5 Reasons Liberals Are Such Unpleasant People To Be Around

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As opposed to the Republican Party, who had their section on homosexuality in their official 2012 party platform co-written by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC).

... the same FRC that lobbied against a House of Representatives resolution (proposed by a Democrat House representative) condemning the infamous "Kill the Gays" Act in Uganda.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5845975 ... t=#5845975
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Res ... Resolution


Yet, the 2007 House of Representatives resolution denouncing female genital mutilation, domestic violence, "honor" killings, acid burning, dowry deaths, and other gender-based persecutions and crimes was sponsored by 44 representatives, of which only 2 were Republican.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hres32

Furthermore, a GOP majority in the House of Representatives voted in 2011 to defund the United Nations Population Fund, which has the fight against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as one of its main areas. Democrat representatives proposed an amendment which would have continued funding of activities against FGM. No Republicans voted for this amendment.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/? ... TOC_29140&


Yet Democrats are in favour of increasing foreign aid, while Republicans are massively in favour of reducing it:
http://www.people-press.org/2013/02/22/ ... -programs/

So for these 3 issues, it would seem that US liberals - either directly or through their representatives - actually follow through on their convictions.

I am referring to comments I see on news message boards, when I talk about the myopic views I was describing.

And I suppose that a college education would be useless in these fields as well?



How exactly does the PATRIOT Act fit into this discussion?



You do realize that the vast majority of the military identify as Republican, don't you? I'm fairly certain that the federal government pays them. Your arguments about being a federal employee = Democrat are largely a wasted effort.

Assad's power largely comes from a better funded military and a loyal minority base that knows once he is gone, they will be subject to some pretty nasty persecution. It was likewise for Saddam.

As for standing up to my employer (I work for the Department of Veteran Affairs), I am very much against the portion of the government that has either voted down or blocked the vote on 3 separate VA bills in the last 4 years because (in order) it expands the government, it costs too much, and it didn't have Iran sanctions attached. This is the same part of the government that complains that the VA needs to do a better job taking care of our veterans.
I am not a fan of either party, but at this point, the Republicans are a morally bankrupt hippocritical cabal of religious extremists with fascist indertones, while the Democrats are just hippocritical d-bags with socialist overtones.



Consumers rights advocates are denounced by the Republican party as detrimental to the economy, and there capabilities have been eroding away for some time now. Otherwise, I would agree with you.



What exactly is the government producing that they are going to shoot you over? It is larger businesses that are going to put you in jail for patent/copyright infringement, not the big bad government.



I am not sweeping under the rug. I just disagree with you on what the problem is. You think less education is better, and I think more education that people can actually afford is better.



So learning to be tough on the streets makes you more capable in an ever more scientific and technical workforce? Wouldn't street smarts augmented by book smarts be a much better way to go?



I couldn't agree with you more. Again, it the affordability of college that I have issue with.



From your source:


So less than half have not mastered a specific skill set after two years and around a third after four, therefor college is a waste of time? Did you bother to read the part where those who spent most of their time socializing were the ones who did the worst? Those who study and try actually do quite well (surprise, surprise). Just because some do not make an effort, you don't think college can provide a quality education? And you think that even those who didn't learn problem solving skills learned absolutely nothing in their college experience?

Do you think we should abolish high schools after the recent study that showed no improvement in ability since 2009?



You assume that critical thinking skills are the only ones that are valuable. So knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, geoscience, computer science, and networking and socializing are all worthless? Using the link above for your argument is problematic, as it does not provide a complete picture and is not comprehensive enough for the discussion at hand.

You make it sound like no education is the route everyone should follow.



They measure tons of things when it comes to education. Some are valid and valuable; some not so much. They miss plenty of metrics that could be collected and compiled, but for someone who doesn't like the federal government, shouldn't that make you happy they aren't even more involved?



So no one should be educated because it doesn't work out for everyone? That will improve society? You seem to be saying that our country will improve if we just stop teaching our youth and send them straight into the workforce.

For me it's really more about what they've displaced. We used to have healthy union and private sector apprenticeships. Germany is doing quite well with that model at the moment.

As for those specific fields, progress on AI has been slow partly because academia has such a narrow (and self aggrandizing) idea of what intelligence is. They're really left brained, but a lot of autonomous learning problems are easier to solve with data mapping than algorithms.

As for medicine, I used to room with a bunch of college girls, one of whom was studying it. They were all drunks. I certainly hope that she'll never be the attending ER doc if I get mangled in a car crash. My dad has some pretty spooky stories from his medical practice.

We still lose a lot of people who should be salvable. If I go into a clinic with just one thing wrong, my odds of a correct diagnosis are pretty good. If there's more than one thing wrong, those odds fall sharply. You're right that medical schools do a decent job of weeding out docs who make mistakes, but they have a narrow definition of what a mistake is that usually doesn't include some of those cases. Some people are good at solving those kinds of entangled variable problems, and I'd like to see schools that test for that and develop it. They don't right now. I'll venture a guess that it's because most of their staff aren't good at it. It would help to have more competition in accreditation, with an effective quality watchdog organized like Consumers' Union.



What did "the TP" had to do with the equivalence of alcohol and guns? I guessed that you meant "the Tea Party," so I responded to your accusation that they were "destructive" by giving an example of the opposite. Does that answer your question? I could have just responded unhelpfully like the above.



Do this quick estimate: How many soldiers would Assad need to control his country solely by force? It's not too hard to rough out: He would need to lock down any building that could be used to build weapons or print leaflets. He would need to seal entire borders, not just roads that cross them. I'd need to think, but I could come up with a rough plan to pull it off. (It would take a lot more than he has.)



I'm really not sure who to distrust more. If you go by what people say, the Democrats do sound more caring. I'm more of a visual thinker, so it's the lack of much follow through that I can see that makes me wonder if that's really true.



I'm not aware of them going after Consumers' Union, and I'm not aware of any other organization doing what they do.



I've already covered very shoddy, expensive programs. They will jail anyone who doesn't pay up (and resisting arrest for that charge can indeed get you shot). I grew up thinking that anti-tax views were miserly, but I stopped being being able to believe that a while ago. Americans used to pity East Bloc citizens who had to pay 30% of their income for housing. That seems pretty quaint now. Both parties' policies keep housing prices high.

I'm not sure how patent law supports your argument. Both parties voted overwhelmingly for the "America Invents Act," which gave corporations even more power, and small time inventors even less. (It solves a problem that didn't exist, opens opportunities for abuse, and still makes it easy to get patents for things that aren't innovative.) In the senate there for more Democratic ayes, and in the house more Republican ones.



Who can afford that "affordable" education? There aren't enough rich people to cover the cost even if you took 100% of their net worth, and poor people certainly can't cover it. The only group that could pay for this is the middle class, and neither party will raise their taxes. Again, we used to have an affordable system.



I've watched a lot of brilliant people defeat themselves because the truth hurt too much. Some harsh experiences can definitely help with that.



Again, we had an affordable system before our bad colleges displaced it. It also was a better track to a stable income. Once people have an income, they have all sorts of learning opportunities.



Yes, I'm aware. If you look at the websites of US universities, "campus lifestyle" is usually more prominent than academics. I was impressed with Purdue ad GWU because they were some of the only ones who put real students on the front pages of their sites. The others looked like dating websites. It's not an issue of 'a few slackers' when the institution's leadership markets primarily to that exact demographic.



When you ask for $220 billion in funding each year, you owe it to citizens to show that your program works. Yes, "only" 36% of students failed to learn critical thinking skills. Knowledge without critical thinking is a far cry from what was promised when their lobbyists brow beat Congress and state legislatures with demands for funding. That's $79 billion per year on a service that was only half delivered. That's more than the cost of the Afghan war in any year from 2002 to 2009. You can buy a lot of $695 ashtrays for that.



You're still equating education with learning. That's as bad as equating churchgoing with kindness.



I've already suggested what I think would be a better, less corruptible approach. Measuring after the fact doesn't help as much if you won't state beforehand what you're trying to do, and how. You can just cherry-pick the stats to find what looks best, then say "This is what we were trying to do." When I was in my late teens and looking at colleges, I asked for specifics about what I could hope to gain if I worked hard at my studies. The answers that I got were some of the most vague I've ever had to listen to.



You're not talking about learning. You're talking about a centralized system that gives privilege to people for the rest of their lives based on a test that they took between the ages of 18 and 22, and has never been vetted by a non-interested party. I'm saying that there are a lot of smart, qualified people out there who could fill all but a handful of those jobs. It's the narrow minded monopoly that I have a problem with.

Last edited by NobodyKnows on 11 May 2014, 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I consider myself a progressive independent myself. I know one thing, I will never live in a conservative/republican dominated state again. There's nothing wrong with tradition but not being able to see and almost expect everyone else to adopt your traditions is silly to me

I don't know what your tradition is, but the academic tradition is even more archaic than the frontier American one. Its morality comes from Mesopotamian goat-herders' fables, and its understanding of nature from a sheltered archipelago.

I'm atheist, but at least with Christians I have the establishment clause of the First Amendment to slow them down a little. No such luck with academic dogma. That religion is an official part of the state.

I knew several in med school in the early years that were the same. The further along the track, though, the more demanding it become. One straightened herself out and the others just washed out.



^ this I agree with. It is getting better, but way too slowly. Thanks to some of the younger up and comers, there has been some research into using electronic medical records to flag symptoms that could indicate multiple diagnoses. This is the kind of thing that comes out of having to do extensive research and having a viable and defensible thesis.



You should definitely not trust either side in that mess. My opinion at the moment is just that the Republicans are currently doing a bit more damage currently. But the pendulum will swing the other way soon enough, and then I will likely be considered a traitor once again for not flip flopping on my overall utilitarian views.



Just for the record, it used to be illegal to imprison a citizen over failure to pay debt. There are more and more states legalizing it, though. At the federal level, they just seize your assets, garnish wages, and confiscate your future SS and Medicare benefits.



I think I am not stating my argument clearly here. I am not arguing in favor of the Dems so much as against the Repubs on this one (and on many issues at this point).



Agreed, more or less. The affordability of education needs to be addressed. I think there should be some serious limitations on the profitability of higher education. I also think that the use of internet based classes should definitely be given much more development focus, especially in terms of classes that have absolutely no need for a live person.



I also feel that this should be a priority. There are plenty of technical colleges and curricula where the students are doing work that they should be paid for while learning. I also think that with further developments in internet based education this becomes much more feasible.



So your solution would be to cut off the opportunity for those who actually do want to learn? I think I am misunderstanding something here.

I agree with you if you are saying that colleges should stop glorifying frats and sororities and playing to the crowd that wants to be cool. But I think reform is a much better path than elimination. A large contributor to the problem is not the colleges as much as those who do not view college as a place to learn and the financial advisors to the college boards who know that those are the people they can capitalize the most on.



I also have a problem with the money being tossed around in a useless manner. Colleges should be accountable for the performance of their students not only while on campus, but in terms of employability and earnings afterwards. And all of that data should be 100% public information.



Education provides more opportunity for learning. I have plenty of college education, and I learned much much more than I would have if I didn't. It is more a matter of saying something more like show people how to be kind so that they have the opportunity to learn kindness. Some people will never learn, but you should still give them the chance.



This is also a problem, but it is beginning to change. Most accreditation bodies in the medical fields now require minimum standards of graduates to maintain accreditation, with many of the sciences following suit.



The narrow minded monopoly is most definitely the problem with our higher education system. But there are plenty of groups out there fighting for change. The SATs and ACTs (plus GREs, MATs, etc) have been coming under more and more fire as basically worthless, and predatory student loan practices have been put in the cross hairs lately as well. College debt and college affordability are becoming more and more important to the political parties as the voters of this generation (and their parents) start making themselves heard. Less and less youth identify with a single political party, so both sides will have to start making changes to keep power.

^I wholeheartedly disagree. We owe way too much to academia for me to ever accept this in any way.

Feeling a little hateful today, are we???

Personally, I find hardcore ideologues of any political persuasion are unpleasant people to be around. The problem with embracing political ideologies is that you are forced to filter reality through them -- you're never going to see the truth of things a great percentage of the time.

The kind of partisan bickering that a thread like this invites is what's wrong with the U.S., unfortunately.

By 'today', did you mean nearly 10 months ago?

Actually, this thread had been sleeping peacefully since last May until you revived it today. But to answer your question; hate is a part of my daily diet.

Partisan bickering, straw men, red herrings, dog whistles, trolling, ad hominens, etc, are the lifeblood of PPR. When a forum is titled Politics, Philosophy, and Religion it kinda invites that kind of discourse. You can thank your buddy pcuser for reviving it when it had been resting peacefully for 9 months. I'm the OP and I would have never thought to revive it. Hell, I'd totally forgotten that it even existed until today. Now that it's been resurrected maybe we can get another 22 pages of "partisan bickering" out of it.

You're right, that's pretty much the nature of discourse in this forum. But I'd be willing to raise the bar if you are. What do you say? Shall we set new standard? Join me in this quest for a more civilized rational, and intelligent dialog in this lions den.

P.S. I don't concern myself with the age of particular thread; only that it was brought to my attention by someone bumping it the top. If I feel I have something of value to add to the conversation (even if it's lone dead) I will.

Why? Uncivil and un-intelligent are always more fun.
Besides, it's going to go that way no matter what so just enjoy it like a high school cafeteria food fight and not sweat it.


It was a silly ass thread to begin with and I started it with that intent. It was, in a way, a parody of some of the liberal threads we've had whining about conservatives. If people insist on manufacturing offense out of it that's their issue, not mine.

Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't make them a troll or mean they are trolling. Just realize we all have different ways of looking at matters and leave it at that.