Posted by
Far_view on Friday, February 15, 2008 9:37:12 AM
I was off at a meeting this past week and most of the folks there were,
I'm sure, of the left - leaning persuasion. I was out to dinner one
night with some of them and as our group is walking along, I hear a
snippet of conversation to the effect of "... so they think that
because we haven't had a terrorist attack that that is a good
argument". So I sidled up and, against my better judgment asked what
they were talking about. I guess the one fellow had been relating the
story of being at a dinner where there were some conservatives and the
latter had cited the fact that we hadn't had a terrorist attack since
9/11/01 on U.S. soil as being an argument in favor of the success of
Pres. Bush's anti-terror policies. He thought that wasn't a good
argument. I was kind of incredulous. I was like, well... that is the
case isn't it? He admitted it was, but said well we only had one
terrorist attack under Pres. Clinton and that was home-grown (Oklahoma
City). I said, well what about the Africa embassy bombings? what about
the attack on the Kohl? I guess he didn't want to count those. Then he
said something to the effect that well, San Francisco hasn't had a
super earthquake since 1906 so we shouldn't be worried about another
9/11, like 9/11 was just some freak occurence. Hoo boy.
We
dropped it for awhile but got back into it later talking about why
conservatives don't like John McCain. He seemed to think that a big
reason was because John McCain didn't support the constitutional
amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. I certainly
can't speak for everybody, but that seems to be a really peripheral
complaint to me. As the conversation progressed he suggested that all
conservatives were basically homophobes because of being against gay
marriage. This is the type of stereotype that Rush Limbaugh always
talks about and here it was on full display. I tried to explain that
one could be against gay marriage and not be a homophobe, but I don't
know if I got through.