Debating The Right-Wing

Not long ago I had an on-line debate with a right-winger, a Limbaugh sycophant. Following are his comments and my responses. At the end is this wonderful piece by Peter Freundlich commenting on the Bush-Cheney rationale for the invasion oh Iraq.

RW: Your arguments definitely slant Dem. By your rhetoric you support with your vote the philosophy and policies of the Dem party.
ME: Of course, I support the majority of Dem positions but not all and certainly not all the players. I've always been a Democrat and very proud of it.
RW: You do not rail against the stupid assholes like Kennedy, dean, and Reid who are viciois on more than a regular basis with traitorous speech some of which does help the enemy ferment vile that gets our boys killed.
ME: That's an absurd and vicious charge. I would say what gets "our boys" (men and women troops) killed is unnecessarily putting them in harms way (like pre-emptive war) and taunting the terrorists with machismo bravado like" Bring it on!" . Why would I rail against Howard Dean? He is a good countervailing force to Rove, Cheney and the right wing attack dogs.
RW: If I heard more of your real views like you stated with abortion you would clarify your points in a more reasonable way.
ME: In other words if I would agree with your other views only then would I appear reasonable and sane since you are right and I am wrong. How generous of you.
RW: Most of what I hear from your rhetoric does sound sometimes very anti-American.
ME: Any opinion that disagrees with the radical right wing is labeled "anti-American". It's a Karl Rove tactic. My country right or wrong, one party rule, extreme nationalism and religious fundamentalism are all very dangerous to any culture or people - they are the conditions that create fascist governments. Our founders framed the constitution against these dangers and to give us the freedom to question our leadership, they warned and encouraged Americans to speak out against the very kinds of fascist leaning corporatists that are now in power.
RW: Legitimate criticism is something anyone can see. Your points all seem to take the view you have some deep inside info no one else has. I don't buy that at all, and it does sound elitist.
ME: I read a lot but I don't pretend to have information that is not available to anyone else. I have conviction concerning my beliefs, the rational discursive thought, natural intuition and common sense that lead me there. When one gathers knowledge, challenges themselves and tests their theories against what others believe they must come to a reasonable and logical conclusion or decide to let others think for them. I refuse to let others think for me. While I rely on others to verify or justify the direction of my thoughts I don't allow their conclusions to be the end-all final arbiter of truth. Truth is constantly revealing itself. I accept that what is considered truth today may be untrue tomorrow - but one must always seek verification and operate from the most reasonable version at hand. I was raised to follow the teachings of Jesus which are hard for anyone to discount as backwards or misdirected. With Jesus as a general litmus test I find nothing wrong with my conclusions. I don't accept that perception is reality. Elitist means : 1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources. a. The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class. b. Control, rule, or domination by such a group or class.

I don't see anything elitist about my political philosophy but everything about the right wing appears exactly that.

RW: I do not like the pork barrel spending that the congress has once again gotten away with that Bush was supposed to control. There will always be some corruption in industry and politics.
ME: Agreed. I don't believe there will ever be Utopia.
RW: It seems at least under Bush industry criminals are starting to go to jail.
ME: Bush is one of them. Bush has too many criminal supporters as most elected Democrats do. There are far too few corporate criminals that are being punished. Martha Stewart was a sacrificial lamb and a distraction. Martha is a liberal who crossed the line and was a perfect target - red meat thrown to the rabid right. Martha was convicted of obfuscating only. She didn't really harm anyone by her actions. By comparison where is Ken Lay and the Enron crooks who destroyed people's lives? Bush is dragging his feet and would pardon all of them if he thought he could get by with it.
RW: I didn't see any of those same fellows go to jail under a Dem administration. In fact most of the corruption that was done was passed over and participated in by the Dems under there own watch. But if a GOP gets in office or a GOP congress all the GOP are corporate raiders when Enron. Global Crossing, Lorral all got fat on Clinton's watch along with Marc Rich, Soros, Lewis, McCaulif, and the rest. If you are going to nail somebody nail them on both sides.
ME: I couldn't agree more! You act as if I defend criminality and complicity as long as they are Democrats. I don't support or excuse corruption in any form but I can understand how people fall victim.
RW: I am for any and all criminals and corporate raiders to be caught and pay the price. Including Hillary and Bill for helping destroy that little savings and loan in Arkansas.
ME: PLEASE! I have seen no proof of this and the courts couldn't either. Approximately $70 MM was spent on this right wing witch hunt that turned up nothing. With all that power and money aimed at destroying the Clintons are you acknowledging the right wing is that bumbling and incompetent? Why doesn't the great Rush use some of his millions in profits to get the goods on his arch enemy? But then it would take away a lot of his attraction if he didn't have an evil Darth Vader to rail about. He helped create the myth for his own profit - why would he want to destroy his own personal Frankenstein? Isn't it odd that Fitzgerald has only spent $2 MM to indict the White House?
RW: If they get the goods on Bush or any other GOP for true crimes let the dice roll. (The dice are rolling, - hee, hee, hee.)

RW: It would be ludicrus for the US to not want or be the number 1 economic and military power.
ME: At any cost or Faustian bargain? No matter what immoral or criminal act against the world community and humanity? Was our country formed to become the number one world power? Is that what our forefathers had in mind? Did we set out to dominate all other nations?
RW: I am not trusting of the good intentions of the majority of tyrannical and dictatorial countries out there. If we stop all of our covert operations do you think the rest of the world would quit. I don't think so. The Muslim religion has as a goal the overt conversion of the rest of the world. Just like the crusades with Chrisianity. And no even though I am a Catholic do I condone torturing people till they convert then killing them so they go to heaven.
ME: I don't think the Catholic church operates that way any longer - do they?
RW: The vast majority of the world countries are the ones violating your principles and ethics. In comparison the degree that other countries violate those principles and ethics is not even comparible with the amount of evil and corruption that they do. The UN should be proof of that with their own members raping and piliging.
ME: This point could be debated at length, especially the theory that you must commit evil to combat evil. If one keeps trying to outdo the other where does it end? How can one or the other continue to think that God will choose the one who is less evil and support them? How fucking ludicrous! And to think that these madmen who think they communicate with and are pleasing God are running the world. If I were God, who is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent and all that other end-all omni-stuff, I would have to be omni-omni-tolerant of man's idiocy, arrogance and evil nature. If I had created this mess and such imperfect creatures I would be tempted to discard it and start over. I guess as long as there are a few redeemable souls God figures it 's a worthwhile investment. Hopefully God didn't place all his/her bet on this one planet and there are others that are proving more deserving of care and protection. Maybe that's the problem. God has written off Earth and is investing in a different human colony on some distant planet.

Although it's unfortunate it has to be so, I grudgingly accept the yin and yang of existence, the bi-polar nature of life, that in order to exist in it's dynamic form life must have a negative force in order for a positive force to exist. Without anything to blow against there would be no wind. Mark Twain states the current truth when he said, "Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done." Twain accepted that war would always exist and had wisely given up on the human race and saw how completely ridiculous and unredeemable man is. But that in no way excuses man's relentless desire to war with one another and take possession of resources that rightfully fall to some other nation and their people.

Here's what PETER FREUNDLICH said back during the invasion of Iraq as he guides us down the rabbit hole.

All right, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly. We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored. We're going to wage war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war. The paramount principle is that the UN's word must be taken seriously, and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then by gum, we will. Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend. Am I getting this right?
Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor-bound to do that too, because democracy, as we define it, is too important to be stopped by a little thing like democracy as they define it.
Also, in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves. We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's failure to allow opposing voices to be heard. We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does. And we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition. We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people. And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.
Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are meditations on paradox and puzzle and illogic and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy. It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like, `We must make war on him because he is a threat to peace,' but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.
As a collector of laughable arguments, I'd be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know--we all know--that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular reasoning accident.
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"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."--Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906
"They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane.”--George Orwell: 1984, talking about the brainwashing of the worker class that happens in authoritarian societies.
"Once a government resorts to terror against its own population to get what it wants, it must keep using terror against its own population to get what it wants. A government that terrorizes its own people can never stop. If such a government ever lets the fear subside and rational thought return to the populace, that government is finished."--Michael Rivero
"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."-- Tacitus
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."--John F. Kennedy