That’s why the Republicans continue to lose Because they fall for that inclusive crap from the left. When has the left ever been inclusive.
Why do we continue to pay money to these people who are out to destroy our very culture?
Boycott hollywood,Boycott network TV, Boycott newspapers, Boycott magazines.
Put these people out of work. Their anti american views make me sick.

Keco, here are some things the left does not want to include:

1. Intolerance

2. Bigotry

3. Homophobia

4. Imperialism

5. Theocracy

Tolerance for any of the above is, I’m afraid, beyond the scope of most people on the left (and the center, for that matter). I’m not sure what sort of perverted logic might lead conservatives to pule over that idea, but they often do. Is a person supposed to have tolerance for homophobia? Tolerance for imperialism? Tolerance for bigotry? That line of logic is one I’m afraid you’ll have to give up—unless you’re arguing for the tolerance of something else entirely.

Gosh, Goodis. Those are all such, um, “elastic” terms you’ve listed.

“Intolerance,” for example: shall we be tolerant of murder, rape, theft, extortion, fraud? Does the “left” have any tolerance for opinions that diverge from its dogma? If so, why are we so often reduced to using euphemisms?

Then there’s “Bigotry.”  Do you think it was bigotry when someone scratched “black is back” on the side of my car? Or are only certain people capable of being bigots?

“Imperialism.” There’s a word with absolutely no fixed meaning, seeing how the Marxists who throw it around so freely are as interested in forcing their view on the rest of the world as the people who believe in freedom.

Sadly, as bright, quick, and accomplished as she is, John McCain overloooked the fact that the obviously superior and wildly popular Governor Palin has no “Ivy League” credentials.  Although infinitely more qualified that Senator Obama, had she only been the governor of at least a small New England state, with Eastern establishment connections, the Ivy Leaguers might have accepted her quite readily.  She just isn’t one of the chosen ones, the Eastern elite establishment, America’s ruling class.  No wonder the NYT crowd, Chris Buckley et al. don’t accept her: she’s just not one of them!  She should at least be traveling and seen constantly with a bunch of Yalies and Harvard types who could have coached her on an Eastern accent and inculcated her with their superior snobbish attitude.  Everyone knows, or should know, that no one else has any brains as far as they are concerned.

To give these terms some traction: Conservatives I meet routinely ask that they be allowed to use the “n” word, since blacks do (and they are confused when I point out to them that the word means radically different things when employed by different speakers in different situations; they seem genuinely baffled by the most basic facts of language use, i.e, that words have meanings that depend on their given context; try, as your own example, to use the word “certain” in two sentences where the word means not just something different, but in fact, the very opposite of what it meant in the first sentence); they want to be allowed to discriminate on the basis of their homophobia; they want to scapegoat illegal immigrants (and sometimes non-whites in general); they want their god to dictate foreign and domestic policies (I noticed you didn’t touch the word “theocracy”); economists like Tyler Cowen believe in the benefits of the “creative destruction” of non-Western societies by capitalism (another way to say “imperialism,” and one doesn’t have to be a Marxist, just anthropologically-minded, to grasp that this always coincides with profound linguistic, religious and cultural losses). Sorry, but it’s hard for me to tolerate such things. If I criticize people’s racism or the free market’s rampant restructuring of world cultures (which you might call “freedom,” though it has yet to be satisfactorily explained to me just how a free market coincides with political freedom; in fact the free market seems to often coincide with brutal totalitarian regimes), I don’t think I’m being particularly leftist; to my mind I’m being ethical.

As to a notion of inclusion, many of the most visible conservatives want to create an America—if not a world—that is Christian, straight, married and white. While I’m aware that this isn’t the feeling of every person who calls themselves a “conservative,” they occupy a great deal of territory throughout the media universe. If that’s not what the conservative political position really stands for, I suggest that you hire some new spokespeople.

Goodis-

1. I would not consider myself a conservative. A libertarian (lowercase, please) yes.

2. I didn’t bother addressing all five items on your list because I felt I had made my point. FWIW, I have no more patience with too-loud Christians than I do with tiny subset of gays who deliberately go out of their way to offend the public in the “pride” marches. We are allowing the extreme element on both sides run the show, and that is foolish of us.

3. I have never known a self-professed conservative to wish she or he were “allowed to use the ‘n-word.’ ”  People fall into one of two categories: those who will employ that particular word irrespective of how it offends, and those who wish for a single standard under which blacks ought to agree to quit using it too.

Just a couple of hours ago I was accused of using a “racial slur” by a young black man who had stopped in front of my house (in full view of me, my wife and the dog), unzipped his pants and relieved himself. A few words were exchanged, the most vicious of which was the word “stupid.” THAT was perceived to be a “racial slur.” Of course there is no arguing with a nitwit like this guy, but I could introduce him to a large number of stupid white people, and with a little effort, I could probably find a stupid Asian.

4. Finally, if by “scapegoating illegal immigrants” you mean incarcerating them and/or sending them home, I plead guilty. My paternal grandparents went through a huge effort to get here legally from Prussia, and I expect every emigrant to make that same effort, as required by law. Why on earth would you advocate breaking that particular law?

A. You and I are arguing with the wrong people.

B. Where in the world do you live? Sounds pretty rough.

C. Unfortunately I know a number of self-identified “neocons” who really want to use the “n” word. They’re out there. I’ve had more than enough arguments with them. I’m sure one or two lurk around this site.

D. By “scapegoating” I mean “scapegoating.” Too often, illegal immigrants (and non-white citizens) are used by whites to talk about problems that affect both communities, but which whites tend to identify as specifically “immigrant” or “non-white” problems. For instance: one guy I spoke to, after admitting to me he was a racist, then went on to explain that only blacks in my town were poor. They had, he said, a “poverty problem,” and this was offered as an ample defense of bigotry. Now, the fact is that there is a higher population of white people than blacks where I live, and a very high number of whites happen to live in abject poverty. It is entirely possible that there are more poor white people here. When I pointed this out, the guy looked at me like I was sailing around another planet. How was it possible there was poverty here? It was mind-boggling to him. He then pointed up that “black people like that gangster culture,” to which I instantly replied that Italian-American filmmakers helped FOUND the very genre worshipped within rap communities. Hadn’t he ever seen The Sopranos? No, he said—and this, from an Italian-American, who might’ve gotten the memo. Maybe I’m dealing with morons, but at the end of the day the things this guy doesn’t like about “black culture” are nothing if not completely present within white culture too. It’s just easier to talk about when it’s somebody else’s problem. You see the same kind of scapegoating in that famous clip between Geraldo Rivera and Bill O’Reilly—O’Reilly wants to blame a DWI death on a guy’s immigrant status rather than on his intoxication, and he uses the accident as one more way to demonize illegal immigrants. I’m not arguing that illegal acts should be tolerated—I’m pointing up the problem of demonization.

E. I suppose if you don’t like pride marches, you can always turn off Bravo; but far-right conservatives want to rule our country. This second fact is a little more disturbing to me.

Well said Bloogger1947,

  It won’t be long now before we will be the good ol’ U.S.S.A (I certainly hope not) with Putin and third in command Obama (after China). Anyway say hello to the ‘fairness doctrine’ and goodbye to any opposing liberal view.
Ironically, I ‘though’ I heard that some ‘illegal’ immigrants are leaving America.

Oops!!! I meant ‘thought.’

  America needs change – but just not what the far left wants to shove down our throats.

Goodis—

If you mean there is probably more that unites us than separates us, I agree.

I live in a suburb just west of Baltimore, a mile outside the city line. Been here 35 years. Of my immediate neighbors, 3/4 are black or mixed-race households. I know most of them, and trust them implicity. We were away on a 2-1/2 month trip, and within an hour of arriving home, we’d be welcomed back by three or four neighbors. These folks are not the source of the problem, by any stretch of the imagination.

To the casual passer-by, the ‘hood looks fine. Nicely-kept houses and lawns, most dating from the mid-fifties with a few older ones. To see the problems, you have to sit in one spot for a while and observe. Since being retired, we spend more time outside and see that. But here again, most of the neighborhood kids are polite, pleasant, and speak to us. It just doesn’t take many stinkers to make life unpleasant.

Mostly I blame our local high school, which has long been rated the worst in the county, academically. The school board’s latest attempt to rectify the problem is to install Astro-Turf on the football field. There are no performing arts programs, and this particular school does not teach English grammar until twelfth grade.

In the wider neighborhood, we have bigots of all flavors. The problem people are the high school students, who seem to have come from the inner city in the last decade, and brought with them a lot of anger and ghetto attitude.

My social circle is full of weird people—certainly more gay, lesbian and black people than Evangelical Christians. Oddly enough, almost every one of my gay friends votes Republican, having learned that the Clinton administration did nothing for them. But for one man, most of these folks are simply interested in fitting-in to the larger community and having their relationships accepted. The consensus among them is that the “pride” marches of Castro Street do nothing but inflame people who are not gay. None of these men and women are closeted, and none have experienced discrimination/hate problems. Honestly, it’s the more outré types who bring this upon themselves.

Here in Maryland generally, there easily as much bigotry devoted hunters, sport shooters and other gun owners as towards people of color or those of unusual sexual orientation.

As far as “poor” people are concerned, they fall into two categories: people without much money, and people without much couth or class. I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood, where our household income was probably the lowest among all our neighbors. You’d never have known it. Fifty years ago, people did not go out of their way to flaunt their ignorance, as they do today.

and the words that should be used in a classroom.

CANCEL THE ABOVE REMARK, WHICH IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT WHAT PRECEEDS IT.

Blogger—One of the things I like about this site is that it offers a space for people like the two of us to start in apparent conflict and end by identifying areas of agreement.

And for the record—some of my gay male friends are also Republican, but I can’t for the life of me think of a single Republican lesbian in my social circle. I wonder if this is a trend or a statistical anomaly.

(Amusingly, the captcha required for this post is “out77.”)

David—I agree, although we only get to find the areas of agreement by remaining civil in exploring them. Unfortunately some cannot resist the temptation to drift off into insult. I applaud you for being one of the few…

I don’t suppose either of us personally knows a large enough number of gay people to generalize about their political leanings. The statisticians would call this an “anecdotal” discussion. The lesbian couple whom I count among my best friends are both Republican. However, I know others who are, as the expression goes, yellow-dog Democrats.

“Out 77” indeed. How funny.

Why did you remove my original post on 11-2???? Are there words you censor? If so, please offer a list.