Boundegar, who presumably considers himself to be liberal, made a statement about “conservatives.” You could take his statement word-for-word, replace the word “conservative” with “liberal,” and it wouldn’t sound out of place coming from a hard-line conservative. My point is that this is what happens when your understanding of politics is limited to “the group I identify with has all possible virtues, and the group I don’t identify with has all possible vices.”
My point is that if you want to avoid reducing political parties into one-dimensional stereotypes then a good place to start might be to stop assuming “conservative = Republican” and “liberal = Democrat.” No one in the original article, the blog post or the comments even mentioned party affiliation before you did. For all we know this judge may not be a registered member of any political party.
So basically this is one of those things where you’re ignoring my point in order to nitpick about usage, because I used the word “party” imprecisely to mean “political affiliation,” and you chose to interpret it in the most uncharitable way possible instead of looking at the context.
It’s weird how often this happens on the internet. I’d call it classic derailing except that I don’t think that’s actually your intention.
I just listened through all the slate clips, and while it started off as, “eh, this isn’t a bloodbath” by the end I was amazed. As mostly-rational people here I think we basically agree that same sex marriage is of no harm to anyone. For rational reasons. And to hear a level headed, conservative judge articulate those ideas without anger or vitriol made me happy.
I don’t know Posner’s current party affiliation. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the bench, so he was a Republican at the time. For what it’s worth, in 2012 he described the Republican Party as ‘goofy.’
