Liberal hatred

[The Duke]

Hanson is basically right about why most liberals have such a disdain for George Bush.  He is a class traitor in their eyes and he rejected the eastern Ivy elite, the top of the liberal establishment, for the south and Christianity, the bottom of the liberal's social heirarchy.

I don't necessarily agree with the quote from the unnamed columnist.  My experience has been that one side condemns the other on account of both evil and stupidity.

And defarge, do you really believe only Republicans want to force their social order on others?  That is a bit silly.  Your side does the exact same thing, so don't play the holier than thou card.

[The Duke]

For the last time: Bush LOWERED EVERYONE'S taxes. No one's paying more unless they've entered a new pay bracket.

Stop spewing untruthful propaganda....Bush didn't lower taxes at all on those who pay payroll taxes but not income tax.  This is about one-quarter of American families, and it is he group that could actually use a tax cut the most.

Wrong.  They got a $300 tax rebate in 2001.

[The Duke]

Do conservatives really thing that people like Bill Clinton and Joh Kerry are stupid?  How can they sustain this argument when most of the intellectual elite in this country are liberal?

All educated beyond their intelligence.

[The Duke]

For the last time: Bush LOWERED EVERYONE'S taxes. No one's paying more unless they've entered a new pay bracket.

State and local ones had to make up for it.  There was also a lack of services and a HUGE deficit.  Can you just admit Clinton was better here?

States that managed their budgets properly in the 1990s (New Mexico) were cutting taxes in the last few years, not raising them.  Don't blame Bush for stupid Governors in states like, oh I don't know, California!!!, where there were large deficits.  The Feds send so much money in aid to states, it isn't even funny.

[The Duke]

defarge,

The elite care less about taxes than they do about other things.  They value being the holders of societal achievement more than their money.

[The Duke]

BRTD,

To compare you to the average American liberal is a joke.  You are a smart guy, but you're in the extreme fringe.  Your political opponents are not just traditionalists and economic libertarians, but als o anyone who opposes an overthrow of the entire social and economic order in the West.  You clearly side with Democrats out of convenience, not affinity.  You are not in the elite, and in fact cannot be cateegorized within any major political sect in the US.

The elite do not have to be wealthy, either.  Most artists are not wealthy, but they represent a CULTURAL elite.  University professors are not poor, but also are not usually wealthy.  Journalists are cultural elites, but aren't usually wealthy.  Activists for groups like PETA or NARAL are not necessarily wealthy, but are in the cultural elite.

Do not confuse wealth with elite.  While Bush may be from a wealthy family, that is not what made them elites.  Lottery winners can be wealthy, so can dot com wiz kids.  What seperates families like the Bushes is their social values (the elder Bush, for example, was pro-choice when most of his party was not).  They believe that what makes you worhtwhile is what college you went to, what your last name is, what your politics are, and who you associate with.  Important sentence coming Elites, therefore, are not categorized as such for what they have, but what they value.

Do not mistake my comments to mean that Bush is a traitor to an economic class, that is a simplification of our world.  He is a traitor to a cultural elite, not necessarily an economic one.  Granted, most economic elites are in the cultural elite, but not all are necessarily.  By embracing Texas and Christianity and rejecting cocktail parties and the Ivy League schools he attended, George W. Bush has betrayed the cultural elite into which he was born and welcomed for a "lesser" America he found more appealing.  The shunning of the institutions and values of the left, he has enraged them far more than any economic betrayal ever could (In the Civil War II Thread we came to this conclusion: That a future Civil War could only be fought over social issues, because economic ones don't sufficviently inflame passions).

[The Duke]

I suppose despite your frst statement you could still consider me a "cultural elite". I go to a very liberal public university. I have a large vinyl collection of obscurish "sophisticated" indie bands. I have modern art paintings hanging on my apartment's walls. So disregarding my politics and replacing them with some more traditional liberal ones, I would basically be what you are supposedly talking about. However my background is still there. So have I become some sort of traitor then to the "lower cultural classes"?

You are not a member of the cultural elite since you are not established yet.  If you were a professor, you would be, but being a college student does not make you an elite.  You do, however, demonstrate that the things liberals value are the same things valued by the cultural elite and you are well on your way there.

You are basically defining the "cultural elite" as Ivy League Degree, Starbucks drinking types. However, such types are bound to be found in the suburbs, not the inner cities. Yet as my threads on the topic have proven, liberals and radicals alike both absolutely hate suburbs. During such threads, we were accused of being "bigoted" toward suburbia, and yet suburbia represents exactly what you are talking about.

Wrong.  The Ivy Leaguers who fit the cultural elite are usually able to earn wealth, and do not live in the suburbs.  They live in places like The Hamptons, Beverly Hills, Fisher Island, and Central Park West.  The elite don't live in the suburbs, although many in the suburbs have embraced the value system of the elites.

The cultural elite can also be, say, an avant garde artist.  He lives in a loft in West Hollywood, not the suburbs.  It could be the owner of an indie record store who lives in a studio apartment in Manhattan.  They don't live in the suburbs either.

They believe that what makes you worhtwhile is what college you went to, what your last name is, what your politics are, and who you associate with.

I found this an interesting comment. What about the protestors at the ANSWER rallies, and the ones rallying against the WTO? Does this fit them? The last two, yes, but what about the first two? Do anti-globalization radicals judge people based on their last names and what colleges they went to?

If you weren't born with the right name or didn't go to the right college, you can still value the same things as the cultural elite.  Going to protest rallies is not something the elite themselves often do, actually, but they do claim to admire social radicals.  Thus, by being a social radical, you can earn your bona fides as a worshipper of the same elite institutions and ideas as are taught at Yale.  The things these people consider symbols of status are the same as those that the elite consider symbols of status, even if the protestors have been unable to attain those things.  They are not really the elite in most cases, but they share the same view of what the social heirarchy is.

It is Bush's rejection of this heritage that drives liberals nuts.  The things they value he was given on a silver platter.  He got into Yale and Harvard on his name, he was born in Connecticut to a patrician family, and he chose something else.  He went and rejected them all, opting instead to be an unrepentant Christian Texan instead of a liberal intellectual.  The fact that he saw more redeeming qualities from this lifestyle that liberals seem to look down on (Southern, religious) after having been handed the life of an elite ona  silver platter is what drives the left nuts.  He rejected their instiutions and social values.

[The Duke]

You see, the problem is that the liberals who really HATE Bush are also the loudest and most obnoxious, so they get the most media attention. The ones who just dislike our current president get less attention. The obnoxious ones really are out of control right now, and it's the moderates do next to nothing to seperate themselves from them.

I agree.  The numbers who really hate Bush are probably relatively small, but they have taken over the public face of the opposition.

The Democratic Party tried to suppress these people during the convention, but the scary fact is that they are an integral part of the Democratic party base.

Hate doesn't win elections in this country.  All the hatred that some conservatives had toward Clinton never drove him from office.  Many hated FDR, and that never drove him from office.

Clinton and FDR also had a bit more nationwide support than Bush does.

FDR did, but did Clinton?

Clinton's approval rating at this stage of his re-election campaign was only two points higher than Bush's, and he only recieved 43% of the popular vote in 1992.  The level of support Clinton enjoyed is not as high as you make it seem.

[The Duke]

What's also funny is that Ford, a non-Christian was accusing liberals including me a Christian of hating Bush because of Christianity.

That's like how my Jewish friend has been called anti-Semetic for disliking Ariel Sharon!

You can be a non-Christian and still not hate Christians, and if you can back up your accusations you can and should point out bigotry.

That said, I didn't say liberals hated Christianity, I said that for the cultural elite, which is comprised almost exclusively of liberals and which sets the tone for liberal politics, Christianity represents something that is low on the social totem pole.

I haven't accused anyone of hating Christian, not even the cultural elite.  I did say, though, that the cultural elite do not hold Christianity in high regard.