Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Classic-Xer]

(12-22-2018, 11:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We "Blues" as a rule admire Abraham Lincoln. To be sure, FDR was not as merciful to Nazis as Lincoln was to the slave-owning planters who lost the American Civil War. Maybe people must show more tolerance of old evils that have long been tolerated out of political necessity than  to those who bring evil to the world as did Hitler and Tojo. The worst that the Confederacy did was Andersonville, and for that its commandant would die with a rope around his neck. By the way -- Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump are two of the most dissimilar Presidents that we have ever had. I look at the deeds of Donald Trump and ask whether Lincoln would have done the same.

Liberalism includes everything from the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment (free enterprise instead of the feudal rights of an elite to a sure profit predicated upon duties of the masses to the feudal elites in return for the privilege of survival, denial of any divine right of kings, and basic rights as enumerated in the American Bill of Rights and the French  Declarations of the Rights of Man) to social democracy that extends liberalism to the ideal of equal opportunity to its fullest. "Liberalism" excludes anything still feudal (like Saudi Arabia), fascist, or Communist, all fair exclusions from liberalism. Ba'athism under Saddam Hussein or either Assad and the theocratic rule of either Iran or ISIS count as fascist in my set of definitions as does the KKK or Nazism.

Liberalism is not particularly American. I have more in common with a Japanese or Indian liberal than I have in common with an American fascist. Indeed I would sell out the American fascist war criminals to liberal Japanese or liberal Indian occupiers with no hesitation. I'm as anti-crime as I can be, and I cannot imagine worse crimes than war crimes... and I would expect American fascists to become war criminals. If I could say that there is nothing wrong with Saddam Hussein that a well-tied rope and a seven-foot drop couldn't solve, I would say the same of any American who commits such crimes. Liberalism asserts the core values of freedom of thought and expression, fair and competitive elections as the means of constituting government, the right to a fair trial to be judged by an independent judiciary, the abolition of whatever remaining feudal rights and duties, gender equity, ethnic equality, rule of law, and the absence of barbarous punishments. Liberalism is the expression of humanism (all in all, the only viable ideology) .

The kind/type of liberalism that you and Eric and some others represent/promote here is not particularly American in origin that's for sure. There is a reason why, I refer to you guys and gals (folks) as so-called liberals instead of liberals and why others refer to you folks as libtards instead of liberals and why others refer to you as loony or crazy liberals instead of liberals and why you guys are the only ones left posting here today.