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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
i think such a response is inherent in this medium. for a post to make it to thread it takes a long string of events. a TFP'er must first care enough about politics to enter this forum, he/she must find a current thread of interest, read all the responses (hopefully), form his/her own opinion, craft a response, and submit it and put themselves "out there" for all to rip to shreds. the nature of a online board such as this dictates only persons with strong opinions will do this on a consistent basis. only fervently held opinions will provide the motivation for going to all that trouble. there are a lot of people with very moderate opinions... however, those people simply pull a lever every other november and don't make much noise otherwise, much less cause a ruckus on TFP.
and i think you're crossing lines on the party/ideology discussion. i see very little support for parties in and of themselves, usually only as far as personal ideology will take them. i do perceive strong connections with personal ideology and political stances... but that does not (and cannot) trump integrity. if you believe a principle to be true (or right) then it will become a part of your ideology. you must defend such principles (that make up your ideology) or risk your integrity. to go against your ideology would be to betrary your integrity... the two are rarely at odds.
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Good point, irate. I tend to interchange ideology and party during discussions. Something I should probably stop doing since most people here don't tend to identify by party.
I rarely, if ever, discuss politics outside this board. I used to love discussing politics, but I found that one rarely ever gets anywhere when discussing it in real life. I have changed my viewpoints over the years, but that has only happened after personal experiences caused me to rethink what I believed. I don't think anyone honestly ever gave me an argument that caused me to do this and I don't think I ever did the same to anyone else.
Discussing politics is very circular. While I enjoy some of the well-thought out and researched posts by some, I also enjoy some of the quick quips and one-liners by others. But rarely do I ever jump into the fray because I don't find that I have that strong of an allegiance to one particular ideology and wouldn't be able to hold a discussion long enough to lead it anywhere. Also, I feel that any comments I could possibly make would be just a regurgitation of comments already made by like-minded posters.
Strangely, many on this board feel the same way. In fact, many claim to be of the Libertarian persuasion yet, we still have near flame wars on a daily basis. I wonder why that is?