"I steeled myself"

It occurs to me that in all my visits to the mens room, i have never heard anybody weeping in a stall. Heard pretty much everything else, though, including sounds that made me back out quickly.

Anything that has to do with "feelings" liberals will portray them as "deep" and/or "meaningful." To hell with facts and to hell with history.

This guy wept? And Then "Connected"?
What an asshole !!

Well, good for Doug Plummer. He may lose some friends, though. Libs don't like having their comfortable, often sneering, views of the WOT turned upside down, especially by someone who used to think like them.

Only a member of the :iberal media could spin a trip to the men's room as a cathartic eperience....pehaps there was more than a ideological "purging" occuring...possibly years of intellectual constipation?

It would take a lot more than that to have me believe that malarkey. A liberal is a liberal. This sounds like a major con job. If I'm wrong, I'll apologize but I like my odds. Perhaps the Red Tories will buy into it but for the rest of us?

Dean, Doug, Rattfuc, and Redux, why are you attacking and/or belittling a guy who is making an emotional argument that coincides with and supports the rational argument I presume you are attempting to make? Have I missed the point? Are you not here to propose for debate conjectures that support your position, in this case, say, support for our Canadian Forces and our allies, which in general I would agree with? That is to say, are you just here to bitch? Have you no empathy at all? Are you Vulcan?

I will reserve judgement until his next outing. As for support for our Forces,until you have been there and done that,then STFU. Our country and government support criminals more than they do our forces. And yes,I mean the selected few we vote in to govern this country. The average Jane/Joe Blow,they DO support our Forces,and thank God for that.

Give this chap breathing room. IMO, he has awakened to reality. The youth showed him the Way.
The snips below are found in one of his previous posts on his blog.
...-

Plummer writes: "... Thomas Friedman’s column, "The Quiet Americans," on the optimism in the current crop of college graduates. I can personally attest to the accuracy of his observations. This is a great generation coming through college just now."

Good news from the college front

[...]
"...It was not only the pride with which they wore those uniforms that was palpable, but also the respect they were accorded by their classmates. I [Friedman] spoke to one young man who was going from graduation at Rensselaer right out to sea with the United States Navy. As bad as Iraq is, they just keep signing up." ...-
http://dougplummer.blogs.com/dispatches/

I think you may have misread me there a bit on my last comment, Justthinkin (assuming you were referring to me), which is no doubt my fault for not explaining myself better, but I do think it is reasonable for me to support our Canadian Forces without, as you put it, having been there. And I do. So I guess that makes me an average J.Blow (but I already knew that).

Of course, when you said STFU, you might have just meant Satisfaction Takes Flannel Underwear, so if I'm completely off base, then please excuse me.

Vit...I may have been off base. I know you do support the Forces. I am just PO'd with the government,and people in general who do not support them,while at the same time sleeping sound in their beds at night. It was to them that I said STFU. But I do like the flannel part..lol

Good to see that you are reporting the news and not creating it. A good story, true or not.

Pat

Are you Vulcan?

Fascinating.

YOU! WHAT PLANET IS THIS?

Wow,lib or not I felt that.If this feeling is actually catching on in our universities the future is looking brighter.We can all use a dose of that.

"If this feeling is actually catching on in our universities the future is looking brighter."

Are you American, madasl? If so, perhaps the future is looking brighter because of the attitude of these college kids.

But, here in Canada, I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find such an enthusiastic group of volunteers supporting our troops in Af'stan. Somebody, anybody proove me wrong.

Forty years after Trudeau: Trudopey-an Torpor.

BATB,

Do you really think that any CDN MSM would send out anyone to do a story about any enthusiastic group of volunteers supporting our troops in Af'stan?

How about the Cadets? There are probably lots more ... they just aren't the ones out destroying others property while doing it.

Well, since this link the traffic to my blog has gone up fourfold. Whether this is a good thing or not I'm not so sure, based on the tenor of the comments on this blog.

We are in an era of profound polarization in our culture, which makes discourse and converation across these supposed barricades a suspect endeavor. It is at the core of my moral values to assume integrity and worth in whomever I encounter. Especially with those with whom I may disagree politically, I try and assume that these stances have come honestly and from a different life experience than my own. It is the intolerance on both “fronts” of the current political dynamic that is distressing to me, when we see the Other as inherently different from ourselves and worthy only of contempt. Down this path of divisiveness lies only conflict and violence. No single political philosophy has a monopoly on truth, and no single way of thinking about the problems of the world is going to get us out of our various and sundry messes. We need each other, and we need to see each other as humans, not labels.

An interesting story indeed...

Doug Plummer writes, "We are in an era of profound polarization in our culture, which makes discourse and conversation across these supposed barricades a suspect endeavor...We need each other, and we need to see each other as humans, not labels."

Well said, Doug. Sadly, you won't much measured dialogue here. To illustrate, in literally every SDA post over the last two days, you'll find at least one disdainful and/or derogatory jab against "Liberals" or "liberals" or "lefties" -- even the seemingly innocuous post about the Grand Prismatic hot spring in Yellowstone. A blog readership that somehow feels compelled to connect beautiful images of a geothermal curiosity with "Leftards" and "Leftopia" doesn't exactly inspire hope that tolerant discourse is forthcoming on even the slightly more contentious issues of our day.

(Doug Plummer writes, "We are in an era of profound polarization in our culture,)
That is so true...
The war between left and right, between state control and the free market, between collective rights and the rights of the individual,
is far from over.

(A) says...A blog readership that somehow feels compelled to connect beautiful images of a geothermal curiosity with "Leftards" and "Leftopia" doesn't exactly inspire hope that tolerant discourse is forthcoming on even the slightly more contentious issues of our day.

A...let me guess...you think sites like,
yourBlagg or yourRabble, offer a more tolerant discourse.
Maybe you should hang-out there instead of here.

(Doug Plummer writes, "We are in an era of profound polarization in our culture,)
That is so true...
The war between left and right, between state control and the free market, between collective rights and the rights of the individual,
is far from over.

(A) says...A blog readership that somehow feels compelled to connect beautiful images of a geothermal curiosity with "Leftards" and "Leftopia" doesn't exactly inspire hope that tolerant discourse is forthcoming on even the slightly more contentious issues of our day.

A...let me guess...you think sites like,
yourBlagg or yourRabble, offer a more tolerant discourse.
Maybe you should hang-out there instead of here.

Vitruvious sez: "Redux, why are you attacking and/or belittling a guy who is making an emotional argument that coincides with and supports the rational argument I presume you are attempting to make"

I was attempting to make no argument other than articulating the fact that being a life-long dogmatic Liberal means forsaking reason, ethical imperatives, stoic self control and true civil empathy for civil manipulation, emotional theater and superficial empathy...that's all.

If our Life-long liberal pal there takes the most rational and important step in throwing off the mind-imprisioning shackels of hegelian partisan Liberal dogmatics,(which is to understand running lock step behind any 1 dimensional political orthodoxy is the path to a closed mind), then I will welcome him to the throng of civilly well adjusted, emotionally secure, reasoning individuals which make up the world outside the international cult of lib-left psychotic busybodies.

Until that happens I see the guy as just another gushy leftoid pulling another emotional theaticial production to celebrate his superior sincerity and depth ( where probably there is none)...Dogmatic Liberalism is a life-long con job...are we being conned? The guy is selling stuff, maybe he wants to crack the red state sales barrier..who knows....all I know from personal objective experince is that it is unwise to take a liberal at their word or their actions at face value.

I mean look at the man's age...he should have grown up and out of sophomoric liberal naive emotionalism 2 dacades ago. That indicates a sheltered existance and an established pattern of reflexive acceptance of stupid ideas.... a post-catharsis recovering Liberal will have a hard time in that environment.

The same reasoning would state that David Emmerson had a genuine catharsis, or Tim Peterson or Belinda Stronach or Garth Turner.

William -- "Let me guess...you think sites like,
yourBlagg or yourRabble, offer a more tolerant discourse. Maybe you should hang-out there instead of her."

Actually, no, I think they're just as bad. Which in my book makes you no less tolerant than your Rabble counterparts. Congratulations.

You are wandering off topic, A, and our gentle and generous hostess dislikes that type of behaviour. If you persist in abusing her generousity you should prepare to be reprimanded. Just sayin, is all.

While to photog is a member of the MSM and therefore automatically suspect as a liberal weenie, his comment near the beginnning of the exerpt, "The internal rejoinder I hear in my head when I see a "Support Our Troops" sign is a hissing, "And prove that you’re not an unpatriotic Democrat surrender monkey." makes me think that perhaps he was not a full-fledged citizen of the so-called and misnamed 'reality based community'.

Members of the MSM who engage in rational thought and reasonable behaviour should be praised and encouraged, in order to increase the likelyhood of the behaviour recurring. Those who don't should be held in contempt and ridiculed mercilessly, because it's fun:)

Come on, we are four years in Iraq now, and Doug has his epiphany that our troops are human, young and "doing a really hard job" - which had to be one of the most superficial throw away statements ever. Doug, "steeled" himself before the ordeal, got weepy, and found a new narrative for his emotions.

Sorry, Doug, you aren't a paragon of open minded virtue by your own words. It doesn't jive with your self-admitted bias.

You come across as another garden variety liberal self-designated virtucrat whose perceptions and truths are feelings driven. Tomorrow is another day with new feelings, new truths, which is the core of the problem with liberals.

Doug Plummer said...

"We are in an era of profound polarization in our culture, which makes discourse and conversation across these supposed barricades a suspect endeavor. It is at the core of my moral values to assume integrity and worth in whomever I encounter. Especially with those with whom I may disagree politically, I try and assume that these stances have come honestly and from a different life experience than my own. It is the intolerance on both “fronts” of the current political dynamic that is distressing to me, when we see the Other as inherently different from ourselves and worthy only of contempt. Down this path of divisiveness lies only conflict and violence. No single political philosophy has a monopoly on truth, and no single way of thinking about the problems of the world is going to get us out of our various and sundry messes. We need each other, and we need to see each other as humans, not labels."

I agree.

WLMackenzie Redux said: "I was attempting to make no argument other than articulating the fact that being a life-long dogmatic Liberal means forsaking reason, ethical imperatives, stoic self control and true civil empathy for civil manipulation, emotional theater and superficial empathy...that's all.

What's really ironic about that statement is that the Old Grits tended to embrace reason, ethical imperatives, self-government through self-control, and a sense of civic obligation. More evidence that we're living in an upside-down world.

"We are in an era of profound polarization in our culture, which makes discourse and conversation...........

Can't we all just get along?

/snicker