but i'm not doing that am i? i'm not holding you up for ridicule because people here don't know you're perfectly willing to redbait. you have made your hostility to left ideas apparent from the get go -- and, in fact, i defended your butt on list and off list. redbaiting is part of the lexicon of the ordinary average american -- to denouce something (sans any real argument) simply by associating it with the "left" with socialism or with communism. when someone registers antipathy to leftwing ideas, as you did from the start, then they can pretty much bet that you use the lexicon with the facility that most americans do. so, i doubt anyone here had to pop a nitro to keep from having a heart attack. in fact, i doubt anyone but reese and maybe carrol are reading!
i called you on being disingenuous -- by pretending to be a relativist about it all -- where the left is just as culpable as the right, yadda. you objected to my characterization of you as redbaiting elsewhere. since you objected, i pointed out exactly how you have used a common rhetorical tactic --redbaiting as substitute for argument. so, i showed you what it is. it may well be that you don't understand. i don't know.
and by the way, i did flame you at dc-stuff when i responded to that thread. you never replied-- i assumed you were busy. but that's NOT why i bring it up here.
again, there's no need to feel as if i've somehow ratted you out. you revealed your sympathies to libertarian and conservative ideas and antipathy to lefty/liberal/dem ideas the first day you joined the list. identifying as a conservative and libertarian pretty much makes you hostile to left analyses of social problems. --here i'm not really talking about politics, but about how we go about analyzing social problems.
my bringing you up in response to Reese, finally, was trying to get him to see that the questions aren't just benign questions. they are undergirded by assumptions about the left that both of you have exhibited here. they are, typically, ignorant assumptions. they are more so, since you've both been subscribed to this list for quite sometime. you've chilled out on them, Reese hasn't. i was trying to get him to see that if he can see you making pisspoor assumptions in your posts in the past, then he should see himself doing the same. it was a form of illustration, using shorthand. it wasn't meant to flame you since i read you as proud of your political positions, not ashamed. so, when i've called you conservative, you've basically said, "yes, ma'am, that i am".
i have no problem with people responding to you. maybe you could listen for a change.
kelley