left wing movies

[CanuckMA]

So if I follow your logic, the conservative scientist looks at ancient Rome and says "We're live longer than they did. We're OK", while the liberal scientist looks at now and says "Why can't we do better than this?"

 

[Ramirez]

So if I follow your logic, the conservative scientist looks at ancient Rome and says "We're live longer than they did. We're OK", while the liberal scientist looks at now and says "Why can't we do better than this?"

sounds like it to me, the conservative scientist looks at cancer and says we'll survival rates are better than 50 years ago, no point looking for a cure, the liberal says there is a cure, the conservative scientist at diabetes and says it is treatable , give up looking for a cure, the utopian liberal one says he can find a cure.....etc.

Actually seems to me every scientist would be liberal by that logic because they never stop striving to do better, advance knowledge, find cures etc.

 

[billc]

Not quite. A conservative might look at that and say, wow, we have come along way and with hard work we can go a lot farther, look how far America has come in just over 200 years. A liberal might look at the same situation you mention and say, after all this time, people are still being mistreated, and there are still people who are in poverty. that might be a little closer to what he is saying.

I remember hearing the star fish story from Dr. Laura. the story goes something like this. A guy is walking on the beach after the tide goes out. There are thousands of star fish stranded on the sand and rocks and they are dying. there is a guy a little farther on tossing star fish back into the water. The original guy walks up and says "Buddy, You can't save all of these star fish." The other guys says "no, but I can save this one, and this one...."

I know, it is a simple story, and you might think it is dumb, however it can show the difference between a liberal and conservative thinker. I know, you just groaned, but give me a few clicks on my keyboard.

On the O'reilly show, he interviewed Sam Donaldson, formerly of the Sunday morning news show. He is a liberal, o'reilly more conservative. O'reilly asked Sam about school vouchers saying " i Support school vouchers because the public schools are broken." Or something like that. Sam Donaldson, the liberal said, "I would support school vouchers if you could show me that you could help all the children, if you can't then I am against vouchers." I couldn't believe it when I heard it. it helped me come up with this corollary to the starfish story.

The guy walks up and says, " you can't save all these starfish" the other guy says, "I can save this one, and this one..." At which point the other guy says, "If you can't save them all, I won't let you save any of them," and beats up the other guy.

 

[billc]

Remember, conservatives are the people against rationing healthcare, thinking that there are ways to improve healthcare that do not demand limiting access to cures and better medicine. the liberals are the ones who point to abortion and "end of life counseling' and in the "death penalty on t.v." thread, the liberal side are the ones who believe it may be better to abort a healthy baby if it might end up in a bad foster home or a bad adoptive situation. There is a big difference here and I think that is what Prager is getting at. More positive outlook by conservatives, less so among liberals. It is truly a Yin and yang thing.

 

[billc]

Ramirez, did you read Pragers column, it would explain more and in a clearer way the point he is trying to make.

Also, this idea of not advancing, the liberal side wants the developing world to stop developing, because of the effects of development on the environment. They also believe in
"family planning" for the developing world because they believe there are already too many people on the planet and that people are too destructive. conservatives believe that the advances of science and civillization need to be spread to the 3rd world. Why should they be stuck in everlasting poverty and have their children die of easily cured illnesses when we can help them. they have as much right to seek a better life as anyone on the coasts of the united states do. Another view on the rome situation.

 

[billc]

From an article in "front page" magazine about left and right:

The biggest mistake that has been made by psychologists (e.g. Altemeyer 1981 & 1988) and others, however, is to identify conservative motivation with opposition to change. Obviously, from Cromwell to Reagan and Thatcher, change has never bothered "conservatives" one bit — but preservation of their rights and liberties from governments that would take those rights and liberties away always has. THAT is what has always made a "conservative" — and it still does.

 

[Blade96]

another column on liberal vs. conservatives and hapiness, going back to the movie American beauty

http://www.dennisprager.com/columns...l=why_conservatives_are_happier_than_liberals

I was looking over Prager's past columns and this one sprang out because of the movie list.

The unhappy gravitate toward the left for a second reason. Life is hard for liberals, and life is hard for conservatives. But conservatives assume that life will always be hard. Liberals, on the other hand, have utopian dreams. At his brother Robert's funeral, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy recalled his brother saying: "Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were and say 'why not?'"
Utopians will always be less happy than those who know that suffering is inherent to human existence. The utopian compares America to utopia and finds it terribly wanting. The conservative compares America to the every other civilization that has ever existed and walks around wondering how he got so lucky to be born or naturalized an American.

Which makes liberal good, everything we have in the 21 century is due to someone's "utopian dreams" you should thank your lucky stars there are people who dare to dream of a why can't we do better.

Ramirez, did you read Pragers column, it would explain more and in a clearer way the point he is trying to make.

Also, this idea of not advancing, the liberal side wants the developing world to stop developing, because of the effects of development on the environment.

Not true, people leftists are always fighting for better living conditions for everyone and the third world. I myself worked for a leftist group that promotes fair trade because of third world people being exploited for easy profits.

They also believe in
"family planning" for the developing world because they believe there are already too many people on the planet and that people are too destructive. conservatives believe that the advances of science and civillization need to be spread to the 3rd world. Why should they be stuck in everlasting poverty and have their children die of easily cured illnesses when we can help them. they have as much right to seek a better life as anyone on the coasts of the united states do. Another view on the rome situation.

We believe that too, bringing out sciences and a better life to the third world and yes, we do believe in family planning. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[billc]

Let me clarify family planning. The left, as in people like ted turner and like minded liberals, Al Gore and others, believe in "planning the families" of third world people which means they should not have children and if they do they should not have more than one. Kind of like the one child policy in China. I mean, historically, Planned Parenthood as an organization was created to keep down the population of African Americans in the inner cities. If you listen to the liberals back then, Teddy Roosevelt and George Bernard shaw, they believed that breeding programs for the poor should be initiated. that is what they mean by family planning. Is that what you mean?

 

[billc]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]And again, eugenics attracted the support of prominent Americans. Progressive Theodore Roosevelt summed up eugenicist theory: "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce." Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the famous opinion upholding Virginia’s decision to sterilize a woman named Carrie Buck: "Three generations of imbeciles," he averred, "are enough."[/FONT]​

 

[Blade96]

Let me clarify family planning. The left, as in people like ted turner and like minded liberals, Al Gore and others, believe in "planning the families" of third world people which means they should not have children and if they do they should not have more than one. Kind of like the one child policy in China. I mean, historically, Planned Parenthood as an organization was created to keep down the population of African Americans in the inner cities. If you listen to the liberals back then, Teddy Roosevelt and George Bernard shaw, they believed that breeding programs for the poor should be initiated. that is what they mean by family planning. Is that what you mean?

No, I dont agree with that. Ted Turner said people should have the one child policy that china has, but chin'as is oppressive because it forces abortions on women who might not want them. I dont agree with that kind of stuff. Family planning to me means that family can decide when or if to have children and have the opportunities to limit the size of their families ( in africa for example many women are not allowed to say no to sex or get their partners to wear condoms and because they are poor may feel they have to have many children to help support the family) But that does cause a population growth that can be harmful to environment so family planning to me means Helping them rise up from poverty, making more BC methods availiable, emancipating women and the like.

 

[billc]

7--Platoon

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/01/10/top-25-left-wing-films-7-platoon-1986/

In what’s obviously a very personal film (like his main character, in 1967, Stone served in the Infantry in Vietnam), the director doesn’t use a single soda straw to dishonestly portray the war, he uses about a half-dozen of them in order to focus only on America’s Worst Hits and spin them into a patch-quilt of propaganda that makes our military look as though it was highly populated with monsters. According to Stone, these were men who participated in or stood by as civilians were executed and beaten to death, whole villages were burned, Vietnamese children were raped, and ears were taken as souvenirs. Furthermore, drug abuse, fratricide, and in-fighting was the norm.

Yes, the left truly does love our men and women serving in the military.

 

[billc]

6-Mash

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/01/11/top-25-left-wing-films-6-mash-1970/

Remember when liberals could be funny? If nothing else, “MASH” is a reminder that politics haven’t destroyed the Left’s ability to entertain or be creative or even charismatic, self-seriousness, bitterness, political correctness and multiculturalism have. What you have in “MASH” is an over-arching anti-military, anti-war, anti-religious theme, but within this leftist message you also have a ribald and truly irreverent comedy that refuses to recognize sacred cows. There’s also nothing preachy or even close to heavy-handed. To the contrary, there’s a contagious spirit of joy, playfulness and, at times, humanity.

Today, “MASH” and especially the characters of Hawkeye, Trapper John (the great Elliott Gould), and Duke (a very funny and charming Tom Skerritt) would be denounced as sexists and likely redrawn completely in 1984-ish production meetings. And you can bet the subplot involving all the comedic machinations that go on to cure “Painless” the dentist of his homosexuality would never survive in this tender and totalitarian day and age. The entire storyline would either be removed altogether or Painless would have to learn to embrace the awesomeness of his gayness.(He’s not really gay, he just fears he is and decides to commit suicide.)

 

[billc]

5-Planet of the Apes

An interesting choice.

Director Franklin J. Schaffner’s “Planet of the Apes” might be the most cynical, anti-human and anti-religious film ever made. What’s most telling about the film’s political point of view is the arc of the main character, played by The Mighty Charlton Heston. When we first meet Colonel Taylor aboard an in-flight American spacecraft, he makes no secret of his revulsion towards mankind as he records in his duty log… Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother? Keep his neighbor’s children starving?

“Planet of the Apes” never gets old. Not a single frame has aged a day. And in this era of lazy CGI, the organic quality of the production is a feast for the eyes; from the crash of the spacecraft to the stunning aerial shots of the barren landscape that immediately follow to show how small the survivors are in their new world to a compelling and completely convincing society ruled by apes. And thanks to a superbly crafted screenplay, this society isn’t just visually realistic. This all comes to life because the necessary details have been thought out when it comes to how a society is structured, ruled, and governed.

 

[billc]

4-the china syndrome

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/j...25-left-wing-films-4-the-china-syndrome-1979/

With the enormous powers of persuasion found in the magic of the motion picture, for a time, Hollywood was truly a force of tremendous good, a force for liberty and the ennobling of the human spirit. Best of all, Hollywood showed us idealized versions of ourselves through heroes and heroines who had codes of honor and integrity, who were selfless and if at first they didn’t comprehend that there was a bigger moral world beyond their own self-interest, they usually did before the final fade. This wasn’t the world as it was, this was the world as it should be. And the critics are wrong. Hollywood wasn’t lying or being hypocritical during their Golden Age, Hollywood was asking us to aspire to something better.

 

[billc]

3--Dances with Wolves

I had never been in a battle like this one. This had not been a fight for territory or riches or to make men free. This battle had no ego. It had been fought to preserve the food stores that would see us through winter, to protect the lives of women and children and loved ones only a few feet away. I felt a pride I had never felt before.
Why it’s a left-wing film
The quote above pretty much sums up the theme found in director Kevin Costner’s epic, Academy-Award winning Western. Whether it’s the Civil War, the men of the North who fought their own countrymen to end the abomination of African slavery, or the very idea of property ownership and commerce; our protagonist, Lt. John Dunbar (Costner), finds none of that, or even the promise of his young country, worthwhile after falling in with a tribe of benevolent and harmonious Sioux Indians.

If you’re looking for something resembling a defense of what happened to the American Indian in this country, you’re going to be disappointed. Reading any evenhanded history of the settling of the American West means having your heart broken for the people who paid the price. Yes, it was a different and more brutal era, but that excuse for the appalling only goes so far.
So my argument is not so much with the side Costner takes in that matter, it’s that even without any kind of American presence in North America, the quote above and the overall theme of the film is still factually incorrect. The battle Dunbar’s reflecting on in the quote is one between his friends the Sioux and the Pawnee (who, in real life, were also victims of brutal Sioux attacks) who are portrayed as no less murderous than the Americans. And yet, we’re still told this nonsense:

This had not been a fight for territory or riches or to make men free. This battle had no ego.
​

Long before the evil European set foot on this continent, Indian tribes warred over “territory” (hunting lands), “riches” (food stores, slaves), and to not become slaves should they lose the battle. And this was likely true of the long historical war between the Sioux and Pawnee that was also something of a blood feud, which seems even less noble than our war “to make men free.” Furthermore, Costner’s quote contradicts itself in the next sentence when he admits this was a fight to protect “food stores.” That doesn’t qualify as riches? And to say “no ego” was involved in a famously prideful people is borderline foolish. The Indians themselves would likely argue both points. Finally, some of our noble Indian friends were just as guilty of owning slaves and butchering women and children as any racist American, because…

That, however, doesn’t change the fact that the film’s final words are tragically true. 13 years after the year in which the film is set, the last of the free Sioux were forced into a humiliating surrender and the several thousand year era of the Plains Indian ended forever. Nor does it change the fact that Costner’s masterpiece is not only one of the greatest Westerns ever made, but also one of the greatest films of all time.

 

[billc]

2--Apocalypse Now

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/01/19/top-25-left-wing-films-2-apocalypse-now-1979/

Why it’s a left-wing film
With a script loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness,” co-writer/director Francis Ford Coppola moves Conrad’s existential tale from the 19th Century African Congo to the 20th Century Vietnam War and portrays America’s involvement there, and our military men in particular, in the harshest and most disturbing ways imaginable. At best, we are forever indifferent to everything and everyone, most especially human suffering. At worst we are murderers of women and children and our government is involved in the kind of secret Black Ops the Left was sure Wikileaks would finally reveal when the just the opposite turned out to be true.

​

We also epitomize the term Ugly American, treating our South Vietnamese allies like children or as though they don’t exist, and there is no amount of brutality we won’t rain down on our enemies in the North. We are borderline terrorists willing to indiscriminately lay down intense air-strikes on villages where children scramble for cover just so we can surf. We use the dead in ways to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy and casually toss around racial slurs to describe anyone who doesn’t look like us.

 

[granfire]

doesn't that regurgitates stuff leave a bad taste in your mouth?

Anyhow, you never answered my question:

How leftish is Universal Soldiers?

 

[billc]

Just to be clear, the one with Van Damme, the first one right? I haven't seen it in a while, but from what I remember, it was a good film for both Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. To comment on how left wing it was I would need to see it again. I know they were in Vietnam and Dolph was committing some sort of war crimes wasn't he? So right there, if I remember correctly, it is starting to tilt. If I can find some time I will watch it and give you a determination. Also, I thought the leading lady could have been prettier.

 

[Steve]

Just to be clear, the one with Van Damme, the first one right? I haven't seen it in a while, but from what I remember, it was a good film for both Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. To comment on how left wing it was I would need to see it again. I know they were in Vietnam and Dolph was committing some sort of war crimes wasn't he? So right there, if I remember correctly, it is starting to tilt. If I can find some time I will watch it and give you a determination. Also, I thought the leading lady could have been prettier.

Any film that depicts troops committing war crimes is left wing?

 

[granfire]

Any film that depicts troops committing war crimes is left wing?

According to bill it's a hallmark of the leftwing movie.

Anyhow, the Lundgren character loses it in Nam, they all die and are recycled as Special Ops and go out of control under Lundgren

I think it's probably the best van Damme movie (which of course is relative)