I find P.J. O’Rourke is helpful here. He argues that God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. Now, you may not agree with his politics (and I don’t) but he is an interesting person and he thinks. He does expand on that gnomic statement, and so shall I…
Public healthcare. The Santa Claus approach would be to provide it free at source as far as possible. Rich and poor get ill. It ought to be cheaper because you don’t have your insurance trying to get their insurance to pay all the time. In reality, there is a constant struggle because you need real people to do this, and you find the drugs makers, the health drink suppliers, even the people who run the car parks outside the hospitals want a slice of the action. But at least you are trying.
The Republican God approach is to work hard, buy health insurance. That guy over there with cancer? I smote him. It’s his own fault. You don’t get greatness without sacrifices.
The Socialist view has few good presenters. People think of National Socialism, Stalinism, or even hairy students carrying pictures of Marx and calling for Revolution (which Marx didn’t want, BTW). Socialism is an attempt to curb of the more self destructive effects of an unregulated market which always concentrates power and wealth into a small clique. Historically, the only things that have countered this have been massive wars or massive plagues. We may not make a perfect job of it, but we can be better than that.
It seems Michael Moore is trying to do the whole job in the USA by himself. He’s a bit of a loose cannon, but he’s almost the only one you have who makes documentaries.
It’s a right-wing trope that the Left wants to give away free stuff, irresponsibly and to irresponsible people. But the Right is hypocritical about this, as about most things. For example, under Bush the Republicans were willing to spend over $1 trillion on a couple of unnecessary wars, and to finance a giant tax cut, and to borrow money to do those things. For that, they can find the money. For social programs, no. Secondly, what they really want is for the poor and people of color to have to work for things. They object to the estate tax, so they are apparently ok with someone inheriting great wealth and not having to work for things that way. And they complain that poor people might use their assistance to do something irresponsible and immoral, like consume drugs, but none of them is dragging away, or wanting to drag away, rich people on drugs. They are “conservative” because they like the status quo, and the status quo is prosperity for a small slice of the top tier of the economic ladder, and austerity for everyone else.
I think it improves my property values if the little old lady next door doesn’t have to eat cat food and live in decay. My general happiness includes the happiness of those I see around me. Because we live together in society, rather than the romanticized isolated homesteads that seem to appeal to the right wing crowd.
All of politics is making decisions about what will benefit a nation based on assumptions about and models of social interaction. It just depends on where you get them. With republicans, they push the stance that all of their models are “natural” or default, stemming from “common sense,” the “gut,” “god’s law” and “natural” laws of economics/competition/human nature. They then position applied/academic social science as “unnatural” when both groups are doing the same thing, just with some attempt at rigor on the Social Science side. Conservatism is just as active an ideology as progressivism.
It’s a shame that by sharing the name “Science” psychology, sociology, anthropology and social history have invited the “hard/lab sciences” to sneer at them dismissively as a lesser cousin. Sure the social sciences don’t produce replicable experiments, but they are tackling problems that the model of hard science can’t address. Any social academic worth their salt acknowledges that they are contributing to an understanding of a large system, not finding isolated “answers” Whatever politically actionable ideas that draw supported by social research are certainly better founded than thise backed simply by “Belive me, I Know How People Work”
the most extreme application would be that we operate under the law of the jungle. but Republicans clearly do not sympathize with anarchists.
It’s about control. Groups with an ideology tend to want to inflict their beliefs on those around them. In this way the gulf between Republican and Democrat is quite narrow. The details are in a hierarchical society versus a flatter egalitarian society. Be it a meritocracy or oligargy, some form of class system is the goal, ideally with multiply tiers. Most of the rhetoric of individual freedom and personal liberty rings hollow, the design is that you’re really only free to do the things that those above you permit you to do.
They are lesser sciences. They still have value, and we should continue to search for answers in these fields. But their results must be put into question repeatedly. Above the hard sciences is mathematics. Taking your argument, I suppose mathematicians look down on physicists and sneer at them too.
Yeah, I can relate - I made the mistake of standing my ground online and saying “Hillary is a bad candidate” a bunch, and even now there’s a lot of people that start screaming “BERNIEBRO” the second you dare say that maybe a person with a lifetime of zero political experience that suddenly got thrust into a Senatorial position for no clear reason, and did nothing with it other than try to build friendships and alliances for a Presidential run…
…Well, I think those are what people in the signals business professionally refer to as “red flags” (semaphor experts, back me up here). Y’know, when someone seems to be consistent in that they will hold only the most politically expedient positions (e.g., the ones that will give them power) and not seem to have any personal convictions other than “give me power”.
But… apparently judging someone by their actual actions, accomplishments and best guesses as to their motivations based on their own publicly stated positions is somehow sexist and “bro” of me. Because the world has gone stupid when I wasn’t looking.
[/quote] As long as he keeps misleading, those misleading topics will get torn apart and his presented facts will thus be criticized and questioned along side those.
[/quote]
I agree… nonetheless,100% truths out there are still continually and strategically being “criticized and questioned” by Trumpass-kissing, fascist-loving, pundits out there. Whatever MM does, it will be criticized by the right-wing, know-nothing shitheads as being lies.
It’s just a relevant reflection on the polarization and inflexibility of even my own party, and I have yet to hear anyone say “sorry for labeling and attacking you”, just a bunch of “well yes we attacked you, demonized you, blamed Hillary’s loss on you, marginalized you, and did everything but literally spit on you, but aren’t you over that yet?”
The Dems need to do a lot of party healing as part of their 2018/20 strategies, because Hillary’s rabid bot army (ahem, sorry, “micromessaging”) riled a lot of folks up and left some pretty bad scars that nobody seems to want to talk about.
And when they attempt to pass laws to curb pollution, they are passing progressive laws. This is simply an example of why I say conservative and liberal are meaningless labels. Reading through the rest of your responses I can’t find anything further in your post that’s in any way germaine to which I might reply.
It’s complex, because people are complex. A state might pass an anti-pollution law, but then might require (quasi-religious) counseling before issuing a marriage certificate. And don’t get me started on the whole Covenant marriage thing.
There is some general confusion between liberal, progressive, socialist, and communism. I think between 2 and 4 of those listed get confused with Marxism. And much of the general populace confuse Marxism with the far worse Leninism. Liberal is almost a meaningless term, to discuss it rationally requires an introduction to the definition of liberalism. (liberal needs no introduction to use as a pejorative though)
You seem to think that it’s all or nothing. The anti-pollution law is progressive and the counseling law is regressive. Just because the same body passed both laws does not change the nature of the laws themselves.
That confusion is intentional and it attempts to paint all 4 as left wing ideology when there is no rationale to do so. Further, ignorance as to the meaning of these terms by some people is no reason to behave as if these terms do not have definite meaning nor is it a reason to provide those who are ignorant a platform to push their uninformed opinions as to what they think those terms represent. Uninformed or ignorant viewpoints are not the other side of the argument. They aren’t even part of the actual discussion.
Either you don’t know the difference between market socialism and political socialism or you are being intellectually dishonest. Either way, this shows your position to be one we can dismiss out of hand due to it being built upon misuse of the term, intentional or not.
In reality this happens no matter how healthcare is paid for. This is another instance in which we are forced to guess if you are uniformed or intentionally being dishonest. Either way, the entire argument is specious since it attempts to differentiate between two systems by painting a false narrative of difference where none can be said to exist.
This would be a god of no compassion and certainly not the one they pretend to follow who was very charitable to the poor and helped them as much as he could. Of course the obvious flaw here is that an unhealthy people benefit no one and is therefor an unsustainable model.
Ok, I think I’ve decided what my guess is going to be… intentional intellectual dishonesty.
