Donahue Slams O'Reilly

[Nomad]

This is just too good....

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/21.html#a5055

and for the transcript:

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/09/22/ver ... y.php#more

[Fat Pat]

It was pretty good. But it could have been MUCH better. Like the Galloway/Hitchens debate too, it could have been much better. I don't know what's up with some of these big Anti-War guys not bringin out the big guns. Although Galloway was MUCH better than Donahue. Donahue was slackin. But O'Reilly was freakin out for a second there about his Nephew joining the military. He was like shakin and shit. I can see defense of family.. but.. I dunno.. it wasn't a question meant to slam his family or something. He could have done well to calm down.

[Nomad]

Although Galloway was MUCH better than Donahue.

Not familiar with that one. Got a link or transcript?

I agree, most leftys don't focus on the right things. They say stuff like "not authorized by Congress" even though military action without a declaration of war has been a part of American foreign policy since the Barbary Wars. Donahue would've done better to focus on the shifting justifications, the lack of a clear exit strategy, the attempts to link Iraq with 9/11 in the public mind, and evidence that intelligence was fixed to justify the war.

And has anyone noticed that when liberals get angry it's cringe inducing...like they're crazy? But if a conservative gets angry, it doesn't quite seem as embarassing. I think the media trains us to respond differently.

[Fat Pat]

Yeah. The Galloway/Hitchens debate has a link here on the Videos board:

viewtopic.php?t=415

.. and then on that same thread I posted a link to the MP3 version. If you liked the Donahue/O'Reilly debate, you'll orgasm over the Galloway/Hitchens debate. Still could have been better, though.

And yeah, a mad liberal isn't a pretty sight. I think it's more of the way they get mad. Not necessarily a media-induced reaction. It's like we're so bent on being whitty and smartass-ish when we should be getting pissed on a very strong moral level. Lefties seem to approach things from too much of a logic and facts way and use sarcasm and whit to convey that. Why not add some emotion? The way it is, Conservatives have been cornering the "market" on emotion. Everything's a very personal, very touching subject to them. Why isn't it for us?

Of all the things I dislike about Ward Churchill - the man KNOWS how to get mad. He KNOWS how to convey emotion. He's great with that. I think it's why he's so popular. Because he takes a strong moral stand and isn't afraid to cry when thousands of people die.

Chomsky on the other hand is so devoid of emotion he starts to become a blackhole of logic. Nothing truely heartfelt can be seen by the casual Chomsky reader/listener. Liberals have to learn that the Right is committing some morally outrageous acts and it's not underhanded to use people's emotions to get others to realize it. There ARE real emotions at play here. Use them. Be a smartass when you're among OTHER liberals.

[Nomad]

I'll have to check out that debate. I found a transcript for those of us who use the computer at work and can't watch vids

It can be found here.

I agree with a lot of what Chomsky says but he seems to be stuck on What America Does Wrong. While it's a topic that isn't given enough discussion, (among everyone but liberals and al-Qaida) I feel that, after a certain point, we should be talking about solutions too. And Chomsky does come off as weirdly robotic. Right after 9/11 he was interviewed and he just dusted off "AMERICA THE TERRORIST STATE, TRACT 7B" after a brief and dispassionate "yes the bombers are bad."

It's just surreal how so many of the opponents of the current order consistently fail to understand how the Right succeeds and why they fail. I think we all need to read What's the Matter with Kansas and Don't Think of an Elephant--both those books were great although Kansas was the better of the two by far.

And we need to have SOLUTIONS. So often I've watched centrists ask leftys "well what should we do?" and the leftys get vague and handwavy. I really think Ry should have a board on here about "better ways to do things" and "how society should be" and that sort of thing.

[Fat Pat]

Good points. And I love that sheep picture that says "Follow" on it. Wonderful.

[Nomad]

Now, I'm reading this debate between Hitchens and Galloway and I can't help but notice Galloway's emphasis on how the Arabs are wronged and how we're making enemies of Islam. This is from a man who called for a global alliance between Progressives and Muslims.

Well speaking as a secularist, I find Islam totally abhorrent. Along with Christianity and Judaism, the faith of Muhammad is a collection of violent superstitions that arose from the patriarchal barbarians of ancient West Asia. There's very little in the Abrahamic religions to redeem them and I think that we should look toward the day when the vile scribblings of crazed desert prophets are as relevent to society as blood-stained altars to Tezcatlipoca.

It's true that we have indeed wronged much of the Muslim world and have atrocities to answer for. However, it's also true that the madrassas of the Mideast are espousing a vicious, reactionary tradition. Galloway was spot-on when he talked about the fact that our actions in the Middle East have made a festering swamp good only as a breeding pool for all maner of fanaticism. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a repressive oligarchy guilty of many crimes but insular and quiescent under the heel of international sanctions and supervision. Modern Iraq is a fractious nightmare stalked by the ghost of Saladin urging his people to fight the apostate West. We haven't made Iraq a bastion of democracy, we've toppled its dictator and served it to the mujadeen on a platter.

I don't want solidarity with the devotees of Allah. I want them dethroned from their theocracies and left to practice their idiot religion with the neutered blandness that mainstream Christianity is left to in secular countries. We will never achieve that with war; war will only inflame them and embolden them. It will make them determined to inflict such horror upon us that we leave them alone to build their theocratic nations of Sharia-supported autarchy. Every daisy cutter we dropped on Afghanistan put another gleam in the eye of a fanatic and every dead Iraqi makes ten others join the ranks of al-Qaida. This war will, in the end, only serve to advance the twisted agendas of men like Bin Laden.

The invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with spreading democracy in the Middle East. Anybody on this message board knows that. But what CAN spread democracy in the Middle East? This is something I don't often hear discussed.

[Fat Pat]

Well, personally, I tend to tolerate religion a bit more than it seems you do.

I think all the semetic religions have things about them that are fundamentally flawed especially when it comes to their own tolerance of other lifestyles, ideas, and beliefs. They have destructive tendencies, they keep women pinned down under very strict ideology, etc. They have all these things wrong with them that shouldn't be tolerated.

But the religions themselves MUST be tolerated. Because we are tolerated. Secularism is tolerated. And we shouldn't turn thousands of years of religious rule around to adopt a form of Secular tyranny. I'm sure this isn't what you meant, but this is what I think your type of thinking could lead to. And religious people should be the only ones to dictate what religious people believe. I don't think we should change anything EXCEPT when it hurts people, hurts society, or limits the potential/liberties of anyone else. Simply the belief, for example, that homosexuality is wrong is something we should tolerate indefinitely. Because the opposite (a belief that it is right) is fully tolerated. It's when that is then enacted upon others in a way which restricts society's growth that it becomes something more than just a mere belief and an actual tool for restriction.

I'm going to continue on with the example of Gay Marriage because that's something you and I can relate to fully. So Gay Marriage would appear to favor the person who says "homosexuality is right" but what the legalization of Gay Marriage is simply doing is allowing society to grow and cause acceptance to flourish. But a ban on Gay Marriage not only would favor the person who says "homosexuality is wrong" but it would also restrict society's growth. THAT'S why a ban on Gay Marriage is an unfortunate and destructive aspect of religion. Not because the state should see homosexuality as "correct" or "great" behavior. Because they shouldn't limit society.

Now let's take an issue from the other side: prayer in schools. A truely tolerant person who wants society to grow would be 100% FOR prayer in school. Not dictated by the school of course (because it's supposed to act on impartiality) but DEFINITELY tolerated. It's just like Gay Marriage. It's not the state saying "yes, this is correct behavior". It's the state saying "we want to promote diversity and growth within society". That's the right thing to do. Religions shouldn't be marginalized if they are truely believed. Any belief that has any sort of backing should be out in the open for public view and allowed to grow by society. Because when it grows, it gets more publicity, it gets more exposure, and the belief is allowed to mature based on the opposition it would encounter. So in a sense.. if religion is a truely flawed thing, under a society highly tolerant of religion, religion would end up dying out quicker. Because people will realize the flaws quicker due to increased exposure to it.

Same with Neo-Nazism. It should be one of the most exposed ideas of all per capita of those who believe it. The sooner we get rid of Neo-Nazism, the better. And people WILL realize it's idiocy en masse. Exposure will help that.

I personally think a culture ONLY benefits from diversity. So we should allow religion to roam free, be as hardcore as it wants, and be as outspoken as it wants, just so long as it isn't dictating our rights and keeping our society from growing. Some people who are exposed to it will convert to it BECAUSE of it was exposed. But if religion is as horrible as we think it is, more will be turned away. Making efforts to turn Christianity and Islam into bland shells of themselves will only make the more hardcore Christians and Muslims mad, cause them to go underground and become more extreme and desperate. To make a religion bland is essentially to sugar coat it. There should be no sugar coating. In fact, for the most part, I want religious people to continue to hate Gays. It doesn't help their cause out at all to do so.

[Nomad]

Oh certainly religion should be tolerated, but within limits. Let me extend my earlier example--nobody in America would deny somebody the right to express his or her faith in Tezcatlipoca if he or she chose to do so. Unless that expression involved bringing back those blood-stained altars.
My point isn't that religion should be stamped out (though perhaps, if possible, it might be left to wither and die), my point is that religion isn't the harmless irrelevancy many secularists seem to think it is. The people who sacrificed themselves in the 9/11 attacks didn't do it for the sanctity of the Laws of Thermodynamics or because of their adherence to String Theory.

Religion can be quite dangerous. It should be kept in its role as a comfort to the ingorant and the wishful-thinkers but it should NEVER be allowed any real influence over the way a society is run.

Regardless, I wasn't making my point about religion's role, per se. I was trying to say that there is a belief-system running unchecked in the Mideast (in the way some of Christianity's adherents here would like their religion unchecked) and it's helping to promote violent behavior. This was, of course, a subset of my larger point--the war isn't helping, what would?

[Fat Pat]

Well yes, there does need to be another way to solve terrorism setting aside the discussion of religion. And you're right, we DEFINITELY do not hear enough from the Left on how to solve terrorism. It's practically a non-issue except to use it as fotter against the right. I'm not 100% sure how to end it but I know brute force is far from a backbone in an "effort against extremism". I can think of many possible solutions but they seem far too obvious. I'll need to learn more. Can you think of anything?