I only try to conserve those traditions that have not yet proven unuseful. In that sense I am indeed a "conservative". My reasons to support the Republicans alas have less to do with conservatism than liberalism. I support the Republicans because the Democrats want to preserve exactly those traditions that I think are wrong. And I'm afraid they have consistently done so for 150 years. There are Republicans I don't like (David Duke, the Crazy Uncle, Bobby Jindal) and Democrats I do like (Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman; in fact my favourite team for President and Vice-President would have been McCain and Lieberman).




I think it was more a shot from the hip thing. I don't think he actually looked over this thread and others and came to the conclusion that liberals provide lots of evidence while conservatives do not. I think he just assumed, as I pointed out before it works, that he was right, hence liberals must have provided more evidence, hence he can claim that as an argument. And the argument was then shot down by a conservative (who, again, provided actual evidence), just as I predicted.




It started when I was a student in Haifa during the Lebanon war. People here were wondering where I was until I showed up posting from Jerusalem (whither we had been evacuated). At that point, if I remember correctly, liberals already "knew" that Israel had attacked Lebanon for no good reason, whereas I had seen, in person, the rockets that had been fired at northern Israel for five years preceeeding the "beginning" of the war. (Unfortunately for the terror supporters, those rockets don't just vanish. Instead they are collected and stored in magazines. People are free to look at them.)




You got me there.

https://forums.joeuser.com/343907

 

Here's one for starters. Particularly amusing is that when a liberal voice provides some evidence, rather than provide their own as a counter, several conservative voices seem to expect that person to then go and provide their evidence for them as well!

If you're lucky maybe the evidence will be something you'd have to go and pay money in order to actually view (https://forums.joeuser.com/339903), which is enough for conservatives to accept as gospel, and demand massive evidence from a liberal in rebuttal.

Maybe instead the threshold for what classes as evidence is also so high it's ludicrous (e.g. see this thread - apparently smoking may not be harmful afterall, at least according to one conservative: https://forums.joeuser.com/340096/page/11/#replies - fortunately that case felt more of an exception to the rule).

 

Those are just the ones from recent memory - I can't be bothered to waste too much time going through all the threads for a more comprehensive answer.

You shouldn't take things so personally - I didn't say YOU fail to provide any evidence. There are plenty more conservatives on this forum than liberals though, so the impact of say 1 conservative that provides plenty of evidence on the average is far less than one liberal who provides plenty of evidence, and I was referring to the average - that is, the average conservative on this forum seems (based on my own experience) less likely to provide evidence than the average liberal. Feel free to provide evidence to counter my point if you want though, it'd make a refreshing change to see examples of posts where conservatives are actually backing up their points with evidence.

Evidence.

To paraphrase Inigo, "I don't tink dat word means what you tink dat word means."

That's what I thought. One liberal posts one graphic. And you somehow mistook that for a universal truth?

 

Actually, that's not what happened in that thread. What happened was that a conservative posted a link to updated information.

 

As far as I could find the statistics cited in the book are freely available. In fact, I knew a few of those facts.

 

But you can make accusations.

 

You responded to me, in a thread where I alone posted any evidence whatsoever, and you made a point that you yourself now claim you cannot back up because it would be too much work. (And ironically the very point you were making was that liberals provide more evidence than conservatives.)

On average is still isn't true. I observe many many threads here and my experience is completely different from yours.

 

And that's what I thought would happen. I have provided evidence, namely evidence for what I myself wrote, and you have recognised it but somehow it isn't evidence and you want more evidence.

And what I did was more than one or two graphics I found somewhere on the Internet. In fact you will find, mainly in threads about religion, that I do not put a very high value on things that can be found easily via Google.

What do you want conservatives to do? Repeat my travels so that I'm not the only one providing first-hand evidence? That doesn't seem useful to me.

But let's just look at people's blogs and compare how much research people put into their articles.

What objective method of judging how much evidence is being provided do you propose to back up your claim? I used my own example as evidence for my counter-claim: that conservatives provide more evidence for their claims than liberals. What is your example for several liberals who provide more evidence than several conservatives?

 

 

I have to tell ya, you are a much more patient man than me, Leauki.

It's shabbes. And while I shouldn't post to the Internet on shabbes I have nothing else to do.

 

 

Your secret is safe with me.

From the thread:

Sounds to me like the liberal person was being asked to provide the conservatives evidence for them.

Mistook it? I took it as evidence, something which is in short supply in these forums. Are you trying to argue that it somehow isn't evidence, or are you just doing the standard strawman here of making out I'm saying something that I'm not?

The thread/post in question referenced the book as providing (statistical) evidence to back up previously anecdotal observations. The book was not free. In fact it was a liberal who went to the trouble of providing information on the statistics used and where they could be obtained for free!

No, I backed up my point with some evidence. I just couldn't see much point in doing a comprehensive study of all JU forum posts to analyse the probabilities of a conservative and a liberal providing evidence, especially given the lack of evidence provided at the other end - I'm still awaiting your links to threads where conservatives have provided plenty of evidence while the liberals haven't; i'd have thought at least some would exist, but you haven't bothered to find just one, despite accusing me of failing to back up my claim after I provided three!

 

Anyway all of this is distinctly off-topic, which is another reason I'm stopping there.

The conservative provided a link to that data. The "redo the chart" bit was sarcasm.

The simple fact is that in your example both a liberal and a conservative provided evidence. Yet from an example where both sides provided evidence, you get the idea that liberals often provide evidence whereas conservatives rarely do; and then you make that claim while responding to a forum conservative who is (I dare say) well known for providing lots of evidence, personal and researched.

 

As I said, you simply don't accept the evidence I already provided in my first reaction to your claim. So what else can I do?

I think your claim has been proven wrong. Liberals in this forum do not provide more evidence than conservatives do. And I think my claim has been proven right: liberals do ignore evidence, even evidence they acknowledge at first.

 

Some folks indeed have difficulty recognizing sarcasm.  Had I said 're-label' instead of 're-do' perhaps it would have been understood.  It was a comment, not a 'demand.'

I understood it. I don't think you could have prevented it.

 

Leauki, aeortar and Daiwa you have my apologies. I have been offline for the last few days and have missed the most recent discourse and will be offline again for another week and a half starting tomorrow (going to Cuba and -not- taking the laptop) so let me add my two cents:

I see the classic "left vs right" pissing contest breaking out here. Come on guys. You can do better than this. The original purpose of the article posted has nothing to do with the liberal vs. conservative argument but more with trying to get folks to see the world through someone else's eyes.

For the record, when challenged I have almost always provided sources for my assertions. Leauki, typically accuses me of never providing sources. When I do provide them (sometimes having to post the link twice) He then replies that my source is all a pack of lies and therefore doesn't count. (However, a link to FOX news is golden, right?)

Now for something completely different....

My two favorite U.S presidents to this point are-

1) FDR- he was a socialist democrat and he led the U.S to victory during WW2. Interestingly enough, the fact that he was a socialist democrat is almost always glossed over in republican talking points when various pundits talk about the golden hour when the U.S.A came in to save the day back then.

2) Dwight D Eisenhower- a republican and former General who fought in WW2. You can thank him for the present U.S highway system (albeit having fallen into disrepair in recent years) and also this very interesting, and prescient warning he gave about the potential for the military-industrial complex turning into a frankenstein abomination- http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

I will be online again on April 9th, at which point I will have ample time to peruse this thread and reply.

 

 

Give your bud Fidel our best wishes.

That's because you link to opinion pieces and questionable sources. You really don't have to back up your words with evidence that other people think like you. That doesn't matter to me. I find you as trustworthy as any other person with your beliefs.

You and I disagree on what constitues "evidence".

When I claim that Saddam tortured and murdered Kurds, pictures I myself took of torture chambers and a rope used for executions is evidence, and stories I have been told by survivors is evidence too, although I cannot unlike with the pictures prove it to you.

On the other hand, if you claim, say, that the Shah murdered 300,000 people during the uprising, and the only evidence you have is some book written by someone who was never in Iran, not at the time or afterwards and I find that the Shah's enemies in Iran themselves speak of a lower number, your evidence is really less than fantastic and not very convincing to boot.

 

I don't usually link to FOX. My links are usually to videos or pictures, to my own work, and to other people I personally know and who have been there where it happened.

If I had trusted journalists, even FOX, I would never have dared to go and see for myself.

 

Thanks Nitro! Unfortunately, I never did get to meet the fellow. Havanah is very nice this time of year though

Well well, aren't we Mr. Stereotype today!

Well, here's the thing Leauki.... not once, have I ever disputed the crimes committed by Saddam against the Kurds. Not once. If you like, go out and find a thread here in which I've disputed his crimes against humanity.

Now let's make one thing damn clear here. Your argument essentially boils down to the assertion that in order to have evidence, a person must have firsthand knowledge of or directly witness an event. If this is true, then no one can personally provide evidence for very much, except for a very small slice of a direct personal experience.

 To illustrate my point, I'd like to use the example of my friend's father. He was in the German Army all throughout WW2, in a Panzer, right from the beginning until the very end. So, not only was he in Germany, he was also in a combatant role that one would imagine would give him a definitive experience of the war. And you know what? If you ask him, he'll tell you that WW2 was the most boring, peaceful experience of his life. Why? Because he was posted on the Swiss border and towards the end of the war (with the fuel shortage) his tank was more of a giant ornament than anything else.

So, I read in a book (produced by a fellow who lists voluminous sources where he got his information from) that WW2 was one of the bloodiest conflicts known to man.

But this other fellow, who directly experienced it and was on the ground the whole time, tells me that that's a load of hogwash because he spent his days watching the birds with the only privation experienced being a little hunger toward the end when the rations were reduced.

Who do I believe?

Now, yes, you did go to Iraq. And you know what? I admire you for it. Good on you for putting your money where your mouth was and heading there on your own initiative.

But to state that travelling somehwere as a tourist for (2 weeks? 3 weeks?) several years after the invasion occured gave you complete knowledge of everything going on in the entire country is utter hogwash. However, you did speak to people who told you of their experiences. So too is Canada full of the refugees of conflicts around the globe with people who tell of their experiences to me.

Going back to my earlier point, yes, Saddam was a very bad man. But the bulk of his transgressions (against the Kurds and all manner of folks inside the country) happened at a time when he was the golden boy of the U.S and other western powers. It wasn't until he failed in his war against Iran and refused to open up his economy that suddenly he became a bad guy who needed to be dealt with!

Well, that book was written by this fellow;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_Johnson

He was a consultant for the CIA, served in the military and wrote a trilogy of books in the late 90's that were prescient. He predicted an event like 9/11 well before it happened, he predicted precisely what our response would be, and so far he's been bang on in that it's only served to harm us more than help us.

Now, could the 300,000 number be wrong? Absolutely it could be. Maybe it's 60,000. Maybe it's 100,000. Does that make the Shah a better or worse man?

The truth remains (contrary to the mythic narrative of spreading freedom) that he overthrew the democtratically elected government of his country (which would not have happened without the help of the CIA) and was so oppressive to his people that a massive, popular uprising took him out of power years later.

Just as Saddam was a monster who did not deserve to govern, so too was the Shah a monster that did not deserve to govern. So too was Augusto Pinochet, so too was Suharto. So what was the difference? Saddam did not know  his place and refused to play ball with the west. The others knew very well the balance of power, so as long as they acted in our geopolitical interests, we kept them in power while turning a blind eye to the many, many transgressions they carried out!