a "car-crash TV" way.  Olbermann is more vitriolic, but he focusses his bile on those in positions of power who he feels have done the wrong thing.  O@Reilly spews bile on anyone he doesn't like.  Plus, Olbermann at least explains his rationale most of the time, though some may not be intelligent enough to notice.  O'Reilly just shouts, and speaks with intellectual vacuousness.
Limbaugh is even worse than O'Reilly, IMO.  As a disabled person, I can never forgive him for his prejudiced rant about Michael J Fox, nor his dreaming about seeing a city his HIS COUNTRY descending into rioting just to disrupt the Democratic Party conference.

2.  Wnen I say the word "liberal", I'm referring to beliefs/traits such as the following :

A belief that we have a moral duty to help the disavantaged.
A belief that the free market alone can never deliver prosperity for all, but that it must be matched by governmental intervention.
A belief that business cannot be left to do whatever it damn well likes because humans are greedy by nature, and that business must be regulated to ensure that wealth is distributed more evenly.
An absolute belief in the principle of free speech.
An interest in alternative ideas and exploration of non-traditionalist approaches.

3.  I am well aware that the Republicans were once a great party.  I am fascinated by the US Civil War and have seen Ken Burns' PBS series twice (once on BBC TV, and recently serialised on YouTube).  I despise the southern Democrats who formed the KKK and prevented the then new Amendments providing absolute equality from being a factual entity.  I was not aware of all of the other facts raised by Lingster and demented20, though I knew that Teddy Rooseveldt was a Republican and greatly admire his work to end the coalminers' strike and ensure better protection for workers.  My point is not that the Republican party has always been dominated by the likes of W, Cheney, Rove etc. but that it has been so for the last 8 years.  People don't vote based on what Presidents or Congresspersons did 50 years ago, they vote on the policies or a candidate/party NOW.  I still maintain that the most recent Republican Presidency has been marked by:

A cavalier attitude the the economy.
The rushing of the US and its allies (including MY country) into a war before plans were ready, without full justification, and because of the wrong reasons.
The way in which they have been pro-big business and against the small guy, in direct conflict with the "American Dream", despite being so-called conservatives who are supposed to support the ideal of people gaining wealth through personal endeavour.
The way in which they have wholesale ripped the heart out of civil liberties – Habeas Corpus, the FISA bill, Homeland Security Act etc.

4.  I am not a conservative, but I do not broadly object to conservative principles, and, as a liberal I have no beef whatsoever with public discourse and the promotion of conservatism as long as there is no barrier in place to prevent liberalism being discussed and promoted equally.

5.  I would agree with you guys who said that party lines are often blurred and we should vote based on the persons' policies, not on which party they represent (though that fits better with the US system than that of the UK, when the Prime Ministerial candidates are tightly-linked to the overall party manifestos and policies).  I once heard it said that GOP and Democrat voters would vote for a mule if it was their party's Presidential candidate.

6.  I would suggest that Bush is not a true conservative; rather, he is right-wing and somewhat despotic.

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