The-Blog-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named

This is a local lib blog, written, as far as I can tell, by one or more--I think it's more--Obamabots who are so one-sided in their blogging as to be unintentionally hilarious.

I mean, seriously, I can hardly object to someone being partisan, now, can I? But there's a big difference between having strong opinions and just being oblivious to the warts on your own hide.

Typically, their blogging amounts to a reference or a quote from one of their favored lib news sources accompanied by some snarky commentary operating on the assumptions that

A) They've understood the item to which they've linked correctly, and

B) The item to which they've linked is correct.

That one or the other of these assumptions is frequently incorrect doesn't deter them in the slightest. Time and again, I have seen them draw the wildest conclusions from the news. For example, when Charlie Crist pulled ahead of Marco Rubio (this seems to have been temporary, at least as of this writing, by the way) in the race for Florida's senate seat, they said that it was bad news for the Republicans--as though they were utterly blind to the fact that, with about 70 percent or more of Florida's electorate planning on voting for either Crist or Rubio, well, obviously, that many people didn't want the Democrat.

They appear, in a very real sense, to be completely blind to such things. They are hilarious.

I don't tell you who they are because it's more that I just want to tell the funny stories, not so much that I want to hold them up to ridicule. Although I guess it's hard to tell the difference sometimes...

Seriously, it's nothing personal. They're just a gas, that's all.

Uncertainty Principle

This is a term I originally used in a comment on EmergentNo, which, much to my surprise, was accepted quite without complaint be a couple of the other commenters, Emergent though they were. It is the idea, popularized by Brian McLaren, that it is a bad thing to be certain you know spiritual truth--one often gets the impression that it is thought to be a bad thing to be certain you know any truth. It is, in fact, arrogant to be truly certain of something. That it would therefore be bad spiritual practice to say that you are certain your opposition--that is, moi, among others--is wrong about Emergent theology and practice doesn't really seem to connect with proponents of the Uncertainty Principle. Go figure.

I have also found that a politicized version of the Uncertainty Principle is often a very big thing with political liberals. They react to being told they're wrong much the same way that Emergents did/do (there is some question as to whether "Emergent" is still a force in the universe). They call you "arrogant," even though, by their own principles, they cannot actually be sure that you are wrong--about them being wrong, that is. The irony is often totally lost on them.

Compassion

This definition is swiped from, I believe, Thomas Sowell: "Compassion is the art of buying votes with public funds."

Poor, Poverty

Poverty: In the United States, the condition of not having enough money to simultaneously pay for your cell phone, car, gasoline, air conditioning, and such mundane things as "food" without picking your neighbor's pocket via the police power of government vitally needed government assistance.

Rich

Rich: the condition of having a dollar more than a liberal, leftist, or socialist thinks you ought to have.

Most People are Mixed Up

In my definitions of conservatism and liberalism, I have pretty much painted them as methodological and ideological opposites. The reality, of course, is that most people are not all conservative or all liberal. Most people trend conservative on some issues and liberal on others. Reasons for this vary from person to person, but this reality gives rise to some of the most interesting creatures on the political landscape. Perhaps the most notorious example is the Neocon, who has been defined as "a liberal who's been mugged." Libertarians would be another example of this sort of thing. So would "Reagan Democrats."

The thing to note here is that it can be very dangerous to look at most people and try to divine their overall conservative/liberal orientation from just a few of their opinions. You may be surprised to find that a writer whose fiscal conservatism you admire may be very liberal on social issues, for example.

Neocons, Neoconservatism

Truthfully, it is hard to get much better than this Wikipedia article on Neocons, and I recommend you read it. But in short, when I say "Neocon," I mean a person who is, or was, basically a cold-war, anti-communist, FDR liberal, and who, with the close of the original Cold War, found himself and his hawkish attitudes more at home in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party. Some have become more genuinely conservative over the years, some have not. They are all along the spectrum.

A frequent flaw with Neocons is that they are often ideologues indissolubly wedded to an idea or ideas that have little or no track record of actually working all that well. For instance, they have commonly (and accurately, I think) been blamed for the Bush administration's apparent assumption that all people everywhere will embrace Western-style representative government, if only they have the chance--a notion that no sober student of Scripture and history could seriously entertain, at least in my opinion. Likewise, they are often ardent free-traders, despite free trade not actually having all that hot a record in the real world.

Neocons are valuable allies with more traditional conservatives on some subjects and not so much on others. Because they vary in opinion from person to person, it is probably better not to generalize more than I already have.