(08-09-2023, 08:54 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I don't think you can count raising the voting age to 25 as a "huge red flag". We hear a lot about how a person's brain hasn't fully developed until around that age (later for men btw). This is based on sound scientific fact. Consequently, there is a concerted effort by the left to raise the age of criminal responsibility to age 25 for this very reason.
As the above link states, Vermont has raised the age to 20. Now, I'm reasonably sure you'll agree with me on this. If you aren't responsible enough to be charged with criminal activity as an adult, then you damned sure aren't responsible to enough to vote until that age as well. Or am I wrong?
Raising the voting age to 25 requires allowing the current GOP to fiddle with the constitution and it further increases the number of taxpaying Americans who are subject to unequal representation, so I'm not a fan.
And oddly enough, I'd wager Vivek himself has a lot more support with young voters than old ones. He seems like he's way more popular with the reddit conservatives, at least.
(08-09-2023, 08:16 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Isn't this the guy who wants to raise the voting age to 25 and doesn't even want to track carbon emissions?
On top of those two huge red flags he's also "anti-woke"?
Man, talk about cramming as many shit positions as possible into a single person.
He also think the "youth vote" is on his side.
Secondly he doesn't thin citizens under 25 are not developed enough or not experienced enough...he thinks too many don't love America "enough" and they need to use the right to vote as leverage to increase people joining the military.
Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy boasted that he will win in a landslide thanks to the youth vote. I found an old clip from May where he touted his plan to limit voting to people 25 and up with some exceptions. Good luck with that youth vote! pic.twitter.com/E3huW5oTcn
Now you can also say join the police for six months, or be an EMT...because, uh, civic duty?
OR you can take the same test that immigrants take to become citizens. Which sounds almost sane compared to the other things he says until you then hear him say he will abolish teachers unions, the Department of Education and THEN institute "school choice" and use the "money saved" to give students college money that has been "invested" for them.
Vivek sounding like Ron Paul:
"Abolish teachers unions and use the money from shutting down the Department of Education to fund school choice so kids aren’t held captive by the zip code that they’re born into." pic.twitter.com/dHMHCEvnHy
Uh oh once again straight white males can’t handle a brown guy.
“History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.”-Thurgood Marshall
(08-09-2023, 05:04 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Dill:Are they? Do you mean support for Ukraine? They supported WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the Afghanistan War too.
The supported Vietnam? Did you miss all those protests against that war? There were a few of them.
Trying to remember . . . oh yes, now I do remember actually taking part inseveral protests against the war, most importantly in 1971 against the bombing of Cambodia. It's coming back to me now . . . .
. . . in fact, ALL of it is coming back, how it was Johnson and a staff of what, certainly not conservative advisors (maybe Rostow, certainly not McNamara) who expanded the war against the advice of area experts. And for years with the support of BOTH liberals and conservatives in congress. The protest I most remember was against the liberal-run Democratic Party, at their convention in 1968, motivated by their support of the war.
Some of the mystery goes away if we introduce a more precise and focused conception of "the left," especially the New Left, which explicitly set themselves apart from "liberals" and lead in the organization and prosecution of protests. That distinction is collapsed in current Fox usage.
(08-09-2023, 05:21 PM)Synric Wrote: While some Democrats supported war "Liberals" and "Left" were considered pacifists and were against fighting
Reasons like this is why words like Liberals Left Conservatives Right etc do not work.
Don't recall any "liberals" who were pacifists and against fighting. Some could have been, sure. Not common though. But all pacifists were not liberals or leftist, either. Think of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Amish.
Terms like "liberals," "conservatives," "left," and "right" work pretty well when we define them with a bias towards conceptual clarity and traditional usages. And when we carefully contextualize them, keeping in mind they may usefully describe majority behavior without assuming "no exceptions." E.g., "liberal" ideals and behavior in 1776 could very well be "conservative" in 1880. Bill Clinton, Hilary, and Obama are not Leftists, but liberal centrists. (or maybe "neoliberal").
When I came of age in the '60s, post McCarthy, I recall hearing no one calling liberals "leftists" except the fringe right (e.g., John Birch Society, and segregationists who often called Civil Rights protesters "Communists."). I never saw anything like that from a national platform until Limbaugh and Gringrich in the late '80s and early '90s. Now we see the terms "liberal" and "leftist" frequently conflated. One major accomplishment of the New Right has been to shift perception of the spectrum so far rightward that the term "leftist" now routinely includes even neoliberals. And the goal was not greater analytic clarity.
One consequence of that is that people may be more inclined to project present (conflated) labels into the past.
If you think of liberals and conservatives in the '60s as much more similar than now, and both major parties suffused with each, it might be easier to see why I remember "liberals" not simply supporting the Vietnam War but leading the nation ever more deeply into it. It was not only Johnson, but the majority of the Dem party until 1969--a party against whom the Left (no quotation marks) protested.
(08-09-2023, 09:18 PM)Dill Wrote: Trying to remember . . . oh yes, now I do remember actually taking part inseveral protests against the war, most importantly in 1971 against the bombing of Cambodia. It's coming back to me now . . . .
. . . in fact, ALL of it is coming back, how it was Johnson and a staff of what, certainly not conservative advisors (maybe Rostow, certainly not McNamara) who expanded the war against the advice of area experts. And for years with the support of BOTH liberals and conservatives in congress. The protest I most remember was against the liberal-run Democratic Party, at their convention in 1968, motivated by their support of the war.
Some of the mystery goes away if we introduce a more precise and focused conception of "the left," especially the New Left, which explicitly set themselves apart from "liberals" and lead in the organization and prosecution of protests. That distinction is collapsed in current Fox usage.
An odd post, especially given that it was your sixth or seventh attempt at it. You stated "liberals" supported the war in Vietnam, not that the Democratic party supported the war in Vietnam. If you meant to say that the Dems supported it, you'd be correct. You'd also be correct if you claimed that the Dems actually started our involvement in it. But that's not what you said in your post, in either case. So, if that's what you meant just be a man and admit you misspoke so we can all move on. That shouldn't take multiple attempts to achieve either.
(08-09-2023, 09:06 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Raising the voting age to 25 requires allowing the current GOP to fiddle with the constitution and it further increases the number of taxpaying Americans who are subject to unequal representation, so I'm not a fan.
And oddly enough, I'd wager Vivek himself has a lot more support with young voters than old ones. He seems like he's way more popular with the reddit conservatives, at least.
I don't disagree. But if you're following current leftist logic then his position is completely consistent with theirs. I do find it interesting that Dems brag about overwhelming support from an age group that they simultaneously claim, correctly by scientific measure, isn't mentally mature.
(08-09-2023, 09:14 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Uh oh once again straight white males can’t handle a brown guy.
If we elect him he's going to let Vishnu run the country!
(08-09-2023, 09:39 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I don't disagree. But if you're following current leftist logic then his position is completely consistent with theirs. I do find it interesting that Dems brag about overwhelming support from an age group that they simultaneously claim, correctly by scientific measure, isn't mentally mature.
When the mentally mature population supports someone who acts like Trump, I think we either need to reevaluate what maturity is, or just admit that Americans are selfish and short-sighted across many demographics. As for the crime age stuff, lousy ideas being used to alter the constitution is a lousy idea. And since you and I are both over 25 and under 75 I think we should know better.
Also, anyone who is mature enough to pay taxes is mature enough to vote. Voting requires no tests, no information, zilch and nothing and that's the way it is like it or lump it. Story time, I was in grad school dorm in NY when Bush beat Kerry and surrounded by liberals and I was in a small town in PA surrounded by republicans when Obama beat that old guy and Palin. Guess what I heard both times: "If you had to take a test to vote, we would have won."
No one ever says "I think the way I do because I'm stupid, and misinformed, and immature."
(08-09-2023, 09:39 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: An odd post, especially given that it was your sixth or seventh attempt at it. You stated "liberals" supported the war in Vietnam, not that the Democratic party supported the war in Vietnam. If you meant to say that the Dems supported it, you'd be correct. You'd also be correct if you claimed that the Dems actually started our involvement in it. But that's not what you said in your post, in either case. So, if that's what you meant just be a man and admit you misspoke so we can all move on. That shouldn't take multiple attempts to achieve either.
Next post will be even odder.
Sure I'd be correct if I said "the Democratic Party," the "liberal party," as FDR called it, supported the war.
And I'm just as correct to say "liberals" supported the war. As I intended.
So I am not "misspeaking."
As if I really meant to say what you believe but my fingers slipped on the keyboard.
Are you are going to argue, somehow, that liberals didn't support the war? That will require more than showing some turned
against the war post '68, when everyone began turning against it. You might want to explain whom you are calling "liberals" as well.
I am referring to a party and its leaders who lead the charge on civil rights and used "big government" to declare war on poverty
and to create a brand new big government program called MEDICARE. You going to say those people were NOT liberals? Or that
they DIDN'T support and even expand the war?
If you are not prepared to do that, then stop imputing imagined errors to me and then demanding I "man up" and own them.
(08-09-2023, 05:04 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I also recall my very left leaning English teacher calling my father a baby killer for serving in that war. Maybe I'm just imagining those things?
Could very well be. The question of whether such things happened is often raised in college history courses on the '60s. From my memory, protestors and hippies and the like were more worried about being beaten up by gung ho active duty types. I do remember returning vets being largely welcomed into protests movements, which many eagerly joined. They became one of the most important constituents of the anti-war movement.
As far as the myth of the spitting protestors, it seems to have emerged in the '90s. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html “So where do these stories come from?” The reporter was asking about accounts that soldiers returning from Vietnam had been spat on by antiwar activists. I had told her the stories were not true. I told her that, on the contrary, opponents of the war had actually tried to recruit returning veterans. I told her about a 1971 Harris Poll survey that found that 99 percent of veterans said their reception from friends and family had been friendly, and 94 percent said their reception from age-group peers, the population most likely to have included the spitters, was friendly.
A follow-up poll, conducted in 1979 for the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs), reported that former antiwar activists had warmer feelings toward Vietnam veterans than toward congressional leaders or even their erstwhile fellow travelers in the movement.
There are several books on the subject. Could be written by "leftists" though. Spat on Veterans: An Enduring Myth https://www.fromthesquare.org/spat-on-veterans-an-enduring-myth/ The Los Angeles Times editorialized that it was a mythical image—an edifying myth, said editor Michael McGough, but still a myth.
Apparently, Wall Street Journal editors did not get the memo. Its January 30, 2023, pages carried Jerry Davis’s “Vietnam War Veterans Deserve an Apology.” In the article, Davis claims that “veterans were often advised not to wear their uniforms lest they become targets for mistreatment. Some were cursed, spat on, and worse.” He goes on to say that “Vietnam veterans often had trouble getting jobs.”
Little in what Davis says is true. To fly home free on a commercial airline, returnees from Vietnam had to be in uniform. Employers were required to hire-back men drafted for Vietnam upon their return. It is true that plant closings in the auto and steel industries in the late 1970s hit Vietnam veterans hard—but that is not what Davis is writing about.
There is no evidence that Vietnam veterans were spat on. Nor could they have been, at least not in the manner described in the most often told stories. Those stories tell of landing at San Francisco Airport and being met by groups of spitters, often hippies. But flights from Vietnam landed at military airbases like Travis outside San Francisco; protesters could not have gotten on the airbase, much less near deplaning troops.
Legend of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/legend-of-the-spat-upon-vietnam-veteran/
In his exhaustive book entitled “The Spitting Image,” Vietnam vet and Holy Cross professor Jerry Lembcke documents veterans who claim they were spat on by anti-war protesters, but he found no physical evidence (photographs, news reports, etc.) that these transgressions actually occurred. His findings are supported by surveys of his fellow Vietnam veterans as they came home.
For instance, Lembcke notes that “a U.S. Senate study, based on data collected in August 1971 by Harris Associates, found that 75 percent of Vietnam-era veterans polled disagreed with the statement, ‘Those people at home who opposed the Vietnam War often blame veterans for our involvement there’ ” while “94 percent said their reception by people their own age who had not served in the armed forces was friendly.”
Meanwhile, the Veterans’ World Project at Southern Illinois University found that many Vietnam vets supported the anti-war protest, with researchers finding almost no veterans “finish(ing) their service in Vietnam believing that what the United States has done there has served to forward our nation’s purposes.”
In the face of such data, why would the current president nonetheless repeat the apocryphal myth about spat-on Vietnam veterans? Because — facts be damned — it serves a purpose: to suppress protest and perpetuate the ideology of militarism.
This objective is achieved through the narrative’s preposterous assumptions. Metaphorically, if not explicitly, the mythology equates anti-war activism with dishonoring the troops; implies that such protest is kryptonite to the Pentagon’s Superman; and therefore insinuates that America loses wars not when policies are wrong, but when dissent is tolerated.
(08-09-2023, 10:17 PM)Dill Wrote: Could very well be. The question of whether such things happened is often raised in college history courses on the '60s. From my memory, protestors and hippies and the like were more worried about being beaten up by gung ho active duty types. I do remember returning vets being largely welcomed into protests movements, which many eagerly joined. They became one of the most important constituents of the anti-war movement.
As far as the myth of the spitting protestors, it seems to have emerged in the '90s. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html “So where do these stories come from?” The reporter was asking about accounts that soldiers returning from Vietnam had been spat on by antiwar activists. I had told her the stories were not true. I told her that, on the contrary, opponents of the war had actually tried to recruit returning veterans. I told her about a 1971 Harris Poll survey that found that 99 percent of veterans said their reception from friends and family had been friendly, and 94 percent said their reception from age-group peers, the population most likely to have included the spitters, was friendly.
A follow-up poll, conducted in 1979 for the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs), reported that former antiwar activists had warmer feelings toward Vietnam veterans than toward congressional leaders or even their erstwhile fellow travelers in the movement.
There are several books on the subject. Could be written by "leftists" though. Spat on Veterans: An Enduring Myth https://www.fromthesquare.org/spat-on-veterans-an-enduring-myth/ The Los Angeles Times editorialized that it was a mythical image—an edifying myth, said editor Michael McGough, but still a myth.
Apparently, Wall Street Journal editors did not get the memo. Its January 30, 2023, pages carried Jerry Davis’s “Vietnam War Veterans Deserve an Apology.” In the article, Davis claims that “veterans were often advised not to wear their uniforms lest they become targets for mistreatment. Some were cursed, spat on, and worse.” He goes on to say that “Vietnam veterans often had trouble getting jobs.”
Little in what Davis says is true. To fly home free on a commercial airline, returnees from Vietnam had to be in uniform. Employers were required to hire-back men drafted for Vietnam upon their return. It is true that plant closings in the auto and steel industries in the late 1970s hit Vietnam veterans hard—but that is not what Davis is writing about.
There is no evidence that Vietnam veterans were spat on. Nor could they have been, at least not in the manner described in the most often told stories. Those stories tell of landing at San Francisco Airport and being met by groups of spitters, often hippies. But flights from Vietnam landed at military airbases like Travis outside San Francisco; protesters could not have gotten on the airbase, much less near deplaning troops.
Legend of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/legend-of-the-spat-upon-vietnam-veteran/
In his exhaustive book entitled “The Spitting Image,” Vietnam vet and Holy Cross professor Jerry Lembcke documents veterans who claim they were spat on by anti-war protesters, but he found no physical evidence (photographs, news reports, etc.) that these transgressions actually occurred. His findings are supported by surveys of his fellow Vietnam veterans as they came home.
For instance, Lembcke notes that “a U.S. Senate study, based on data collected in August 1971 by Harris Associates, found that 75 percent of Vietnam-era veterans polled disagreed with the statement, ‘Those people at home who opposed the Vietnam War often blame veterans for our involvement there’ ” while “94 percent said their reception by people their own age who had not served in the armed forces was friendly.”
Meanwhile, the Veterans’ World Project at Southern Illinois University found that many Vietnam vets supported the anti-war protest, with researchers finding almost no veterans “finish(ing) their service in Vietnam believing that what the United States has done there has served to forward our nation’s purposes.”
In the face of such data, why would the current president nonetheless repeat the apocryphal myth about spat-on Vietnam veterans? Because — facts be damned — it serves a purpose: to suppress protest and perpetuate the ideology of militarism.
This objective is achieved through the narrative’s preposterous assumptions. Metaphorically, if not explicitly, the mythology equates anti-war activism with dishonoring the troops; implies that such protest is kryptonite to the Pentagon’s Superman; and therefore insinuates that America loses wars not when policies are wrong, but when dissent is tolerated.
Quote: I am a Vietnam vet, and like most vets, I don’t much care to talk about the things I saw or the things that I went through. But there are a few things that I would like to share with the younger generation.
I was 18-years-old when I was sent off to war and, as I recall, my mother and father were the only ones at the August airport when I left; and they were the only ones at the Augusta airport when I came home. No police escorts, news media, or parades. I recall a lot of states sending buddies of mine nice letters and in some cases, money, as a bonus for serving. I came back from Vietnam in 1971, and as of today, the state of Maine has never acknowledged my service. I can, and have, gotten over that, but there is one thing that I will carry to my grave. When we left Vietnam, we spent 18 hours in the air before touching U.S. soil. I will never forget how happy we were to be home. I also will never forget the horror of seeing all the protestors there to greet us; they made us feel like the war was our fault. But the worst part was when they started spitting on us. I still today tear up when I talk about it. Despite all I went through in those 13 months, that was the worst. I was honorably discharged as an E-6 SSG with 11 years active duty, and am considered 100% disabled because of PTSD. Things have changed today and I am more proud than ever for our young men and women who have and who are serving us.
Tons of similar stories. Protests did happen when veterans returned. They even happened when we returned from Iraq I seen that first hand. Why are we trying to rewrite history?
I have the Heart of a Lion! I also have a massive fine and a lifetime ban from the Pittsburgh Zoo...
(08-09-2023, 10:14 PM)Dill Wrote: Next post will be even odder.
This one right here, or the one after that? Inquiring minds want to know.
Quote:Sure I'd be correct if I said "the Democratic Party," the "liberal party," as FDR called it, supported the war.
And I'm just as correct to say "liberals" supported the war. As I intended.
So I am not "misspeaking."
Interesting, doubling down on actual liberals supporting the Vietnam war. This is going to be entertaining.
Quote:As if I really meant to say what you believe but my fingers slipped on the keyboard.
Your posts are often non-sensical, so the concept isn't that farfetched.
Quote:Are you are going to argue, somehow, that liberals didn't support the war? That will require more than showing some turned
against the war post '68, when everyone began turning against it. You might want to explain whom you are calling "liberals" as well.
I'll make it easy for you. When I refer to liberals I'm talking about actual liberals.
Quote:I am referring to a party and its leaders who lead the charge on civil rights and used "big government" to declare war on poverty
and to create a brand new big government program called MEDICARE. You going to say those people were NOT liberals? Or that
they DIDN'T support and even expand the war?
Oh, so you are just referring to the Democratic party, which not only started US involvement in the Vietnam war but consistently expanded it. See, I was confused as you said earlier in this very post that you weren't only referring to the Democratic part, but liberals in general. I guess those hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors were conservative then. My bad.
Quote:If you are not prepared to do that, then stop imputing imagined errors to me and then demanding I "man up" and own them.
Heavens forbid. As Napoleon stated, never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. Do carry on.
(08-09-2023, 10:22 PM)GMDino Wrote: And claim she's "really" a man.
Any chick who kicked my ass totally has a penis...and I don't mean the ones on the necklace or whatever. More on topic, I've already seen clips of MAGA preachers warning people not to be taken in by the smooth-talking Hindu.
Tons of similar stories. Protests did happen when veterans returned. They even happened when we returned from Iraq I seen that first hand. Why are we trying to rewrite history?
I'll refrain from replying to Dill, since his insinuation that my father, easily the finest human being I've ever known, is lying based on Dill's anecdotal evidence would earn him a well deserved reprisal if it was made in person. Here's another liar, as claimed by Dill.
I've had many disagreements with Dill over the years, but this claim is beyond the pale and makes me think of him extremely poorly. Sorry if that's against the ToS, but anyone calling Vietnam veterans liars for detailing the abuse they suffered deserves to be called far worse.
Edit: start the above video at 2:30 as it's age restricted I cannot embed a start time.
Tons of similar stories. Protests did happen when veterans returned. They even happened when we returned from Iraq I seen that first hand. Why are we trying to rewrite history?
Yeah I was just saying it might have depended on where you were and when you came back. I think Dill cited some stuff to consider that it wasn't ALL soldiers being spot in and maybe not even most. But those kinds of stories are awful and carry much more weight in the public consciousness.
That doesn't take away for anyone's own experiences. It just says there is more than a black and white view of it.
Again I grew up in a small town. They celebrate the life of the one citizen who died in Vietnam every year on Memorial Day. I never heard of any soldier coming back and been maligned. Doesn't mean it never happened but it has to have been a miniscule number of times.
Perhaps if I lived in New York or California my reference point would be different?
Warning: Reading signatures may hurt your feelings.
(08-10-2023, 12:00 AM)GMDino Wrote: Yeah I was just saying it might have depended on where you were and when you came back. I think Dill cited some stuff to consider that it wasn't ALL soldiers being spot in and maybe not even most. But those kinds of stories are awful and carry much more weight in the public consciousness.
Except that's not what he was arguing, at all. He's claiming it never happened, at all. Have the moral courage to call your little buddy out for this obvious fallacy.
Quote:That doesn't take away for anyone's own experiences. It just says there is more than a black and white view of it.
No, Dill is arguing that it never happened. I allow for it not being the common experience, he does not. Who do you agree with?
Quote:Again I grew up in a small town. They celebrate the life of the one citizen who died in Vietnam every year on Memorial Day. I never heard of any soldier coming back and been maligned. Doesn't mean it never happened but it has to have been a miniscule number of times.
What is a miniscule number of times?
Quote:Perhaps if I lived in New York or California my reference point would be different?
Would it change your definition of what "miniscule" means?
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