Hearing two freepers argue is funny...check this out...

[b06jgm]

one guy says he was a liberal but as soon as "the damn libs started thinking government should control everything" he claimed a Zell and said "I didn't leave the democrats, they left me". So the other guy is saying "Well what is a liberal then?" He couldn't really answer. I shouldn't say the other guy is a freeper...he's really just a neutral party wanting to listen. The one point he brought up was "how can the base of the term liberal (liber = to be free) want more government". He kept arguing that if they were truly "liberal" they would want no government. I just sat back and kinda chuckled.

[grannylib]

1. Kinda like the 'switch' Ahhnold tried to pull on the public during the

RNC hate-fest, about ReThugs believing in "a government that is accountable to its people, not people accountable to the government." I about ran off the road when I heard that on NPR the next day (I tried to watch it, honest, but it was SO putrid I could only handle it in 60-second-or-so chunks every 20-or-so minutes).
This has been the LEAST accountable, MOST secretive government EVER, and he says THAT?? The government that has pushed/is pushing the Hatriot Act/2?? God help us, honestly...

Liberal: to favor representative government over monarchies or aristocracies. In favor of maximum personal liberties, especially as enacted by law. Generous.

How the hell has it become such a pejorative??

[Indiana_Dem]

2. I just learned from my 96YO grandpa today at lunch

that the Dems used to be conservative and didn't become socially liberal until the Great Depression and the 1st World War! He said the Republicans were the liberal ones, during the civil war, that fought against slavery. The Dems fought for women's suffrage in the early 1900s. He said all the Dems used to all be like Zell, a "Dixie Democrat". My grandpa said he's always been a Dem but socially more liberal. He said the unions were always Dem, though. He said that people would be surprised to know that it's like the two party's have switched but that the Dems are moving back towards fiscal conservatism as before.

He couldn't believe I didn't know all this and wondered how many other people weren't aware. He just thought it was common knowledge. I told him that when I was being taught history in high school, I had no interest in politics and didn't pay much attention until now.

He attributed Wilson and FDR for the changes back in the first part of the century.

[Minimus]

5. My father told me similar history

he said that the South was always Democratic until about 1964, Civil Rights turned a lot of the Dixiecrat Democrats into Republicans, ie: Trent Lott, Strom Thurman,(he listed a bunch more).

My family is Southern, Democrat and we say good riddance to the racist hypocrites.

[cheshire]

6. The wisdom of age is so important

[IdaBriggs]

3. Have you read this one...?

Its from Michael Moore's website --

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=144

And welcome to DU! :) Ida

[Jacobin]

4. Dumb and Dumber