bblight
Is that a moonbat in my sites?
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Evolving Tactics
[font=Garamond, Times]Conservatives learn to fight like liberals.[/font]
[font=Verdana, Times]
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Quick, someone call Howard Dean. It appears the right has stolen the left's playbook and is now using tactics liberals have used for decades. Unlike Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book, which someone slipped to Ronald Reagan's staff in 1980, there are actually useful nuggets that the old Reaganites and the new Bushies can use.
It's hard to know when this began. But on a variety of fronts conservatives are using arguments and tactics heretofore under patent protection by the left, including pushing for activist judges (with four decades of liberal jurisprudence on the books, the left's best hope is judges who respect precedent above all), using federal dollars to build political constituencies, filing lawsuits, launching boycotts, and arguing for free speech and "diversity" in education. The last has drawn a surprising amount of attention lately with a debate over evolution and "intelligent design"--the hypothesis that evolution isn't random but rather the mechanism an intelligent being uses to change the universe.
President Bush pushed this debate well into the public spotlight by remarking that intelligent design should be taught in addition to random evolution. Whatever the merits of this debate, it's interesting that the "religious right" is co-opting the arguments of the left. With "diversity" a worthy goal in education, why not present students with "both sides"? That way no one is left out and everyone is included.
The question alone has to be infuriating for the left. It's nice to think that there was once a golden period in education when the pursuit of truth was paramount. But from the elementary curriculum to politics in college classrooms, education has always been determined by cultural and political movements. Many of the elite schools were themselves founded to sidestep one prevailing orthodoxy or another. So for years we've had a new god in education and he goes by the name of "diversity." Not to be confused by the worthy goal of striking barriers to education once placed in the path of minority groups, this form of diversity has been the principal vehicle for a liberal intellectual agenda that wasn't otherwise up to intellectual speed.
That the right is now adopting this creed shows that the liberal tactic is nearly played out. Colorado University professor Ward Churchill, who likened 9/11 victims to Nazi functionaries, can take diversity for a test drive in hopes of leaving the controversy he stirred up in the dust. But with that logic, intelligent-design folks can jump behind the wheel too and see where "diversity" takes them.
This isn't the only race Nascar America is likely to be cheering on in the years ahead. The National Rifle Association called recently for a boycott of ConocoPhillips Co. over the energy giant's attempts to stop its Oklahoma employees from keeping guns locked in the trunks of their cars while at work. A new state law specifically protects the right to keep and bear arms in a car while at work. Conoco is drawing fire because it is suing to stop that law from going into effect.
Meanwhile in Arizona a cattleman turned the tables on an environmental group to win a massive settlement, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The group, the Center for Biological Diversity of Tucson, is known for suing over ranching practices and for posting photographic "evidence" on the Internet that cows are destroying otherwise pristine habitat. But rancher Jim Chilton fought back with his own photos showing a vastly different picture of the 21,500 acres of federal land where he has the right to graze his 450 cows. "I had to decide whether I was a cowboy or a wimp," he told Journal reporter Jim Charlton.
Mr. Chilton sued for defamation of character and won a $600,000 judgment against the center--a lot of money for a group that in 2003 saw about a third of its $3 million income come from court awards and settlements. The greens are now appealing, calling Mr. Chilton "litigious" and complaining the judgment could doom the center. Should he get the money, Mr. Chilton plans on first paying his own legal expenses and then using the rest of the windfall to set up a legal defense fund for other ranchers.
The Bush administration is also using the government to beat the left at its own game. Democrats vigorously objected to President Bush's Faith Based Initiative not because they are antireligion per se, but because by opening up federal grants and federal institutions to faith-based groups, the president was putting religious organizations on equal footing with predominantly liberal secular groups that had come to think of federal charitable dollars as exclusively theirs. With federal money, the religious groups would suddenly be competitive. The left fears that government bureaucracies will feel pressure from above by elected Republicans and from below by a growing political constituency that's leaning to the right. That fear is likely to be realized if Republicans ever succeed at creating private accounts for Social Security, Medicare or other large entitlements. The Ownership Society is scary to the left precisely because it is meant to change the face of the culture. Republicans are now starting to realize that like in war, winning often means adopting your opponent's best tactics.
[/font]
[font=Garamond, Times]Conservatives learn to fight like liberals.[/font]
[font=Verdana, Times]
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Quick, someone call Howard Dean. It appears the right has stolen the left's playbook and is now using tactics liberals have used for decades. Unlike Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book, which someone slipped to Ronald Reagan's staff in 1980, there are actually useful nuggets that the old Reaganites and the new Bushies can use.
It's hard to know when this began. But on a variety of fronts conservatives are using arguments and tactics heretofore under patent protection by the left, including pushing for activist judges (with four decades of liberal jurisprudence on the books, the left's best hope is judges who respect precedent above all), using federal dollars to build political constituencies, filing lawsuits, launching boycotts, and arguing for free speech and "diversity" in education. The last has drawn a surprising amount of attention lately with a debate over evolution and "intelligent design"--the hypothesis that evolution isn't random but rather the mechanism an intelligent being uses to change the universe.
President Bush pushed this debate well into the public spotlight by remarking that intelligent design should be taught in addition to random evolution. Whatever the merits of this debate, it's interesting that the "religious right" is co-opting the arguments of the left. With "diversity" a worthy goal in education, why not present students with "both sides"? That way no one is left out and everyone is included.
The question alone has to be infuriating for the left. It's nice to think that there was once a golden period in education when the pursuit of truth was paramount. But from the elementary curriculum to politics in college classrooms, education has always been determined by cultural and political movements. Many of the elite schools were themselves founded to sidestep one prevailing orthodoxy or another. So for years we've had a new god in education and he goes by the name of "diversity." Not to be confused by the worthy goal of striking barriers to education once placed in the path of minority groups, this form of diversity has been the principal vehicle for a liberal intellectual agenda that wasn't otherwise up to intellectual speed.
That the right is now adopting this creed shows that the liberal tactic is nearly played out. Colorado University professor Ward Churchill, who likened 9/11 victims to Nazi functionaries, can take diversity for a test drive in hopes of leaving the controversy he stirred up in the dust. But with that logic, intelligent-design folks can jump behind the wheel too and see where "diversity" takes them.
This isn't the only race Nascar America is likely to be cheering on in the years ahead. The National Rifle Association called recently for a boycott of ConocoPhillips Co. over the energy giant's attempts to stop its Oklahoma employees from keeping guns locked in the trunks of their cars while at work. A new state law specifically protects the right to keep and bear arms in a car while at work. Conoco is drawing fire because it is suing to stop that law from going into effect.
Meanwhile in Arizona a cattleman turned the tables on an environmental group to win a massive settlement, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The group, the Center for Biological Diversity of Tucson, is known for suing over ranching practices and for posting photographic "evidence" on the Internet that cows are destroying otherwise pristine habitat. But rancher Jim Chilton fought back with his own photos showing a vastly different picture of the 21,500 acres of federal land where he has the right to graze his 450 cows. "I had to decide whether I was a cowboy or a wimp," he told Journal reporter Jim Charlton.
Mr. Chilton sued for defamation of character and won a $600,000 judgment against the center--a lot of money for a group that in 2003 saw about a third of its $3 million income come from court awards and settlements. The greens are now appealing, calling Mr. Chilton "litigious" and complaining the judgment could doom the center. Should he get the money, Mr. Chilton plans on first paying his own legal expenses and then using the rest of the windfall to set up a legal defense fund for other ranchers.
The Bush administration is also using the government to beat the left at its own game. Democrats vigorously objected to President Bush's Faith Based Initiative not because they are antireligion per se, but because by opening up federal grants and federal institutions to faith-based groups, the president was putting religious organizations on equal footing with predominantly liberal secular groups that had come to think of federal charitable dollars as exclusively theirs. With federal money, the religious groups would suddenly be competitive. The left fears that government bureaucracies will feel pressure from above by elected Republicans and from below by a growing political constituency that's leaning to the right. That fear is likely to be realized if Republicans ever succeed at creating private accounts for Social Security, Medicare or other large entitlements. The Ownership Society is scary to the left precisely because it is meant to change the face of the culture. Republicans are now starting to realize that like in war, winning often means adopting your opponent's best tactics.
[/font]
are both as fake as hell ..... 
