Reasoning with someone like that is like reasoning with a lemming.

The only thing crazier than a crazy person is one who tries to make sense of him. Or argues with him.

You seem to think your opinions about people and ideas carry some additional weight that others cannot bring to theirs. And you seem to get very sensitive when others don’t seem to share those opinions. You’re not just saying people are mistaken, you’re telling them they are not even entitled to be mistaken. That is arrogance, moral and intellectual hubris of the highest order. Its not exactly an attitude that tends to generate a sympathetic hearing.

That’s why in the areas of politics and economics, your opinions have no value. They are worthless, not because they are necessarily wrong, but solely because they are yours. It’s not so much that your beliefs are mistaken, its that you cannot even visualize anyone thinking differently than you do, unless, of course, they are either scoundrels or fools. That’s an attitude not likely to get you a sympatheic ear either.

That makes a difference.

But that doesn’t mean I have to accept any of it, any more than I have to accept UFOs, Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, Reincarnation, Bigfoot, The Mayan Calendar, Santa Claus, the Face on Mars, Chupacabra or Jesus; even if I am accused of “not having an open mind”.

I’m not just stringing together words here to construct an analogy. Your politics are pure anomalism to me, and your proofs are intricate and detailed but ultimately irrelevant, like the Bible verses creationists spout reflexively to definitively disprove and discredit modern biology, geology and astronomy.

Just give it up. I refuse to accept your view of political reality, period. I not only find it mistaken, I find it distasteful. It is intellectually empty, morally barren, esthetically repugnant, and spiritually desolate. We can still be friends, just like I can be friends with Christians or Hindus, but I don’t have to believe one syllable of your ridiculous ideological religion either.

I am a smart, educated, experienced, capable, and decent human being and I have complete confidence in the validity of my moral and intellectual choices. I think by now I have amply demonstrated nothing you can say is likely to intimidate me.

And keep your speculations on why I am “so afraid to accept the obvious truth” to yourself, because I might just have to tell you why I think you have to cling so desperately and pathetically to yours.

You tend to treat words like “communist,” “socialist,” and “fascist” as though they have no real meaning, like calling someone a “motherf**er.” Not surprising, really. The Left has spent many years trying to destroy the connections between these words and their meanings and ideas. Most of the time all they have to do is scream “McCarthyism!” and the acid of a century of history is neutralized into common salt.

I pay attention to what these ideas are, not their names (which seem to change frequently), and these are very specific ideas and beliefs.

It’s a free country, and people can indeed believe any toxic statist crap they want to. Doesn’t mean I want these jackasses running the country. 76 socialists in Congress is 76 too many.

Of course, for someone like West, and his fans, anyone who disagrees with them about anything must be a Communist. And in my opinion, anyone with views that extreme must therefore be a fascist. (With a lower case “f”, of course).

Just because someone belongs to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or even the Democratic Socialists of America, doesn’t necessarily mean they are Communists. And if they are, so what? This is a free country. If you want to call yourself, or be a fascist, or a socialist, or even a communist, (with an UC or lc), you have every right to do so.

Perhaps Mr West might remind himself, and his followers, of that.

It’s 72 Muslims. And not one of them is a virgin.

The edited video the idiots have been passing around:

The unclipped version:

As you see, “names have been named.”

The Democratic Socialists of America, as of 2009, claimed 70 members in Congress. Names are named.

Until 2002, the DSA hosted the website of the Progressive Caucus.

If there is any significant difference in economic and foreign policy ideas between the published positions of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (or the Citizen Agenda, come to that) and a self-identified Communist, I have yet to see it.