The reluctant McCain and the filibuster
I feel his pain.
No, truly, I do. RINO extraordinaire John McCain has indicated (if these reports are correct) that he will be voting to end the filibuster for the Gorsuch nomination. He says he’s not happy about it:
“It is depressing; I’m very depressed,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “We’re all arguing against it, but we don’t know any other option.”
It is a sad thing. The filibuster—annoying though it may have been when you’re the majority party and want to get things done—was one of the blocks to tyranny of the majority, and one of the goads to reasonable compromise. The extremists among us don’t like compromise (I sometimes don’t like it, either), but on the whole I think the tradition helped the country more often than it hurt it.
And for a long time both sides saw this, and had a gentlemen’s agreement (yes, the Senate was and still is mostly men) to keep it, to each side’s mutual advantage for the time when they wouldn’t be the ones in the driver’s seat.
That’s gone, and McCain is lamenting its demise. I don’t blame him for being sad—although you might. His hand has been forced; the gentlemen’s agreement is over. I would vote for ending the filibuster too, under these circumstances.
Some Democrats are saying that the filibuster should go, period, for everything, and some even seem quite sanguine about it. No doubt they’re salivating at the idea that some day they’ll control the Senate and can enact their dream legislation:
… [A]n increasing number of advocates, mostly Democrats, favor scrapping the filibuster for nominations ”” and even potentially rethinking how it’s used to block legislation.
“I’m a believer that we should change the rules of the Senate,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “I don’t think we should do it in the context of a particular legislative or confirmation fight, but I think we should stand back and have a discussion about whether we want the filibuster to be used in the way it historically has been.”
Yesterday MCain called those who seem okay with that (or even happy about it) “stupid idiots.” It’s clear that he’s referring to Democrats such as Chris Murphy, and others who might think it’s just hunky-dory to do this and to take it even further.
But see how certain websites on the right are presenting McCain’s statement? Put McCain’s remarks in context and you can see how subtly misleading this article is. A reader without the background I just offered would draw the conclusion that McCain is calling the Republicans who advocate ending the filibuster the “stupid idiots.” And all the comments I see at that article I just linked seem to be angry at McCain, probably based on this misunderstanding (and on their already-existing animus towards him).
I’ve noticed over the years that the leftist media and some of the media on the right like to work up the GOP rank-and-file against RINOs such as McCain. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t often very real reasons to be angry at RINOs like McCain. But be angry at them for what they actually do, say, and mean, rather than things about them that the media seeks to distort in order to manipulate readers.
And if McCain ends up voting against ending the filibuster (that is, assuming that the Democrats activate the filibuster and the issue comes to a vote, which I’m almost certain it will)—then there’ll be some tasty crow for me to eat.
[NOTE: By the way, here’s some background on Chris Murphy’s recent use of an actual (not symbolic) filibuster.]
Everybody keeps saying they are going the nuclear route but with some of these squishes like Susan Collins I’ll only believe it when I see it.
We’ll end up regretting this . . .
Trump/GOP won’t be in power forever.
Bill:
But the GOP actually has no choice. There is no doubt—none—that the Democrats will do it next time they come to power, if the GOP doesn’t do it now. The gentlemen’s agreement is over.
The Democrats have made their decision to filibuster Gorsuch. The die is cast.
McCain’s pain and yours and mine is for an America that no longer is, the fools having thrown it away.
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.” Abraham Lincoln
The New Civil War
That most don’t perceive the democrat party to now be the home of traitors changes the truth of it not in the least.
WINNING THE CIVIL WAR OF TWO AMERICAS
Neo, I know. You can still regret doing something when you have no choice but to do it.
I hate our current political climate. I also know it’s been worse (1860 comes to mind)
“Democrats have not recognized a single Republican presidential victory this century. “
I don’t understand this. GWB was President for 8 years. He led the country during 911. He had opposition, true, but when a bill passed a bill passed. We’ve had peaceful transfers of power for as long back as our country has been around – even during the civil war.
Yes, a lot of Democrats didn’t like Bush and they don’t like Trump either (heck, I’m a conservative and I don’t like Trump). And a lot of Republicans didn’t like Obama, and some, including the current president said he was illegitimate.
I don’t agree with the rule change in the Senate, and I predict there will be tears at the end of all this. But the vast majority of our politicians and voters are still “in the system” – when a bill gets passed, it passes. It gets enforced (for the most part – sometimes the president – regardless of party – doesn’t fulfill his vow as well as he should, but the courts seem to be able to keep pressure going there).
There’s a lot of extreme rhetoric and propaganda flying around. GB, you won the election. You have the legislative, executive, and (over time, during the GOP moment we’re in now) will gain the judicial. Can we put aside the fever-swamp victimhood and govern?
Bill,
‘Selected not elected’ was a popular saying on the left for the entire GWB presidency.
Griffin, yes. And “show us the birth certificate” was pretty popular among GOP rank and file from 2008 forward.
Politics is not insurrection.
Bill,
Hating the current political climate is one thing but denying it’s reality is another. How exactly would the Republicans ever get a nominee on SCOTUS if the Democrats won’t allow a vote? And as neo said the Democrats will do away with filibuster in a heartbeat and then where will the Republicans be?
McCain still can’t seem to realize that the Democrat Party are no longer loyal to the United States of America, and probably haven’t been since the Vietnam War. Their allegiance is now to an imaginary version of the USA, the United Socialist States of America (USSA), and in their minds the racist old USA needs to be destroyed completely to make way for the USSA.
The fact that the USSA will not, and can not, actually exist will not stop them from destroying the USA; indeed, they intend to use the disastrous social upheval that will inevitably result from the USA’s destruction to drive desperate former citizens to help them try to construct and enforce their new USSA. And, when the USSA self-destructs for the reasons that have been self-evident since Kipling penned “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” a century ago, they will of course blame the saboteurs and wreckers, anyone else but themselves, for the fact that destroying the USA only led to the death of the very concept of liberty for the next thousand-year dark age, instead of the glorious future they promised.
I don’t know why you call McCain a “RINO” and not Trump. McCain’s been a Republican far longer than Trump and has more traditional Republican values. Preserving the filibuster is the established Republican position. If anyone’s a RINO it’s Trump. I wish people would drop the stupid “RINO” label.
There was a way out of this. I wonder if any conservatives would have supported it.
Democrats were willing to vote for Gorsuch, preserving the status quo of the SC, and the filibuster, in exchange for having a say in the next SC nominee– since the next replacement most likely will be a liberal justice and will most likely be replaced by a Trump nominee.
This will, in effect, turn the senate into a smaller version of the house– with less accountability to the voters.
Tatterdemalian has the right of it but its not just McCain who doesn’t get it, Bill’s right there too. Yes, GWB was President for 8 years and some legislation was passed but little reform was accomplished. In fact, arguably we went further to the Left under Bush.
But the difference between then and now is that the radical Left has a much firmer grasp upon the reins of power today than they did then. On the Left there are NO liberal moderates in a position of power. That too is part of Obama’s legacy and arguably the most significant.
Trump can’t issue a perfectly legal order without activist judges illegally banning it. The deep state has literally declared war upon Trump and that too is indicative of a paradigm change in the country’s circumstances.
The Left is engaged in a cold war with the right and is pursuing the erasure of the American Republic. That many deny it is to be expected but denial never stops reality.
Brian E,
But why should the Democrats have a say in the next nominee if it happens during a Trump (or any Republican) administration? This would NEVER fly if the positions were reversed.
Elections have consequences.
The Democrats weren’t willing to bust the filibuster to pass Obamacare.
Once the filibuster is history, the next Democrat majority will pass single payer health care. You heard it hear first.
Yes indeed, elections have consequences. I have no problem with nuking the filibuster, since the SC is now the Legislature of Last Resortâ„¢. Republicans need to nominate as many originalist judges to every level of the federal judiciary in the next four years.
McCain passed his “sell by” date some time back. Strangely, his “Maverickness” has always manifested itself in opposition to his own party.
Get ride of Cloture. Repeating myself here. Bring every issue that gets out of committee to the floor, and have Senators vote on the merits. I am talking about legislation, and confirmation. No more phony procedural closets to hide in. If certain issues legitimately justify a super-majority, then make the case. (I have no expertise here). But, end the farce of blocking a vote even occurring through phony filibusters, or other arcane foolishness.
“Politics is not insurrection.”
True, I must admit.
But do you know what is insurrection?
Refusing to comply with lawful orders from the Federal government- such as by declaring your city or state a sanctuary and refusing to comply with federal officers enforcing immigration law.
I note that when the Supreme Court suddenly discovered that gay marriage was a Constitutional right red states including Texas complied with the law.
Yet now many blue areas of the country are simply refusing to even hand over criminal foreigners to the Federal government- in open defiance of the law- because it is not in accordance with the whims of the Democrat party.
Do they think no one is noticing this?
I imagine that they expect the next time they take over the government they will simply resume issuing decrees, expecting instant obedience.
I suspect they will not get it, especially if the defiance of the law they exhibit now is allowed to stand.
As the saying goes this will not end well. And pretending the two sides are the same- or even equally guilty- isn’t helping, either.
There was something Rush Limbaugh said today, about possible efforts by the Democrats to take away from the legitimacy of future Supreme Court rulings, by being able to say, “Well, that Justice only got confirmed by a very narrow majority (or on a party-line basis), so anything he rules on doesn’t really count.”
Let’s forget the Senate and go straight to the shooting war now … get it over
The “Civil War” meme is getting about as tired as the “Polar Bears, Glaciers are melting, Warmest Year Ever…” meme. Chicken Littles come in many persuasions it seems.
DNW: At the risk of seeming to attack you personally, I doubt that you have ever seen a genuine shooting war, up close and personal. If you had, you would not so easily urge that we literally go to war. I am afraid that we will get there all too soon as it is.
Civil war would be a horror but it will pale next to the death of liberty. Whether the Left or Islam, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” – George Orwell
Ike Says:
April 5th, 2017 at 8:33 pm
Ike, I don’t think you are attacking me personally. If you were, you would be attacking me for flippancy or sarcasm, or shrugging indifference, rather than for urging a literal war.
And though you might be right that we will get there soon enough (though I don’t think you are or that we will) I doubt that what I say would affect the tendencies of anyone either way.
But you are right about one thing: Though I have done plenty of shooting and seen and shed plenty of blood and guts, none of it has been the blood of man and none of it was spilled by me.
Another note. Although I do sneer at the sensitive conservative types whose main interest seems to be in keeping the peace and making nice … even while they are being beat around the head; I know enough about violence merely from having lived long enough to see quite a bit of it, that there is nothing romantic about it, and that fighting by the rules went out with the code duello.
I am sure that if social violence ever did break out, it would be incredibly nasty and brutal in a way Americans have not experienced since the Civil War. Worse probably, since whatever residual respect there might once have been for womanhood and the antagonists’ elderly and children has largely disappeared in our culturally fractured polity.
We see young men violently assaulting middle-aged women, and having no apparent compunction whatsoever about it.
The physically disarranged and brutal Benjamin Butler and David Hunter would no doubt look like paragons of benignity compared to the average leftist college professor made political authority, should it come to that nowadays.
“It is a sad thing.”
It is a sad thing when you wake up and realize your acquaintances are unhinged. If Dems won’t be reasonable, then this is what the future holds.
Bill Says:
April 5th, 2017 at 4:01 pm
We’ll end up regretting this . . .
Trump/GOP won’t be in power forever.
When one side gives up on being fellow countrymen, there’s nothing else to be done.
Brian E:
They were willing to end the filibuster to pass Obamacare. They knew they didn’t need to.
Democrats were willing to vote for Gorsuch, preserving the status quo of the SC, and the filibuster, in exchange for having a say in the next SC nominee— since the next replacement most likely will be a liberal justice and will most likely be replaced by a Trump nominee.
Bill: I don’t remember hearing about this. Did it happen or is it hypothetical?
The Democrats weren’t willing to bust the filibuster to pass Obamacare.
Bill: They didn’t have to. They managed to pass Obamacare using carve-outs and slimy procedural tricks in the dead of night.
Not to mention Al Franken’s suspicious keep-recounting-the-votes-until-the-democrat-wins senate victory in Minnesota.
If those tricks hadn’t worked, I’m sure nuking the filibuster at that level would have been on the table.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
April 5th, 2017 at 4:22 pm
Credit where it’s due: the links in GB’s post are to
Daniel Greenfield aka Sultan Knish, an excellent essayist, although prone to hyperbole (but so were most of the Founding Fathers, FWIW).
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-new-civil-war.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266304/winning-civil-war-two-americas-daniel-greenfield
“Leftist beliefs defy common sense. It takes a whole lot of indoctrination to make anyone believe them. End the centralization of education, roll back the endless expansion of higher education and take a hard look at the corporate culture monopolies of the entertainment industry and the Berlin Wall will fall again. Without a fresh supply of zombies, the left goes back to being a marginal movement.
And the left knows it.
The Two Americas have come to a dangerous crossroads. The policy agenda of the Democrats would destroy America. That of the Republicans would destroy Anti-America.
American culture, economics and religion can’t survive the rule of Anti-America. That is what we saw in the Obama years. But Anti-America would do even worse if Republicans got serious about a reform agenda. That’s one reason why Democrats are beginning to engage in a political secession.”
It’s not the nuclear option. It’s the Harry Reid option.
AesopFan Says:
“…That’s one reason why Democrats are beginning to engage in a political secession.”
An agenda so bad, it can’t stand even the slightest competition. Remember: the Berlin Wall was built to keep citizens IN.
Fausta is 100% correct.
In 2005 the Republicans were on the verge of removing the filibuster for non-Supreme Court judicial nominees. They did not do so.
In 2013 Sen. Reid DID remove the filibuster on lower level judicial nominees.
Leaving aside whether or not going ‘nuclear’ now is a good idea, history shows us the Democrats will do so when it is politically expedient for them.
I can’t thing of a single reason it makes sense for those of us on right to unilaterally disarm.
I can see a practical reason why senators don’t want to see the nuclear option applied generally. It renders the minority party irrelevant, and senators have egos as big as the western sky.
For decades, with the filibuster, the legislative agenda has proceeded to a more progressive vision of the country, with few exceptions.
The notion of the Senate working on “gentlemen’s agreements” has become absurd. Without gentlemen on the Left, such agreements are impossible.
McCain is no gentleman, either, never has been.
Gentlemen do not posture, do not make vicious and fraudulent charges against those who disagree with them.
Schumer, Booker, Franken, to cite just three, are no gentlemen. They are part of the “Resistance Party”, in phony imitation of the French Resistance in WWII that the Democrats have willingly become in the Trump era, with the associated implication that their opponents are evil blackhearts.
Gentlemen do not fight guerrilla wars. They do not shoot opponents in the back. They do not slander those with whom they disagree.
Gentlemen are consistent in actual moral principles. McCain has few of those.
“I fear that someday we will regret what we are about to do. In fact, I am confident we will,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “It is imperative we have a functioning Senate where the rights of the minority are protected regardless of which party is in power at the time.”
“Nonetheless, McCain was prepared to vote with McConnell on the rules change, saying he felt he had no choice.” From the AP.
Is McCain operating on a principle?
Democrats have sought to protect the rights of the Senate minority only when they were in minority. Which has been rare in my lifetime.
Democrats have progressively done their best to ruin this country, and now they want to retain their power as a minority, whether in the Senate or in statehouses?
Democrats are not gentlemen, Neo. Remember the Bork and Thomas hearings? So very long ago! Those Dems were never gentlemen. You cannot build gentlemen’s agreements around just two Dems, Heitkamp and Manchin.
There can be no gentlemens’ agreements in the Senate any more. Ever.
In financial parlance, the Democrats are short an option but are doing their best to ensure that the option is exercised against them. This could be categorized as a non-rational action on the part of the option seller.
In plain English, the Democrats are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
Huxley – up thread: you’re asking me questions on comments I didn’t make. I think Brian E made the comments you’re referring to?
One thing that I don’t think many are seeing: Trump’s big selling point was his ability as a “deal-maker”.
Thus far, he *sucks* at making deals. He had two main jobs (for many people, this was the SOLE reason they “held their noses” and voted for him):
1. get conservative Supreme Court justices confirmed.
Well, Gorsuch will be confirmed, but the GOP is losing a lot of future leverage/protection by invoking the option that even Democrats wouldn’t do (granted, they figured in 2016 they would retain the presidency). This will have grave consequences, I believe.
On a side note: the SC was never supposed to have the earth-shaking legislative power it now has…. But that’s water under the bridge.
2. Repeal and replace Obamacare.
I don’t even have words for how colossally he screwed the pooch on this one. *deal-maker* my behonkus.
Democrats may be overly optimistic, but they are expecting a wave election in their favor in 2018, followed up by a rejection of Trumpism in 2020.
We’re going to regret that we took the nuclear option. What would have been better would have been if Trump, the amazing Deal-Making Man, had done a better job working with both Democrats and Republicans to, you know, make those amazing deals. Get things done. Etc.
Of course, in the current climate (represented well on these threads) the very idea of actually working with the other side is heresy.
This will end in tears.
Bill:
I believe the phrase “Democrats wouldn’t do” is not correct. The proper phrase would be “Democrats didn’t do.”
They didn’t do it because there was no reason to do it at the time. There is little question in my mind that if they had needed it to confirm a SCOTUS justice they would have done it in a heartbeat.
By the time they would have needed it—Scalia’s death—they no longer had the Senate majority, so they couldn’t do it. If they had had the Senate majority at that time, and Obama had appointed a liberal justice and the GOP had blocked him or her, do you really doubt for a single second that the Democrats would have invoked the nuclear option without hesitation to place that person on the Court? And blamed it on the GOP as they did it?
Llwddythlw:
I disagree. See this.
The Democrats weren’t willing to bust the filibuster to pass Obamacare.- me
Bill: They didn’t have to. They managed to pass Obamacare using carve-outs and slimy procedural tricks in the dead of night.
——-
So they resorted to using slimy tricks to pass Obamacare, rather than bust the filibuster, when they really wanted Medicare For Allâ„¢?
That only makes sense in the context that even the Democrats were reluctant to “nuke” the filibuster. If there is no political price to pay for doing so– partisans on both sides advocate for it’s elimination, then why are they reluctant to do so?
One could argue Republicans are reluctant to do so, because a feature of conservatism is to conserve things. But Democrats don’t hold that as one of their guiding principles.
IMO, it’s because it renders the minority irrelevant. And large egos may be the only bi-partisan feature of the Senate at this point.
Has gerrymandering contributed to this impasse? I think there are relatively few congressional districts that are closely contested.
Neo – good point. I got my timelines mixed up.
That being said:
“do you really doubt for a single second that the Democrats would have invoked the nuclear option without hesitation to place that person on the Court? And blamed it on the GOP as they did it?”
Well, a lot of people argue here that Democrats are categorically more despicable than Republicans. I used to think that too.
The point is that Republicans are the ones who have invoked the nuclear option on the filibuster. If it would have been a raw power-grab to do it if Dems did it, it’s the same with Republicans.
I’m too much in the “a pox on both their houses” mode at this point to pick sides. Our political culture sucks. And with all the circling the wagons, “if they bring a gun we bring a bazooka”, take no prisoners, all that matters is winning the point going on, I’m not expecting things to get better.
We’re going to reap what we sowed.
It’s remarkable that some commenters still assign an attribute of collegiality, political temperance, or political amity and self-restraint, to members of a party whose own ideologues announce that they recognize no limits on what burdens they may place upon, or commands they may issue to, the citizens in the name of “progress”.
What world are these people living in? The last Democrat president announces he is out to fundamentally transform America. He says that Constitutional rights are incomplete because they constitute a charter of “negative liberties” which only states what the government may not do to you, while making no mention of what your fellow citizens [through that government] must be compelled to do for you.
You don’t have to compare the Democrat party to Hitler in order to highlight the fact that an agreement with or concession to Ted Kennedy years ago, or an expectation more recently that the Obama Administration operatives would respect the law and the rights of citizens is wholly, and ridiculously misplaced.
This sensitive conservative cry-babyism, this mourning for a “recently” departed past that actually ended decades ago, is flabbergasting. The Luisitania or Titanic may still have forward momentum, but once hulled it becomes a virtual hulk long before it the decks are awash. And the band plays on.
But you know … nothing really fundamental has changed for the sensitive conservative, even though the left was in the days before the election openly crowing about the long awaited and soon to be irreversible – if slow motion – final political and population replacement solution to the problem of the recalcitrant Middle-American middle class.
Bill: So your point is that if the Democrats wanted single-player, they could have just nuked the filibuster at the legislative level right off and pushed it through.
Interesting.
It’s hard to say on that “What if?” They may not have had the votes even for a simple majority. Back in 2010 there were still Blue Dog Democrats — an extinct species these days — who might have been too conservative to vote for single-payer.
Besides, Obama was already on record saying that single-payer was a bridge too far to go in one jump, so an interim reform would be necessary on the road to single-payer.
I doubt the argument that the Dems designed Obamacare to fail. I think they would have been happy to muddle along with some form of Obamacare. I’m sure some had made the calculation back then, that if Obamacare did collapse, they would have the power to go full single-payer.
Bill:
No, the point is not that the GOP did it. Although I definitely agree with you that that’s the point the Democrats will try to make, and that point will be successful with many people.
But when I responded to you earlier, you had been talking about the history of what the Democrats did and why, and it was and is my opinion that you mischaracterized it. That’s what we were talking about.
What’s more, you now write:
I disagree with that, too. Context is important in characterizing something as “a raw power-grab” or not.
Context for the Democrats doing it to pass Obamacare would have been to pass a piece of transformative and yet unpopular legislation that only one party supported. In contrast, the context for what happened just now is that the Democrats were willing and ready to block an eminently qualified presidential SCOTUS appointment, and block the next one and the next one until they forced a Republican to nominate a liberal SCOTUS justice in order to get any justice approved at all.
Both things are exercises of power, but both are not equally “raw power grabs” by each party.
Neo: I agree that if the GOP had not exercised their option to bypass the filibuster, the Dem’s strategy would have paid off. As a matter of curiosity, I wonder if Schumer really believed that that was likely. After watching McConnell’s statements of the last few days, I would have assigned an infinitesimal probability of success to any such strategy.
The propaganda point would be true if the Dems and their media proxies were able to turn a few people who were otherwise neutral on this matter. I’m afraid I don’t really know anybody who is neutral, so I’m not sure how to assess whether or not the strategy will ultimately have paid off in this narrow sense.
The virtual filibuster which I have been railing against was only put into place it appears, by Democrats in 1975.
With a two-tracking system in the Senate allowing more than one piece of business to be on the agenda at the same time, allowing Demonicrats to each get up once and speak as long as they wished – no yielding the floor – would probably delay the business for no more than a month … if the bloody Senate were in session for 30 days. I doubt that the Democrats could average more than 15 hours each and if the senate stayed in session they would soon enough be strewn on the floor like the panting dogs they are.
It’s been bothering me that in the above comment, I used the word “session” with some imprecision.
I should have said “session without adjournment”; since technically a session is:
https://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/session.htm
This sensitive conservative cry-babyism, this mourning for a “recently” departed past that actually ended decades ago, is flabbergasting
DNW: I find arrogant Trumpism equally flabbergasting.
I didn’t like Hillary. However, I don’t assume Trump is better or necessarily buys us more time.
I especially don’t like that many Trump supporters — including you from what I can tell — are as filled with hate for their opponents as many current Democrats are.
Well, you are partly right and partly wrong.
In the first instance, you are wrong to imply that I was ever, or am to any emotional extent now, or to any degree but a highly conditional one now, a Trump supporter.
In the second instance am not sure that the right word is “hate” when it comes to materialist collectivists, but if a complete disregard for their existences and seeing them as having now become tantamount – if not quite – to existential enemies satisfies your view of what I think, I’ll concede that much at least.
They demand from me what I neither want nor need from them, and which I deny categorically as a legitimate interpersonal claim: whether made man to man or through the agency of politics. And as such, they demand that which if effected, betrays the purpose of this country and destroys what makes such a polity and system worth preserving in the first place.
By their insistent and never ending efforts to chain us to a “shared fate” as they term it, they make our lives shittier and more degraded and socially ugly; more burdened and troubled with the personal traumas and dysfunctions of their uninteresting and unappealing lives; and poorer in the ways of liberty, hope, and self-direction.
Many conservatives, for reasons which seem to me to be emotional, insist on attributing to modern liberals, attributes of intrinsic moral value, and qualities of spiritual value, or ‘soul’ if you will, which the progressives themselves deny as existing.
I am merely doing them the honor, as I have repeatedly stated, of taking them seriously as to their admission of political aims and as to their announced anthropology – at least as in regards to themselves.
They are the ones who have reduced themselves to cosmically purposeless appetite-things which recognize no limits and no morality apart from the “creative” shaping of reality to suit whatever the locus of urges they happen to call themselves, has been accidentally formed into by an equally pointless – according to them – ‘evolutionary’ reality.
So, frankly, Hux, I don’t get your point; if you have one,
But then you might just be telling me what you like and dislike.
In which case …