I'd have gone into more detail about all the wankery but I couldn't afford a venti

Ha Ha my privilege did't wot either

Just got that passed on to me the other day. From 2004. Since been refuted by the original letter writer. but nobody pays attention to that.

Yeah, well that's the kind of country you get when the 'president' passes on without clarification falsified videos from British neo-Nazis. :P

The marine that wrote the original letter was the one that recanted what he'd written after he fully investigated it. The original letter that's still circulating was done as a knee jerk reaction to something he heard. It happens every time someone forwards an e-mail without thinking it through. I made a lot of enemies in my family over the years because I WOULD investigate. About 1% of the e-mails I received had any accuracy. I pissed them off by replying with facts.

Yeah. I notice 'facts' don't work so well on imgflip either. :D

yeah, the first thing they do is dispute your sources with less reliable sources

Or just fling insults with no intellectual content whatsoever. Like BrandonJ elsewhere on this commentary stream. I'd be fine with debating conservatives if they would debate back. Repeating the same thing over and over is a sign of mental illness, not a supported and rational argument.

I recall an article in Psychology Today that said that conservatism was a mental handicap. Further study showed that, in small, tribal groups, say 50-200, it is actually beneficial. In today's society, it's tragic. A conservative can easily handle the small societal tribes, but on a large scale, They melt down to quickly. Liberalism, likewise, is a mental handicap because it thrives in a larger society. Unfortunately, there are not studies on the progressive mind-set. I suspect that true progressives don't look at everything in black and white, nor do they accept what they are told blindly. They try to find the balance on both sides of the issue. Take the cry of tax cuts that has resounded for years. It's good for business, but it is not good for society. While the conservative theory is that the money saved by the rich will trickle down and stimulate the economy, it never seems to work that way. Instead of investing capital back into a business, those that benefit the most from a tax cut use those extra funds for their own non-use. It's all become money manipulation that creates nothing and people get fooled into thinking it has value. OTOH, small business people understand the benefits of reinvesting into their business, and are able to reap better benefits. Take my daughter: she and her partner deliver motor homes across the US and Canada. If they fly home, the cost of the ticket is a tax deduction. Meals on the road are tax deductible. Gas for not only the motor home, but for their tow car are deductible. New tires on the car are deductible. The key factor here is that they reinvest a larger percentage of their income back into the business than the major corporations. Their next big expenditure is going to be purchasing a new tow vehicle. Income vs outgo, they put a higher percentage back into their business than GE, GM, or any other corporation.

Yeah, if you give a tax break to a wealthy CEO they tend to put it in the bank; give one to a small business owner and they invest in their business which leads to more income, which leads to more labor hired, which leads to more taxes for infrastructure, etc, etc. The only difference I have with your discussion is that I would switch places between 'liberal' and 'progressive'. Not condemning progressivism, I'd much rather have that than the current regime, but I live in Portland and come up against self-proclaimed 'progressive' folks all the time and find they often tend to pull off the same cranky conspiracy-addled thinking conservatives do nowadays. Of course I wouldn't really consider them 'progressive' since much of the thought and action tends to be regressive, harkening back to halcyon days that never existed. I consider myself a liberal in the sense that it represents the autonomy of the individual. I would call myself, in the best European tradition, center-left; I am extremely socially liberal, in that all people should be able to do what they want as long as it doesn't directly harm another individual. I am in support of free trade, open markets, and globalization - 'progressives' are just conservatively attempting to hinder trade in the name of jobs, which will never work since change is coming regardless and the best we can do is to prepare people for it - but I also believe that goverment should help support people who, through no fault of their own, have been dealt a bad hand. Mostly I object to what so many righties on this site label liberalism: just another name for socialism or some other fantasy evil they must assail at all costs. Lee Atwater under the first Bush, and Karl Rove under the second, were successful in executing a re-labeling of liberalism as leftism. All these young, angry white pups are using the mis-labeling to try and grab back perceived lost power. By supporting Trump they are merely cutting their own throats.

The reason I use progressive, as opposed to liberal is because a large number of today's "liberals" were conservatives until the influx of the Dixiecrats {think David Duke} to the GOP in the late 60s and 70's. Because of the extremist views far right views of the Dixiecrats into the party, that conservative faction that left became known as neo-liberals, moved the Democratic party towards the right away from the progressive policies of FDR, JFK, and LBJ. If you compare today's "liberals" to the "conservatives" of the fist half of the 20th century, you'd find they are right in line with the conservatives of that era.

I use progressive as a term for people that want progress in our world. I see them as forward thinking people. People that see the path a country is headed beyond their life times. So many progressive issues that have ripple effects once implemented. Universal Health Care, Climate change and the environment, Education, Gun control. Those that yell loudest against those items are those that have no solution, and rarely can discuss without reverting to name calling.

Yeah, I believe in all those progressive causes; I use quotation marks around 'progressive' because whom I'm talking about are those who'll lay down in the street for weird causes with little impact. Those who'll sneer about 'neo-liberals' when free trade is mentioned, but would seem confused when you told them their ideas are all aligned with Trump's except for the racism. I'm a liberal of the classical school. The Economist magazine and Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the Federalist Papers, Thomas Paine and the autonomy of man. There's a reason there's a 'neo-' before liberal in that formulation. What actually happens is that those of the liberal democratic bent will effect change and then conservatives will fight it. Over time, as the change is shown to be successful, conservatives slowly become less strident and even accepting of it. Then liberals see another necessary change coming and effect it, the conservatives fight it due to fear of change, and it all goes through the cycle again. I'm a good Hegelian; thesis + anti-thesis = synthesis. Some of today's 'liberals' will begat tomorrow's conservatives. It's all about protecting your own on the right. Liberal democratic values that started to bloom in the renaissance were the beginning of progression to the modern world and it's liberties. Liberals progress, conservatives push back. You and I are coming from the same basic direction, we may just disagree on the semantics. :)

I concur.Conservatism is keeping the status quo. Even the harnessing of fire was a liberal undertaking. Fear of fire is deeply ingrained in our psyche. Instead of cringing in fear, those ancestors studied it as closely as they dared. They used their fear to learn how to handle it, which lead to warmth against the cold and a means to cook our food.

Wordy as always. :D

Dear Swiggys-back, Psychology Today is a compelling commercial magazine that thrives in the market place where advertising pays the bills and provide the profits. I enjoy reading it and occasionally get edification from it. But it shouldn't be given the weight of science or confused with real paychology, any more than Popular Mechanics is a fountain of real physics. Their articles are distilled, "digested" and recast for lay people. But could you agree that it is a fundamentally human trait to be convinced the beliefs we hold ARE the right and proper beliefs? And quite naturally the evidence we find supporting our beliefs and opinions is judged accurate while, in contrast, evidence supporting opposite beliefs is suspect, or even judged to be false? Fake news has currency across the political spectrum-check SNOPES. I'm not endorsing the idea that "there is no truth" or that truth is subjective. But i am saying that despite meme's to the contrary liberalism, progressivism and conservatism are not psychological diagnoses. Neither are Fascism or Communism. And thanks for your calm voice and moderating influence, btw. DOUG out

Thanks for your input. Long ago, I discounted using a single source for making a claim, and when I forget that, I'm nailed. Last year's election opened my eyes to the amount of fake news that is out there, on both sides of the spectrum.

In the case of the Psychology Today article, they did a good job on explaining it for the lay person. I only had one semester of Psychology in college, but they were able to explain several of the items they used. Besides the interview process, they also used brain scans. I don't recall if they were CAT scans or MRIs, but they were able to determine exactly how each subject's thought process works by the areas of the brain that was active during similar stimulus. I wish I could find the original article, but the last time I looked, I could not find it: Only a blog that was, in truth, a parody of the original article. I talked to one of the founders of NewsLo, a "humor" site that specialized in political humor. Their parodies read so straight forward that you couldn't tell if it was real or not. I told him that he was treading on shaky ground by making his parodies too factual sounding. A majority of people wouldn't get the joke and pass it on as truth. He was happy with that, saying that if people didn't follow politics enough to realize he was pulling their leg, then they deserve to have their leg pulled. I told him,"Oh, you're a liberal form of Fox News", and he got mad.

Poor girl. Always the loser. :D

4. You are awesome.

5. You're right, he is. :)

I noticed harrisp0 deleted (below). I think he might have been being harassed by trolls. I'd like to jump in and convince all the good ones to hang on and the little farts will disappear, but some have too-quick emotional reactions and leave. Shoot.

Hey genius, it was the leftists who burned the art as well.

Are you going to tell me that the left isn't waging a war on Christmas? I have seen it.

On websites tailored to a certain group of the populace who are willing to grasp at every invented conspiracy if it makes them feel superior to others. I prefer to get my news from various sources and then test them out before believing, and to determine myself what I think is true. It's called empirical thinking and it depends on actual, non-invented evidence.

Hopefully you have the natural humor to place the 'news' in its context. ;)

I do the same with your Occupy Democrats

As a liberal I am sure you listen to many of the leftist baloney coming from their media.

Liberals have their conspiracy theories as well. Don't fool yourself.

LOL a liberal talking about the persecution card. You people talk about free speech all of the time. In fact, it is Berkeley which has a free speech rally every year, yet they have shown how much value they place on free speech.

I say 'Merry Christmas' all the time, as well as 'Happy Holidays' and 'Season's Greetings'. I just think the 'War on Christmas' claims are a form of conservative political correctness, and an attempt to suppress free speech. There's a definite stench of hypocrisy on the right side of the American political spectrum nowadays.

Oh yes Ken. You are really going to tell me that there isn't a stench of hypocrisy in the left as well?

What does "white privilege" have to do with anything on this current flame war?

You'll notice, CrazyPowerMetaller, that in this 'flame war' that it's my original meme but BrandonJ has made about 10 times more comments in it than I do. He even comments when no-one comments to him. XD XD XD His constant filling of my notifications this past week has made it easy to ignore him. ;P

'White privilege' is when well-off white dudes have nothing better to do than follow the personality cult of a lunatic president who managed to squeeze his way into the Oval Office by weird math. And thus goes forth and proves what I wrote on the cup on the original meme. :)

Another example of liberal hypocrisy

Liberal tolerance of free speech

http://ktla.com/2017/02/02/uc-berkeley-protests-of-breitbarts-milo-yiannopoulos-caused-100000-in-damage/

but please keep going on about Roy Moore

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2705149/Michael-Moores-lavish-property-empire-revealed-court-documents-wife-22-years-divorce.html