Famous Liberals in our history

[Christopher]

Applying a term such as "liberal" to people throughout history is ridiculous, since the definition of the term has changed over time.

There are many words which have completely changed their meaning over time. Go here: Eight Words Which Have Completely Changed Their Meaning Over Time | Writinghood

I could create a list of "nice" people throughout history and yet if I had given this list earlier in history it would have a completely different meaning. The word nice used to refer to someone who was "ignorant or unaware". That seems to fit here, so I guess I will label you, rightwinger, a "nice" person.

 

[Intense]

Applying a term such as "liberal" to people throughout history is ridiculous, since the definition of the term has changed over time.

There are many words which have completely changed their meaning over time. Go here: Eight Words Which Have Completely Changed Their Meaning Over Time | Writinghood

I could create a list of "nice" people throughout history and yet if I had given this list earlier in history it would have a completely different meaning. The word nice used to refer to someone who was "ignorant or unaware". That seems to fit here, so I guess I will label you, rightwinger, a "nice" person.

My Personal Application of the Term Liberal, My Personal Litmus Test is that which imposes the Will of the Society, over The Individual, Over Justice, Over Rational Thought. It does not matter whether now or 1000 years ago, Power is Usurped from the Individual for the benefit of the Angry Mob, which justifies by Force, not Persuasion.

Natural Law is a Principle. Self Determination is a Principle. Equal Justice or Impartiality In Justice Is A Principle.

 

[Intense]

It's been the Same Argument Individual Liberty V.S. State Control. Government by Consent ( Structured Liberty, as Mark Levin would put it ) V.S. Big Brother.

 

[Cecilie1200]

He was also a LIBERAL

didnt he own slaves?
i know a few on your list did

Martha Washington owned slaves when they got married. They were freed upon Washingtons death

It wasn't just Martha, unfortunately for your squirming and evasion. See, if you didn't have such a history of selective awareness and disingenuity, you would know the correct answer to these arguments when they're flung back in your face.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Love our right wing name calling

20 years ago they were calling you a communist
5 years ago they were calling you a liberal
Now they call you a socialist

They don't know what any of these words mean but they just like to call names

Wrong again, borcht breath.

As was pointed out earlier -and is historically correct- the Eugene Debs socialist wing of the Democrat Party stole the term "liberal" (which up to that point meant libertarian), as a semantic smokescreen to obscure their authoritarian agenda.

Then again, as you continue to prove, accurate knowledge of history isn't your strong suit.

What are you just brain dead or intentionally moronic?

Eugene Debs? for crying out loud, when have republicans invoked the name of Eugene Debs?

I'll type slow so you understand. Up until the Bush debacle of a presidency, the republicans used "liberal" as a dirty word, just like they used communist before that. Once the public realized what a load of crap the right wing was selling, calling someone a "liberal" lost its sting. Now the dirty word off every right wingers tongue is the dreaded "socialist"

Yes, dumbass. Now let ME type slowly so YOU understand. Conservatives began using "liberal" as a dirty word because, beginning with Eugene Debs, the left started trying to appropriate the term in order to flatter themselves and disguise what they were really after. Their behavior dirtied the word up, allowing us to make it into an epithet. We don't have to know who Eugene Debs was to turn his attempt at deception around.

And no, calling someone "liberal" hasn't lost its sting, as witness the way that Democrats still run from that term every chance they get. We've just decided to be more precise about our descriptions.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I'll give you FDR. He was a man who believed that the average man was not capable of dealing with the world around him. As a result, he spent his life trying to construct a government that would both cradle the individual and insert itself into the lives of the individuals.

All of the others on the list seemed to believe quite srongly in the power of the individual against the force of the government or the power present at the time.

Any of them would certainly have been "Borqed" by modern Liberals if they dared to assert their core beliefs as they did at the time they lived.

At the core of Conservatism is the belief that the individual is a strong and competent force in the world. At the core of Liberalism is the belief that the individual is not capable and is weak in the face of adversity and must be protected by a collective.

That is why Conservatives want to protect reward for effort while Liberals want to assure the protection from failure. Everyone on your list believed in the nobility of the individual and all except FDR believed in the ability of the individual. This is odd to me in that he was crippled and yet the President.

Truly a "content of the charachter" triumph story.

You said it.

FDR should have left all those breadline stalkers to die slow deaths in the misery of their own failures.

Oh, yeah. What FDR did HELPED the people hurt by the Depression, rather than exacerbating the problem and extending the Depression years beyond what it would have lasted had he kept his mitts off.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I'll give you FDR. He was a man who believed that the average man was not capable of dealing with the world around him. As a result, he spent his life trying to construct a government that would both cradle the individual and insert itself into the lives of the individuals.

FDR was willing to look at what happens if the average man is dealt a series of conditions that were beyond his ability to deal with. The great depression was caused by greed and speculation. The ones who paid the price were the workers who found themselves without jobs.
Retirement plans of that era consisted of either dying young or having enough kids so that someone would be there to care for you in your old age. Social Security, which conservatives fought as socialism, provided a safety net for those who worked their whole lives

Horseshit. Each and every freaking word is just complete, utter horseshit premised on a fairy tale that has nothing whatsoever to do with what actually happened in American history. This post is just breathtaking in its staggering amount of ignorance, misinformation, and outright naivete.

 

[Cecilie1200]

what a load of SHIT! so FDR was a superhuman and eveyone else was incapable and stupid, gotcha ya fucking wingnut!

When compared to the republican braintrust of his time, FDR was superhuman

Republicans mouthed the same nonsense they do today..
Let things take care of themselves, poor people are poor because they deserve it

Isolate the US from the rest of the world, their war will not affect us

Thankfully, we had FDR to lead us through the depression and WWII

The Republicans were right about letting the economy correct itself. FDR's meddling extended the Great Depression by years. As for isolationism, that was hardly a "Republican vs Democrat" issue. The vast majority of the American public wanted nothing to do with another European war. Isolationism was a position advocated by a broad spectrum of public figures, including William Jennings Bryan, one of the more famous Democrats in 20th century American history.

FDR "led us through the Depression" only in the sense that he led us deeper into it.

 

[Fatality]

what a load of SHIT! so FDR was a superhuman and eveyone else was incapable and stupid, gotcha ya fucking wingnut!

When compared to the republican braintrust of his time, FDR was superhuman

thats the problem wiht you fucking nuts, you think your heroes are fucking Gods

 

[Cecilie1200]

Conservatives in action

1937 Wagner Housing Act opposed by rural and southern congressmen led by Sen. Harry Byrd of VA; southerners also opposed 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that sought to eliminate child labor that was widely used in the South and that established minimum wage and maximum hours for all workers, including blacks; southerners also killed the anti-lynching bill in 1938 with a 6-week filibuster

Interesting how you pick one little quote off an entire page, AND don't bother to source the quote. Trying to hide something?

 

[paperview]

I'll give you FDR. He was a man who believed that the average man was not capable of dealing with the world around him. As a result, he spent his life trying to construct a government that would both cradle the individual and insert itself into the lives of the individuals.

All of the others on the list seemed to believe quite srongly in the power of the individual against the force of the government or the power present at the time.

Any of them would certainly have been "Borqed" by modern Liberals if they dared to assert their core beliefs as they did at the time they lived.

At the core of Conservatism is the belief that the individual is a strong and competent force in the world. At the core of Liberalism is the belief that the individual is not capable and is weak in the face of adversity and must be protected by a collective.

That is why Conservatives want to protect reward for effort while Liberals want to assure the protection from failure. Everyone on your list believed in the nobility of the individual and all except FDR believed in the ability of the individual. This is odd to me in that he was crippled and yet the President.

Truly a "content of the charachter" triumph story.

You said it.

FDR should have left all those breadline stalkers to die slow deaths in the misery of their own failures.

Oh, yeah. What FDR did HELPED the people hurt by the Depression, rather than exacerbating the problem and extending the Depression years beyond what it would have lasted had he kept his mitts off.

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression?

Conservatives' newest talking point -- designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package -- is breathtaking.
By David Sirota

If you're like me, you sometimes find yourself speechless when confronted with abject insanity.

If you're like me, for instance, you were dumbfounded when "Forrest Gump" beat out "Pulp Fiction" for best picture; when HBO's "Sopranos" received more accolades than "The Wire"; and when George W. Bush insisted Iraqi airplanes were about to drop WMD on American cities.

So if you're like me, you probably understand why I was momentarily tongue-tied last week after running face-first into conservatives' newest (and most ridiculous) talking point: the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.

During a Christmas Eve appearance on Fox News, I pointed out that most mainstream economists believe the government must boost the economy with deficit spending. That's when conservative pundit Monica Crowley said we should instead limit such spending because President Franklin Roosevelt's "massive government intervention actually prolonged the Great Depression." Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett eagerly concurred, saying "historians pretty much agree on that."

Of course, I had recently heard snippets of this silly argument; right-wing pundits are repeating it everywhere these days. But I had never heard it articulated in such preposterous terms, so my initial reaction was paralysis, the mouth-agape, deer-in-the-headlights kind. Only after collecting myself did I say that such assertions about the New Deal were absurd. But then I was laughed at, as if it was hilarious to say that the New Deal did anything but exacerbate the Depression.

Afterward, suffering pangs of self-doubt, I wondered whether I and most of the country were the crazy ones. Sure, the vast majority of Americans think the New Deal worked well. But are conservatives right? Did the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolong the Great Depression?"

Ummm ... no.

On deeper examination, I discovered that the right bases its New Deal revisionism on the short-lived recession in a year straddling 1937 and 1938.
But that was four years into Roosevelt's term -- four years marked by spectacular economic growth.

Additionally, the fleeting decline happened not because of the New Deal's spending programs, but because Roosevelt momentarily listened to conservatives and backed off them. As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, in 1937-38, FDR "was persuaded to balance the budget" and "cut spending and the economy went back down again."

To be sure, you can credibly argue that the New Deal had its share of problems. But overall, the numbers prove it helped -- rather than hurt -- the macroeconomy. "Excepting 1937-1938, unemployment fell each year of Roosevelt's first two terms [while] the U.S. economy grew at average annual growth rates of 9 percent to 10 percent," writes University of California historian Eric Rauchway.

What about the New Deal's most "massive government intervention" -- its financial regulations? Did they prolong the Great Depression in ways the official data didn't detect?

Nope.

According to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, "Only with the New Deal's rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression." In fact, even famed conservative economist Milton Friedman admitted that the New Deal's Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was "the structural change most conducive to monetary stability since ... the Civil War."
OK -- if the verifiable evidence proves the New Deal did not prolong the Depression, what about historians -- do they "pretty much agree" on the opposite?
Again, no.

As Newsweek's Daniel Gross reports, "One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression."

But that's the critical point I somehow forgot last week, the truism we must all remember in 2009: As conservatives try to obstruct a new New Deal, they're not making any arguments that are remotely serious.
Salon.com Mobile

 

[mal]

1. Jesus Christ
2. George Washington
3. Abe Lincoln
4. Gandhi
5. Martin Luther King
6. Ben Franklin
7. FDR
8. Thomas Jefferson
9. JFK
10. James Madison

And what exactly have the conservatives done for us?

By what Standard?...

I got one for ya...

^Good Liberal... Jimmy Carter Liberal...

What did he do again?...

He was convicted and later executed for the rape and murder of 33 boys and young men between 1972 and his arrest in 1978, 27 of whom he buried in a crawl space under the floor of his house, while others were found in the Des Plaines River. He became notorious as the "Killer Clown" because of the many block parties he threw for his friends and neighbors, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup, under the name of "Pogo the Clown". - Source: Wiki



peace...

 

[paperview]

I'll give you FDR. He was a man who believed that the average man was not capable of dealing with the world around him. As a result, he spent his life trying to construct a government that would both cradle the individual and insert itself into the lives of the individuals.

FDR was willing to look at what happens if the average man is dealt a series of conditions that were beyond his ability to deal with. The great depression was caused by greed and speculation. The ones who paid the price were the workers who found themselves without jobs.
Retirement plans of that era consisted of either dying young or having enough kids so that someone would be there to care for you in your old age. Social Security, which conservatives fought as socialism, provided a safety net for those who worked their whole lives

Horseshit. Each and every freaking word is just complete, utter horseshit premised on a fairy tale that has nothing whatsoever to do with what actually happened in American history. This post is just breathtaking in its staggering amount of ignorance, misinformation, and outright naivete.

I just read through his post three times to see if I could find one bit of "complete and utter bullshit."

I can't find it.

Maybe you can actually tell us WHAT in there is incorrect.

Be specific.

 

[paperview]

Conservatives in action

1937 Wagner Housing Act opposed by rural and southern congressmen led by Sen. Harry Byrd of VA; southerners also opposed 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that sought to eliminate child labor that was widely used in the South and that established minimum wage and maximum hours for all workers, including blacks; southerners also killed the anti-lynching bill in 1938 with a 6-week filibuster

Interesting how you pick one little quote off an entire page, AND don't bother to source the quote. Trying to hide something?

Here's his source:

http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/20th/1930s/depression-responses4.ht

 

[paperview]

what a load of SHIT! so FDR was a superhuman and eveyone else was incapable and stupid, gotcha ya fucking wingnut!

When compared to the republican braintrust of his time, FDR was superhuman

Republicans mouthed the same nonsense they do today..
Let things take care of themselves, poor people are poor because they deserve it

Isolate the US from the rest of the world, their war will not affect us

Thankfully, we had FDR to lead us through the depression and WWII

The Republicans were right about letting the economy correct itself. FDR's meddling extended the Great Depression by years. As for isolationism, that was hardly a "Republican vs Democrat" issue. The vast majority of the American public wanted nothing to do with another European war. Isolationism was a position advocated by a broad spectrum of public figures, including William Jennings Bryan, one of the more famous Democrats in 20th century American history.

FDR "led us through the Depression" only in the sense that he led us deeper into it.

Not by 1940/ And Byrant had been dead for 15 years.

By 1940 , a good many Americans thought it was necessary to help defeat the Axis.

Republicans were the great isolationists, by and large.

 

[Cecilie1200]

You said it.

FDR should have left all those breadline stalkers to die slow deaths in the misery of their own failures.

Oh, yeah. What FDR did HELPED the people hurt by the Depression, rather than exacerbating the problem and extending the Depression years beyond what it would have lasted had he kept his mitts off.

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression?

Conservatives' newest talking point -- designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package -- is breathtaking.

Just because it's new to YOU doesn't make it new, or a "talking point", either. Conservatives have been saying it ever since FDR proposed doing it, and economists have been agreeing with them for a long time.

By David Sirota

If you're like me, you sometimes find yourself speechless when confronted with abject insanity.

If you're like me, for instance, you were dumbfounded when "Forrest Gump" beat out "Pulp Fiction" for best picture; when HBO's "Sopranos" received more accolades than "The Wire"; and when George W. Bush insisted Iraqi airplanes were about to drop WMD on American cities.

Apparently, if I were like you, I would think that merely disagreeing with your opinion is a sign of abject insanity, rather than simply a difference of opinion. "People didn't like the same movie I did! They should be committed!"

Have you always been so conceited, or is this a new thing you're trying out?

So if you're like me, you probably understand why I was momentarily tongue-tied last week after running face-first into conservatives' newest (and most ridiculous) talking point: the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.

Because he's a dimwit who had his head up his ass his entire life, and was shocked by how bright the sun was outside of his rectum?

During a Christmas Eve appearance on Fox News, I pointed out that most mainstream economists believe the government must boost the economy with deficit spending. That's when conservative pundit Monica Crowley said we should instead limit such spending because President Franklin Roosevelt's "massive government intervention actually prolonged the Great Depression." Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett eagerly concurred, saying "historians pretty much agree on that."

Of course, I had recently heard snippets of this silly argument; right-wing pundits are repeating it everywhere these days. But I had never heard it articulated in such preposterous terms, so my initial reaction was paralysis, the mouth-agape, deer-in-the-headlights kind. Only after collecting myself did I say that such assertions about the New Deal were absurd. But then I was laughed at, as if it was hilarious to say that the New Deal did anything but exacerbate the Depression.

I'm always amused by people so self-absorbed that they're convinced something hasn't happened until they personally have experienced it. I guess this guy also believes the sun rises as sets in his belly button.

Afterward, suffering pangs of self-doubt, I wondered whether I and most of the country were the crazy ones. Sure, the vast majority of Americans think the New Deal worked well. But are conservatives right? Did the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolong the Great Depression?"

Ummm ... no.

On deeper examination, I discovered that the right bases its New Deal revisionism on the short-lived recession in a year straddling 1937 and 1938.
But that was four years into Roosevelt's term -- four years marked by spectacular economic growth.

Ummmm, no. But for the sake of his fragile ego, I'm glad that he was able to find a strawman to argue against. It would have been terrible if he had actually had to argue in favor of his own premise, rather than finding a red herring to argue against.

Additionally, the fleeting decline happened not because of the New Deal's spending programs, but because Roosevelt momentarily listened to conservatives and backed off them. As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, in 1937-38, FDR "was persuaded to balance the budget" and "cut spending and the economy went back down again."

Paul Krugman. Oh, well, THAT settles it.

[ To be sure, you can credibly argue that the New Deal had its share of problems. But overall, the numbers prove it helped -- rather than hurt -- the macroeconomy. "Excepting 1937-1938, unemployment fell each year of Roosevelt's first two terms [while] the U.S. economy grew at average annual growth rates of 9 percent to 10 percent," writes University of California historian Eric Rauchway

What about the New Deal's most "massive government intervention" -- its financial regulations? Did they prolong the Great Depression in ways the official data didn't detect?

Nope.

According to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, "Only with the New Deal's rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression." In fact, even famed conservative economist Milton Friedman admitted that the New Deal's Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was "the structural change most conducive to monetary stability since ... the Civil War."
OK -- if the verifiable evidence proves the New Deal did not prolong the Depression, what about historians -- do they "pretty much agree" on the opposite?
Again, no.

As Newsweek's Daniel Gross reports, "One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression."

But that's the critical point I somehow forgot last week, the truism we must all remember in 2009: As conservatives try to obstruct a new New Deal, they're not making any arguments that are remotely serious.
Salon.com Mobile

Good thing you found a bunch of people you could quote to support you, without ever bothering to actually quote anyone presenting the arguments you decided you wanted to argue against. It's always easier to debate opponents you make up in your own head, isn't it?

 

[Cecilie1200]

FDR was willing to look at what happens if the average man is dealt a series of conditions that were beyond his ability to deal with. The great depression was caused by greed and speculation. The ones who paid the price were the workers who found themselves without jobs.
Retirement plans of that era consisted of either dying young or having enough kids so that someone would be there to care for you in your old age. Social Security, which conservatives fought as socialism, provided a safety net for those who worked their whole lives

Horseshit. Each and every freaking word is just complete, utter horseshit premised on a fairy tale that has nothing whatsoever to do with what actually happened in American history. This post is just breathtaking in its staggering amount of ignorance, misinformation, and outright naivete.

I just read through his post three times to see if I could find one bit of "complete and utter bullshit."

I can't find it.

Maybe you can actually tell us WHAT in there is incorrect.

Be specific.

Apparently, you're missing the concept of "every single word is complete and utter bullshit". It doesn't get any more specific than "every single word". I'm objecting to all of it, including "and" and "the".

 

[Fatality]

where are the anit war protests now?

 

[paperview]

Ok, cheekychix, YOU tell us - just how did FDR prolong the depression? Just when did that happen. WHat year? What policies? What EXACTLY did he do.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Conservatives in action

Interesting how you pick one little quote off an entire page, AND don't bother to source the quote. Trying to hide something?

Here's his source:

http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/20th/1930s/depression-responses4.ht

No shit, Dick Tracy. Hence the phrase " . . . off an entire page". I didn't say I wasn't capable of figuring out who he quoted. I said I found it interesting that I had to. Duhh.