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United States43971 Posts
On January 10 2022 03:43 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2022 03:30 KwarK wrote:On January 10 2022 03:21 Doc.Rivers wrote:
Again your examples ignore that I referred to a specific example of American liberals' current desire for change.
It is true that your argument about conservatism & pedophilia, and my argument about liberalism & pedophilia, are using different senses of the words liberal and conservative. Mine is the ordinary meaning of those words as used in the US, including by FDR, JFK and Obama.
In truth I don't actually believe my argument about liberalism & pedophilia. It was just to illustrate the absurdity of proceeding from abstract propositions about political philosophies to an argument about engendering pedophilia, as KwarK and Mohdoo did. It's a silly discussion from the outset. Obama is a liberal, as is Bush. That’s what you’re not getting. The attempt to spin this into “I know my argument is nonsense, surely we can all agree both arguments are nonsense” is just more nonsense by you. You can’t make my argument invalid by making enough invalid counter arguments. Conservatism has both an a priori ideological reason to protect child abusers and a long track record of actually doing it. Conservatives value hierarchical authority for its own sake and believe that the rights of individuals, particularly individuals from lower social echelons, are secondary to the maintenance of social order through hierarchies. For example they would prioritize the reputation of the British monarchy over getting justice for the victims of Prince Andrew, not because they support what he is alleged to have done but because they support the institution of monarchy. To them the collective social good stemming from the institution outweighs any individual harm. Liberalism is a philosophy predicated in the inalienable rights of man, regardless of class, race, sex etc. It is an individualist philosophy that places no value on the institutions that abuse children and focuses on the rights of the victims. You might be interested to learn that socialism, like conservatism, is not individualist and is opposed to liberalism. As you know we are using different senses of the words liberal and conservative. And as you know, the sense in which I'm using it is the ordinary meaning in the US. It's a US politics thread so I'm not sure what the point is of your making an argument about an ideology that, as you put it, matches up with the Taliban. It should have been immediately obvious that I didn't actually believe what I was saying, because it directly contradicted my prior posts about the silly pedophilia arguments which fail to establish a nexus between political philosophy and the incidence of pedophilia. Granted I should not have taken the bait and continued the discussion.
The one you’re using is wrong. That’s why you’re confusing yourself with these quotes from FDR and JFK. What you need to realize is that FDR uses the word liberal he’s thinking of Locke, who he read, and the centuries of conflict between individualism and medieval power structures. He was a highly educated man who understood the word in its historical philosophical context. When you read it you’re understanding it in the context of Facebook memes created by an Eastern European troll farm and forwarded by your uncle who didn’t graduate high school. Identifying that these words have the same letters is not sufficient for you to understand what FDR meant.
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Well I won't repeat myself any further, but reasonable observers can see what I mean by ordinary meaning. It's about how a word is used in the US, for many years, by all or most people.
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United States43971 Posts
On January 10 2022 04:26 Doc.Rivers wrote:
Well I won't repeat myself any further, but reasonable observers can see what I mean by ordinary meaning. It's about how a word is used in the US, for many years, by all or most people.
There is no possible way of expressing the political philosophy of “liberals” as you’re using it because it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean at a given time.
https://www.newsweek.com/fox-lou-dobbs-george-bush-liberal-1111686
When discussing political philosophy we have to use the actual meanings of words, not the vague assertions of tv personalities. “Liberals” believe in the free market and socialism, they believe in freedom of speech and censorship, they believe in supporting the police and defunding them. There is no point in discussing what “liberals” believe in because the “liberals” in question aren’t an actual group, they’re a bogeyman hiding in the shadows seeking to remake your favourite childhood movies with purple haired feminist casts.
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Northern Ireland26763 Posts
On January 10 2022 04:26 Doc.Rivers wrote:
Well I won't repeat myself any further, but reasonable observers can see what I mean by ordinary meaning. It's about how a word is used in the US, for many years, by all or most people.
It’s wrong for the reasons Kwark states. I lack his patience, so I’ll just say fuck it and let folks misuse most the times.
The problem is that liberal is an already existing school of political thought. One that if you conflate it with something else, you lose the word’s power to describe the specific thing it’s meant to describe.
Which then leads to awkward fudges such as people now using the phrase ‘classical Liberal’ to refer to what is just liberalism. Which gets even more confusing because one would think the group referred to as liberals, and classical liberals would therefore have a lot in common. But they are very, very different schools of political values indeed.
Likewise people misusing the word socialist, lowers the word’s descriptive power to describe actual socialism.
Seasoned watchers of my terrible posters in here may notice that I used the phrase ‘the ostensible left’ in place of how many would use liberal. It’s the group that is widely considered by many people to be the collective left (although in some cases inaccurately). I think it’s a reasonable fudge to describe the folks who are considered to be on the wider left, without using the word liberal.
I’d also add this is a politics thread, so while the wider populace absolutely mangle definitions with clear meanings, if anywhere they should be used correctly it should be somewhere like this.
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Now, I have pretty much dropped the use of the word "liberal" from my posts in this thread because it's a funky word, especially to Europeans who post here, but... This is a US politics thread. Wasting so much digital ink over someone using a normal word with a (admittedly odd) American definition seems to me totally overdone so long as we all know what someone is talking about. Just like most, if not all, of us are aware, an American conservative is not the same thing as an English one, or a German one, or a Polish one, etc. But everyone jumped on Rivers for pointing out that Mohdoo's post was simplistic to the point of absurd by using the same logic to come to what Mohdoo (and presumably rivers himself) would consider an absurd conclusion.
It is certainly true that in the American context the word "liberal" is closely linked to the idea of "change" or "progress." It's why pollsters like gallup use three main categories 1)Conservative, 2) Moderate, 3) Liberal. By any sort of rigorous analysis these words would cause a lot of annoyance (even "Moderate"). But most people who would read or answer those polls know what those words mean in that context.
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On January 10 2022 07:33 Introvert wrote:
Now, I have pretty much dropped the use of the word "liberal" from my posts in this thread because it's a funky word, especially to Europeans who post here, but... This is a US politics thread. Wasting so much digital ink over someone using a normal word with a (admittedly odd) American definition seems to me totally overdone so long as we all know what someone is talking about. Just like most, if not all, of us are aware, an American conservative is not the same thing as an English one, or a German one, or a Polish one, etc. But everyone jumped on Rivers for pointing out that Mohdoo's post was simplistic to the point of absurd by using the same logic to come to what Mohdoo (and presumably rivers himself) would consider an absurd conclusion.
It is certainly true that in the American context the word "liberal" is closely linked to the idea of "change" or "progress." It's why pollsters like gallup use three main categories 1)Conservative, 2) Moderate, 3) Liberal. By any sort of rigorous analysis these words would cause a lot of annoyance (even "Moderate"). But most people who would read or answer those polls know what those words mean in that context.
The FDR quote I cited demonstrates this quite clearly. The word liberal has been in use in America, to describe something uniquely American, for at least 80 years. So it is reasonable for people discussing US politics to use the word in that sense.
The objections that, when the word is used in this sense, it has no meaning, can be answered by the fact that modern American liberalism has an identifiable definition. And that is true even though some people misuse the word to describe anything they don't like. See this article, where I got the FDR and JFK quotes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfla1
"Since the 1960s, the Democratic Party has been considered liberal and the Republican Party has been considered conservative. As a group, liberals are referred to as the left and conservatives as the right."
"Today, liberalism is used differently in different countries. One of the greatest contrasts is between the usage in the United States and usage in Europe. According to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (writing in 1956), '[l]iberalism in the American usage has little in common with the word as used in the politics of any European country, save possibly Britain.' In Europe, liberalism usually means what is sometimes called classical liberalism, a commitment to limited government, laissez-faire economics and unalienable individual rights."
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United States43971 Posts
The issue is that liberalism vs conservatism isn’t the main political divide in America. There isn’t a liberal party and a conservative party. It therefore makes very little sense to frame the division in those terms. The political divide in the US is between two coalitions, both of which are predominantly liberal. This isn’t a red team vs blue team thing and it doesn’t help anyone to view it as such. Conservative political philosophy is not the same thing as the Republicans Party.
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It is certainly true that in the American context the word "liberal" is closely linked to the idea of "change" or "progress." It's why pollsters like gallup use three main categories 1)Conservative, 2) Moderate, 3) Liberal. By any sort of rigorous analysis these words would cause a lot of annoyance (even "Moderate"). But most people who would read or answer those polls know what those words mean in that context.
No. Just no.
It's not "in the american context", but in the "simpleton context". Yes, this is the "US pol thread", but you know what else it is? A discussion. A discussion based on arbitrary bullshit definitions made up by yellowpress shitpapers in the US certainly isn't the basis for a proper discussion, is it? Otherwise, half the people here are antifa terrorists, and the other half are nazis and fascists.
Or are you saying that you get to decide which "american definition" is too stupid even for an internet argument? Or, do we accept to call anyone conservative "fascist", because so many people believe that conservatives are just that?
Hell, why stop there. Anything against gun control and in favour of healthcare is communism, europe is socialist, the US is the biggest country in the world by population and landmass, the election was stolen, etc pp - lets use all american DDDs (dumbed down definitions), rather than actual definitions. Who gives a shit what is "commonly used in the US", if you ever had an even remotely relevant discussion, you'd understand that you either use the correct (not the "most convenient because of usage") definition, or you avoid the term in the first place, since that usually (as was shown) opens the debate up for shitfuckery.
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Let's talk about filibuster reform.
The Democrat plan is to enact some sort of filibuster reform to ensure passage of the voting rights act. They claim it is the only way to protect the democracy. Republicans claim it is a way to nationalize the elections, all the better to rig it in favor of Democrats.
My question is: what is there to stop the Republicans from undoing this legislation or pass their own voting related legislation such as voter ID once they gain power? Clearly it is inevitable that at some point, the Democrats will lose an election.
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I think the goal should be to force the Republicans to die off as a party, because youre right as they are they're an inevitable evil and will eventually get a foothold into power.
Democrats should work to make people's lives very materially better off, increase voting rights and enfranchisement as much as possible, and basically cement themselves as Worthwhile and leave Republicans to suffer for a few decades before reforming as something preferably less psychotically fascist.
Politics basically needs to be redefining in the next decade or two and its either gonna be redefined with fascism or something else, so hopefully the Democrats really do pass some pro-voting enfranchisement.legislation.
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United States43971 Posts
On January 11 2022 23:03 gobbledydook wrote:
Republicans claim it is a way to nationalize the elections, all the better to rig it in favor of Democrats.
Just to comment on this, they’re not wrong but in an ultra partisan society elections need to be nationalized. This is one of the lessons from Northern Ireland. Allowing local elites to manage their own elections as they see fit is trusting the cat to manage the cream. The only way the national government can be seen as legitimate and representative is if the rules by which it is selected are established, agreed upon, and enforced. And a nakedly illegitimate government ends poorly.
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All indications are that meaningful voting legislation/filibuster reform is dead on arrival in the Senate as a result of too many Democrats siding with Republicans.
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Northern Ireland26763 Posts
On January 11 2022 23:03 gobbledydook wrote:
Let's talk about filibuster reform.
The Democrat plan is to enact some sort of filibuster reform to ensure passage of the voting rights act. They claim it is the only way to protect the democracy. Republicans claim it is a way to nationalize the elections, all the better to rig it in favor of Democrats.
My question is: what is there to stop the Republicans from undoing this legislation or pass their own voting related legislation such as voter ID once they gain power? Clearly it is inevitable that at some point, the Democrats will lose an election.
How can the Democrats lose if it’s rigged?
But living in reality a second, I don’t see what the particular issue is in nationalising well, national elections at the very least.
Filibuster reform makes sense given how it’s been employed in the recent past, although I don’t think it’s the golden ticket either. Even squashing it way down or removing it completely and it’s still difficult to pass legislation on a simple majority basis.
As per usual I find most Republican concerns to be deeply disingenuous and as you say, when the winds of political change blow their way, they would conceivably benefit just as much.
I’m not innately opposed to voter ID laws if they are packaged with funding and pathways to make it as simple as possible for voters to get those IDs.
Other countries have ID requirements and aren’t horrific dystopias.
My issue is the framing of widespread fraud is bollocks, which is the justification for doing this, and it’s never packaged with the aforementioned measures, making a reading of anything other than voter disenfranchisement difficult to come to.
It’s both a problem that doesn’t exist and it introduces other problems in the form the solution is being presented currently.
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On January 12 2022 00:06 Zambrah wrote:
I think the goal should be to force the Republicans to die off as a party, because youre right as they are they're an inevitable evil and will eventually get a foothold into power.
Democrats should work to make people's lives very materially better off, increase voting rights and enfranchisement as much as possible, and basically cement themselves as Worthwhile and leave Republicans to suffer for a few decades before reforming as something preferably less psychotically fascist.
Politics basically needs to be redefining in the next decade or two and its either gonna be redefined with fascism or something else, so hopefully the Democrats really do pass some pro-voting enfranchisement.legislation.
If the Democrats actually solve these problems like wealth inequality and voting rights, they would lose a lot of the power they have in being the party that promises to solve them. Prolonging the problem by paying lip service to action, but not actually doing it, and claiming the other party is the super badness but secretly relying on the continued existence of said party for their strategy, is the more prudent political play.
It takes a blind fool to think that the Democrats are actually interested in solving the problem rather than prolonging it. They're not allies, they're the controlled opposition.
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On January 12 2022 00:52 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2022 00:06 Zambrah wrote:
I think the goal should be to force the Republicans to die off as a party, because youre right as they are they're an inevitable evil and will eventually get a foothold into power.
Democrats should work to make people's lives very materially better off, increase voting rights and enfranchisement as much as possible, and basically cement themselves as Worthwhile and leave Republicans to suffer for a few decades before reforming as something preferably less psychotically fascist.
Politics basically needs to be redefining in the next decade or two and its either gonna be redefined with fascism or something else, so hopefully the Democrats really do pass some pro-voting enfranchisement.legislation. If the Democrats actually solve these problems like wealth inequality and voting rights, they would lose a lot of the power they have in being the party that promises to solve them. Prolonging the problem by paying lip service to action, but not actually doing it, and claiming the other party is the super badness but secretly relying on the continued existence of said party for their strategy, is the more prudent political play. It takes a blind fool to think that the Democrats are actually interested in solving the problem rather than prolonging it. They're not allies, they're the controlled opposition.
60+ years of promising to reduce wealth gap between Black and white people, 60+ years of relentless support from Black voters, 60+ years of not making any progress on said wealth gap.
Even if they were sincere about addressing such problems, their incompetence is overwhelming.
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Northern Ireland26763 Posts
On January 12 2022 01:05 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2022 00:52 LegalLord wrote:On January 12 2022 00:06 Zambrah wrote:
I think the goal should be to force the Republicans to die off as a party, because youre right as they are they're an inevitable evil and will eventually get a foothold into power.
Democrats should work to make people's lives very materially better off, increase voting rights and enfranchisement as much as possible, and basically cement themselves as Worthwhile and leave Republicans to suffer for a few decades before reforming as something preferably less psychotically fascist.
Politics basically needs to be redefining in the next decade or two and its either gonna be redefined with fascism or something else, so hopefully the Democrats really do pass some pro-voting enfranchisement.legislation. If the Democrats actually solve these problems like wealth inequality and voting rights, they would lose a lot of the power they have in being the party that promises to solve them. Prolonging the problem by paying lip service to action, but not actually doing it, and claiming the other party is the super badness but secretly relying on the continued existence of said party for their strategy, is the more prudent political play. It takes a blind fool to think that the Democrats are actually interested in solving the problem rather than prolonging it. They're not allies, they're the controlled opposition. Now this is quite the conspiracy stated as a fact, wow! Are all of them involved or just a cabal at the top? Can you name names?
Most of them are, I mean if we’re looking back. I don’t think they’re controlled opposition as that would infer somebody to who they’re accounting to.
It also doesn’t account for autonomy. How to differentiate from a true believer of the current orthodoxy from someone cynically exploiting it for their own gain?
Their record can largely be filed into the ‘better than the GOP/haven’t ultimately fixed much’ though I think that’s reasonable.
I think though that actually fixing some major problems would make the party politically bulletproof, rather than the current state of affairs where the balance floats around the probability of a coin flip.
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Yeah, I don't think the lack of progress is because they want to keep milking it but its also true that there certainly isn't that much pressure on the Democrats currently to do better because the only opposition is literal fascists.
The Democrats would probably have more success agreeing on what and how if there was another alternative for people to turn to if they don't deliver.
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EPT
