Now I'm just confused.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

It is inevitable that a partisan ideology runs into itself. By this I mean inherent conflicts between narratives of different issues. Perhaps the greatest example of this is the tension between a conservative drive for a highly interventionist foreign policy, and the conservative drive for marginalizing the very societies we are "helping".

Obama is often criticized for "alienating our allies". The fodder for such a charge is endless and the arguments offered for the charge are patently disprovable. What is weird though, is how conservative backlash against immigration sits neatly next to conservative lauding of those fine, decent people over there who just want to be free. I mean, as long as they're not coming here. Then they're dangerous.

I mean, the point is, immigrating here means that you agree to assimilate, and we agree to go over and impose our values upon your country. It is a one-way street: immigrants come here and should assimilate, and we should go over there to change their ways. How they reconcile this is beyond me.

What all this does is simply betray true feelings about those people, and is a tacit admission that all this high-falutin' talk about democracy, freedom and decent, hard-working people is just a smokescreen.

Remember this: every conservative who maligns Muslims in this country kills a service-member over there.

Comments

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

Well, I think there are a lot of tensions in conservative policies on immigration. In particular, those in favor of free markets should also be in favor of free movement of labor if the 'free' in 'free market' is to mean anything at all. But this: "conservative backlash against immigration sits neatly next to conservative lauding of those fine, decent people over there who just want to be free" isn't really fair. Surely lauding those who want to be free isn't logically equivalent to embracing the claim that we should let anyone and everyone live in America if they so desire.

But otherwise I'm not entirely sure what you're on about in this post. I suspect that you're relying on a lot of sweeping generalizations that aren't really true or require a lot of nuancing, e.g., ", immigrating here means that you agree to assimilate" and "we agree to go over and impose our values upon your country". If you were a bit more explicit about the contradiction in which you think you've trapped conservatives, then it'd be a bit easier to respond.

[torpidai.livejournal.com]

but, have we not all sussed it yet? 'free market' is just as much a misnomer as Army intelligence, "Arabic Numerals" and The People's Democratic Republic of Korea.

Tis all just doublespeak to fool most of the people most of the time, and BTW I hear Texas is giving you lot a bad name by trying to remove words like slavery and capitalism, prefering "Atlantic triangular trade" and free enterprise system respectively.

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

"'free market' is just as much a misnomer as Army intelligence"

agreed