San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders:
Now that is honor and patriotism. And a real American. That's the kind of Republicans who inspire hope that there can be a viable, civilized, mature opposition to the Democratic Party.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
You know that Obama is against gay marriage, right?
Oh come on. Obama is against Proposition 8, which shows that he is on the right side of the issue. It isn't something a president would ever be dealing with, so I am pretty sure he is just taking a rhetorical position that would not alienate socially conservative voters.
Is a rhetorical position an honorable one?
Why not, Mr. Troll, Sir?
So, Republicans must be honorable, but Obama can say he is against gay marriage just so he can pander to a portion of the electorate? Where's the honor in that?
I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "honor". Most of the Founding Fathers publicly misrepresented their religious beliefs so that they wouldn't alienate the people who would fight with them and vote for them. That is exactly the same thing I am asserting Obama is doing in this case. Now if you think Washington and Jefferson and Madison were dishonorable and should have thrown away the Union they were forming just so they wouldn't pander in things irrelevant for their actions, then fine, go ahead and think of a coalition-building President equivalent to a bigot.
It's you who doesn't understand the meaning of honor: "Principled uprightness of character; personal integrity." Where's the personal integrity in saying something you don't believe just to get elected?
Also, honor: "To show respect for." Does Obama honor gays by saying they should not marry?
Now we have Prop 8 passing in California. If Obama had been willing to expend some political capital he didn't need by supporting gay marriage, it might have made a difference. If Prop 8 affected me I would feel betrayed.
I don't know if what you say about the Founding fathers is true, but if it is, it may have been pragmatic but it certainly wasn't honorable. Many of them owned slaves and that wasn't honorable either.
You seem to have a very one-dimensional view of the world. A leader has to balance many interests and is not effective if he puts his own ego or a self-righteous attitude above common goals. The goal is not to get elected, but to make a difference. Getting elected is only a necessary step on the path to that goal.
Name me a successful political leader who did not compromise on positions in order to satisfy some constituents. (But don't try claiming that Gandhi was a political leader - he was not. And he said some dangerous and irresponsible things that a political leader could not afford to make.) Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, TR, FDR, Gladstone, Churchill, Adenauer, Ben-Gurion, Rabin, Havel... I suppose all of them were panderers, liars and/or criminals in your book.
BTW Obama spoke clearly against Prop 8 and he has been an outspoken advocate of repealing DOMA ever since he started running for Senate. In everything that matters, he has been and will continue to advance equal rights. I see tons of evidence that gays understand that they have a friend in him. So why are you concerned that he may be betraying them?
You're the one that brought up honor. Then you change the discussion to pragmatism. Where did you learn to debate? You commit every logical fallacy in the book.
If someone tells you something they don't believe, for whatever reason, it's not honorable.
It's as if Lyndon Johnson had said in 1963, "blacks are inferior and segregation is OK." What effect would that have had on the civil rights movement?
I brought up honor, but I didn't intend it for assholes' perusal. So listen here. It is dishonorable to elevate hate to policy or, even worse, to principle. And that's what the Republican Party has become - the party of hate. Hate for the poor, hate for blacks, hate for Latinos, hate for Arabs/Muslims, hate for atheists, hate for homosexuals, hate for women who dare have an abortion, hate for women who dare have sex, hate for women who dare demand equal pay for equal work, hate for science, hate for reason, hate for anyone who criticizes the government... Much of what the Republican Party has stood for since the Reagan revolution - and every single bit of it since the Gingrich revolution - has been motivated by hate. That is dishonorable, and that makes it newsworthy when decent Republicans, like the good Mayor of San Diego, actually stand up for what is right.
Instead of acknowledging that glaring big picture, you stick to your petty bickering about semantics and your silly false equivalence of restrained rhetoric and actual discrimination. And your new example of LBJ is especially silly, considering that JFK and LBJ did not make racial equality an important issue in their 1960 campaign and were not even seen as particular friends to the civil rights movement. So your "as if" was in fact true, for all intents and purposes. And - unlike gay marriage - civil rights was an issue that the president could influence directly.
Post a Comment