Why have Most Liberals Become What They Hate?

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I will give this to Jill Stein, she is actually a liberal. Also, the whole localized democracy was interesting. This is what I mean by why are the liberals are not real. To me, real liberals vote third party. But in any case .

He ended torture, the war in Iraq, and is ending the war in Afghanistan. So... what's Obama doing that's bad?

Guantanamo bay is a major issue with your first point...jut get rid of the ended torture.

I went with Jill Stein as well. I wouldn't have if I didn't live in California, and my vote actually counted for more, but I felt safe casting a protest vote.

I was going to vote for her, since I though I could not vote for Johnson, but I learned i could vote for him, so I decided on him.

But there are still "advisers" in both countries, so it is kinda a far cry from an exit like he mentioned during his campaign. I never said he never did anything good. Repeal of doma, easing the war on drugs (still has a far way to go), immigration reform (hate the ID card idea though), and appointing Sen. Hagel. To me, the whole NSA debacle (yeah, Bush too, but he is no longer president), the war on drugs, real marriage equality (end federal involvement, allow polygamy, as much as that is unlikely), ending gitmo,the TSA, quit the saber rattling with Iran, the drone strikes, farm subsidies, and the whole GMO issue. Those are things I think represents liberal pretty well. I find the closeness to corporations and the military activism off putting. As for other liberals, banning certain speech and choice (the soda ban) are really off putting things.

Why would I have a problem with voting for Jill Stein? It's not liberals or conservatives per se that I have a problem with, it's partisans who will sell out every value they claim to hold to boost their "team" that I can't stand. I respect anyone who's willing to opt out of the lesser evil crap and vote for who they really want, if more people did that the country would be much better off.

You mean the wars that Bush scheduled to end anyway? Someone else got to Gitmo first, but lets, see, what else don't I like about him...

Unprecedented executive power grab, declaring the right to secretly order assassinations sans due process
"The most transparent administration in history" engaging in a massive crackdown on whistle blowers, among other shady sh*t
A massive increase in federal raids on medical marijuana growers
Record deportation levels, much higher than under Bush
Libya
Sending drones into Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and probably a few places we don't know about, killing thousands of civilians, and then cynically classifying them as "enemy combatants"
Pointless sabre-rattling in Syria

There's more, lots more, but I don't want to totally derail the thread.

So what do you like about him? The D. perhaps?

This x10. If people of both sides come together, in the name of freedom to create a better world, then I would have no problem. But it seems like people only legalize freedom when it suits them. That is why on another thread I said I think civil disobedience vis a vis agorism and Thoreau is the way to go for those who love freedom, because I truly believe many people do not like freedom, thus we must compete with the state for the hearts and minds of the people.

...of people currently engaged in war with our country, in places where it would be impossible to simply arrest them. I don't have a problem with that.



Leakers, not whistleblowers. Leakers reveal things that are legal, whistleblowers reveal things that are illegal. Frankly I don't how we can allow the leaking of state secrets.



Hey, I don't like that either, but some of them are doing illegal business under the cover of medical use.


I don't have a problem with deporting criminals who are here illegally, not that everyone here illegally is a criminal.


I love what he did in Libya, it was a perfect use of American power in cooperation with other countries.


That's not cynical, it's what they (the guilty ones) are. Some innocent people got killed, but far fewer than if we invaded. These are terrorists plotting to kill us and attack our allies. They must die. That's perfectly compatible with liberal values.


It got them to give up their chemical weapons, I would not call that pointless.




He's intelligent and sincere about doing the best for this nation. I have my complaints about him, but he's far better than what he had before. Unfortunately be is forced to work with a system that is corrupt to the core, and there isn't too much he can do about it.

Mostly just that I didn't give my decision much thought besides canceling out.

That's a naive statement. You're either not paying attention, or you think that 16 year old US citizens are worthwhile targets for US strikes. And, of course, there's that pesky bill of rights...
Whistleblowers, too. One of the guys recently sentenced revealed, among other things, American troops committing war crimes; another who was pursued for years, and basically had his life ruined, was punished because he revealed massive inefficiency and poor management in the department he worked for.

Yes, some of them were. Many were not. One of the targeted growers was pioneering a novel registration/zip-tie tracking system that could have been an example for states all over the west, until the feds cracked down on them.

Not that everyone deported is guilty of anything besides being here illegally, either.

BS. Calling any male between the ages of 15 and 60, and located within 10 miles of a target, an "enemy combatant," is worse than cynical, it's on the level of NewSpeak out of 1984.

Yeah, actually I agree on this. I don't know if Obama did this on purpose, but the entire play was a nearly textbook-perfect example of aikido principles played out in real life.

I agree on the intelligence; not so much on the sincerity. I also agree that he would do better if he weren't hobbled by the current political climate, and that he was better than the Republican option.
I still would have rather had Jill Stein.

Heck, almost any of the third parties would have been better (I would question Virgil Goode though).

I actually try and keep my complaints to things he's done unilaterally specifically so people can't try and blame the Republicans for Obama's failings, since congress had nothing to do with the drone strikes and the classified legal rationale behind them, the pot crackdown, the secrecy, the deportations, etc. Not that it stops the partisans from trying, but it forces them to expose themselves in doing so. It would be a much longer list if I included things that involve other branches of the government.

Modern-day liberalism is founded on one core principle: total rejection of discrimination regarding anything. As a result, they have no basis for morality beyond their own opinions, and fail at every stance they take on social and political matters. Evan Sayet's great at detailing this...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c[/youtube]

... and 95% income tax (!) on the highest earners.

The poll tax was rejected by the Labour Party because it would disproportionately tax the poor.

I watched the first 10 minutes, and that struck me as a string of straw men.

I am too young to remember foreign policy issues from the start of the century, so I'll focus on the sex education straw man. The aim of the liberal isn't "spread diseases and get teenagers pregnant", quite the opposite. Liberals believe in teaching teenagers about sex so they know how to have it safely, and also feeling confident in not having sex if they don't want to. Many conservatives believe in telling teenagers to simply not have sex. The abstinence-only way actually leads to more teenage pregnancies than sex education.

I'm also fairly sure that most liberals in 2003 didn't think Saddam was good, but they didn't believe that he had WMDs, which was the justification Blair and Bush gave for invading.