Billy Bragg is awesome, though!
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“National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility…”
“…Each side has drawn tremendous energy from opposing this idea of liberalism. At the same time, the space occupied by liberalism itself has shrunk to the point where it’s difficult to locate” - Saval
The New York Times seems to have recently breached the, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you” part of the saying, and gotten mired in the, “then they ridicule you and then they attack you” portion.They are much more careful and even respectful in their attacks than was the case 2 years ago. But the equivalences Saval draws (mostly implicitly) are lies. Just lies.
National Review pundits have been sneering at ‘liberals’ for over 4 decades. Ponnuru has polished that turd to a high shine for roughly 2 decades now. The American left, so-called, still hardly exists. Establishment Democrats are in a snit over the fact that they actually faced some minimal flack last year when they cock-blocked Sanders’ delegates, spread lies about their behavior at party conventions and… propped up a candidate who lost to one of the most repellent men in the nation.
There is no equivalence between the organized, extremely well-funded political right and the little blip of decency that coalesced when Sanders vied for the Democratic nomination. It will take years for us to obtain a foothold on par with what the right has now. There is no left Newscorp, no left Sinclair Broadcasting, no left Clear Channel. And there is no Freedom-From-Want Caucus in the House.
Continually equating ones critics, regardless of their motivations, power, or legitimacy, is the first ‘tell’ of a manipulator.
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In the context of the discussion, taking social liberalism/conservatism out of the equation allows us to focus on how the GOP has been able to shift the Overton Window to the right to the degree that the progressive left is excluded from the political discussion. I agree that there’s intersectionality with social issues, but in this context, it’s an exacerbating factor that helps mask the adherence of both American establishment liberals and conservatives (to varying degrees) to the neoliberal consensus.
If you want to bring Libertarians into the discussion (and we should, since they’ve been helping that rightward shift along), those that care about social liberalism do so only insofar as it affects them personally (hence the focus of Reason magazine libertarians on things like pot legalisation, LGBTQ rights, police militarisation, (selective) separation of church and state). Social justice and redress for Others usually isn’t on the menu. Meanwhile, they’re pushing an even more extreme version of unsustainable neoliberalism than the conservative establishment (which is saying something!).
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I didn’t even need to click on it to know that was Andrew Sullivan!
One argument against gay marriage is that it makes gay life much more heteronormantive in nature. I’m generally of the mind that sexual liberation should be available for all people, and that not everyone (gay, straight, cisgendered, whatever) is going to fit into the marriage/family box, period. Making that the only sort of family life that’s sanctioned to people could be seen as being discriminatory on some level.
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I do agree. But we should also remember that focusing only on economic issues has been used to deny that we still have problems that need to get addressed with race and gender. There is a certain danger in continuing to focus on one aspect of our general set of troubles.
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The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 did correct one problem from the Gender Recognition Act.
If a trans person was married and wanted to get their gender legally recognised, they were required to get a divorce before the panel would allow it. This caused problems for a lot of people. The marriage act changed that.
But as @strokeybeard points out, it was the Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone who introduced the bill, not David Cameron. She was good on trans issues as well.
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A truly liberal view of state-recognised marriage would acknowledge that it is at its base a means of promoting the creation of new families, and in the process transcend the romantic and reproductive aspects of that creation. Two (or more, challenges of legal logistics acknowledged) trans male platonic friends who plan to remain child-free should have the same opportunity to create a state-recognised family as a heterosexual romantic couple who intend to have kids.
Sullivan, trapped as he was by his Catholic faith and its insistence on the marriage/family box, never came close to that view. If he hadn’t also promoted loathsome neoconservative views along with the usual unsustainable neoliberal views of the American right I’d feel sorry for him.
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A US liquid pint is only marginally larger than a half liter. Us Ounces are marginally smaller than UK ounces, but there are more UK ounces in a pint. So the UK pint is MUCH bigger than the US pint.
Insult to injury. This abomination:
Is not a beer glass. Its a glass mixing cup for use with a Boston shaker. It measures 16 oz us to the rim. Which means unless you pour flat beer with no head and ruin your pants you are not getting 16oz into it. Max volume of a properly poured beer in one of those is about 14oz. With a “Coney Island head” as we call it in the business its usually 12oz.
These:
Are proper beer glasses. (My British and Irish ones have been used so heavily that the marks wore off). Not only are they made of thinner, lighter, better glass (discounting the mugs). But the stated volume is the volume of liquid beer. The volume of the head is not counted. So when you get a .5l or a pint. THERE IS ACTUALLY THAT MUCH BEER IN THERE.
Crazy I know. Overbearing European nanny state. Putting easy to see marks on things. That not only give the bartender great visual feedback on pouring a perfect beer. But clearly show you got what you paid for. Socialists.
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He’s right too! Especially when he’s singing Woody. With Wilco.
Wait, make that left.
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I’m in the same boat as Cory. I’ve always voted NDP and frankly stay out of US political conversation because most of the time, as a far-left Canadian, every policy being discussed is unbelievably foreign to me.
It’s honestly surreal when I travel to the US and see 1) the massive focus on politics everywhere with all those screens with talking heads and news scrolls, 2) the sheer amount of anger everywhere, making me quite legitimately terrified of giving my opinion to anyone in person.
Also, I think one of the best things about the BBS, for me, is that it actively promotes discussions outside the Dem/GOP political spectrum. It feels more like “home” to me than just about any other US-centric forum out there.
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The first American Ace of WWII flew for Canada before America joined the war. When he transferred to an American unit later in the war, he took the gun sight (in meters) from his Spitfire and put it in his Mustang because the mental calculations to lead a plane in a dogfight was easier. So… it has that going for it.
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IMHO, it is because everyone assumes if you are this party or that you are all of these negative things that want to destroy America. They take the most negative images they have seen and apply it to everyone of that party. I mean, if you understood the monsters in their heads, you would understand their anger. And for sure, there are some real people who resemble these monsters, but the real people are much more complicated.
It is sort of like the eternal Star Wars vs Star Trek fans. There seems to be a bitter rivalry, but if the stood back they would see they are two faces on the same coin and they have things in common they could work towards.
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Well, for me the NDP says a lot of the right things, but I’m never confident in their ability to actually implement any of their plans. Then again, I live in BC, where the quality of politician is incredibly low (it was a really tough to decide which set of incompetent, inscrutable, bumbling, corrupt morons to vote for last provincial election. I went for the devil I don’t know and voted NDP, but John Horgan’s making Christy Clark look like a political genius even after she lost her majority. Blech).
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In the United States, the term doesn’t mean very much, along with ‘conservative’, ‘progressive’, Left, Right, and so on. What is usually being referred to is tribal style. There are people with opinions and preferences once associated with the historical Left and Right, but these are very, very far and few between.
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60 years later NASA had the same problem when they tried to calculate the lead required for a planet.
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As opposed to the leftist who know rights and people (biological citizen entities) come first. Industry as a tool of the people, as oppose to people being tools of industry.
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Wealth and power disparity are at the core of many social issue, tho.
A system that is inherently unequal can be tuned, tweaked, to be tolerable? For most? For enough to win elections?
Or is the root of the problem the wealth/power inequity, where you are put in many positions of subordination?
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It’s been strange over the last decade or so to see CNN become the default “background noise” video piped into public TV sets everywhere I go. I walk into the gym and there’s a TV on every treadmill broadcasting CNN. I go to the airport – the news is everywhere I look, at every terminal and gate. I turn on my phone and it gives me news headlines. It’s like that Ray Bradbury story where people have music piped at them constantly, except it’s political news surrounding me.
And the omnipresent news (whether it’s MSNBC, Fox, or CNN) tells people that the Democrats want to destroy the country with their terrible Obamacare, the Republicans want to destroy the country with their terrible Obamacare replacement, everyone hates everyone, and war is constantly imminent. So everyone’s on edge with hatred for The Other Guys on their mind at all times.
I really want to just remove myself from the scene entirely, honestly.
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nice word choice, bro.
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Just… just… stop.
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