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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On February 19 2015 12:41 Shiragaku wrote:
Liberalism is a very broad ideology with many variants, but what all liberal ideologies have in common is their support for elections, civil rights, freedom of press and religion, and free trade as well as owning private property. To say that there is one definition would be incorrect.
The modern Republicans and the TEA Party in particular do not fit any definition of liberalism due to their populism, moral politics, anti-secularism, and corporatism.
And Dems don't fit either because welfare and gun control both infringe on private property. Progressive versus Reactionary is a better dichotomy.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
liberals who recognize positive liberty (liberty of outcome rather than sanctity of sovereign borders) have long recognzied the limits of private property. look at mill's stuff.
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Except legit progressives were actual anti-libertarians: pro-state-intervention on social issues (at the time, mostly alcohol) and pro-state intervention on economic issues (minimum wage, working conditions, income tax etc.)
Terms morph. I like the older terms since they're more precise, but you do what you can.
Also, @Horizons, yeah, I had no intention of meaning it was unfair. Any history text should criticize your own country. I'm in favor of Swedes learning about how they raped the Germans in the 1630s, Americans learning how they murdered the Indians in the 1830s, and Japanese learning about how they raped and murdered the Chinese in the 1930s. No country should get on a high horse, and all should try to live up to high ideals. The American story, and our greatest patriot observed, is made more, not less powerful an understanding of the many ways in which we have failed to live up to the dream of "all men, created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights..."
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
throwing out some obvious bait out there but if we look at the primary effect of 'critical history' it is to dispel the notion of unabashed and glorified national history, which is a useful tool for authoritarian state. germany has it quite good. germans are now very critical of authoritarianism and recognize nationalism as silly.
conservatives who are critical of government should be all for it really.
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On February 19 2015 13:17 oneofthem wrote:
throwing out some obvious bait out there but if we look at the primary effect of 'critical history' it is to dispel the notion of unabashed and glorified national history, which is a useful tool for authoritarian state. germany has it quite good. germans are now very critical of authoritarianism and recognize nationalism as silly.
conservatives who are critical of government should be all for it really.
Again, American conservatives are conservatives in name only. They love wasting money on new military technology, wasting money on enforcing laws against victimless crimes, and generally just throwing personal liberty out the window unless it's convenient for them.
The terms "liberal" and "conservative" need to die. They've outlived their usefulness greatly.
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On February 19 2015 12:41 Shiragaku wrote:
Liberalism is a very broad ideology with many variants, but what all liberal ideologies have in common is their support for elections, civil rights, freedom of press and religion, and free trade as well as owning private property. To say that there is one definition would be incorrect.
The modern Republicans and the TEA Party in particular do not fit any definition of liberalism due to their populism, moral politics, anti-secularism, and corporatism.
Even if I accepted that final sentence as true, it's amusing that you would compare conservative politics to liberal/progressive ideology. It's not like the left is above using any of the things you mentioned in pursuit of political ends.
As to everyone else, the phrase "conservative" and "liberal" are fine. 99% of people more or less know what we mean when we say them, so there is no need to come up with a new phrase.
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On February 19 2015 13:35 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2015 12:41 Shiragaku wrote:
Liberalism is a very broad ideology with many variants, but what all liberal ideologies have in common is their support for elections, civil rights, freedom of press and religion, and free trade as well as owning private property. To say that there is one definition would be incorrect.
The modern Republicans and the TEA Party in particular do not fit any definition of liberalism due to their populism, moral politics, anti-secularism, and corporatism. Even if I accepted that final sentence as true, it's amusing that you would compare conservative politics to liberal/progressive ideology. It's not like the left is above using any of the things you mentioned in pursuit of political ends. As to everyone else, the phrase "conservative" and "liberal" are fine. 99% of people more or less know what we mean when we say them, so there is no need to come up with a new phrase.
Oh right, this is the US politics thread where political jargon has an exceptional definition to what it really is
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Well it's better to use what we have now then try to find brand new words for things. Just IMO.
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On February 19 2015 09:02 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2015 08:26 Mindcrime wrote:On February 19 2015 01:35 oneofthem wrote:
this guilt thing is just a rightwing narrative against 'liberal elite education.' been going on since the 1980's.
readers of wf buckley would know it's been going on a lot longer than that; Richard Hofstadter wrote about it in 1966. true. the stuff about liberals trying to brainwash kids into guilt is kind of buckley territory tho
It's the same logic behind rejecting vaccines, thinking our president is a terrorist spy, thinking that gay marriage is not about equal treatment under the law for all American citizens but about "converting our children to sin", and so on.
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On February 19 2015 13:40 Introvert wrote:
Well it's better to use what we have now then try to find brand new words for things. Just IMO.
The advantage to using the precise terms is it points out the silliness and artificiality of the modern US political alliances (and the "spectrum" that describes them).
Republicans are liberal (anti-excessive government/pro-freedom/pro-personal choice) on economic policy.
Democrats are liberal on foreign policy and social policy.
Why the social conservatives and economic liberals are allies can only be explained historically; any philosophical connection is tenuous at best.
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On February 19 2015 14:04 Yoav wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2015 13:40 Introvert wrote:
Well it's better to use what we have now then try to find brand new words for things. Just IMO. The advantage to using the precise terms is it points out the silliness and artificiality of the modern US political alliances (and the "spectrum" that describes them). Republicans are liberal (anti-excessive government/pro-freedom/pro-personal choice) on economic policy. Democrats are liberal on foreign policy and social policy. Why the social conservatives and economic liberals are allies can only be explained historically; any philosophical connection is tenuous at best.
That's exactly what we have our qualifiers for ("Social conservatives" for example.) I'm not arguing that we should use meaningless terms. I'm saying that we don't have to make such statements like "well, we should just get rid of these words entirely because they don't mean what they used to mean." The level of precision and historical context is determined by the topic of discussion. There can be confusion when someone isn't sufficiently clear, but that's the fault of the poster. They aren't useless.
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On February 19 2015 10:33 Millitron wrote:To be totally fair, our laws are based pretty heavily on the Ten Commandments. A history curriculum that didn't cover the Ten Commandments would be pretty lacking.
Is your schoolsystem really so bad that you would ever think such a thing? Seriously?
The mosaic commandments (the first as well as the second set) are about reverence of god, sanctity of worship of said god, and relegated to sidenotes a bit of social stabilizers. To even suggest that english common law tradition was heavily influenced by bronze age crap about stoning people for collecting firewood on sabbath, is so unreconcileable with reality, that i hope you were joking. And most importantly Roman law has and had several orders of magnitude bigger influence over american lawmaking and judicial process than anything from the old testament.
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Roman Law of course is important for English common law, though to nowhere near the same extent as it was important to the various civil codes of Europe. A history curriculum that doesn't at least cover the fundamentals of Roman law (12 tables, some property law, and the patrician/plebeian conflict that spawned the whole thing) is indeed quite lacking.
Of course, it should go without saying that at least a basic study of the Bible (Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament) is necessary for any educated person, at the very least due to their nature as the source of our form of morality. Their important to literature, philosophy, and religion are important secondary reasons.
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On February 19 2015 17:54 Yoav wrote:
Roman Law of course is important for English common law, though to nowhere near the same extent as it was important to the various civil codes of Europe. A history curriculum that doesn't at least cover the fundamentals of Roman law (12 tables, some property law, and the patrician/plebeian conflict that spawned the whole thing) is indeed quite lacking.
Of course, it should go without saying that at least a basic study of the Bible (Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament) is necessary for any educated person, at the very least due to their nature as the source of our form of morality. Their important to literature, philosophy, and religion are important secondary reasons.
They are not the source of our form of morality.
Secular western societies value seperation of church and state and would consider it amoral to stone people to death because they have the wrong faith or don't follow rituals in reverence to a volcano god.
The basis of our morality is the philosophy of the enlightenment period. Inspirations that led to that are of course older, and christian theologists of course contributed (due to them being the dominant faction of philosophers in europe at the time), but saying that abrahamitic religion is a "source" of morals, when the morals existed before that religion coopted some of them, and disregarded almost everything important about moral behaviour during its existence.... is mindboggling.
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Administration officials are making their rift with Israel public:
The Obama administration on Wednesday accused the Israeli government of misleading the public over the Iran nuclear negotiations, using unusually blunt and terse language that once again highlighted the rift between the two sides.
In briefings with reporters, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki and White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggested Israeli officials were not being truthful about how the United States is handling the secretive talks.
“I think it is safe to say not everything you are hearing from the Israeli government is an accurate reflection of the details of the talks,” said Psaki, who acknowledged that the State Department is withholding some details from the Israelis out of concern they will share them more broadly.
Earnest said U.S. officials routinely speak with their Israeli counterparts. But, he added, the administration “is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the United States.”
The immediate cause of the dual rebukes is the administration’s unhappiness over Israeli leaks of some details on the nuclear talks, shared by U.S. negotiators in private conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.
For days, administration officials have denied reports that they were keeping Israelis in the dark about some aspects of the negotiations. On Wednesday, Psaki acknowledged that “there’s a selective sharing of information.”
At this point, it's fairly clear that Netanyahu is trying to sabotage negotiations with Iran and spike any deals before they can even be presented to Congress. It gets to the question of whether a bad deal is better than no deal at all, which is kind of a theme of the Obama presidency and similar kinds of questions are being asked about other deals like TTIP and TPP.
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On February 19 2015 18:58 coverpunch wrote:Administration officials are making their rift with Israel public:Show nested quote +The Obama administration on Wednesday accused the Israeli government of misleading the public over the Iran nuclear negotiations, using unusually blunt and terse language that once again highlighted the rift between the two sides.
In briefings with reporters, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki and White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggested Israeli officials were not being truthful about how the United States is handling the secretive talks.
“I think it is safe to say not everything you are hearing from the Israeli government is an accurate reflection of the details of the talks,” said Psaki, who acknowledged that the State Department is withholding some details from the Israelis out of concern they will share them more broadly.
Earnest said U.S. officials routinely speak with their Israeli counterparts. But, he added, the administration “is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the United States.” Show nested quote +The immediate cause of the dual rebukes is the administration’s unhappiness over Israeli leaks of some details on the nuclear talks, shared by U.S. negotiators in private conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.
For days, administration officials have denied reports that they were keeping Israelis in the dark about some aspects of the negotiations. On Wednesday, Psaki acknowledged that “there’s a selective sharing of information.” At this point, it's fairly clear that Netanyahu is trying to sabotage negotiations with Iran and spike any deals before they can even be presented to Congress. It gets to the question of whether a bad deal is better than no deal at all, which is kind of a theme of the Obama presidency and similar kinds of questions are being asked about other deals like TTIP and TPP.
It would be simpler to ignore Israel and just make a deal between the US and Iran.
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On February 19 2015 20:18 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2015 18:58 coverpunch wrote:Administration officials are making their rift with Israel public:The Obama administration on Wednesday accused the Israeli government of misleading the public over the Iran nuclear negotiations, using unusually blunt and terse language that once again highlighted the rift between the two sides.
In briefings with reporters, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki and White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggested Israeli officials were not being truthful about how the United States is handling the secretive talks.
“I think it is safe to say not everything you are hearing from the Israeli government is an accurate reflection of the details of the talks,” said Psaki, who acknowledged that the State Department is withholding some details from the Israelis out of concern they will share them more broadly.
Earnest said U.S. officials routinely speak with their Israeli counterparts. But, he added, the administration “is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the United States.” The immediate cause of the dual rebukes is the administration’s unhappiness over Israeli leaks of some details on the nuclear talks, shared by U.S. negotiators in private conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.
For days, administration officials have denied reports that they were keeping Israelis in the dark about some aspects of the negotiations. On Wednesday, Psaki acknowledged that “there’s a selective sharing of information.” At this point, it's fairly clear that Netanyahu is trying to sabotage negotiations with Iran and spike any deals before they can even be presented to Congress. It gets to the question of whether a bad deal is better than no deal at all, which is kind of a theme of the Obama presidency and similar kinds of questions are being asked about other deals like TTIP and TPP. It would be simpler to ignore Israel and just make a deal between the US and Iran.
The administration is doing the exact opposite of ignoring Israel, they're making it very publicly clear that they are annoyed with Netanyahu. It might be simpler to ignore him, but doing this seems to indicate that his leaks and his planned appearance have in fact angered the Iranians and set back negotiations, or even worse, they have angered donors and politicians in the US who have signaled they won't support a deal.
EDIT: It's worth pointing out that Obama can't just "make a deal". He needs Congress to ratify it on the other end. It's hard to say if the GOP will be cooperative if they're playing games like they are with Netanyahu, but generally they haven't blocked Obama's requests on foreign policy or security issues. They did embarrass him by refusing to authorize force in Syria, but the public opinion polls for that were really bad.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
outside of select republican lobbyists americans have little patience with netanyahu and israel. as far as iran is concerned i dont think a formal treaty is necessary tho, just alteration to existing sanctions. don't think the administration really want to be tied to iran in that way.
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On February 19 2015 17:54 Yoav wrote:
Roman Law of course is important for English common law, though to nowhere near the same extent as it was important to the various civil codes of Europe. A history curriculum that doesn't at least cover the fundamentals of Roman law (12 tables, some property law, and the patrician/plebeian conflict that spawned the whole thing) is indeed quite lacking.
Of course, it should go without saying that at least a basic study of the Bible (Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament) is necessary for any educated person, at the very least due to their nature as the source of our form of morality. Their important to literature, philosophy, and religion are important secondary reasons.
Sigh..
The Bible and all the other Holy Books were written AFTER big societies developed, to develop and hold together bigger societies you have to have certain rules which most probably will follow a very obvious moral code.
The basic rules for societies developed pretty similar among just about all cultures, sure there are diffrences but overall the baselines are very similar.
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Wow WalMart raising wages (see if anyone notices all the doom and gloom previously forecasted), and Buffet selling off his entire $3.7 Billion dollar stake in Exxon ($40 a barrel oil looks like it will be here soon) while buying a stake in 21st century Fox.
This is going to be an interesting next couple years.
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EPT
