Tuesday, September 06, 2005

One Student Is A Good Guy

One of my students was wearing a t-shirt today, and on the back of said t-shirt was the saying (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Except for ending slavery, Nazism, fascism, and Communism, War Never Solved Anything!" Of course I like that slogan, having seen it before, but it didn't hit me until I saw the logo on the front of the shirt.

This student of mine is a Protest Warrior, a group I've written about here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have always hated most conservatives' terrible sense of humor but this Protest Warriors rubbish is enough.
Fascism was stopped because we fought back. Japan attacked us, so we bombed them. That ended the war, more or less.
Iraq, on the other hand, was started by us. In this situation, we are the bad guys, unless you want to believe that it was Hussein that crashed planes into the WTC, which is utter, utter nonsense. America always feels like they have to bother other countries with their support, which is really unnecessary.
It's not that liberals are perfect individuals. Far from it. However, I've yet to see one good joke written by a conservative (besides, you, Mr. Miller, of course). They're horribly unfunny most of the time. The Boondocks and (occasionally) Doonesbury make great jokes, while today's Prickly City was "Why are you worshipping a murderer haha isn't that funny". The site you mentioned isn't any better, at all. They really don't know when to shut up.

Darren said...

Anonymous, we'll just disagree. What exactly do you disagree with about the slogan on the shirt? Did war *not* end one of those items? One might say Communism, but there's that whole "cold war" thing.

And where did I, or the t-shirt slogan, mention anything about Iraq? BTW, no one with any sense claims Iraq was behind 9/11. But there's plenty of evidence (which lefties ignore because it doesn't suit their world view) to show that Saddam was most friendly with terrorists--including his blood payments to families of Palestinian suicide-bombers.

If you'd like to read more about conservative comics, might I recommend this post:
http://rightontheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2005/07/conservative-comic-strips.html

Anonymous said...

The shirt was about war. Iraq is a war. That's where I got it. War may have solved those problems listed, but it's caused many more problems. An idiotic amount of budget goes towards war when it could be going towards nearly anything else. Call me a pacifist, but most warfare is ludicrous. I suppose the reason that the site angered me is the fact that they're pointing out how liberals are "suppressing" their messages when that's all the conservatives have been doing to liberals as well. The two-party system in America is a pointless debate, in my opinion.
There are various reasons in general that I am not a fan of conservatism, the biggest being that I would like to decide for myself on moral issues and not have the government tell me what to do. The only right that Republicans have kept close to their hearts is the second amendment.
Wow, look how I've gone off topic yet again. I suppose I'll end it by pointing out something you said today:
Although there are a lot of smart rich white kids who get into Stanford, there are also a lot of dumb rich white kids who get in due to their wealth. I'm not a fan of affirmative action, but the college admission process isn't the most honest process ever created.

Darren said...

I *so* did not say that. What I said is that the rich white kids often have access to and take, as some of my students do, "four AP and one honors class" and hence actually work hard--and deserve to go to Stanford based on their work and accomplishment. They may have the "privilege" of going to a good school, but they still *work* while at that good school. They've *earned* their disproportionate representation in Stanford.

As for most warfare being ludicrous, we'll just have to disagree. Pacifism is wonderful--until the pacifist is attacked. Then what?

I love English philosopher John Stuart Mill's quote on the subject:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks nothing is worth a war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares more about than he does about his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of men better than himself.


Put in a more pithy way:

If you have nothing you're willing to die for, what do you have to live for?

Darren said...

BTW, liberals supposedly are the ones who believe in big government, which dictates to everyone what they should do and how to think. Conservatives supposedly are the ones who believe in keeping government small and off the backs of people. Some "conservatives" are shifting away from those Reaganesque beliefs, unfortunately, but the liberals surely aren't shifting away from their beliefs!