Personal Democracy Forum: He “must” be a republican
June 26, 2008 by libertyisforme
From my friend Nicole Sauce:
So I was sitting in a session at the PDF Conference with mostly liberals and progressives that was supposed to focus on local blogging.
The classical liberal crowd, commonly called libertarians with a small l, was in the minority. One asked a question and mentioned that he felt the problem cited in the presentation where the locals had to fight to force the city council to not change zoning in favor of a builder was less a problem of corrupt builders and politicians on city council and more a problem of the city council having too much power to choose winners and losers.
….
After he made the comment, a spectator spouted “He must be a Republican.”
It illustrated to me the problem with trying to have a reasonable conversation on the merits of an issue with folks who are more worried about their labels than the issues: They resort to name calling when they can’t find a reasoned retort.
I couldn’t agree more; having a conversation with an extreme statist is as painful as a urinary tract infection.
At least UTIs can be fixed with a healthy dose of cranberry juice.
I completely agree. I’m equally disturbed by those who use their political labels as a means not just to identify themselves but as a means of determining their views on issues they are unable and/or unwilling to think about independently.
We need to get video of that.