Do you realize what an incredible week this has been? I’m ready to go ahead and call it right now: In the months and years ahead, when Republicans and democrats try to figure out when the national scene all turned……

Just for grins, I’m including a dictionary entry: rhet·o·ric, NOUN: The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively. Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous.

weilbourbaki on June 9, 2009 at 11:36 AM”

In regards to liberals, I think one can certainly be “smart”, however that may be defined, and still be quite wrong. Also, nothing irritates me more than a conservative who hasn’t informed themselves enough to debate his/her own opinions, as they hurt the conservative cause as much as anyone. However, offering up FDR as an example in liberal intelligence doesn’t help their cause at all, either. My knowledge of his wartime leadership is too generic to foster anything but a favorable opinion…but as far as economics, he was as much a socialist as Obama is, and his policies dragged the depression out. Sadly, WWII was the only thing that could save our country from the pit of economic despair he created.

As for me, Hotair and Huff-post are the most highly trafficked blogs by myself. I visit huff-post because I always think it’s fun to stir up commotion and such. Plus, it is always nice to give other conservatives on the site help.

Given we still have relatively free markets, conservative domination of talk radio is not an a priori fact.

This is not to suggest, however, that leftward blogs evidence better thinking than rightward. They do not.

“It appears that people with these characteristics are more confident in their views and so they’re more inclined to at least take a quick look at the counterarguments,” Knobloch-Westerwick noted…<

Should read:

more… Knowledgeable, Grounded in historical fact, empirical evidence, well reasoned examination of the long term effects, and unafraid of disagreements or differing beliefs from liberals because we already know they are totally wrong.

Exit question: Are lefty blogs better written? Be honest, notwithstanding the fact that my ego is on the line.

As if this were even a question. I’ve been to Kos; it ain’t pretty.

I once sent a liberal friend a link to an article that argued against global warming. His immediate reaction was to disregard the article on the grounds that there was a FOX SPORTS advertisement on the page. Not FOX NEWS, but FOX SPORTS. I guess anything remotely related to FOX was enough for him to denounce as “conservative propaganda”.

Liberals close-minded? Ya think?

Are you kidding? It was made by liberals for liberals. That Nicholson accidently screws it up by throwing us a pile of red meat doesn’t change the conclusion, where they show him to be a dinosaur and a danger to his own men. Sure, they blur the line a little to claim some nuance – it’s still a LibFest/Self-Righteousness Orgy.

Jaibones on June 9, 2009 at 10:56 AM

I concur. The premise: law enforcement triumphs over those who take extraordinary measures to defend the country and our freedoms. A very timely movie.

When your arguments are based on truth it is confidence inspiring. Libs have to lie all of the time to stick to their talking points. They have to deny what we all know about human nature.

echosyst on June 8, 2009 at 11:19 PM

The achilles heel of liberalism: denial of human nature.

When your arguments are based on truth it is confidence inspiring. Libs have to lie all of the time to stick to their talking points. They have to deny what we all know about human nature.

echosyst on June 8, 2009 at 11:19 PM

Bingo.

The libs also always have to construct a straw man “demon” of the other side and portray people as “victims” of it. It’s a pure emotional argument that has no logical foundation.

wildcat84 on June 9, 2009 at 7:37 AM

Little more need be said. I have found this to be true of every single liberal I have debated in person. Once forced to admit they really believe [your favorite subject here, e.g. trutherism, global warming] they recant and say things like, “Well, pollution is still bad.” or “Bush was still a bad President.”

The left is full of lies and a form of delusion that is hard for most to imagine. They can’t engage the views of others because to do so will shatter their glass web.

Oh, and thanks for letting me register today. Long time reader! My first post here.

Anyone who has spent any time at all even near a liberal knows that they are, without exception, close minded and stupid.
Jaynie59 on June 9, 2009 at 9:47 AM

I sincerely hope that this is just baiting but this overgeneralization and many more like it are unnecessary. It’s actually quite childish to shout, “Anyone who doesn’t think like me or follow my political leanings is an idiot”, and doesn’t lead to any constructive discussion.

There are closed-minds and dumb people on both sides. For every Jeananne Garafalo, there is a Heidi Pratt on the other side. I would like to think that you at least recognize that F.D.R. was smart enough to get us through not-so-easy depression and World War II, even if you don’t agree with his liberal policies.

Conservatives more likely to read opposing viewpoints than liberals

Conservatives are ALSO more likely to UNDERSTAND opposing viewpoints than liberals.

Before we declare victory for conservatives everywhere having more of an open mind than liberals, I think the study needs to be examined to determine what kind of conclusions can be made. Reading the comments, I sense a common theme of the irrational liberal and the logical conservative. The only problem with this conclusion is that the study only provides a brief glimpse into the difference between conservative and liberal reading habits. Why? It is because the study was mainly intended to further prove statistically that the avoidance in cognitive dissidence exists when people read the news and it suffers from sample bias when trying to read into other variables including political preferences.

I find that this study is very valuable for its main task, but like many university studies, the sample is not a true representation of the full population.

This study had “sample size of 156, with an average age of 22.0 years (SD = 3.6), 97 females (62%), and 59 males (38%).”

“Overall, the strongest impact resulted from habitual news use, which applied across all four criteria. More frequent news use led to greater preference of attitude-consistent messages and greater avoidance of counterattitudinal content, based on article choices as well as exposure times.”

What this tells me is that people who pay attention to politics expose themselves to differing viewpoints to challege themselves, liberal and conservative. As for the rest, in the limited time that they do pay attention, they read only with the sea change of popularity, which in college tends liberal. This would most likely distort the results and lead to a weak statistical significance, which was seen in the paper.

-Bourbaki

I bet liberals absolutely hate that movie.

pilamaye on June 9, 2009 at 8:49 AM

Are you kidding? It was made by liberals for liberals. That Nicholson accidently screws it up by throwing us a pile of red meat doesn’t change the conclusion, where they show him to be a dinosaur and a danger to his own men. Sure, they blur the line a little to claim some nuance – it’s still a LibFest/Self-Righteousness Orgy.