Whiterabbit I don't see why reading the rest of that page helps.
I already had read the whole page, but I will go back and look in more detail because you asked me.
One of the main characters articles is really racist towards native Americans. The fact he also wrote a really pro american article does not (to me) make that okay, even though his mother (and the author) seem to think it does.
I fail to see what point you are making. Are you trying to argue that patriotism excuses racism? As long as you love America, you can hate anybody you like?
And yes, I have now looked and noticed that another of his articles (about slavery), though not entirely visible, seems to make referance to people "whining" about it.
But again, it is okay because he loves America! Predjudice is okay as long as it is backed up with blind patriotism!

Also, the idea that the teacher (the usual ridiculous straw man liberal that right wing types like to bring out) has the kids write an essay on "Americas Crimes" is just ridiculous.
Yeah, liberals are so evil aren't they? They all hate America!
Next week will they be writing "Why I hope America gets beaten in Iraq" and "Why the soviets deserved to win the cold war"?
This is so laughably bad I cant believe you have called me back to look at it more closely. The closer I look, the more ridiculous this situation becomes!

I read it once and thought it was insulting native americans, now I see it also insults blacks and liberals!

Whiterabbit I think you have seriously miss understood Maus if you think it was having a go at Jewish people or that it is in anyway equivelent to the racist portrayals of black people in Better Days.
The guy who wrote Better Days seems to get his ideas on how black people act from watching one too many episodes of COPS.
I'm also a little curious why you think he picked Hyenas of all things? If you want to divert accusations of being racist, that is hardly the most flattering animal to choose! Is he saying black people are cackling scavengers?
When you combine this with the article he has the main character write about black people whining about slavery (which his mother sees no problem with), the evidence is starting to stack up!

Whiterabbit my point with the porn, sexism and incest is that, combined with the racism and straw man political enemies (thanks for pointing more of those out to me) this comic does not seem to present conservatives in a very good light at all.
In fact, it almost seems to be forefiling liberal Americans very worst, most offensive stereotypes of what people in the red states are like (red necks, racist, inbred etc).
Worst of all...since it is furry porn it makes conservatives look like...(I am afraid to say it)...furries!
I want to make it clear at this point, I am jsut saying that this is the impression of conservatives the comic gives. I know there are lots of liberal furries two. Furries can come from all political schools of thought and we cant blame the right for them!

To me, this comic comes across like a sneaky undercover attack on conservative vales, rather then supporting them.

Oh gods no... Not just furry rage, it's an all out furry war! D:

Actually that's a really good discussion. Well done both of you. This interesting stuff! :)

Would you ever consider doing a "fake" conservative comic with extremist views like the ones Hark mentions? I've considered aspects of that since my comic looks sort of like some sexy pro war thing.

If I ever considered writing something parodying conservatives I would end up not bothering.
I cant come up with anything funnier then conservapedia, and that isn't supposed to be a parody!

Than maybe we're reading the same page through different filters, but I see nothing racist towards Native Americans. He says they were pagans, and they were. He says they were stone aged, and they had yet to discover the uses of copper and bronze as weapons and tools. He says they performed slash-and-burn farming techniques as well as blood sacrifice, and they did (the Meso-Americans did, anyway). The page then peters off with him saying they were swallowed up and displaced by the Europeans, which is what happened. I saw no derogatory language or implications of the same. All I saw were facts presented in a child-like manner, which is unsurprising since it was supposedly written by a character who is a child. Where is the racism?

And no, patriotism does not excuse racism, but I saw no racism there to excuse. If you noticed the "whining" about slavery, then surely you read the first line of that paper as well.

Slavery is bad, which is why we ended it.

To me, this sounds like a child who is confused why people are still complaining about America's part in slavery, when we abolished it over a hundred years ago.

I agree that the Teacher seemed like a pretty blatant straw man, but you cannot deny that they're out there, some of them in a position of power over children, and not afraid to use it to indoctrinate them into liberalism. I've actually had it happen to me a couple of times, myself. He used this straw man (rather clumsily I admit) to progress his story, and give you a better sense of the main characters' personalities. Now I can't speak for the artist, but I doubt he was going for a "all liberals hate America, we should fail in Iraq, and the commies should have won the cold war", but wanted to point out that they are out there, and they do exist (sad as that thought is).

Where does it insult blacks and (in general) liberals? I see one specific person maligned, calling a kid retarded, but reading further on I see that he does ride a short bus, so maybe he is. I don't know.

I don't think that Maus was having a go at Jews, only pointing out that assigning a species to a race is hardly something that Jay Naylor thought up. Many of the early portrayals of blacks in his comic were somewhat stereotypical, but like any writer, he improves with age, and they tend to lose their "Ebonics-street-slang".

As to why he chose hyenas, I wouldn't know. But if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that besides elephants, lions, and giraffes, no creature makes me think of Africa more than hyenas. Why didn't he go with one of the others? Well, he's never used (to my knowledge) ungulates, so giraffes are out. Elephants don't translate well to "furry-ism" because if you've ever seen an elephant's front feet, you could see how difficult it would be to evolve hands with opposable thumbs from those (same reason for ungulates). As for the lions, he could have decided to not go with them, because he was already using canines and felines for Europeans. Again, this is all speculation, since I can't pick his brain. Hyenas are more than cackling scavengers, they have some of the tightest-knit family structures of the African mammals (only the African Wild Dog is closer). They are also top predators, not just scavengers. It's been speculated that since they do most of their hunting at night, and lions come along to steal their kills, leaving the hyenas out on the fringe, waiting for scraps, that they are strictly cowardly scavengers. With the advent of nightvision technology, this myth has been put to rest. The evidence is indeed, starting to stack up. :P

Regarding the porn, does it make anyone's opinion, views, or statements less valid just because they make pornographic drawings? Sexism, perhaps, but what about when you have it running both ways? Incest isn't good, but it is a fact, it does happen, and portraying it "off-screen" in a comic doesn't make you a bad person, nor invalidate your beliefs. I'll grant you that it doesn't paint you in a very good light, but you can't please everyone. As to fulfilling liberals worst views of red states, many of those people are going to have those views regardless, unless they meet someone from one of those states that proves otherwise. And even then they may consider that person the exception that proves the rule.

In any case, can you name me one group of people that ever existed where one or a small section of that group didn't have people who embarrassed the rest?

Ozone, I really wouldn't call this a furry war. Heck it's not even a furry tiff. :P And no, I wouldn't do a fake conservative comic with those views. If I wanted to hear conservative bashing, I'd turn on NBC news. ^_^

Wow, this has to be the single longest post I've ever made.

The Furry Civil war rages on!
The Furs shall Rise Again!

White rabbit, so the way he as talking about native americans was just factual? Come off it! that is a very shallow argument.
One could describe white people at the time in the following terms-
"White people back then were extremely dirty, war like, practiced slavery and aggressively attacked and destroyed other cultures."
Those statements are true about Europeans at the time.
But does that make it a balanced view of western civilisation?
No, obviously not!
He simplifies native american culture to a couple of facts (despite the fact there were many native American civilisations, with widely varying behaviours) and uses that as he basis to describe them.
He only mentions negative things about the Native cultures. While you can argue those things are true, the fact that he can only see bad things about those cultures shows that he holds a negative view towards them.

White rabbit to say that he is not attacking liberals also seems a bit ridiculous. If you put forward a scene in which the good characters believe one thing and the bad characters believe another, you are making a value judgement about the two sides. Better Days main character is very much a stand in for the author and the views he expresses are the authors views.
The purpose of this scene is to demonstrate the bad things liberals believe and why the heroes unshakable patriotism is good.
These characters are there to teach us a moral, and the moral of the story is "liberals are slagging off America and that is wrong! We should love America as blindly as this child does! Without doubt, or question!"
Now whether or not that is a good moral is besides the point, but it is clearly the moral. And a moral that states that liberals are not patriotic is an insult to liberals.
Think about it this way- If I (as an English person) made a comic where a ridiculously ignorant, fat American shows up spouting poorly thought out arguments why America is the best only to be shown to be a fool by a clever, noble, good looking English guy, wouldn't you think I was trying to say something about America? Or would I just be commenting on that one American character?
Whether the author intends it or not, you have to admit that if you present all characters from one group in a certain way, it is going to seem like you are commenting on people from that group.
(Just in case anyone gets mad, that was just an example! I am not going to do that and I condemn anyone who does!)

As for the Hyenas, you seem to have just admited that he makes them steroetypical and speaking ebonics street slang at the start but improves over time. So he was a bti racist but toned it down? How good of him!
As for the Hyenas, I was nto atempting to malign the noble hyena, but I think your biology lesson on them is going a bit off topic.
if I made a comic portraying Americans as rats or pigs, I could argue that these creatures are intelligent animals (and they are, I like pigs and rats!) but the message of using these animals is a negative one in our society.
Hyenas are a cool animal, but in our society they have a bad reputation. Why pick an animal that has a clearly bad reputation? they may not be cackling scavengers, but that is how they are mostly imagined.
If you are claiming he picked them because he believes they represent black peoples close knit societies or the fact that lions (presumably white people, since they are cats) are stealing from them, I think you are being a little ridiculous.
(But we can agree that Hyenas are cool. I sort of wish I had put some in my comic now. They ARE cool.)

White rabbit, of course you are right about porn, nothing wrong with porn, but I was simply commenting that if I was going to pick a comic to champion my views, I wouldn't pic one that sells furry porn on the side!

Why perhaps many of the authors insults are accidental, done because he did not think hard enough rather then out of malice, they are still present.

You are right that some people will believe bad stereotypes of conservatvies regardless but as someone who does not believe such things about conservatives, I was shocked to find a conservative comic seemingly confirming these negative ideas!

WARNING! THREAD HIJACKING UNDERWAY! WARNING!
I think we've both taken this thread a bit off topic. :P

Re: the Native American paper. You expect a balanced view from a paper with five sentences on it (I didn't count them, just guessing here)? He very well could have extolled their many virtues in the proceeding paragraphs, but we are only given a snippet to show why the teacher is upset with the main character's writings. The fact is, we don't have the whole paper or know everything that Fisk thinks of Native Americans, and I doubt the artist would have put them up on his page, as they would make for a fairly boring comic. But we also come to the crux of this disagreement: the paper was written by an eight-year old kid. Of course it's going to be a simplified view. He's hardly likely to wax poetic with complex ideas. Also, he's unlikely to have met many Native Americans, so he has only his textbooks and teachers to formulate his opinion on them.

Re: attacking liberals. When did I say that he wasn't attacking liberals? For that matter, when does he attack liberals themselves, outside of the occasional straw man? He attacks their ideals, to which he objects, but no real person, living or dead is ever maligned. As to the moral, I apparently don't come away with the same one that you are. What I'm getting is "leave the politicking to the politicians and teach what you're being paid to teach". :P I don't see anywhere in that page (or any others for that matter) that states or even implies "Liberal = unpatriotic".

Re: the hyena thing. So once a racist, always a racist (and I'm not claiming he is or isn't, I've never met the man)? A person can't change or improve over time? Leopard = no spot moving? I've already commented on why he may have chosen hyenas. To me, they are one of the two or three animals I think of when I picture Africa. He may have done the same, I don't know. What I am not saying is that he chose them to represent the close-knit community or that lions are stealing from them. I haven't seen any lions in his comics, so I don't know if they are "European" or whatever. In fact, most of his felines appear to be domestic breeds. I can't think of a wild cat breed in any of his comics offhand (make of that what you will).

Re: porn. Just remember that this is the internet, and Rule #34 is always in effect. ALWAYS. X3

Re: Author's insults. I also think none were made out of malice, but I also happen to think that the majority are in the eyes of the reader. It's all about perception, I guess.

But yes, hyenas are pretty cool. X3

Whiterabbit, you're doing some serious straw clutching here.

Really? I thought my arguments were well reasoned. What makes you think that I'm clutching at straws?

Some really well formed opinions and debates in this thread, especially you Hark i enjoyed reading your posts.

On the animal=race thing, i think myself would pick Rhino's for black people, with hyenas being my second choice, not because of what they represent but they're just animals from that region. (and lions don't seem to suit them and monkeys/gorillas ...well c'mon)

For fun, here's how i'd furry the world if i had to categorize like maus:
Caucasians:Cats
Hispanics: Dogs
Blacks: Rhinos or hyenas
Asians: Cranes or Pigs
Indians: Leopards or Elephants
Native Americans: Deer/antelope
Islamic: Camels

I wouldn't categories the world races by animals.
Mainly because you are ALWAYS going to offend somebody.
Which is ironic since a write a comic where every race is categorised as an animal.

Whiterabbit- That picture Philby posted does seem to rather kill your argument.
YOu are trying to come up with moderate and reasonable explanations for the author...and then he draws pictures like that!
I think it is safe to assume that a mind that comes up with that sort of morally reprehensible sentiment is probably not worth giving the benefit of the doubt too.

You also seem to say he is not saying liberals are unpatriotic...yet he has the main liberal character be a teacher who has the kids write articles called "Americas crimes".
Does he then go on to include other liberal characters who are just as patriotic as the right wingers? No. The only liberals we see are the bad guys of the story.

To act as if his only comment was "This one teacher is bad" is being ridiculous. If you only include bad liberal characters in your story you are sending out the message that you think liberals are bad.
Once again, imagine if I write a story where the only American character is called "Asshole Sam" a huge, fat moron who shouts patriotic slogans because he is too stupid to think of anything else to defend him idiotic, simplistic opinions.
He is constantly picking fights, bullying other people, and waving guns in peoples faces because he is sexually inadequate.
But I am not having a go at Americans! I just meant that this one character is bad.
Would you believe me if I used that defence?
If you would....I own this bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in purchasing!

White rabbit if he had truely stopped being racist wouldn't he be ashamed of his earlier strips and want to change them? Instead he leaves them there, just as rude adn crude as ever.
If I wrote something racist and later realised, I would be desperate to take it down and try to remove all copies of it from circulation. But the author here never seems to offer any comment or apology. If he thinks he did anything wrong, he certainly doesn't act like it.

As for the native American thing, I have to agree with Philby, I think you are reaching a bit. The author is showing us exerts of the essays that reflect his views (the main character is the author proxy after all) and his mother then confirms that we are supposed to sympathise with the author. The essay starts out with "why native Americans were bad" and there is no impression giving that he followed this up with a "why they were also good" section. If the author was not trying to say native Americans were bad in his view, he could have shown us a different secction of the essay. The fact is he only shows us that one part then goes out of his way to have the teacher shown to be wrong and the mother and essay writer to be correct. The message is that there is nothing wrong with the sentiments in those essays. And as I have already shown, the sentiments in those essays is unfair and insulting to native Americans.

But at the end of the day, look at that picture Philby posted and then consider that the author also has his own insert character engage in incest...is this really someone you want to defend?

Skullbie
For fun, here's how i'd furry the world if i had to categorize like maus:
Caucasians:Cats
Hispanics: Dogs
Blacks: Rhinos or hyenas
Asians: Cranes or Pigs
Indians: Leopards or Elephants
Native Americans: Deer/antelope
Islamic: Camels

Why Hispanics=Dogs?...Because we are loveable, loyal, always willing to have a good time?

For the record, I'm not complaining nor offended, just curious about why dogs...

Mainly because mexico has quite a bit of stray dogs roaming around(that's how my uncle found his new dog) and the game Phychonauts where there's a level that the dog characters looking so freaking awesome in ponchos <3

I think cats suit white people to a pinch though.

Skullbie
I think cats suit white people to a pinch though.

Lazy, pampered and untrustorthy?

The problem with assigning creatures to human races is that you hugely exagerate the differences between them. A love story between an african man and a chinese woman becomes ridiculous when they're a Giraffe and a Panda. If you're telling a story about race relations what purpose does making everone an animal person serve?

I think animals as races is more effective in war comics or serious comics(a bit like maus only it was doing backgrounds) where it becomes very easy to tell who's who (like when the jewish mice hide themselves as poles/pigs you can still plainly see the mouse behind the pig mask, nice metephor)

Also i think a romance could work if told in the right context. a black man and an Asian woman would have some very different background and upbringing, you could represent that with an animal from Africa and an animal from Asia as a metaphor for 'hey we love each other regardless'.
Or you could use a gorilla and a japanese Macaque to say 'hey were not so different you and me'. Again in the right context it would work.

This will be my last post on this subject, as I've made my views and thoughts on why I think he did what he did, and wish to end my part in this before ill feelings are made. You guys seems to think that you get the whole message of a research paper from a five-line excerpt, and refuse to believe that the negatives which were shown were all that was written on the subject. Negatives which I might add, were all factual. Also remember, that we were being shown why the teacher was upset. If she wanted to demonstrate this to his mother, she's hardly likely to point out the part where he talks about how they used every part of any animal they hunted (as he did here, in a letter his teacher had the class write to Japanese whalers). She is trying to make a point at why she thinks Fisk is being bad. Why would she undermine her own argument?

I'm not sure if he included other "good" or "bad" liberals in his story, as the political angle fades into the background later on. However, I do know that he included many characters who held values that most conservatives wouldn't and didn't always show them in a bad light, but as people who have good sides as well as bad, just like the rest of humanity (or furranity if you prefer). He also showed many characters of whom it is plain held conservative values, but make stupid mistakes like the rest of us. To me, the comic wasn't a "Lib-ralz bad! Hurr hurr hurr!" rant, but a story of a family living their lives, and trying to do the best they can despite their mistakes and flaws. To an extent, we all draw conclusions about the comics we read through the filter of our experiences and personality. I simply prefer to give this one the benefit of the doubt.

I couldn't tell you why he doesn't remove earlier strips. And again, I don't think there was racism inherent in the strips in question. However, I can think of many reasons he MIGHT not have taken them down. Maybe he's lazy (that's why I haven't taken down my earlier, embarrassingly bad drawings for my first few strips). Maybe he doesn't want to as a personal reminder of what he used to do. Maybe he doesn't feel it will do any good since once it's out on the internet, it's out there for good. Or maybe (as I think is the case), he never intended any racism and sees no reason to take them down to satisfy the people who choose to take offense.

As for the picture posted, it looks to me like the work of someone who is extremely tired of people attacking him for his beliefs, and is acting out in a manner that hurts no one. The fact that his author avatar (and NOT him) engaged in incest really doesn't enter into it. It does not necessarily follow that HE would do the same if given the same circumstances, or condone them in others.

Please excuse me if this comes across as rude, but Phillby, you seem adept at drawing the worst conclusions why someone might want do something. If you want to make an allegory on race relations why not use animals? What would you find acceptable? Cars vs. Planes? Amoebas vs. paramecium? Paper vs. plastic? A person might have any one of several good reasons why they would replace races with specific animal types. Maybe they aren't good at drawing human faces. Maybe they want to appeal to young children. Maybe they just like the way they draw furries. Incidentally, I'd love to see a love story about a giraffe and a panda. Sounds like a good formula to me. Just imagine the wealth of "necking" jokes! X3

Skullbie, you hit the nail on the head. Use the animals from that region to represent the races. What more reason do you need? The only difference I would make would be to make Hispanics (those from Central and South America at least) into jaguars, snakes, or maybe birds. Don't quote me on it, but I think that domesticated dogs were unknown to that region until the Europeans brought them over. I think. I'd have to check to make sure. Indians I'd probably make into Tigers, and switch pigs with pandas for Asians. But that would all be personal preference on my part.

Skulbie, those are good points. However I think that by restricting anthropmorthic characters to purely human behavior kind of misses the point of using them in the first place, and if you're using animals to represent races that kind of limits what charactersitics you can use without making a comic about how Mexicans sniff each others bums.

Whiterabbit, I don't belive I am so much jumping to conclusions as standing on an escalator that carries me between them. Why would the Liberal strawoman teacher object to the essays so much if the omited portions were much more reasonable? The entire comic is so full of sexist and racist material that you'd have to be blind to ignore it all. my personal favorite is this one right here , or you can go the Lackadaisy route and use a single species and represent race in a more subtle manner (in this case breed which is a much more sensible analogy than species.)

Thanks for showing me Lackadaisy, it looks like a pretty good comic. I always like to read about past eras. ^_^ However, I fail to see how using the same species/different breed makes that big a difference, since each breed also has personality traits anthropomorphised into them, albeit, in a slightly more subtle way. This is especially true of cats and dogs.

Edit: Argh! I got sucked in again!

Skullbie
Mainly because mexico has quite a bit of stray dogs roaming around(that's how my uncle found his new dog) and the game Phychonauts where there's a level that the dog characters looking so freaking awesome in ponchos <3

I think cats suit white people to a pinch though.

Russians are bears, Americans are eagles, Aussies are kangaroos, South Africans are Springbocks, Indans are Elephants (I think)... It's best to go by countries and their chosen mascot animals, because "races" are a nonsense anyway.

For South American people, I dunno. Thereare Llamas, Armadillos, and Jaguars that people like to associate with...
In America, "black" people often associated themselves with the black panther. :)

Lackadaisy is supposed to be really good, I've never got round to reading it.

Philby I think you are right about animals as people for race being hard to pull off.
Maus is a rare exception that makes it work (and is one of the most powerful graphic novels in existence) and I dont think Better Days is skilled enough to pull it off. In fact I dont think, I know it isn't!


Ozone- Awesome! If we go on mascots, British are Lions! Excellent! I get a kick ass animal!

megan_rose
I think that being an artist and a writer, you're required to put yourself in other people's shoes, to be open-minded, and willing to try new things and experiment. And conservatives generally don't have those qualities.

There are certainly some very conservative comickers out there (Dave Sim anyone?), but I think it's easier to be creative and liberal than creative and conservative.

I don't necessarily agree with that, although I can kind of address why that seems to be the case.

To a large degree, conservatives are (tragically) also religious nuts. We're talking about people who believe that the world came into existence 6000 years ago and that animals were gathered by two aboard a giant boat. When someone becomes convinced that that's real, then it kind of skews one's perspective of fantasy. Especially when you have religion that teaches that other forms of fantasy are blasphemous. (i.e., Christian mothers burning Harry Potter books for spreading the evils of literacy. ...I mean, witchcraft.)

NickGuy
I am an EXTREMELY conservative-minded person...at least when it comes to government. i dont believe in big government snooping in our business...but thats a whole convo for another time.

I choose not to express these views through my comics simply because thats not what i want to read. I think if a conservative view is done right (like Frank Miller) then its so subtle you might not even catch it. Other times its just really blatant and irritating. I want to avoid the blatant part.

Pretty much agree.

I don't like to think of myself having conservative leanings, because I've always kind of associated that term with the religious right, to which I have absolutely no allegiance. But economically and politically, I prefer capitalism to social policies, which is pretty much what defines a conservative. Still, I would rather be called libertarian than conservative, even though that seems to come with negative connotations, much to my surprise.

I'm not particularly fond of the Republican version of conservativism, and I'd love to provide my own commentary about it, but that's not really what my comic is about. I like making tit and ass jokes more.

Someone
To a large degree, conservatives are (tragically) also religious nuts. We're talking about people who believe that the world came into existence 6000 years ago and that animals were gathered by two aboard a giant boat. When someone becomes convinced that that's real, then it kind of skews one's perspective of fantasy. Especially when you have religion that teaches that other forms of fantasy are blasphemous. (i.e., Christian mothers burning Harry Potter books for spreading the evils of literacy. ...I mean, witchcraft.)

I'm a christian and I do believe that the earth isn't billions of years old. I'm just as creative as my libral friends who believe in evolution. I havn't had my parents burn my non religous books but I certainly have gotten shit for my choice in literature. I'm not the only one like this there are plenty of christians that have great imagiantions.

PPPchairman, so how old is the earth? (give or take a few years?)

You've got to have a great deal of imagination if you take every word in the Bible literaly.

I don't personally know any Christians who think the earth is only 6000 years or whatever. None of them have trouble accepting dinosaurs and all the rest. Even the catholic church officially sanctions the big bang. :)

That's a low blow, and does not belong in this thread.

And what do races have to do with conservative webcomickers?

This thread is badly derailed IMO.

Aside from the DD Awards stuff and self-promotion of comics in "Redux: Did you just update?" thread, I am (and have been) very tired of feeling like I have to put on either full armor or a hazard protection suit just to express myself as a conservative in this forum...the feelings and assumptions about conservatives are just so strong, there's no room for a different opinion, even though some say "of course there is." And that saddens me, because there was a time when visiting this forum excited me and captivated my interest on a variety of topics.

*shakes head*

Phillby
You've got to have a great deal of imagination if you take every word in the Bible literaly.

dueeast
I am (and have been) very tired of feeling like I have to put on either full armor or a hazard protection suit just to express myself as a conservative...the feelings and assumptions about conservatives are just so strong, there's no room for a different opinion, even though some say "of course there is." And that saddens me, because there was a time when visiting this forum excited me and captivated my interest on a variety of topics.

The thing is though, there will be no one to support your viewpoint unless you put it forward yourself.

Perhaps the place seems to tilt overly towards one side of politics because those on the other just aren't as forward about expressing their beliefs?

I believe that the earth is 6,000 years old. It does not take any sort of imagination to believe this because I can back up my faith with logic.

and Ozone those christians only believe that way because they don't have enough sense to argue agaist evolution, so they try to combine it with christianity in the hope that they won't be ridiculed for their faith and the Catholic Church is most likly trying to say that the big bang occured to just to hold on to members and bring in evolutionists into the church. (and yes I do believe in dinosaurs existed from fosil evidence and a few verses in the book of Job)

Well that's great you believe what you do. We're all entitled to our own points of view. My Christian fiends might say that you don't know enough about evolution and such though, that sort of thing goes both ways. ;)

The mainstream Catholic church accepts evolution, the big bang and all the rest and so do quite a lot of the other major faiths. :)
But there are of course individuals and individual officials within mainstream religious organisations whose points of view differ, just like there are among us.

Who's right? Well science (the discipline that guides us all regardless of belief), tends to support evolution and all the rest.

But then that doesn't really affect you as an individual. What does it matter what everyone else tends to follow when you're happy with what you know? I don't support people trying to forcibly, antagonistically convert others to their way of thinking, so I'm glad you remain steadfast in your beliefs.
I hope you maintain them, Good luck PPPchairman, I wish you well. :)

Ozone,

It's not that others aren't forward about expressing their beliefs...it's that they get ripped to shreds on multiple fronts if they do.

I've got a thick skin but it gets tiresome, my friend. Why beat your head against a wall when you can just do your own thing somewhere else? So that's what I do most of the time. I have health issues, I don't need the stress, y'know? B)

ozoneocean

dueeast
I am (and have been) very tired of feeling like I have to put on either full armor or a hazard protection suit just to express myself as a conservative...the feelings and assumptions about conservatives are just so strong, there's no room for a different opinion, even though some say "of course there is." And that saddens me, because there was a time when visiting this forum excited me and captivated my interest on a variety of topics.

The thing is though, there will be no one to support your viewpoint unless you put it forward yourself.

Perhaps the place seems to tilt overly towards one side of politics because those on the other just aren't as forward about expressing their beliefs?

Dueeast, I hate to say it, but that sounds like the standard conservative cop out.
Every time there is any open forum for discussion, right wingers seem to end up accusing it of being biased, basically because it doesn't favour them.

Web sites that are not strickly conservative? Obvious liberal bias!
News sources that are not strongly right wing? More liberal bias!
Wikipedia? Bias nonsense! If anyone can edit it, liberals will be on there as well as conservatives and that means it is liberal bias!

And now DD forums are too liberal as well.

Is there anything that isn't biased against conservatives? Any area that they can debate against liberals without being so easily overwhelmed?
Why can liberals put forward their ideas so effectively when there is an open forum but conservatives cant?

I don't think there is a statistic that conservatives don't own computers or go on the internet, so I cant see why conservatives shouldn't be able to explain and defend their views as well as liberals.

Your answer just smacks of a very over used conservative excuse that comes up every time they seem to be losing a debate. Is there any problem conservatives dont blame on liberal bias? Liberal bias is probably to blame for us not finding WMD in Iraq!

PPPchairman, I am not sure I want to get into a debate with you because I am 50/50 that you are just being silly on purpose.