Ironically, you proved his point that he's wasting his breath, when you failed to read his entire post, where he clearly says that he is against business taxes for this very reason:

Instead what usually happens is that they pick a sentance or paragraph out of context that on the surface addresses a point that they wish to argue against thereby ignoring great chunks of the point that I *am* trying to make. They then proceed to argue against a point I really wasn't making by filling in the gaps in my *assumed* position with liberal stereotypes.

As far as how long I waited to get a reasoned response, you're right, I was a bit quick on the trigger. But then I'm familiar with a lot of the folks here and I guess I'm guilty of making some of the same assumptions that I'm complaining about.

My "home site" is the GalCiv2 site which gets some cross-posting from "here" (the JU site) via the Off-topic and a few other forums that are shared across many of Stardock's forum sites (of which there are 12 at current count). While politics is by no means related to my professional expertise nor am I a great student of current events, I do have a set of political beliefs and interests and every so often I'll visit JU to see how the other half lives.

As far as the "rabid right wingnut" comment I can't imagine that people here don't realize how far right wing this site (i.e. JU) is. Compared to JU, WorldNetDaily may as well be the Huffington Post. Anything to the left of Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh must be downright communist. That's fine in and of itself. Conservatives certainly do exist and while I don't agree with most conservative opinion I can at least accept the fact that many people can hold conservative viewpoints and still be reasonable and rational people.

The thing is that conservatism and liberalism are really belief systems. They are opinions or more correctly points of view. And while there are individual points that a liberal or a conservative may bring up that could be argued as either right or wrong you cannot argue against someones opinions.

Historically that's been my primary objection to the JU site. That a lot of folks here view their conservative *opinion* as if they are provable fact and hold my liberal *opinion* not only as simply my opinion but as somehow inately *wrong* and will argue every point to prove that not only are my opinions *wrong* they are also totally unreasonable opinions to hold.

But every so often I'll pop in to JU to see if somehow or other the slightest tolerance for contrary opinion has suddenly surfaced. Usually it doesn't take long to find out the answer is no. I will however admit that by doing so I'm guilty of making assumptions about the prevailing attitudes here that may not always be correct.

The thing is there are very few liberals here, as far as I can tell anyway, and I *assume* that's the case for the same reason that I don't hang out here very often and that is because when I do all I really get is abuse and all I get for my trouble is to have most of what I say either ignored or misconstrued. Why really should I bother?

The silence is deafening.

what silence? at least you waited more than 2 hours:

You clearly do not seem to grasp the point. Rabid right wingnut suggests that someone who is right wing EXTREMIST and INSANE. Not everyone who is even remotely right wing or left wing is insane and extremist. So the question is, what qualifies someone from the right to being an insane extremist? I was giving you the benefit of the doubt by suggesting that you are unfairly lumping the average conservative with creationists (aka, those who want creation theory taught in school instead of evolution, not necessarily people who merely believe that god created humans) and the KKK. But if merely being opposed to communism is enough to be an "insane" right wing "extremist" to you, than it is you who is insane and extreme.

as for your attack on JU.

JU is full of left wingers. Some posters are the most rabid left wing holocaust denying antisemetic anti capitalism and anti freedom nuts you can come up with.... We just happen to have a community of sensible people to tear apart their stupid ill formed arguments.

The average "liberal" forum instead simply bans and censors anyone who displays an ounce of integrity and intelligence. When you try to tear apart the argument of a leftist on a leftist forum, you are banned and your post deleted. When you try to tear apart the argument of a conservative here, you fail miserably because you have to have no grasp of logic or history to even be a liberal in the first place.

The biggest offense to me, is that liberals seems to have coined the names.. they call themselves liberal (as in liberty... which they oppose), and call their opponents "conservatives"... where conservatives are not about conservation of the status quo, but sensible fact and historically tested to work approaches to maintain freedom and success. That a few lunatics happen to agree with conservatives because their priest told them to is the focus of attention for the left, and they make it out as if anyone who opposes them does so on such a mandate. The united states is one of the rare few places in the world where there is actual liberty and success to conserve.

Whatever.

no that is not what I mean. You can apply logic correctly, or you can fall into fallacies. Although you still have no answered whether you consider all non democrats to be creationists and KKK members. Or do you accept that at least a sizable portion of us here are capable of arguing against the liberal holy grails without being nut jobs.

There ARE actual creationists in here who make strawman arguments about evolution... I don't think I should be grouped with them when I proclaim my opposition to communism; do you?

People can be right for the wrong reasons. And just because someone does something, doesn't implicate everyone else supporting that notion... EX: hitler opposed animal cruelty and was a vegetarian. Does that mean all vegetarians and people opposing animal cruelty are mass murderers? the answer is no; I would go so far as saying that those are unrelated.

I didn't feel I had much to say in response to what I thought the point of your last reply was, hence my silence .

Well if you disagree with the wrong person on this forum you can get banned as well (although I'd agree that the tolerance level here in terms of whether a poster gets banned/deleted is better than quite a few other forums.

It is also quite possible to have a grasp of logic and history and be a liberal, and it certainly doesn't strengthen your argument to make such generalised negative comments.

This precisely proves my point.

Generalizations are *always* going to be wrong but people will *always* make them because they do have predicitive value because while generalizations are always wrong in an individual sense they are fairly accurate in an aggregate sense.

In other words my applying conservative generalizations as to any one person's specific beliefs are just as wrong as someone applying liberal generalizations to my beliefs. There can and most certainly will be some correspondence but still they're as likely to be wrong as right. But I didn't do that. I didn't make assumptions about any one person's belief system. I did make assumptions about the site as an aggregate which are that anything that appears to be liberal will be vehemently opposed without exception and to me most importantly matters of personal opinion are often argued against as somehow "wrong" and I do believe these assumptions to be vaild.

When I say that I see no real evil in a state having a progressive tax then there exists no argument that anyone can make to say I'm wrong. You can disagree with my opinion but it is a valid opinion shared by many intelligent and well meaning people. But yet people here will in fact argue that I'm wrong. This to me is intolerable, and so I won't. But I'll check back on occasion, who knows perhaps prevailing attitudes will change someday.

Glad you got everyones beliefs down, that said... nobody's twisting your arm.

No, you will not.

A habitual ass decided to rant about how gaming companies are parasites and evil and the like and how brad (CEO of stardock, the company that runs this forum) contributes nothing to society... on christmas day. He got banned; that was last christmas and the only banning I have witnessed.

There are tons of people here who disagree with brad all the time and they don't get banned for it. If you haven't noticed, this article was made BY the CEO of stardock.. all the people here who vehemently disagree with him and are insulting him and capitlism are still not banned. You have to be quite an extreme jerk to be banned around here.

This is actually worse... because the alternative is that you consider anyone who opposes communism and despotism to be a "rabid wingnut". I was actually giving you the benefit of the doubt. Way to go lowering my opinion of you even further.

Blacklisting people for silly reasons is silly on to itself. In the years I have been on JU I have never blacklisted anyone just for having a difference of opinion with me, even when they got flat out insulting and ridiculous. If anything I have never balcklisted anyone at all. There are plenty of people here who use to blacklist for stupid reasons, Little-Whip being one of them. She loved having the ability to block people just to shut them up. Did it to me before. Brad blocked me once, only because I bugged him enough about it and he basically said to me "thats what you want". LOL.

Blacklisting just because you can to stop people from contradicting you is a cowards action in my opinion, you can't handle a discussion, you struggle to defend your point even if you might be right,  plain and simple. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of JU then. Bitching about how most here are Republicans or of that leaning is pretty idiotic considering you are stil here. Go cry to your mom about that.

This isn't Democratic Underground where they cancel your accounts for having a diffenece of opinion with their site. Freedom of Speech is not a Democrat concept. And in case you don't believe me, go to their site and read their site rules. Cowards if you ask me.

Yes, you will. Disagree with Brad and you risk getting banned (I can vaguely recall reading him saying something about the forum rules being you don't piss him off, and obviously if you disagree with him you're more likely to piss him off). He does tend to give you the courtesy of a warning first though.

Just a short while ago (beginning of Oct), Brad had an ongoing exchange with some antagonist that created an account just to blast him on the FOX/UPS/Stardock dust up. This guy went on for days on end. If anything Brad was too accommodating. So I vehemently disagree that it is easy to get banned (perhaps SPAMmers).

I vehemently disagree that you never get banned.