Woolly liberal

Crooked Timber’s Henry Farrell seems to be having a bit of a sense of humour failure.

CT commenter Bob McManus: "The right think they can destroy the system and create the Libertarian Paradise, but I am now hoping to seem them all on a gallows in my lifetime. I have never been so hopeful."

Henry: "Bob – I presume and hope for your sake that you’re trying to provoke an outraged reaction here from someone rather than make a serious claim – this is trolling in my book, and not compatible with the kinds of argument that I want to have in my comments section. You’re on your first warning. Feel free to express strong and vigorous opinions about me or whoever else – but saying that you want to string up everyone on the other half of the political spectrum is way beyond the kinds of argument I’m prepared to tolerate."

For one, it’s pretty obvious Bob was joking; for two, given how badly the current lot have cocked things up, a gallows would seem somewhat lenient.

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Cracks in the coalition

The Republican Party’s recent success comes chiefly from its creation of a coalition encompassing hardline social conservatives and big business. The social conservatives gain little from Republican support for big business, but also lose little (they may even gain, if the support for big business involves freeing up markets instead of enormous corporate welfare payments).

However, things are different for big business. Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble, for example, wants to ensure that its workforce consists of the most able people it can possible recruit – so it’s funded a campaign in its home town of Cincinnati to repeal a city charter amendment that allows discrimination against gay people. Unsurprisingly, certain foaming-at-the-mouth bigots don’t like this, and are trying to launch a ‘boycott P&G campaign’.

I’m going to step up my consumption of P&G products as a result, and I hope you will too. But this issue also has more general importance – even ultraconservative Singapore has stopped enforcing its anti-gay-sex laws partly so that it doesn’t lose out on the chance to attract talented gay foreign workers.

It would be excellent news if America’s major corporations were to come to understand that supporting bigotry is bad business practice, and force liberalisation of the Republican platform – or even desert the party altogether.

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Question for Americans

To Americans, or people of whatever nationality living in America – outside of lunatic right-wing blogs, do people in general give a monkey’s about the Dan Rather / dodgy letters story?

Given how incredibly unimportant and irrelevant the story is, it would be nice to hear that only ultra-partisan crazies care about it…

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Good luck to him

The government’s curfew policy, under which under-16s out in certain areas after 9pm without an adult can be sent home by police even if they’ve done nothing wrong, is vicious, cruel, and disdainful of human rights.

Bravely, a 14 year old boy from Richmond-on-Thames (a notoriously dangerous and mean area where such policies are particularly necessary) is challenging the rules under the Human Rights Act. Hopefully, the judiciary will yet again find against evil blind cunt David Blunkett and abolish these stupid rules.

Although ideally, the judiciary would find against evil blind cunt David Blunkett and commit him to the Tower of London for torture and execution.

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Public notice

As of now, I’m going to avoid reading the blogs of deranged Muslim-hating nutcases like Andrew Iain Dodge, and avoid posting on anything directly War on Terror-y for a while.

Even if this doesn’t change my opinions on the whole crusade’s pointlessness, at least it should keep me saner and less angry, and hopefully reduce the extent to which I offend and anger non-Muslim-hating non-nutcase WoT hawks.

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Paranoid derangement

Andrew Iain Dodge needs to ramp up his medication: "When Islamic bombings and kidnapping become the norm here, as in countries around the world, I wonder if the Left will feel that it spent its time wisely."

The fox-hunting sillyness isn’t a very good use of the Left or the Right’s time. But that’s no reason to make up nonsense about Muslim bogeymen who will destroy our society. There’s not one scrap of evidence to imply this will happen.

I don’t think all the War on Terror-ites are racist – most are just bad at risk assessment, which is an entirely forgivable human trait. However, the Dodge-y crowd is so clearly racist that it’s embarassing…

"With France heading to 20% Moslem population, and Britain officially at 5%, in reality at who knows what level, we are in deep trouble. Do we have among us a group of people whose beliefs, politics, and aspirations are in contradiction to those of a free, democratic Britain?"

I hope that reputable War on Terror supporters share my disdain for this, well, disgusting faction.

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More Kerry death throes

The doomed, McGovern-esque John Kerry campaign took another blow yesterday: a new WSJ/Harris poll (subscription required) shows Mr Kerry leading Mr Bush by 48% to 47% among likely voters.

With all this evidence accumulating to show that his campaign is practically dead, the only thing Mr Kerry can do now is honourably concede, pull out of the race, and retreat to a monastery.

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At least they’re honest

Gotta love the pro-Bush Kerry-haters.

"When all is said and done, Kerry’s campaign is deader than McGovern’s in ’72. In fact he’s looking worse than McGovern, which takes some doing.

"Come November, the Beeb will end up looking extremely foolish after its extensive happy-clappy coverage of Kerry’s campaign — at least amongst us American readers. Will the majority of British people even notice, though? Or will it all come down to, ‘those Yanks were too stupid to go for that wonderful guy in the French shirts’?"

George McGovern, one of the most honourable people to stand for election in recent times, lost by a landslide to Richard Nixon – the worst president of the last century. The enormous defeat came chiefly because Mr Nixon’s dirty campaign falsely painted Mr McGovern as weak on defence.

Less than two years later, Mr Nixon resigned after admitting that he’d taken part in a criminal conspiracy while in the White House. Meanwhile, Mr Nixon did exactly as Mr McGovern had planned, and withdrew US troops from Vietnam.

In short, if there was ever an election in which the American public earned the soubriquet ‘The Yanks were too stupid to go for the wonderful guy (and elected the criminal scumbag instead)’, 1972 was it.

Strangely enough, I always assumed that the *anti*-Bush side would be the only people to mention that particular election this time around…

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