This started as a comment back on this post, but I’m elevating it to post status:
OK, bud, put up or shut up time: So which party is it? I’ve made it absolutely clear to you over and over that when I use the term "partisan," I don’t use it in the sense of "having an opinion about an issue" — which seems to be your favored sense. I’ve made it clear that I am speaking of slavish identification with a political party (or the attendant disease of unvarying devotion to the "left" or "right," which increasing means the same thing in this country).
"Partisan," as it is used on this blog and as it is used about 99 percent of the time in this country, refers to sticking up for your party — and we talking Democrats or Republicans here, since the Libertarians and others aren’t really a factor — at all times, and always denigrating people of the "opposite" party. It means surrendering your ability to think to party platforms. It means thinking it really MATTERS whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican.
So, bud — what’s my party? Democratic? Republican? What’s my ideology: Left? Right?
Either state it, and support it, and let the other readers judge your thinking on the matter, or drop this business of taking a relatively esoteric sense of the word and using it for no other purpose whatsoever than to insult me. You know that’s what you’re doing, and there’s no other possible reason to do it than to have that effect. You know that partisanship is loathsome to me, and unless you have a profound reading comprehension problem you know WHY. I’m pretty sure you’ve never met anyone who has explained his aversion to partisanship more than I have. This means what you are doing is saying, "What does Brad despise most?" and deciding to call me that, which is a form or argument on the intellectual level of "I know you are, but what am I?"
You know that ad hominem attacks are verboten on this blog. You know that in particular, I don’t allow it from anonymous commenters. I have bent way the hell over backward for you on both points, mainly because I am the object rather than someone out there.
But I’ve had enough of it. Either support your assertion of my oh-so-obvious hypocrisy — and that means showing that I am precisely the sort of partisan that I myself condemn, in the common sense in which I use the term — or cut it out. Now.
What I do almost every waking level of my life is tell the world exactly what I think and why I think it. I am not going to provide a free forum for someone to repeatedly say that I am a liar about one of my most strongly held positions. Not unless he can back it up. This is his chance. He either does so, or starts addressing the substance of what I say without the name-calling.
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Brad, Leave Bud alone many times his opposition makes your argument. Besides, you have called me names and I didn’t take my toys go home.
The beauty of the blog is that it is pure democracy in action. Unlike call in radio or tv shows where they interrupt you before you can complete your statement. Here you make a comment and take what comes after.
I love this blog and you do an excellent job with it. I have been very impressed with the level of intelligence of the participants. I have learned a lot by being on this blog.
My advice for what it is worth is the old saying, ” sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
But I’ve had enough of it. Either support your assertion of my oh-so-obvious hypocrisy — and that means showing that I am precisely the sort of partisan that I myself condemn, in the common sense in which I use the term — or cut it out. Now.* Brad Warthen
Good news Brad! I have arranged a partisan solution to this issue between you and Bud.
In true South Carolina tradition, I have bought back non-partisan dueling on the Capital steps. Your choice of weapons and second’s have been decided in advance to solved your non-partisan opinion. Senator McCain will be your second and should he be shot by mistake in his wheelchair while guarding your backside against Bud. Bud has agreed to go directly to jail without due process to assure you of his honest intentions about your emotional outbreaks on the internet. By the way, your weapon of choice will be a used keyboard from the Huckabee campaign since nobody in his campaign knew what a keyboard was for?
Good luck and win one for Jesus and Senator McCain!
I like bud, too, Brad. But like you I have no stomach for the chicken-hearted, such as The Pulse. Boot ’em.
From Wikepedia:
The expression “Partisan politics” usually refers to fervent, sometimes militant support of a party, cause, faction, person, or idea.
Or from Dictionary.com
parā¢tiā¢san1 ĖpÉr tÉ zÉn, -sÉn; Brit. ĖpÉr tÉĖzƦn – Show Spelled Pronunciation[pahr-tuh-zuh n, -suh n; Brit. pahr-tuh-zan] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
ānoun
1. an adherent or supporter of a person, group, party, or cause, esp. a person who shows a biased, emotional allegiance.
Brad, most people that have read you for a long period of time understand how you dislike the Republican and Democratic brands. But just because you dismiss the two major parties and declare yourself an independent does not mean you’re not a partisan. You can be a partisan in different ways as reflected by the definitions shown above. To suggest partisan only means adherence to a particular party is not a factual representation of the meaning of the word.
In your case you’ve become quite the John McCain partisan (McCain being a person) by simply ignoring any and all evidence that suggests he’s something other than what YOU, BRAD WARTHEN, believe him to be. It is simply not even a close call anymore to suggest that John McCain is a straight-talker after the recent about face he did on the torture issue. Yet you defend him as if he is what he portrays himself to be. That is a pure partisan plain and simple. Why not just admit that you’ll support John McCain regardless of any facts that come out about him. His age, philandering, flip-flopping, political scandals or anything else is not to be considered.
As for AJ Ghost’s suggestion to resolve this discussion with a duel, how about 1 gigabyte flash drives at 1000 megapixels. First person to fill the drive up with partisan ideas will be declared the winner.
Yes, bud, we can all use dictionaries, and we all understand that one word can mean many things.
And as I said, the sense you use for the term “partisan” is not the sense I’m using when I condemn it — ever.
Your using the word that way to claim I am inconsistent is like saying I can’t be believed for decrying “parties” because I was a member of the “wedding party” when my son got hitched last year. Cite the dictionary all you want, you’re being deliberately obtuse.
This blog exists so that each of us can express what we honestly think, and others can argue with that. You don’t do that on this point. Rather than engaging my strongly held opposition to partisanship, as most of us use the word, for what it is, you resort to word games.
This might be defensible if you misunderstood, something you might do once. But all I should have to do is point this out to you once, and say, “that’s not what I meant.” That should be all I had to do even if I were the one employing the esoteric usage. But I’m not; I’m using the term in the way it is most commonly used. You know that, so stop pretending that you don’t.
You have a lot to contribute to this blog, bud. But don’t give me any more of this bad faith stuff. The only way I could be inconsistent with the position I have clearly taken would be if I really, deep-down, identified with one party and not the other. If you had any lack of clarity on what I mean, I just cleared it up for you (as I’ve done so many times before). So that will be the basis of our dialogues on the matter here on this blog, starting now.
Take this principle and apply it more broadly. When someone takes a position on this blog, engage the position. Don’t say that’s not really that person’s position. That sort of “argument” is reprehensible.
Brad,
Regular readers of your blog understand that you hold partisan opinions on a wide variety of topics (pro-McCain, anti-Sanford, anti-Libertarian view, pro-government, anti-private sector, anti-Confederate flag, pro-privatization of healthcare, pro-war, anti-abortion).
As Bud says, the issue of partisanship comes down to objectivity on a topic. A partisan ignores facts and data.
The example of Senator McCain is most apparent. You have constantly railed against vouchers and tax-cutting-conservatives. Senator McCain has just come out this past week with strong statements supporting both. And your response to these FACTS has been silence.
Same for the issue of privatizing healthcare. McCain’s views are 180 degree different from yours. Yet there has been not even a mention of these issues when it comes to Senator McCain. If that’s not partisanship in the truest sense of the word, what is it?
This is a tempest in a teapot, but one of many caused by the misapplication of words, in this case, the word “partisan” misused by the editor.
Since the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have come to express a broad collection of ideology, both individualistic and statist, they lack the precision to add much to conversations.
It would be good for some of those whose liberalism contains mostly socialist notions to understand the source of “their” ideas, from Robert Owen to Marx, Lenin, Hitler and Mao.
Brad, as a person who makes a living writing editorials in the English language you should understand better than anyone that it is not playing word games to use a particular word, as defined by the dictionary, to describe something or someone. That’s why we have dictionaries after all. Partisan, as Brad defines it, can have only one very narrow definition, the one as it relates to political parties. I find that interpretation very condescending to others who choose to use it in the broader, and in my view, more appropriate sense. A good argument could be made that someone partisan to a particular person is far more offensive than someone who is a partisan to a particular group of persons who happen to be members of a particular party.
To take an extreme example (and please I’m not accusing Brad of being a Nazi) is it more partisan to blindly defend the Nazi party or Adolf Hitler? In today’s world both would be considered offensive if facts that shed light on the two are ignored. There were probably many members of the Nazi party that were not evil people at all. So it could be argued that a Nazi partisan is less objectionable than a Hitler partisan by virtue of the fact that some Nazis and perhaps a few Nazi ideas were not evil while no one could argue that Adolf Hitler was anything but pure evil.
So as Doug has once again pointed out John McCain continues to rack up quite a few descrepancies in his resume that would give an objective person pause to reconsider their support. A partisan, on the other hand, simply ignores these descrepancies and supports the pre-conceived image of that candidate.
Bud, I understand why you use the word partisan in relation to Brad, and so do many of us. (Peace, Brad, I understand also why it makes you so mad). Please do us all a favor and find (or create) another word/phrase to use, simply out of mercy for us if not for Brad. Consider his blood pressure. Just consider it a word that for idiosyncratic reasons bothers him, and, as the gentleman you are, refrain from applying it to him. Just remember Bud, Hitler at least made the trains run on time.
I thought it was Mussolini who made the trains run on time.
Our of respect for Karen, and even though Brad annoys the heck out of me with his constant harping on the subject, I will bite my virtual tongue and avoid the p-word when describing someone other than a political party p*******.
Lighten up, guys. It’s just a blog.
Actually, I like Karen’s idea of finding another word for “partisan” … Because whenever I hear the word partisan, my twisted stream of consciousness chuckles at memory of Hogan’s Heroes’ character Cpl. Louis Lebeau, the French Resistance Partisan-POW played by Jewish-American actor Robert Clary … which reminds me that Colonel Hogan turned out to be a pervert played by pornophile Bob Crane … which reminds me of Bill Clinton, a partisan pervert who has played us all.
Therefore, in keeping with the strict topical disclipline and logical adherence of Brad and his fellow bloggers, I hereby propose that partisans shall henceforth be known among us as “Lebeaus.”
bud may have problems with the spelling. Otherwise, I think it works.
Thanks, bud. All I ask.
Doug, my reaction hasn’t been silence. Yesterday’s extended outburst about Sanford was in part motivated by the fact that I was upset about his “no new taxes” pledge. If he’d do something that crazy to please the wild-eyed, he might even pick Sanford. I was going to finish the Sanford post, then do a separate one on the “no new taxes” foolishness, but finally decided to go home and see my wife briefly sometime after 9 p.m.
I still plan to post on the tax thing, today or tomorrow. All I’ve seen on the voucher thing is a passing reference. That I won’t probably won’t get into, since I don’t care what a president’s opinion is about K-12 education, any more than I care what he thinks about local garbage pickup. I would imagine that McCain and I have a lot of areas of disagreement outside the bounds of the presidency.
Bottom line — he said both of these crazy things to try to pull his party together, and I want to make sure he doesn’t do anything crazier. Sanford would be crazier.
If you’d like, one day I’ll try to compile a list of everything Obama and McCain both say that bugs me. Not that it matters. What matters is where you end up, and I like where we’ve ended up (editorially speaking). They’re both excellent candidates.
Do you have anyone who agrees with you on EVERYTHING? I don’t. I don’t expect I ever will. What does that have to do with anything. If my strong preference is for THIS guy over THAT guy, do you expect me to spend my days listing the bad things about the guy I like? What kind of sense does that make?
Thank you very much Bud; you are a gentleman and a scholar. Brad, I agree with you. It’s not a case of ‘giving in’ or ‘giving up’ on what you believe; it’s a case of picking the person whom you feel can do the best overall job, and realizing that there will come a better time to push for those goal/ideas that this particular person will not/cannot push for. If I voted only for a person who agreed with everything I did 100%, I would probably not be able to vote for anyone; and if there were someone I could vote for, the chances are that person would not receive very many votes. So while whoever gets the presidence will not do everything I want him/her to do, lets get someone in who can accomplish something to the good!
Bud, Hitler was also known for making the trains run on time. He also did a lot to reduce their joblessness rate. Gordon, wouldn’t the plural of that be lebeaux?
Partisan shouldn’t be a dirty word. While personal shots are uncalled for, there have been plenty of them from both sides of the spectrum. Believe it or not, discussion on this blog (with the exception of posts on the flag in front of the Statehouse) is far more civil than what I see at the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
What do you expect? Georgia was settled by convicts.
One would assume that the posting on this blog is mostly about Brad and Bud.
Just to set the record straight if I had to vote between the two and their comments, I would have to go with Brad.
Brad has a job. His job is selling papers. Part of selling papers is to get hits on his paper. Believe it or not, the owner of the paper takes into consideration the hits from the Internet on the paper website.
The delivery of the paper has been diminished around the state because of economics pertaining to the bottom line and cutting cost.
The hits made on the website that has paid commercials is what the owners look as the bottom line.
Brad. You are doing your job. You are selling papers. The rest of the people that want to castigate you do not know anything about newspapers and how they are fighting to survive. Could the people that read the paper online and add comments realize that they are having a voice because they have a paper? I appreciate the paper. I live in an area of South Carolina that I can no longer have The State delivered to my home except by mail. I would just as soon read it on line than have to pay for mail delivery.
Thank you Brad and the powers that be that I can at least read the paper online and I know what you are going through. I may not always agree with you but I have the right to disagree online.
Lee, that one-liner about Georgia may be your best post ever.
So what’s the upshot here? Instead of saying Brad’s a McCain partisan, I should say Brad’s biased toward McCain, or sold on McCain, or sold out to McCain, or dyed in McCain’s wool?
It’s not like “partisan” is “three-peat”. To the best of my knowledge, Brad couldn’t have copyrighted a pre-existing word.
I mean, heck, Bud and I disagree all the time, but I still like having him here. Yin needs yang, left needs right, liberal needs conservative. It all adds up to a broad view.
And, by definition, a broad view isn’t partisan, is it?
weldon VII,
Depends on the broad(apologies,Karen).
No apologies needed, Bill. I do appreciate your politeness. We women realize how sensitive persons can be to a given word. Most men do not seem (in my experience) to be that aware of how a single word can immediately dispose a person to anger (and no, I’m not talking about obscene/profane perjoratives here. The association may be reasonable or unreasnonable. But the fact is, ‘that word’ bothers ‘that person’. If you wish to discuss something with that person in a reasonable manner, you avoid using ‘that word’, or at least you avoid applying it to ‘that person’. If you simply want to make ‘that person’ angry, by all means use it. It may be that men are aware of this quirk of humanity and use this purposely to anger or hurt the other person. If so, this may explain why women think men are so frequently unreasonable. At any rate, the use of these words can make it difficult to engage in a reasonable discussion because it throws the person into a response that may not be entirely thought out or reasonable, and usually the person in question either cannot, or chooses not to state the reason it makes him/her so uncomfortable. If you want a discussion here, lets not step on each other toes on purpose. If you want a non-sensical fight, you guys go to it.
Surely the issue is not so much the term, but the action of partisanship itself. From an evangelical perspective, this link to a new book by Jim Wallis points the way to a different kind of political involvement.
Thanks a lot for slamming my six generations of Georgia ancestors, Lee. I’m sure with a little research I could find some less flattering things about the antecedents of a goodly number of Sandlappers.
I am sure you can find mediocre citizens in any state Mr. Gordy, and good people, but that doesn’t alter the historical facts that Georgia and Australia were penal colonies. The good blood came later. The initial settlers of Carolina and Virgina were more civilized and cultured, and their bad blood came later. The important thing today is not the distant past, but the genetic and cultural pollution of the illegal immigrants from Mexico.
I think they call that xenophobia.
I think “xenophobia” is a pseudo-medical term intended to smear people who post facts about what they consider to a serious attack on our country. Many people are afraid to criticize any criminals who are non-white, so they attempt to intimidate others into joining them.
Others just realize that they cannot make a reasonable argument for denying immigration to upstanding, educated people who obey the laws, while supporting the self-selection and dumping by Mexico of people with the least to offer the USA.
Lee, with just about every comment you make on the subject, you just continue to show a deep-seated dread and fear of every thing you aren’t acquainted with. That is called phobia. Your greatest nightmare would be to leave the country and get sick somewhere overseas, wouldn’t it? Here’s someone from another blog (Sojourners) who hit the nail on the head:
Say what you will; your “omniscience” on almost every subject is quite likely the result of a deep-seated fear and inadequacy, and compulsion to have the last word. You need to get free of that.
Herb, there you go name-calling again, in lieu of reasoned discussion. What are you afraid of?
You might be a cheater, but not I.
I refuse to hire any contractors who use immigrant labor. I refuse to hire H1B programmers from India, as long as we have 500,000 unemployed software engineers who are US citizens.
I don’t have any phobias, and you are not qualified to diagnose anyone in person, much less over the internet.
Justify to me why you should deny immigration to healthy, educated, honest Europeans and Asians while turning our heads to millions of illiterate, diseased criminals sneaking across the Mexican border.
Justify to me why the hotel and food industry at the Grand Strand needs to hire illegal aliens when the local black population has an unemployment rate of 20%. Have the white liberals just written off blacks, and decided to throw them over the side for a new constituency of illiterate followers?
Let’s not forget, Lee, that it is your persuasion that the free market economy should be allowed to run its course without government intervention. So, businesses are going to hire 1) people who are willing to work at jobs that other people do not want to do 2) people who are willing to workers for poor wages in order to make their products competitive, because people here want cheap goods. And I’ll wager that even if you put up a wall and man it with machine guns, you will not be able to keep out people who are hungry, and/or desperate for a better life. Even the East German Stasi could not build an effective wall in the end.
And I’m afraid the only discussion possible with your viewpoint is when a person agrees with it.
Free market capitalism does not include hiring smugglers to bring in hordes of cheap laborers and girls as prostitutes.
Yes, we need a fence, but we mainly need to remove the market for illegal workers.
* No tax deductions for wages paid to illegals.
* No government contracts for companies caught employing illegal aliens.
* No foreign language radio or television stations spreading lies about America and instructions on how to cheat.
* No instant citizenship for “anchor babies” born to illegals. No citizenship for any child unless and until both their parents become citizens, the proper way.
* No welfare, medical care, school, or public housing for anyone who is not a US citizen.
* No bank accounts for illegal aliens, and no international wire transfers except for those bank accounts.
* Foreign aid reduced to countries who encourage illegals, to offset the costs of law enforcement for those who are felons.
Other nations do the above, including Mexico, and it works.
How come the “liberals” don’t care how much ecological damage and littering the illegals do to as they cross the Mexican border?
How come the “liberals” don’t care about the hundreds of thousands of girls kidnapped in Mexicon and sent to America as prostitutes for the illegal male laborers? It is not even crime in Mexico.