Courteous Political Discussion

[Nilsen]

this was a long thread....whats it about? can someone give me the short version?

ill try this and see what happens:

[strk]

Originally posted by storch
Do you buy any of those cheap products?  When you have work done at your home do you get three bids and select the highest priced one?  

Pipe down already you silly liberal, your time and rhetoric are from the past.  

This is a global economy.  

When I can get castings made in America that are equal in quality to the the ones I get from Taiwan and are equal in price then I will buy American.  

I use this example because this is one of the few mfg. goods where I still have a choice.  I choose the imported product for price and quality.  

A US casting costs me $2.95.  the comparable Taiwanese product $1.25.  

We use hundreds of these castings on certain styles of rails.  

Who would I pass the costs on to?  My customers?  

Do you think that if I explained to the customer that the reason my product was 120% more costly than the next guy's because I bought American they would understand and give me the job?  

Aside from that, the jobs in the US foundries are held by left leaning union types such as yourself.  They would take my money and use it to support Kerry.  Frankly I'd rather see a Taiwanese person feed his family first.  All you guys are doing is eroding the foundations of the greatest country on earth.

this is where free trade without worker and environmental standards has brought us, silly wingnut.

You don't seem to grasp the fact that the more we allow corps to make something in an area where people work for a dollar a day and live in abject poverty so that you can buy cheap crap at the local Wal-Mart is costing americans real jobs.

And your taiwanese casings may be great, silly wingnut.  They may make sense to buy overseas.  What you have done in your argument si sto uncover onje of the faults of unbridled competition.  Important things, like manufacturing jobs in the US, get sacrificed for the almighty buck.

So, silly wingnut, but all the taiwanede products you can.  I buy American whenever I can and I buy union products when I can.  I believe in americans and american jobs.  

Say why dont you go to Taiwan or china and work for a year in one of the factories making your cheap casings - see some of the real costs of your cheap products, wingnut.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by strk
way to make a straw man argument - however a logical fallacy

You said, "The more a president is ideologically driven the poorer leader he would be."

I consider these men to have been ideologically driven:

George Washington:  A man who shocked the world by sticking to the ideal of the government he fought for and stepping down as General and again allowing Presidential power to pass from him to Adams.

Thomas Jefferson: An idealist if there ever was one

Abraham Lincoln: One who was so strongly against the division of the union due to the issue of slavery that contemporaries decided they could not abide by his presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt: A man who presided over and pushed for the USA emerging as a world power and who so believed in the canal he ill advisedly boasted "I took the isthmus"

Franklin Roosevelt: A man who fundamentally changed the role of the federal government to allow for some economic regulation and provide some economic security for the citizenry.

Martin Luther King Jr.: a man who's idealism was the source of his influence and who influenced millions.

And just to allow for some internationalism, Mohandas Gandhi: perhaps the most idealistic leader of the modern age who influenced MLK and hastened  the independance of a billion people.

If it is such a "straw man argument" you should have been able to destroy it.  However if you stand by your statement, you must believe these men to have been poor leaders.

[strk]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
You said, "The more a president is ideologically driven the poorer leader he would be."

I consider these men to have been ideologically driven:

George Washington:  A man who shocked the world by sticking to the ideal of the government he fought for and stepping down as General and again allowing Presidential power to pass from him to Adams.

Thomas Jefferson: An idealist if there ever was one

Abraham Lincoln: One who was so strongly against the division of the union due to the issue of slavery that contemporaries decided they could not abide by his presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt: A man who presided over and pushed for the USA emerging as a world power and who so believed in the canal he ill advisedly boasted "I took the isthmus"

Franklin Roosevelt: A man who fundamentally changed the role of the federal government to allow for some economic regulation and provide some economic security for the citizenry.

Martin Luther King Jr.: a man who's idealism was the source of his influence and who influenced millions.

And just to allow for some internationalism, Mohandas Gandhi: perhaps the most idealistic leader of the modern age who influenced MLK and hastened  the independance of a billion people.

If it is such a "straw man argument" you should have been able to destroy it.  However if you stand by your statement, you must believe these men to have been poor leaders.

you are confusing ideology with values and you are missing my point - which was that flexibility to react the realities of the present is a better asset than someone who uses his pre-set ideas to guide him regardless of the actual facts.

Your argument is a straw man because you are trying to make my argument into "no man with strong ideology can be a good leader - that is a fallacy.  

when I used the words "idealogically (sic) driven" I mean inflexible in that mind set.  No man is without ideals and his philosphical mind set.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by strk
you are confusing ideology with values and you are missing my point - which was that flexibility to react the realities of the present is a better asset than someone who uses his pre-set ideas to guide him regardless of the actual facts.

Once again: Ideology is: " A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system."

George Washington was an ideologue.  He had a set of firm beliefs about the political system which he helped create.   The others I mentioned are also idealogues.

Flexibility in the tactics used to achieve the results one believes in is one thing, flexibility in the beliefs is another.  When one is too flexible, one has no backbone.

Someone who reacts to the currents of the river ends up swimming.  One who plans his course and anticipates ends up clearing the rapids.

Your rhetoric suggests you believe MK Gandhi a bad leader.

[Nash]

Once again Holden, in your first post you said:

"The subject of this thread is whether it is better to have someone in the oval office who has firm convictions or someone with a more flexible approach to policy."

You're now trying to morph your point so that "firm convictions" now means "ideology".

But they are different things.

Kudos on the flexibility you're demonstrating in this thread.

It doesn't mean you're not ideological at the same time. The two can co-exist.

But firm convictions and flexibility don't have that same relationship.

[Holden McGroin]

Nash, ideology came up with this statement:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by strk
POTUS is a difficult job and imo the more a president is idealogicially driven the poorer leader he would be.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was showing an ideologically driven leader can be quite effective.  We have had leaders who blow in the wind, showing no ideology other than to get re-elected.  The flexibility to change one's convictions is not a trait of good character.

[Nash]

I agree. And one can be both flexible *and* idealistic.

But several times now you've been trying to corner flexibility to mean only wrt changing one's ideology.

I mean, you did say "flexible approach to policy" in your first post. Then said that flexibility is "the tactics used" to further ideology. But then you try to draw the conclusion that flexibility is a liability because it means changing ones ideology.

Which we both know is not the neccessarily the case.

I'm confused, and maybe you better firm up what your argument actually is.

[Holden McGroin]

"But then you try to draw the conclusion that flexibility is a liability because it means changing ones ideology."

No, I said, "The flexibility to change one's convictions is not a trait of good character."

It is a liability if your ideology is too flexible.  If for (extreme) example, one were to be against wife murder one day and then for it the next, I would consider this flexibility to be a flaw in character, and therefore a liabilty.

(Anticipating the retort) Obviously one can change ideology throughout one's lifetime, I am not talking about someone who keeps a childhood notion of something throughout life.  I am talking about the political difference between a leader and someone who's beliefs are guided by whatever the polls tell him they should be.

Churchill believed that UK should challenge the Third Reich sooner that the UK's popular opinion allowed.  He knew he was right about the danger of Hitler: He led.

[Nash]

Bringing this to real-world examples is probably a good idea.

Before I continue, is your post based on both the praise/critisism and widely held view that Bush is ideological, firm, with strong convictions, and rather inflexible? And that Kerry is... lets just say, different than that?

Or is it coincidence?

[Holden McGroin]

Actually the 'flexible' example I had in mind was from Arkansas, but that is between you and me.  BC was not an ideologue by any means. That is why he had to worry about his legacy.  Something JFK or FDR did not need to do.

I think Bush is not as ideological as he is reported to be.  The first thing he did as president (that IRC) was to greatly increase the federal participation in primary and secondary education.  

I think this was a politically expedient thing to do rather than appealing to any conservative ideology.

[Nash]

Then this isn't about Bush and Kerry, and not even about Bush himself? Just Bill?

[Holden McGroin]

I had him as a general notion, an example on the other end of the spectrum. It is as much about Bill as it is about Winston, FDR, or Gandhi.

Each vote is a compromise.


>edit: actually I started the thread just because I wanted to post a statement in which each sentance alternately insulted and then appealed for civility.

[Nash]

You sure are slippery.... I admire your work, btw.

So let's see where all of this has finally taken us to...

Gandhi, Churchil and FDR vs. the man from Arkansas.

Yikes...

All of these men were flexible (as per your examples). But it's alleged that only 3 of the four had an ideology that went along with it (which I won't concede, mind you).

Quite selective... because you've failed to give examples of the peril of those who are idealistic but are utterly rigid in terms of the the flexibility they demonstrate in carrying out their ideological agendas.

Of course you try to get Bush off the hook in this regard by saying something about primary schooling or something... but the shoe fits too perfectly here.

I'll go ya tet a tet. Clinton the the ammoral wet rag vs. Bush the rigamortised zombie.... but you need to pick a side. No fair setting up the parameters of the debate, picking a victim, and saying none of your guys fit into those parameters.

Otherwise you might as well have said "Clinton sucks" and been done with it.

[Holden McGroin]

Cheap shot joke coming...

No you have it wrong.  He was the suckee.

>edit

I had to ask a question in the original post, so I asked one.  

You seem to want to specify the thread. I used as general terms as possible to open the discussion, rather than being specific and causing the thread to become just a poll of Bush vs. Kerry.  I didn't wanna.