Quote of the Day: One Standard

 

“The truth is most conservatives are fine accepting apologies for dumb stuff said or done years ago. Unfortunately, liberals refuse to forgive conservatives so we have no choice but to do the same to you. It doesn’t have to be this way. We only ask for one standard.” – Chris Barron (2019-09-18)

It’s not from an extremely famous figure (he is a Fox Business contributor). It’s not an extremely pithy one-liner.  In that tweet, however, you have the summary for so much of the current situation in the GOP.

The modern cancel culture is a nightmare, but until people on the Left learn that it can come back to bite them, it’s not going anywhere. There has to be one set of rules for everyone, one standard. Otherwise, we are creating special classes of citizens. I am not a second-class citizen, and I will not be treated as such. Therefore, I demand the same rules that apply to me apply to my political opponents.

Stop the canceling, stop the woke patrol, stop the heresy trials, stop treating our existence as a problem to be solved, and we gladly return the favor. Until then, enjoy the rules that you wrote, applied to you.

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  1. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    Sometimes the only way to change the rules is to enforce them evenly


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    • #1
  2. Patrick McClure Coolidge
    Patrick McClure
    @Patrickb63

    After years of Republicans acquiescing  to the one way street I am so happy we are now making them live by their rules. After they feel the sting for a while it might ease up for everyone. And if it doesn’t, at least the field  is more level.

    • #2
  3. Samuel Block Support
    Samuel Block
    @SamuelBlock

    I suppose Al Franken serves as the example for these guys living up to their standards. Obviously, they have buyers remorse, but since then it’s been clear that they learned their lesson.

    • #3
  4. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    The problem with one standard is that the Left really enjoys being the mob.  It is like wrestling in the mud with a pig.  You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.

    • #4
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):
    Sometimes the only way to change the rules is to enforce them evenly

    The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.—Abraham Lincoln

    • #5
  6. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    I suppose Al Franken serves as the example for these guys living up to their standards. Obviously, they have buyers remorse, but since then it’s been clear that they learned their lesson.

    Al Franken should be treated like Louis C.K. They are gross and weird but they aren’t serial rapists. They need to take a significant hit for bad behavior but then they need to be allowed but into the public square with the expectation that they will be better. 

    But the left won’t accept this compromise so a part of me thinks that we shouldn’t either. This is a confusing deal for me.

    • #6
  7. Samuel Block Support
    Samuel Block
    @SamuelBlock

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    I suppose Al Franken serves as the example for these guys living up to their standards. Obviously, they have buyers remorse, but since then it’s been clear that they learned their lesson.

    Al Franken should be treated like Louis C.K. They are gross and weird but they aren’t serial rapists. They need to take a significant hit for bad behavior but then they need to be allowed but into the public square with the expectation that they will be better.

    But the left won’t accept this compromise so a part of me thinks that we shouldn’t either. This is a confusing deal for me.

    #me also! In Franken’s case, he helped create the state that took him down…. He got what was coming. In the case of Louis C.K., I’d put good money on his ousting being the result of a great, (fairly pro-life, or at least anti-abortion) bit that he did as an opening for his routine a few years ago… heck, I don’t think he’d put up much argument on the claim that he’s gross and weird.

    • #7
  8. TGR9898 Inactive
    TGR9898
    @TedRudolph

    OmegaPaladin:

    “The truth is most conservatives are fine accepting apologies for dumb stuff said or done years ago. Unfortunately, liberals refuse to forgive conservatives so we have no choice but to do the same to you. It doesn’t have to be this way. We only ask for one standard.” – Chris Barron (2019-09-18)

    stop the heresy trials,

    This is the explanation for the entire situation:

    Heresy.

    To a Progressive, their ideas are the only correct ones.  It is their Religion.

    And they treat non-believers like heretics.

    Thus the punishment of heretics AND the protection of the believers is not hypocritical.  There is no double standard in their eyes.

    To an outsider with a critical view that belief system – and the behaviors that come with it – is blatantly obvious.

    • #8
  9. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    TGR9898 (View Comment):
    Thus the punishment of heretics AND the protection of the believers is not hypocritical. There is no double standard in their eyes.

    So, the backsliding believers are merely sinners, not full apostates or infidels?

    • #9
  10. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    I suppose Al Franken serves as the example for these guys living up to their standards. Obviously, they have buyers remorse, but since then it’s been clear that they learned their lesson.

    Al Franken should be treated like Louis C.K. They are gross and weird but they aren’t serial rapists. They need to take a significant hit for bad behavior but then they need to be allowed but into the public square with the expectation that they will be better.

    But the left won’t accept this compromise so a part of me thinks that we shouldn’t either. This is a confusing deal for me.

    #me also! In Franken’s case, he helped create the state that took him down…. He got what was coming. In the case of Louis C.K., I’d put good money on his ousting being the result of a great, (fairly pro-life, or at least anti-abortion) bit that he did as an opening for his routine a few years ago… heck, I don’t think he’d put up much argument on the claim that he’s gross and weird.

    I think you are wrong there sir. Louis C.K. went full abortion at the end of his bit. Though potentially, maybe, some lefties saw that he had an inkling of wrongthink. 

    • #10
  11. Samuel Block Support
    Samuel Block
    @SamuelBlock

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    I suppose Al Franken serves as the example for these guys living up to their standards. Obviously, they have buyers remorse, but since then it’s been clear that they learned their lesson.

    Al Franken should be treated like Louis C.K. They are gross and weird but they aren’t serial rapists. They need to take a significant hit for bad behavior but then they need to be allowed but into the public square with the expectation that they will be better.

    But the left won’t accept this compromise so a part of me thinks that we shouldn’t either. This is a confusing deal for me.

    #me also! In Franken’s case, he helped create the state that took him down…. He got what was coming. In the case of Louis C.K., I’d put good money on his ousting being the result of a great, (fairly pro-life, or at least anti-abortion) bit that he did as an opening for his routine a few years ago… heck, I don’t think he’d put up much argument on the claim that he’s gross and weird.

    I think you are wrong there sir. Louis C.K. went full abortion at the end of his bit. Though potentially, maybe, some lefties saw that he had an inkling of wrongthink.

    Yeah. I was thinking about the “it’s 100 percent murdering a baby” line, but your right.

    I’ve got a kind of distorted view of this debate because I grew up a few decades after Roe and was raised around progressives. So I guess I tend to see anything that strips them of their belief that they occupy the moral high ground is a shot against “pro-choicers.” I’m pretty confident that most of them see it that way too. 

    • #11
  12. Songwriter Inactive
    Songwriter
    @user_19450

    OmegaPaladin: “The truth is most conservatives are fine accepting apologies for dumb stuff said or done years ago.

    Back when Bill Clinton’s college foolishness was dragged out in the open (pot-smoking, draft dodger, etc.), I remember thinking, “If we are gonna be judged by how we behaved in college, nobody is safe.”   

    I absolutely detest Bill Clinton, but I gave him a pass for his college misdemeanors.  And I think most of the country did as well.  

    Today’s candidates will not be forgiven so easily, it seems. It looks like the Spanish Inquisition is upon us. And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAn7baRbhx4

     

     

    • #12
  13. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    OmegaPaladin: Stop the cancelling, stop the woke patrol, stop the heresy trials, stop treating our existence as a problem to be solved, and we gladly return the favor. Until then, enjoy the rules that you wrote, applied to you.

    I completely agree! But how do we do that? Where is the venue where we can hold them accountable and fight back? I fear that they don’t really care what we think or if we criticize or judge them. After all, they are superior to us.

    • #13
  14. WillowSpring Member
    WillowSpring
    @WillowSpring

    Saul Alinsky’s Rule #4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”

    • #14
  15. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    “But Mommy, she bit me first!” fails as a replacement for the principles governing a republic. In a nation, there’s no Mommy.

     

     

    • #15
  16. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    “But Mommy, she bit me first!” fails as a replacement for the principles governing a republic. In a nation, there’s no Mommy.

     

     

    What about Hillary?

    • #16
  17. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    The right can attempt to “cancel” all the legit candidates on the left, and it won’t stop the left from cancelling people. I think the left will regard their losses as collateral damage, and regard a cease-fire as acquiescing to Evil that needs to be rooted out. They have the media on their side, which will be curiously incurious about pursuing past transgressions.

    “Troubling allegations surfaced today in the form of a credible accusation that Vice President Mike Pence was present at an event that disparaged gays and African-Americans. We go to correspondent Joy Reid, who is in studio with Governor Ralph Northam to discuss the accusations.”

    I mean, does that sound ridiculous? 

    • #17
  18. cirby Inactive
    cirby
    @cirby

    James Lileks (View Comment):
    The right can attempt to “cancel” all the legit candidates on the left, and it won’t stop the left from cancelling people.

    The trick isn’t to “cancel” the Left.

    The actual trick is to set things up so the leftists cancel each other.

    That is already happening, because they finally pushed the envelope so far that they have no choice in the matter. The various left-side factions are so invested in their own little worlds to the point that they desperately need enemies to aim at, and there are so many more nasty lefties that are easy targets. A lot of those factions also hate each other now, to the degree that they no longer care that much about collateral damage, as long as they think they’re correct.

    They tried to go after Trump for being a chauvinist pig, but that immediately led to the obvious left-wing toads in showbiz, and eventually Epstein.

     

    • #18
  19. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    “But Mommy, she bit me first!” fails as a replacement for the principles governing a republic. In a nation, there’s no Mommy.

     

     

    What about Hillary?

    Mommy Dearest, perhaps…

    • #19
  20. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    “But Mommy, she bit me first!” fails as a replacement for the principles governing a republic. In a nation, there’s no Mommy.

     

     

    What about Hillary?

    Mommy Dearest, perhaps…

    She’s some kind of mother…

    • #20
  21. Tex929rr Coolidge
    Tex929rr
    @Tex929rr

    Songwriter (View Comment):

    OmegaPaladin: “The truth is most conservatives are fine accepting apologies for dumb stuff said or done years ago.

    Back when Bill Clinton’s college foolishness was dragged out in the open (pot-smoking, draft dodger, etc.), I remember thinking, “If we are gonna be judged by how we behaved in college, nobody is safe.”

    I absolutely detest Bill Clinton, but I gave him a pass for his college misdemeanors. And I think most of the country did as well.

    Today’s candidates will not be forgiven so easily, it seems. It looks like the Spanish Inquisition is upon us. And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAn7baRbhx4

     

     

    I never cared about Bill Clinton’s college age antics.  I cared a lot about the fact that he lied about them. 

    1.  “I didn’t inhale”
    2. During the 92 campaign he appeared at a veterans group meeting and declared (re the draft) “if I had been called I would have gone”.

    Bill Clinton was the second person to make me yell at the television and scare my dogs (the first was Dallas Cowboys receiver Alvin Harper).

    • #21
  22. Kevin Creighton Contributor
    Kevin Creighton
    @KevinCreighton

    OmegaPaladin: The modern cancel culture is a nightmare, but until people on the Left learn that it can come back to bite them, it’s not going anywhere.

    I think this is almost correct. The problem is, though, that “The Left” will never be able to excuse the social transgressions of “The Right” because those transgressions occur because of the essential makeup of “The Right.” It is who they are: They are deplorable bitter clingers, so OF COURSE they act in deplorable ways. Moreover, they cannot act any differently. White, Christian Heterosexual males are racist.

    Period, full stop. Racism is as much a part of us as our mitochondria is, so no forgiveness is ever possible.

    For people like Trudeau or Notham or others on ‘The Left,” though, such racism is an abhorrent anomaly. It is not who they are, they just made a regrettable error, and they will be forgiven for it, even if (in Trudeau’s case) they make it over and over and over again. He is completely incapable of being racially insensitive at his core, they say, because of who he is.

    I find this fascinating, because it is the completely opposite of how I was raised. I was raised in Canada, in a multicultural neighborhood, and I knew, at an early age*, that painting your skin to portray another race was way, way out of bounds. You just didn’t do that**, yet somehow, this is a lesson that some leading progressives never learned.

    And I have no idea why, other than to say that you show me someone who is suffering from liberal guilt, and I’ll show you someone who has at least one reason to feel guilty.

    —————————————————————————–

    * Ok, in order to spare myself any shame in the future, I must confess that when I was younger, I dressed up in a costume to portray another race. At the age of 8, in order to pass myself off as an ancient Jewish shepherd, I wore a housecoat on-stage in my local church’s Christmas pageant.I regret the error.

    ** Ask C. Thomas Howell how his career took off after “Harvard Man.”

    • #22
  23. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    I suppose Al Franken serves as the example for these guys living up to their standards. Obviously, they have buyers remorse, but since then it’s been clear that they learned their lesson.

    I think that Kirsten Gillibrand was never going to be nominated due to her treatment of Al Frankin.  I dislike his politics but the penalty he suffered was completely out of proportion.

    • #23
  24. Phil Turmel Inactive
    Phil Turmel
    @PhilTurmel

    Concur.  In this battle, we should not “bring a knife to a gunfight”.  Sad as that necessity may be.

    • #24
  25. RandR Member
    RandR
    @RandR

    Songwriter (View Comment):

    I absolutely detest Bill Clinton, but I gave him a pass for his college misdemeanors. And I think most of the country did as well.

     

     

    And look what THAT got the country. More of the same behavior.

    • #25
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