I sort of feel like the tea party and progressives could almost find some common ground over the plight of ordinary people getting screwed six ways from Sunday in this economy. We share a disillusionment with Wall Street and, I would argue, concern with loss of community in the face of crushing bureaucracy. The general principle of localism seems like something we could agree on, to a point. But it all ends there, because the tea partiers, among their other philosophical shortcomings (and there are many), have a MASSIVE blind spot when it comes to understanding the way power works in this country. They refuse to see any abuses resulting from unfettered, predatory, market-fundamentalist-style capitalism. Everything is the government's fault. It's such a simplistic view, it would be quaint if it weren't also so harmful.
Recent Comments
Cartoon: The Measure of Intelligence
Cartoon: The Celestial Politics of Trans Bans
Cartoon: Hey did you hear? Biden is old!
Cartoon: "Sex Is Real" Is A Euphemism
Cartoon: Let's Outlaw Being Homeless! That'll Work!
Cartoon: Appealing to Trump Voters by Getting Tough on Immigration!
Cartoon: Free Trade Is For Peasants, Not Cartoonists!
Cartoon: HOMOPHOBIC WOKE PARENTS ARE TURNING GAY KIDS TRANS!
- Older »
Most Recent Open Thread
The most recent open thread can always be found at the top of this page. When older posts have closed comments, please respond to them on the most recent open thread.Alas, a Blogroll
Alas, A Subscription Service
Archives
Categories
Amp on Twitter
My Tweets
Please. Tea Partiers are enamored of market capitalism, true. But we don’t particularly like state capitalism, which is the kind you’re talking about.
The reason we can’t get along, find common ground, work together to crush our mutual enemies, etc., is that most of you guys are enamored of big government and we hate big government. The end. Tea Partiers can accommodate left anarchists or minarchists. “We want to form communes!” “Do we have to join?” “No, you can do whatever you want.” “OK with us then. Hey, are those organic tomatoes for sale?” “No, but we’ll barter with you for them.” “Will you barter for gold?” “Yes.” “OK then!”
With the left-wing people (I hesitate to call them “progressive”) who demand that we submit our healthcare to government control, who demand that our kids go to government schools, who demand that every problem that arises in the course of life must be handled by government – and at the highest possible level of government, too – there’s no hope for rapprochement.
With the lefties willing to leave us the @%!% alone, we can get along just fine, and return the favor to boot.
The Tea Party just wants to be left alone. They hate the use of government power for coercive purposes. Mostly, they just believe in a ‘hands-off’ theory of governance.
Please. They’re standard issue conservatives. Which means that they’re in favor of government power, just to accomplish different things. Like discrimination, a standard issue conservative goal.
—Myca
“But wait, Myca,” you say. “Of course Tea Partiers are disgusting homophobes! They’re Republican, after all. But I’ll bet they’ve totally adopted laissez-faire principles and abandoned government coercion in every other way!”
“Wow! You sure are right,” I say. “Certainly the Tea Partiers would never be in favor of government coercion in terms of abortion! I’m sure they would be in favor of a woman’s right to freely choose medical procedures without government interference. It’s because, unlike leftists, they love freedom!”
–Myca
There are social conservatives – a majority of social conservatives – in the ranks, certainly. And? I didn’t argue that the Tea Party was a bastion of liberalism, I argued that left-wing love of state power was the factor preventing a Tea Party-progressive axis against corporatism.
I get my information on Tea Party gut feelings, not from LBTGQ blogs or the Palin-uterus-obsessed Mr. Sullivan (I would say that people enamored of his bizarre Trig-provenance theories are “birthers”, but (a) the word is taken and (b) there aren’t any such people, it seems to be a pretty lone crusade) but from being at the rallies, talking to the people, hanging out with them on and offline.
And there are liberals there. Not many, I’ll grant you, but a definite strain of the old-school, 10th-amendment, “leave me the hell alone”, “US out of XXXistan” peacenik liberal. Some of them are $!%! crazy (there’s one lady in Denver who is convinced the UN is out to drain the vitamins from our carrots) but most of them are just old hippies who happen to own homes and pay a lot of taxes on their good jobs as psychologists and doctors and such – and who can do math on the entitlement wave and see what has to be done.
It’s not the social policies, where there is a lot of disagreement (and some agreement to back-burner those questions and let them be fought out by a future Congress consisting of social-con small government types, and social-lib small government types) – it’s the taxes and the spending. You can decide it’s all about homophobia if you want; we don’t mind. But if you think the gay abortions are what’s keeping us from joining the “progressive” anti-corporatist movement, you’re fooling yourself.
I like that even in listening mode the teabagger has flames shooting out of his mouth. Just a constant state of agitation.
Cartoon character: “Has it occurred to you that any time the government tries to help ordinary Americans or regulate Wall Street, you call it tyrannical?”
Robert: It is tyrannical! And your fancy smart talk about how to achieve our shared goals is just “love of” your dishonest conclusion! DON’T TREAD ON ME, “@%!%”-er!
Now, this site does not allow us to downvote comments, nor do I feel certain that implementing this would produce more of what we want for the site. But I think we can agree that we don’t want cliched, unsupported accusations of bad faith like the one Robert just made twice in succession. If he does it again, why not ban him?
Yes, Robert, we’re all well aware of your tendency to ignore evidence in favor of your feelings.
But, see, that’s why I posted extensive documentation in both comments. If you have evidence that Andrew Sullivan is wrong on the facts here, post it. If you have evidence that Bilerico is wrong on the facts here, post it. Saying “Boy, I sure do disagree with these folks on a bunch of stuff, so I get to ignore facts, Wheeeee,” is hardly convincing.
If all you have is more, “Who you gonna believe baby, me or your lying eyes,” then save it. We’ve heard it before.
And so they are broadly in favor of government coercion, just when it’s being used for stuff they favor. And so they are broadly in favor of expanded government power, * as long as it’s being used for stuff they favor.
And so their attitude towards government coercion and power is indistinguishable from the attitude of other Republicans, or, for that matter, most Democrats.
—Myca
* this link is from the Christian Science Monitor, and though I understand that the Science part might give you some trouble, hopefully the Christian part will be enough for you to not stick your fingers in your ears, humming.
Yeah, but expanded government power over health care is good in the case of abortion. Which is, of course, why that particular expansion of government power is smaller government.
I’m not enamored of big government. Not for its own sake, anyway. I think the government offers the best solution to at least some problems, and should be big enough to solve those problems, but that’s not the same as wanting the indefinite expansion of government, as an end in itself.
Right. Exactly. The “So?” is that they’re in favor of bigger government in some ways just like me.
This is why the big/small government debate is so fucking inane. I don’t think the government should have the power to assassinate people, commit torture, or engage in warrantless surveillance. So I’m for small government. And that’s the way it’s been throughout most of the 20th century. So I’m a conservative.
Lookit me! I’m a small government conservative!
Except that, no, the ‘small government conservative’ position is that the government ought to have wildly expansive and unprecendented powers. It ought to be bigger and more powerful. It just ALSO ought to fuck the poor.
It’s not a position, really. It’s a slogan. Trying to claim it as a position or principle is meaningless and futile … but it’s fun to watch people try.
—Myca
This reminds me of the argument I heard from many Republicans during the Bush administration that we liberals really ought to embrace Dubya, because after all, look how he expanded government spending!
Like … do they really think that we just love spending so much that we don’t care what it’s spent on? Of course we care. AND SO DO THEY.
We think some expenditures are wise that they think are foolish (like a strong social safety net), and they think some expenditures are wise that we think are foolish (like spending money on official government discrimination, torture, elective wars, etc).
That’s not because I luuuuuuurve big government and want to marry it, that’s because I’m not a homophobic warmonger, and because I believe things work better with a strong social safety net.
—Myca
Never having been to a TP rally or listened to a TP speaker in my life, i’m still going to go out on a limb and say that I understand “big” government to mean “highly funded by taxes” government. You know, like the difference between a “big corporation” and a “small corporation.”
More money passing through the government = bigger. At least in their eyes.
And because their vision of the government overall is smaller, they think it’s reasonable to claim the “small government” mantle.
“small” =\ “weak”
and
“small” \= “nonintrusive”
Sure, except that they end up using it to mean ‘nonintrusive’ fairly often, which is how Robert uses it above in the sentence, “And there are liberals there. Not many, I’ll grant you, but a definite strain of the old-school, 10th-amendment, “leave me the hell alone”, “US out of XXXistan” peacenik liberal.”
The, “leave me the hell alone,” and the, “US out of XXXistan,” are both part of ‘nonintrusive,’ rather than ‘relying on lower taxes overall,’ especially coming from the kind of ‘peacenik liberals’ Robert is referencing.
I mean, I agree with you that they use, “leave me the hell alone,” as a beard to sell you on, “abolish the EPA and the FDA while we keep prisoners jailed indefinitely,” but it’s clear that their use of ‘small government’ is not restricted to meaning specifically, “having less money passing through.” Robert has often referred to the ‘leave me the hell alone’ component as a major, if not THE major point.
—Myca
No disagreement there.
I think you put it correctly when you noted that everyone wants government to interfere in some places (abortion/ market/ health care/ civil liberties/ antiterrorism) and not in others (abortion/ market/ health care/ civil liberties/ antiterrorism). One side’s “minor inconvenience not affecting anyone” is the other side’s “huge problem that threatens the country,” and vice versa.
I also agree that it doesn’t make sense to brand one as “small” and the other as “big.” Both are intrusive in their own way. I must admit though that it seems liberals are much more likely to think taxes should be raised and services commensurately increased. That is fairly characterized as “big government” though I am often in support of it nonetheless.
The be fair, under George W Bush we did get a significant expansion of the safety net, in the form of Medicare part D. There are a lot of quibbles I’d, er, quibble with — that there is literally no funding mechanism (NONE!), that they didn’t attempt cost controls — but compared to the status quo, Medicare part D was still a good idea.
Also, you don’t have to be a homophobic warmonger to be a Republican — I’ve really admired some of the within-the-GOP activism GOProud has done this year, for example. (Of course, it’s also true that huge portions of the GOP establishment still reject GOProud.) And Log Cabin Republicans spearheaded one of the marriage equality lawsuits that’s looking really good (technically, an anti-DOMA suit).
Don’t get me wrong — I realize that the large majority of Conservatives are either actively anti-LGBT, or willing to go along with anti-LGBT in their party. (The same is true of too many Democrats, but the number of Democrats who are actively fighting on the right side of LGBT issues is much larger). I just thought it was worth pointing out that there are exceptions to the generalizations, and if the GOP gets much better on this issue over the next quarter-century (as I expect it will), it will be partly to the credit of GOProud and Log Cabin Republicans.
I think the division isn’t on big/small government — I see no evidence, when you look at actual legislation, that conservatives in power leads to the government shrinking — but on taxes. Being anti-tax isn’t the same as being pro-small-government, since you can cut taxes and grow government simultaniously, by blowing up the deficit.
I think characterizing tax policy as “big/small’ is sloppy and makes it harder to understand the issues, because putting it that way makes it easy for politicians to pretend to be for smaller government while they’re actually using deficit spending to make the government bigger.
Conservatives are broadly anti-tax; liberals think some taxes should be raised. I think that’s a fair statement of the actual policy difference. But do the conservatives here agree that’s fair?
ETA: Although of course, some prominent conservatives do favor raising taxes on poor people. So maybe it should be more like “conservatives are generally anti-tax.”
Great cartoon, Jen.
I think the “Tea Party” (as something other than standard issue right wingers and extreme right wingers) is largely an astroturf phenomenon and/or media creation. If they were real, they sure as hell wouldn’t have been voting for Republicans.
Was there a big, vocal outpouring of support amongst Tea Partiers for the California marijuana legalization initiative? I didn’t notice it if there was.
Really? Because I think that the pentagon’s budget should be cut in half, and we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq.
Does that make me a small-government liberal? If not, why not? Is it because the Bush administration didn’t raise taxes to invade two countries, but instead put it off so that the grown-ups would have to deal with it later?
I mean, I get what you’re saying, but if smaller government is a good-in-itself, pitch it as a good-in itself. If it’s good because it will tend to reduce government tyranny, then it makes no sense to endorse both the small government AND the government tyranny, which is what the Tea Party seems to be doing.
—Myca
I’d say that’s a fair description, Amp, and I agree with you that the sloppy language used (guilty as charged) does make it easier for dishonest pols to appeal to folks like me with BS rhetoric that they don’t mean.
To account for things like Camp’s idea (which I’m broadly in agreement with, as are a lot of conservatives), it might be fairer to say that conservatives are people who want the government to be the provider of last, worst resort. If there is any way possible for something to be done privately, it ought to be done privately. (If someone had come up with a viable plan for beating the Nazis and the Soviets through private contractors, we’d have been on board.) *As a result of that preference*, we generally want taxes to be low. But the desire for low taxes is an outcome of the preference, rather than the preference itself.
(Other than the natural human preference for having one’s own taxes be as low as possible, of course, which I think even pro-big-government liberals endorse ).
Because I think that the pentagon’s budget should be cut in half
So do I. But I also think our social spending needs to be cut in half. Let’s compromise, and cut 25% from both.
Does that make me a small-government liberal?
If you agree with my proposed compromise, I’d have no problem calling you a small-government liberal.
Right. I think that this may be where the actual difference is.
I believe that things ought to be done well. I have no particular attachment to the government as a mechanism, nor to the private sector. I think that there are things either one is properly suited to.
My attachment is to seeing things done right, not seeing them done privately or publicly. I think that maybe the right takes as an article of faith that, “If there is any way possible for something to be done privately, it ought to be done privately,” because that will BE doing it right (or better).
I just don’t think that’s proved.
—Myca
Amp:
I see no evidence (especially when you look at actual legislation) that conservatives have ever been in power. Certainly Republicans have been in power. But not conservatives. The gap between the two is what led to the rise of the Tea Party movement. They got tired of seeing that the party that was supposed to be conservative actually wasn’t and decided to do something about it.
Gin-in-Whiskey (which sounds like a great way to ruin good whiskey) and Myca, the distinction between “big government” vs. “small government” or “intrusive government” vs. “non-intrusive government” in the minds of the Tea Party movement does not seem to be a direct function of amount of taxes it collects or spends. Amp, it’s not opposition to taxes per se. In fact, the distinction is a direct function of whether or not the powers exercised by the Federal government can be justifed on the basis of the Constitution. If a power being exercised by the Federal government is not explicitly granted to it by the Constitution they are highly suspicious of it and think the Feds should be out of it. Most Federal programs these days seem to be justified on the basis of the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution, Article I Section 8:
But the Congress’ and (so far) Supreme Court’s interpretation of this clause seems to mean to them that the Congress can legally do whatever a majority of both Houses seems to think will promote the general welfare of the United States, which supercedes the rest of that section (which consists of a list of some very specific Congressional powers). Why list specific powers granted to Congress if they can do anything they want anyway? A review of documents such as the Federalist Papers and others seems to me to show that such a belief is in pretty strong opposition to what the people who wrote the Constitution intended. If the powers exercised by the Federal government were restricted to those specifically granted to it in the Constitution then it wouldn’t need to collect nearly as many taxes. Thus, reduction of Federal taxes would be a secondary effect of the Tea Party movement’s primary intent.
Now, especially in the case of social welfare programs, that would mean that the States would have to set up and run those programs themselves, determine their extent, and fund them from their own tax revenues. That would in turn require the States to get the representatives of their own citizens to vote to determine these measures. One of the foundational principles of a Federal Republic is to force as many decisions as possible into State and local government where the representatives are closer to the people they represent and are more responsive to them. The current concentration of power in the Federal government is counter to that. It is a major mistake to say that Tea Party movement folks are “anti-government” and “anti-tax”. They realize they need government and government services (e.g., roads, police, fire departments). They realize these need to be paid for. But they want the distribution of who does what to create, fund and run these services arranged on a Federalized basis as they believe that the Constitution means to do. What they perceive as the improper assumption of power by the Federal government and the distinction between the powers and functions of the State/local governmental bodies and the Federal government is an inescapably significant component of their focus. To lump them together and say that the Tea Party movement is “anti-government” fatally misses the point if you wish to reach an honest understanding of their perspective.
It also makes me wonder if the left does NOT see a useful distinction between these two – or else wonder if they are anti-Federalist, and wish to deliberately remove that distinction and concentrate power in the Federal government.
As far as abortion goes, I would say that conservatives in general agree with the philosophy as expressed in the Declaration of Independence:
It is thus a proper function of government to secure a person’s God-given right to life – especially when prior to their birth that person’s own mother wishes to extinguish that person’s ability to exercise that right. They recognize any person’s right to health care regardless of whether they are male or female. But they don’t recognize abortion as health care.
RonF:
Ah, but Ron, as you know, the question of whether or not a fetus is a person is not such a simple matter as that, at least not if you are going to take other religious traditions that disagree with Christianity into consideration.
Ah, Federalism.
You see, all movements (that I know of) are hopeful. The people in them think that if everyone thought their way, the world would just be a wonderful place.
We tried the kind of radical Federalism RonF was talking about. It fails. Yes, doing away with all Federalist bits of the government would fail too–other countries have tried that but the Civil War resulted from trying it your way.
Great cartoon, Jen!
As I think of it, when big business colludes with the high levels of the government, that is the huge problem. Government by itself is just a tool, particularly in a nation where the people are the government, at least in theory. (Of course, by now I’m so jaded by the politics in the U.S. that I predict that the economically powerful will always have a stranglehold over the government of this country.)
On a side note, Ron, your comment that
sounds a lot like the “No True Scotsman” cliche.
@RonF:
Yeah, I’ll just bet that’s what they tell themselves. Now show me the part of the constitution that requires a woman allow someone to live in her body for nine months. The same people that make that argument would scream about tyranny and smash apart a room if someone told them they had to let someone live in their *house* for nine months. Of course it helps to not think of women as people with any kind of inherent rights, or at least not the same rights as real people have. I’ve yet to meet one that wasn’t also enraged by the very idea that society should help those children in their pursuit of life, liberty, or happiness.
I’ll believe anti-choicers are arguing in good faith when they support birth control, sex education, and social programs. You know, things that actually drastically reduce the number of abortions. Until then it just looks like they hate women and want to make them suffer for not staying in their place. That it’s usually poor minorities suffering is just icing on the conservative cake to make it all the sweeter for them.
Well JT, perhaps RonF was using that quote to help make it clear that the Declaration of Independence excluded women and so laws that deny women the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are perfectly within the foundational beliefs of the US (and he certainly has plenty of historical proof to back that up). And for further support of this view, we’ve recently had Scalia tell us that women can’t be considered either citizens or persons, at least in terms of having equal protection of laws*.
So fetus** = person, women not so much.
* I don’t know whether Scalia believes that in some cases the use of citizen(s) or person(s) in the Constitution does include women; he may well have a Humpty Dumpty attitude toward the words that varies from clause to clause.
** Or maybe not, if the fetus is female.
JThompson:
I would scream if someone squatted in my house for 9 months, and would not hesitate to exercise my rights to remove them. However, if I had agreed upon a 9-month lease with them and then decided I wanted them out after they moved in I would expect that the State would intervene on their side, not mine.
I would also expect that absent any threat of violence on the squatter’s part the State would not let me remove a squatter by killing them.
In my state I would merely need to give them a 30 day notice form and they would have to leave after that time. If they did not leave when the 30 days had expired, the state would intervene on my side. In neither your example nor my example is the law unconstitutional.
Your example fails to support your position.
I’m not familiar with this cliche you’re talking about.
The context suggests that you’re trying to make the claim that GOP politicians are automatically conservative; that there’s no significant difference between “GOP” and “conservative”. Let’s put it this way – there were times when I was told that I needed to go somewhere and take “Feminism 101”. I’d suggest that rather than me getting into a lengthy discussion here you should take “Conservativism 101”. And I don’t mean from the New York Times. You need to get your hands dirty over at places that support conservative principles.
The reason that candidates who received endorsement from Tea Party movement people won numerous GOP primaries over establishment GOP candidates was because of this very issue. For a number of years there have been increasing complaints that a number of GOP Federal legislators are “RINO”s – “Republicans In Name Only”. But that’s not used very much anymore. The reason is not because the GOP has moved to be more conservative but because conservatives have abandoned the concept that GOP establishment = conservative. Thus the rise of the Tea Party movement.
It was easier to co-opt the GOP than to form a 3rd party because the constituency was already there. Conservative voters were voting for GOP candidates because they were the lesser of two evils. When the Tea Party movement started up it gave GOP primary and general election voters someone to vote for instead of having to decide who to vote against. The result was a record turnover in the House, both in absolute numbers and in percentage. That didn’t happen because GOP = conservative, it happened because GOP != conservative as far as conservatives are concerned.
But, please – go ahead and keep making that mistake. It can only help the conservative cause.
I thought about it and finally decided that this really isn’t worth a new response. You can read any of the approximately 80,000 abortion threads on this blog to read the proper dismissal of this absurdity.
OK, RonF, so does that mean that you favour abortion being illegal if a woman purposefully got pregnant but legal if she didn’t? Because your analogy falls apart at that point. After all, I can think of quite a number of ways in which a woman can get pregnant through no fault of her own.*
*Well, unless you’re one of those people who thinks having sex is an automatic “lease agreement.” And that takes us right back to JThompson’s point about anti-choicers wanting to make women suffer for not staying in their place.
It’s an imperfect analogy, I’ll admit, Jake. But then the analogy comparing a fetus in a woman’s body to the illegal occupation of real estate was JThompson’s, not mine. It would be tyranny for someone to implant a fetus in a woman’s body by force. It is not tyranny to insist that having taken a voluntary action to create that fetus a person must not then kill it. Taking a defenseless innocent life seems to me the ultimate tyranny. My view is that preventing abortion is not imposing tyranny, it’s protecting against it.
AndIf:
I can’t answer for “anti-choicers”, whoever they are. I have no problem with legal birth control or providing education to children about how human reproduction works. “Social programs” is rather too broad of a term to address in this context. Using the term “anti-choicers” to describe all opponents of legal abortion and assigning a specific set of attitudes towards sex education, birth control and “social programs” is about as accurate as assigning a single set of specific attitudes and political positions to “gays” or “feminists”.
Do you oppose a woman’s right to choose her own medical procedures without government interference?
Then yes, you can answer for, “anti-choicers,” because you are one.
—Myca
You give yourself too much credit. Your analogy is a failure, not merely imperfect.
I’m going to do something unusual for me and agree with Ron, a bit.
I mean, there really is a distinction between Republicans and Conservatives; it’s fair to say that the senator from Maine (either one) is a centrist Republican but not a Conservative Republican, for instance.
Furthermore, if you asked me what I thought of the job liberals have done governing, I’d say that liberals haven’t gotten a chance to govern; Obama is a centrist, Bill Clinton was a centrist, and the Senate is designed in a way to strongly empower conservative Democrats when the Dems have a majority there, especially now that so few Republicans are willing to cross party lines.
In other words, I make a distinction between “liberal” (aka “progressive”) and “Democrat,” and so do virtually all the liberal Dems I know. And that’s not a “no true Scotsman” argument — there are actually real ideological differences between a liberal Democrat and a centrist/conservative democrat. So I think maybe I should give what Ron’s saying some credence, as well. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and all that.
That said, it does seem to me that the ideological spectrum of elected Democrats is much wider — hence the great trouble Reid has had keeping all the Democrats voting together, versus the ease with which Republicans maintain party unity. I think this is because the Tea Party really has use primaries effectively to keep their officials in line, whereas liberals either can’t or haven’t done the same thing.
(P.S. I don’t know what a gander is).
Ron,
The point that I was trying to make – which you either missed or are avoiding – is that is presumptuous for you to crown yourself the King of Conservatism. You’re going to have to convince most people by actual facts (which I’m guessing most of the readers of this thread would be interested in; I’d be, for sure), not your personal dogma.
By the way, I am plenty well informed about conservatism at this moment… but thank you for pretending you know everything about my knowledge base anyway.
Just one question: why is it that you expect me to go through extensive “Conservatism 101”, yet you can’t trouble yourself to do a simple google search for “No True Scotsman”?*
* Here’s a good link on the term
That’s true, it’s probably not a good idea to minimize political views to just two parties and ignore real differences.
What gets to me is that people claim to know the true labels of other politicians based on vague, unclear concepts that often boil down to personal bias. Either that, or the goalposts are being moved in an inconsistent way. To continue your example of Senators, yes, the Maine Senators could easily be described as “not all that conservative”. Same with, say, Scott Brown, or even Mark Kirk. But… nowadays it’s the people who have a long conservative history who are being labeled as “not true conservatives”, like former Senator Robert Bennett of Utah, or Bob Ingliss of SC (mainly because he dared to defy his reprimanded colleague Joe Wilson). If the predictions are true, even Richard Lugar of Indiana is facing a primary challenge for being “not true”.
It bugs me, that’s all.
A gander is a male goose.
Hens love roosters,
geese love ganders,
everyone else loves Ned Flanders.
Amp refuses to endorse the heteronormativity of that song, and thus pretends not to know. But in his heart, he knows.
I was going to ask why it is I should keep my male goose down — is there a time when people would lose their tempers and so release their ganders to attack and peck at helpless guests? — but then I remembered that the expression is “dander,” not gander.
I was once attacked and pecked by a gander.
Oh yeah, geese will no-foolin’ fuck you up.
My ducks sometimes try this, but it’s like being attacked by annoyed salad tongs … sort of pinchy, but mostly ridiculous.
—Myca
I was about five at the time, so the thing was almost as big as I was. Why yes, it was traumatic.
You’re lucky it wasn’t a swan. Pretty, but vicious. They’ve been known to break limbs on full-grown human adults.
“take a gander” is an expression that means to take a look at something. (Is that a South thing or something? I thought it was weird you guys didn’t know.)
Let’s not drag us all down with Barry. I know what a gander is. (And I’m not from the South.)
Heh, I didn’t even read what cliche the word got used in; I assumed it was “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
“Take a gander” has plenty of play in sunny CA.
The cliche is “sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” and is more evocative, as it warns that preparations for the killing and consumption of one bird are just as applicable to another. A far more dire warning.
I would be less shocked that you didn’t know this if it wasn’t canonical Star Trek. If you tell me that as a SF writer you haven’t watched Wrath of Khan at least thirty times, my world will be shaken. Shaken, I tell you. I thought that was like, a LAW.
“good for” produces 140,000 google results. I respectfully submit the cliche exists in more than one form.
Sauce for has 1.9 million. So there. :)
THERE CANNOT BE MORE THAN ONE TRUE STATEMENT!!!!!!!
Sorry, punch-drunk from tired.
Oh a swan can mostly take on a gander.