No matter where you sit...

[Schadenfroh]

The government is a bird in the sense that it behaves like a chicken with its head cut off...

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

america is not a bird
/thread

was going to post the same exact thing.

 

[zsdersw]

For those without imaginations.. which is quite a few, apparently.. here is what the bird analogy means:

Totalitarian societies do not endure... and that is what you would have with either a left-wing-only or right-wing-only nation.

 

[CaptnKirk]

When we got to the light at the end of the tunnel, we found that it was NOT a train,
but a proctoscope . . . .

 

[bamacre]

For those without imaginations.. which is quite a few, apparently.. here is what the bird analogy means:

Totalitarian societies do not endure... and that is what you would have with either a left-wing-only or right-wing-only nation.

Exactly. Opposing ideas, choices. We are better off because of them, and why freedom of speech is so utterly important.

 

[Scotteq]

Understatement of the year.

If America cannot be symbolized by a bird, why does this exist:

Is it because the American Bald Eagle is an occasionally cannibalistic predator which swoops out of the sky to kill those it would devour? That it picks prey items which cannot give fair fight? And because once it has sufficiently fouled it's own nest, it will abandon same rather than clean up after itself?


Analogies are fun! :awe:

 

[Thump553]

There are political philisophies that are just plain flat out wrong. Would you say that 1930's German Nazism is essential as it balances out the less genocidal, less empirialistic segments of the political spectrum? Or that Pol Pot and his murderous regieme had any benefical qualities whatsoever?

A cute anecdote for the Paul Harvey show, but certainly not an ironclad truism.

 

[ShawnD1]

There are political philisophies that are just plain flat out wrong. Would you say that 1930's German Nazism is essential as it balances out the less genocidal, less empirialistic segments of the political spectrum? Or that Pol Pot and his murderous regieme had any benefical qualities whatsoever?

Absolutely. The bird named Earth can't fly unless it has all of its feathers.

 

[drebo]

Exactly. Opposing ideas, choices. We are better off because of them, and why freedom of speech is so utterly important.

The two are not mutually exclusive. You can have opposing ideas, debates, and free speech without appeasing everyone to the point where your policies are worthless.

There IS a right and a wrong way to do things. A policy of appeasement is the wrong way.

 

[zsdersw]

There are political philisophies that are just plain flat out wrong. Would you say that 1930's German Nazism is essential as it balances out the less genocidal, less empirialistic segments of the political spectrum? Or that Pol Pot and his murderous regieme had any benefical qualities whatsoever?

A cute anecdote for the Paul Harvey show, but certainly not an ironclad truism.

Extremes are, by their very nature, not good.. but that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. There will always be extremes, no matter how the goal posts change over time, and they help us define where the best place for a society should be by highlighting where it shouldn't.

To go back to the bird symbol, the extreme left and right tips of the wings are not essential to flight, but they're always there nonetheless.