Backed into a corner by you? Now that is rich. As I said, do some research if you are interested in finding out who wrote the laws onto the books. It isn't surprising that you would object to laws that are on the books being enforced. Liberals are big on writing laws that dictate what we may and may not do and then selectively disregarding those that they change their minds on.
Tell you what, why don't you take the same challenge that I gave to sublime. Name 3 things that you can do with absolutely no interference from government at either the local, state, or national level. As you tick off the things that you can't do without interference, look up who is responisbile for those laws from government interference with the private use of private property to helmet and seat belt laws, to the mind police, to the very real possibility of legislating what we can eat when we go out and tell me which side is so authoritarian that they don't trust you to allow you any choice at all.
This is another example of a cornered person changing the discussion to weasel out. Instead of addressing the things I wrote, you are now challenging me to do something that was not part of the initial post's scope. Your diatribe about Liberals is painfully lame--Libs pass laws and then ignore them? Once again you seem to be calling for some kind of a draconian, conservative police-state.
No, those are conservatives. There is a reason that liberals are known as the kings of unintended consequences. You don't realize that the torch of progress all to often turns out to be a devouring conflagration. There are times when rampant liberalism absolutely must be held in check and when you are about the business of attempting to change the very pillars of society based on nothing more than the sexual preference of 2 or 3 percent of the population, that is one of those times.
Pillars of society? Yep, we can all see that Canada went down in flames when they got marriage EQUALITY. What are there now, 6 first world countries and 1 US State that allow marriage EQUALITY, and you're still stuck in the 1500's on the subject? White supremacy was a "pillar of society" too, just like the superiority of men--but our discussions put paid to that idea, don't they?
Now that you mention it, compared to most of the world at the time, the US was radically liberal. Slavery had gone out of vogue in more conservative Eurpope over a hundred years earlier.
So, now to weasel out of the corner that you painted yourself into, you are changing the meaning of the words, right? What a silly argument, to use the words Liberal and Conservative in their current meanings and apply them to the world of a hundred years ago. Wigs and Tories, Pale.
Once again, compared to the rest of the world at the time, The US was radically liberal.
Once again, if you're going to change the usage of the words from one post to the next, then you need to define them each time. The US was deeply conservative (in the current meaning of the word) when it came to religious fundamentalism and racial issues. Almost all stores and businesses were closed on Sunday, most places had "Sunday" laws that forbade the selling of liquor or doing business, racial segregation and prohibitions on interracial marriage were complete--or nearly so.
If we use the term "liberal" in an older frame of reference, the US was liberal in that its form of government was seen as liberal because it wasn't based on the same hierarchies that most European governments were. The problem with using the word "liberal" to demonize people or policies you don't like is that it has more than one meaning depending on the context in which it's being used. Socially, I am a liberal because I think that equality is more important than maintaining racial purity, religious dogma, royal bloodlines, or traditional inequalities. Financially, I am a conservative, I don't believe in deficit spending, I think the FED has been a disaster just like our ill-conceived, credit-based war in Iraq.
A million. Did you really say a million? A million witches? Yes, I say that your research is shoddy. If you are referring to the inquisition, which lasted some 600 years, the number of heritics and witches who were actually killed amounted to less than 4,000 and the vast majority of those were jews. Researchers have been given access to the church records of the time and meticulous records were kept detailing the inquisition and disposition of each case. The research revealed a great deal of shoddy research and wild overestimation of the numbers.
Once again, it's not my research that's shoddy. No, I'm not talking about the Inqusition, they were pretty disgusting in their own right and a wonderful example of what happens when Church and State get into bed together (look at Iran for another example). Actually, some researchers put the number much higher than a million for the more than 500 year period during which women--and some men--were burned at the stake or executed in other interesting ways due to a religious frenzy that simmered for centuries. Reading history is interesting and it can be informative too.
I, and most conservatives prefer working within the law and the legislative process. It is liberals who are perfectly content to have unelected, unaccountable judges legislate from the bench. Some of the most intrusive and unconstitutional law that we live with comes from the bench because liberals know that such law would never make it through the legislative process.
Like abrogating the Constitution to spy on Americans? Like setting up illegal prisons to torture people in direct contravention to the Geneva Convention to which the US was a signer? Like passing laws to enshrine religious dogma into law to protect imaginary "pillars of society"?
You should go back to focusing on abortion arguments, Pale, your technicolor description and rhetorical fireworks coupled with incessant drumbeat of "murder, murder, murder..." was so nauseating that most people stopped arguing with you and left your thread--thus giving you the appearance of victory. Even though the deaths still continue. In the last paragraph in your post 142 you make a wild accusation without a shred of proof, but I wanted to address the misunderstanding we have there. Do you know who Fred Phelps is? He's the preacher of the Westboro Baptist Church and he and his sycophants are so egregiously abusive and stupid towards gay people that even religious folks who basically agree with his beliefs despise him for his insanely vitriolic diatribes. To a lesser extent that's how I feel about you. I don't always disagree with you, but you are such a violent extremist with your demands for draconian laws and your sweeping acerbic statements about vast numbers of people whom you lump together in groups under ill-defined rubrics that I don't want to be associated with you in any way. (Other than browbeating you on discussion sites.
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Please note that I didn't call you a single nasty name--like "ignorant twit" or "big mouth".
