When browsing a gaming website, one of the banner ads was for ExploreFreedomUSA.org. The use of the keyword “freedom” as in “they hate us for our freedom”, and “freedom fries”, “freedom to starve” and related patriotism-justifies-anything bullshit, suggested to me probable republican ties. Curious as to the political leanings of my favorite how-to-craft-X-in-ffxi website, I checked it out. It has a one sentence thing about homeland security, saying that it’s everyone’s business. Report suspicious things. (Turn your neighbor in, if you’re a good party member you’ll do it).
But it also has extensive linkage on the first amendment. The only one I browsed was talking about overprotective hyperreaction to something that smacked school officials as vaguely collumbine-ish. Apparently a killed was expelled and spent 3 days in jail for something he’d drawn two years ago, that his brother unknowingly brought to school, and accidentally displayed. Hmmm, sounds a little more protecting free speech, not something I associate with republicanism these days (unless by “speech” you mean “campaign contributions”).
Then there was the get out the youth vote thing. Something I associate with thoroughly democratic strategies. *shrug* I have no idea what to make of it.
I would say that if you see a set of political views that are displayed toghether and don’t fit into a pre-concieved “category”, then they are probably someone’s actual views.
I ran into this guy recently who said he’d never vote for a female president, as he didn’t think women could handle power.
He surprised me, though, when I asked him how he felt about Ahnold. They guy despises Arnold, and his reasoning is as follows (note that this guy is not of Native American descent)
He saw this TV segment where Arnold was talking about how the Indian Casinos should pay California the taxes they owe to California.
And this guy’s reaction was “Wait a minute, the taxes they owe to California? They don’t owe you shit. The white man came in with guns and took all their land and put them on reservations, and here you come, an immigrant like the rest of us, and have the gall to say they owe us something!”
So yeah, real people tend to have views that aren’t categorizable along party lines.
Clearly why we need to abolish the electoral college and enstate instant runoff voting. 😉
On the other hand this one was probably crafted by a “non-partisan” committee with a vested interest in “jingoism”. And an interest in the first ammendment. And probably focus grouped to death. It’s neither republican or democratic. It’s swinging both ways. And pretty vacant too. Notice it’s a public service message from the Ad Council.
(Found it and your post interesting which is why I took the time to look at the site and respond to you.)
Vacuous is certainly a good word for it. Damn near absolutely content-free. =)
Republicans are actually pretty big on getting out the vote as well. That’s how they won last year, after all. Getting out the vote really isn’t a partisan issue (well, beyond _who_ they’re getting out to vote, anyways).
As for the First Amendment issues – that gets tricky. One tends to associate restriction of speech with Republicans, and freedom of speech with democrats, but it really isn’t all that clear-cut. For instance, “Political Correctness” tends to be more of a Democratic Party issue, and in a sense, that’s basically censorship. Meanwhile, there are “strict constructionists” among the Republican Party that do take the First Amendment to heart – Antonin Scalia, for example, has written some very strongly pro-First Amendment opinions for the Supreme Court.
Finally, I’ve noticed a tendency recently from the Republican Party that if an issue involves guns, they come down on whatever side paints guns and gun owners in the best light possible. If they don’t try to avoid the topic entirely. I’m not saying all Republicans do that (not by a long shot), but the Party seems to be taking that stance. It seems to be their way of countering the Democratic Party onslaught of “Look! All guns are evil! Look what happened in this situation! See how it involves GUNS?!”
Republicans are big on getting the vote out. But this was the youth vote. The youth _internet_ vote. Not a demographic in which republicans typically prosper.
There are a large number of elected democrats I’d like to beat repeatedly about the head and shoulders with the bill of rights. Particularly the first. Maybe some with the second, but for the most part no. The anti-gun-nuts, I’d just like to beat period. =)
“Republicans are big on getting the vote out. But this was the youth vote. The youth _internet_ vote. Not a demographic in which republicans typically prosper.”
True enough. Plus, I somehow missed the word “youth” in your original post, and hadn’t actually read any of the stuff you’d linked to. My fault 😉
Personally, I think all elected officials should be required to take a quiz on the Bill of Rights that demonstrates they understand what it means. If they fail the quiz, we’ve got to elect a new official. Perhaps the quiz can be instated as a requirement before they can be a candidate – that would reduce the number of elections anyway… (in case it isn’t obvious, this idea is mostly facetious… even if it does hold a certain amount of appeal anyway 😉 ).
When you’re congealing selbina butter, you’re congealing communism.