More and more you can find out whether someone is a liberal or a conservative (in the American sense of the words) by getting the answer to a simple question:

Do you think the average person is too stupid to do the right thing?

If you answer yes, you're probably a liberal. If you answer no, you're probably a conservative. 

Obviously it's not a 100% truism but in most discussions with people in "real life" (or on-line) the inevitable root distinction between the two philosophies is whether the government is there to rule us or whether the government is there to serve us. Few liberals would agree that the government is there to rule us, because they don't think it is there to rule them just all the stupid yokels who make up the majority of the country.

Here's a conversation I had recently:

Friend: We need to make sure all Americans are ensured a certain basic standard of living.

Me: I support your right to your opinion, but why does the federal government have to be the means to make your belief a reality? Why not work through charities and volunteerism so that those who believe as you do can work towards your goal?

Friend: Because people aren't smart enough to do what's right.

From Hotair:

Elitism is a sense that the hoi polloi are simply incapable of governing themselves, let alone a nation, and that a small group of “experts” have to take control of everything they do.  That goes far beyond mere matters of state.  Elitists see people getting more obese and believe that government has to intervene to remove food choices from individuals, as one rather timely example, as in New York City.  They believe that removing personal choices will keep people from making bad decisions, because they — in all their wisdom — will make the right choices for them.

This describes perfectly the policy direction of the Democratic Party, and perhaps even a part of the Republican Party as well.  That’s why the charge of elitism sticks so well to Democratic candidates in national elections.  Their humble origins are immaterial to the concept of elitism.  Candidates who want to grow the federal government in order to increase its nanny-state power are by definition elitists, because they believe individuals cannot make choices for themselves.

For Obama, the trappings of his ego make this even more obvious than perhaps it should be.  He can’t understand why a man who makes his own presidential seals before being elected, gins up a rally of cheering Germans in an attempt to impress the yokels back home, and creates a Greek temple to his wisdom can be seen as elitist if he had to struggle in his early life.  I don’t think anyone doubts the struggles of his childhood, but part of the problem is that his struggles really aren’t all that exceptional.  He came from a broken home; probably half of all adults his age do now, or close to it.  He traveled the world, grew up in Hawaii, and got scholarships to Columbia and Harvard Law School.  That’s not that tough of a start in life.

Forest de Rothschild notes that McCain has at least one event in his life when he rejected his own privilege in favor of his nation.  He could have accepted the North Vietnamese offer of early release, based on his status as an admiral’s son.   At the risk of his life and certainly at the risk of more torture, he refused.  She believes that’s why McCain can make the elitist argument against Obama, and perhaps that’s true in terms of credibility.  However, the real reason it sticks is because Obama and his allies want to govern us as though we were idiots, and McCain and Palin appear more likely to treat us as adults.

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

Read the whole thing:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/09/rasmussen-only-29-of-obama-supporters-think-supreme-court-should-decide-cases-based-on-constitution/

I think this pretty much puts to rest the argument as to who believes in freedom and who prefers we be ruled by a dictatorship.

I prefer that our laws be voted in by elected representatives that conform to a written standard that has been agreed to.

Apparently most Obama supporters prefer that wise judges rule us.

Oye.

Good lord.

Something to keep in mind next time someone argues that we need to care what other countries think.

One of the things the Gas Powered Games team is working on is the end-game screen. At the end of a match (as well as in-game in real-time to a lesser degree) players are going to want to see statistics on how each player did.

One of the things we've been playing around with is having achievement points be based on how many categories you led in.  In this way, the statistics aren't just interesting, they become part of the game play itself since achievement points are what help you become victorious in the overarching scheme of things as well as allowing you to purchase ever superior persistent items.

We're hoping to release beta 1-A in a week or two that will include things like more strategic elements to the maps, potentially a new Demigod to play with, and a number of new gameplay changes.  I think people will be surprised at how quickly these betas will improve the game play and "fun" factor of the game. Stay tuned.

Here's an obviously partisan article that was food for thought:

http://www.examiner.com/x-722-Conservative-Politics-Examiner~y2008m9d4-What-if-Obama-was-just-some-guy-at-your-office

It essentially asks people to look at their own lives and ask themselves whether they would want Obama to be the CEO of the company they currently work at.

Obama has been on the job 143 days so far and in those 143 days, he has made it pretty clear he just wants the top spot. He likes to refer to himself a lot when he talks and is quite quick to condescend to people who don't share his opinions on virtually any subject.

But seriously, as far back as you go in Obama's record, he seems to always have focused on how to get up the next rung in the ladder rather than trying to do whatever he was doing well.  He's written 2 books about himself but never passed or written a major piece of legislation.

As the comments in the article listed above remind me, there's plenty of empty suit CEOs and managers out there. Does Obama strike you more as one of them or as a true leader with a history of executing on his ideas?

Consider this, Obama is 47 years old. Forget comparing him to other politicians or whatever, compare him to just people you know.  What precisely has Obama accomplished in his 47 years? What achievements can you point to (other than 2 autobiographies)?

This entire post could've been done just with links to the MSNBC rumor machine. But I'm kind of choked up after last night's bittersweet news - think of all the great times that now we'll never have. Plus, focusing exclusively on one source would underplay the breadth and depth of these people's pathetic melodramatics:

1. Denial - This was probably the most surreal stage, with Obama campaign eventually elevating unblinking denial into a campaign smear. The Atlantic ran an article entitled "the Eagleton Scenario" and the NYT published an op-ed gently and kingly suggesting that Palin "should withdraw" to avoid humiliation. InTrade shares on Palin being replaced spiked to almost 15. When that didn't work, the left seamlessly transitioned to a different wishful denial.

Read the whole thing..

http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11274839.html

My 11 year old is learning animation...

I don't like McCain. I make no bones about it. I am not inclined to vote for him and I still don't plan to.

But this article at RightWingNews really does speak for me pretty well.

However, the real problem with Obama isn't just that he's incompetent, it's that he's an incompetent who seems to think he's a genius. Never has a man so unaccomplished been so overly proud of his non-achievements.

Compare him to say, Jimmy Carter, who was far too naive to be President and did such a poor job that he could fairly be considered the least capable man to hold that job in the last century. Carter, for all his naivete, had served in the military, run a business, and been Governor of a state. On the other hand, Obama shares Carter's liberalism and naivete, but doesn't have his experience, and is arrogant enough to believe it doesn't matter.

For that matter, compare Barack Obama to a liberal who is, let's say, a middle manager at Circuit City or IBM. Who would you rather have as President -- Obama or that random manager? I'd take the random manager because at least that person would probably be humble enough to realize how much he doesn't know about America's most important job -- and that is what we're talking about, folks.

Exactly.  Obama isn't merely unqualified for President, he's incredibly unqualified. He's 40 some years old and what exactly has he done? What has he done in his life other than seek ever higher office? He's simply a guy who is good at reading speeches off a tele-prompter.

That being said, it may have been Barack's inability to do the job that had me rethinking my non-vote for McCain, but it has been the left's treatment of Sarah Palin that put me over the top.

Granted, "Politics ain't beanbag" and everybody with half a brain knows the mainstream media is in the tank for Obama, so it's no surprise that Sarah Palin hasn't been treated fairly by the press.

However, the rumors, lies, and attacks on Sarah Palin's family, many of which have been spread by the mainstream media, have been absolutely despicable.

Precisely.  This is a lot like 2004 where I wasn't terribly enthused for Bush. Bush is about as unlike me as you can get. I'd probably get along better with Kerry than Bush (not that I'd want to hang out with either one). But the left's behavior was so disgusting leading up to the election that I simply didn't want "those people" to have any more power than they have.

Read the whole thing:

http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/09/why_i_am_now_supporting_john_m.php

I've written about this many times in the past but one of the more off putting features of American liberals is their smugness.  If you disagree with them it is only because you are either ignorant or evil. This tends to result in them losing elections. Often.

I just read a very interesting blog about this that I thought I'd share here:

This conceit of liberals -- which sometimes I think is all that sustains them, and all that keeps them liberals in the first place -- that liberals have some sort of a monopoly on brains, wit, taste, and, yes, even basic humanity will be their undoing. It always is. They keep making the same mistakes over and over and over and over again, and we're the dumb ones.

They, the ones who have made the same ten mistakes every single election since 1968, are the smart ones. Right?

Let's check the list: Demean an opponent who you really ought to suspect might be rather intelligent as an ignorant boob, bordering on a genuine diagnosable moron, to such a degree that when the candidate speaks and reveals himself as reasonably intelligent, he actually seems to be nearly a genius.

Demean those who don't live in "cosmopolitan" cities as bumpkins who have nothing to contribute to politics or culture -- not their own ideas, their own aspirations, their own fears, their own traditions -- except for the votes they're expected to cast for the Democratic elites who scorn them.

And all the rest of it.

Now, after the fact, the left is convulsing and gnashing their teeth. How could we have allowed ourselves to so demean Sarah Palin as to turn her home-run speech into a genuine star-making speech by lowering expectations so much through our derision!?!

How could you have done that, you ask. That's not the right question. The right question is Is it even possible for you to avoid doing that?, because you do every. Single. God. Damn. Election. Cycle.

It works in my favor, and yet I'm still horrified to see you doing it every time.

Have you ever done anything else? Are you capable of doing anything differently? Even as conservatives snicker at you and tell you to your smug fat faces that you're making a gross strategic error, you continue doing so just the same!

We don't even bother to hide our snickering at you any longer. We don't bother to conceal this basic error from you -- we simply declare it. We don't have to hide this, we don't have to try to avoid tipping you off that you're making this mistake for the thirtieth time, because we know you won't listen anyway!

That's the truly delightful thing about this. We don't have to scheme with each other and say, "Quiet down, don't give the game away," when a fellow conservative points the error out. It doesn't matter! We can scream this from the rooftops for all the good it does you.

It's like we're fighting a war and we don't even have to bother coding our messages to the troops because we know there's no chance at all you'll even bother to pause to read our communications. "Don't bother us with your silly orders and tactics and strategies," you tell us, "We can figure out how to beat you silly people well enough on our own without any of your stupid-brained help."

You can? You sure about that? Well, whatever, buddy. If you think so. Seems to me you guys are 3-4 since 1994 -- a losing record -- but if you guys want to keep following the same game plan, be my guest.

Ultimately the liberals' sin is their smugness. Not even so much because most people recoil from the assumption of superiority, both intellectual and moral, by those who have accomplished nothing exceptional in life except for reliably voting and "thinking" liberal, as if casting a vote the "correct" way slaps 30 points on to your IQs and counts for 100 hours of community service and child mentoring.

No, the main problem with that smugness, that belief that you're sooo very fucking clever, is that you're actually not particularly clever at all, and the great gap between your personal estimation of your intelligence and the actual real-world measure of it is wide enough to stumble into and take a painful fall. Perhaps if you weren't so very convinced of your own innate entitlement to rule, you'd spend less time seething at a public unwilling to concede that rule to you, and less time trying to trick the public into voting for you by concealing your true beliefs, and more time trying to figure out what the public actually wants in its government, and how to provide with them with that.

You know the big difference between conservatives and liberals in terms of political acumen? You guys never see this stuff coming, because you're so convinced of your innate right to control other people's lives. You convince ourselves you're always the smartest guys in the room, and anyone who disagrees with you must either be so stupid or so luminescently evil they could never prevail in a campaign.

The Ronald Reagans and Sarah Palins surprise you, because you just can't even conceive of them. Your entire sense of self-worth depends on the proposition Liberal = Smart, Good, Conservatives = Stupid, Bad, so you can't imagine clever, good people opposing you.

You go into every election thinking the score is already 24-0 in your favor -- after all, you have nothing but vicious, racist, gay-bashing hobo-killing morons in your way. How can you, the Moral and Intellectual Elect of the Earth, possibly fail?

And yet you do. More frequently than you win.

Eh. I don't know why I'm bothering to tell you this. As you've demonstrated in every past election, you're not going to listen anyhow.

Ya fuckin' dunces.

Oh, and... Good job so demeaning her you half-convinced the public she was a drooling imbecile and yee-haw hollerin' bumpkin who'd embarrass herself on stage.

Sure, sure. Smart move.

A former beauty queen -- who could have imagined she might be comfortable in front of a large, critical crowd, and might in fact even thrive in the spotlight?

A former television sportscaster -- who would have predicted she'd have some poise and savvy playing to a camera?

Amen. I have run into this in discussions with family and friends when politics come up. I try to avoid talking politics because, like many of you reading this, I keep up with it very closely, I'm pretty knowledgeable on the topic.

Most people, left or right, aren't that up on the issues. Yet, despite their lack of relative knowledge on the issues, they will presume to be more enlightened or educated simply because they hold left wing views.

Republicans believe that individuals are responsible for helping their fellow man.

Democrats believe that it's "someone else's" job to help others and vote to empower the government to make someone else do it.