But — hey, bro — it’s hate in the name of “good,” so it’s all cool and shit!

My dream job would be a salaried position wherein my job duties consisted of repeatedly bludgeoning the face of every blogger and commenter who has ever frequented the SADLY NO site.

I’m curious if it’s possible to airdrop all SADLY NO contributors in Yemen or Mecca or some similar shitscape with “Fuck Allah” sandwich boards wrapped around each of their bodies? Might be worth pursuing.

This kind of commentary drives me absolutely berserk and is exactly why I prefer to read about political events than listen to jackasses discuss them on cable TV.

“Left” and “right” typically refer to two different sets of things that people want a government to do (“left” wants government to “take care” of everybody, “right” wants government to “punish” moral offenders). Both want big government, they just want it to do different things.

The big problem is that, politics being what it is, both sides get what they want most of the time in “compromises”, and we end up with the worst of both worlds.

They’re not devoid of meaning. They just don’t mean something about ideas. They mean something more about tribal allegiances.

Which is fine. Sometimes it’s useful to know what someone’s (broad) tribal allegiances are, but it’s also important to know that tribal allegiances and affiliations can shift in dramatic ways even in short periods of time. It’s also important to understand that there really are ideas, and members of any given tribal confederacy probably do have actual ideas and beliefs and values as individuals, and aren’t just automatons who toe the party line just-because. Rather, they themselves mistake their ideas and the ideas of like-minded tribe members as some sort of ideological foundation for the broader tribal coalition. They go on to happily mistake this coalition as a philosophical tradition going back to Time Immemorial (1950) rather than a pragmatic tribal confederacy duking it out at the ballot box and in cultural norms over goodies and political power with a rival confederacy.

They are two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

Heads – they win; tails – we lose.

Just saying.

If Cato is extreme right wing, where does that put Obama and the Democratic leadership?

Is this a trick question? They are Statists, authoritarians, bad people? Take your pick they all work for me.

BTW, same goes for Republicans too.

They are two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

Exactly! There is ONE coin. What moron is holding up a sign “DOWN WITH TAILS!” or “HEADS SUCKS!”

The game is to appease the crowd by flipping the coin every couple of years, but IT IS STILL THE SAME COIN!

Look at the cheering for Brown in MA. Yay! We flipped the coin! WTF!

In response to SES,
You know, I have been on both sides of the political spectrum. I’ll admit now that I was a “bleeding heart” liberal for a long time, and still occasionally fall back on my liberal roots. (After moving to Boulder, CO I quickly realized I was more conservative than I thought). It’s almost eerie to read the remarks on “Sadly, No!” as they remind me of a time when I was admittedly too lazy to do research on current events, and instead went with what my fellow liberal friends insisted was the truth. Then, when I was ousted from that podium by cold, hard facts, I became furious, almost prideful, and would just walk away from the conversation without even allowing for a civilized debate. I saw some of this on the comment board at “Sadly, No!”
I think the reason for such hatred on sites like “Sadly, No!” is two-fold. First, it’s much easier to smear someone’s livelihood from the safety of your computer desk where you never have to speak to that person face-to-face. Second, and more importantly, I think that we oftentimes get so caught up in our own opinions that it’s impossible to listen to the opposite, and possibly true, voice. It becomes a pride issue for some, whose opinion seems so solid to them, that when it is cut down with one single statement or fact that proves the contrary, they don’t know what to do except grow hateful of the truth. And, of course, this happens on both sides of the spectrum, as we’ve seen with the talking heads of FOX News and CNN. Who knows what the solution to this immense problem is? We can’t force people to be civil, and unfortunately people are more content to be up in arms than at peace. That’s my two cents.

Keep writing the truth, Radley!

Though for some reason when people talk about attacking CATO I always think of the person doing the attacking as Peter Sellers…

And yet they refer to CATO as advocating unfair trade policies because they dont favor US interests over the poor and down trodded countries of the third world.

Do you think these people are aware of their hypocrisy and don’t care, or are they really that full of shit?