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Qball?
The fact that you imagine that anybody can define what they are and what they believe in ONE WORD is the problem.
Are you really entirely 100% in agreement with every detail and position of the GOP?
You are more than a simplistic label, are you not?
Well so is everyone else.
It isn't that one word encapsulates every political belief we have. It's that we're not afraid to call it what it is, generally speaking. It's not somehow more honest to avoid actually labeling your beliefs as something because that term may not describe every belief you have. And my point here is that liberals try and define their beliefs by what makes them look better than those who disagree with them, instead of the more official term that already exists.
Listen up, Libs! You must call yourselves "Liberal"! And by that, I mean limp-wristed, socialist, tax and spend NAZI's who are weak on defense, hate our country and want to impose sharia law.
OP...........you are not acknowledging the fact that 20 years of propaganda administered by crafty fuckers like Carl Rove and Newt Gingrich effectively altered the meaning of the term "liberal" in Americam political discourse.
It worked well. But not well enough. The word is being reclaimed. Your OP barely scratches the surface of the matter. And that.......is very "conservative" of you.
I think it's funny when somebody calls me an extremist. Sure don't know how God, family, Country, and hard work makes me extreme. It's the exact same value system our Nation was founded on and still the most common set of core values in our Country.
The left likes to arbitrarily call us extreme, but ask them to focalize that. They will start fumbling for certain. There are very few right wing extremist in America. In fact most Ind. and a lot of Democrats are conservative on most issues. They just have one or two issues they use to point their votes left. Typically, those issues aren't the most important for the Country - they are most important to the individual.
That type of self-serving attitude, well...
Qball?
The fact that you imagine that anybody can define what they are and what they believe in ONE WORD is the problem.
Are you really entirely 100% in agreement with every detail and position of the GOP?
You are more than a simplistic label, are you not?
Well so is everyone else.
It isn't that one word encapsulates every political belief we have. It's that we're not afraid to call it what it is, generally speaking. It's not somehow more honest to avoid actually labeling your beliefs as something because that term may not describe every belief you have. And my point here is that liberals try and define their beliefs by what makes them look better than those who disagree with them, instead of the more official term that already exists.
It isn't that one word encapsulates every political belief we have. It's that we're not afraid to call it what it is, generally speaking. It's not somehow more honest to avoid actually labeling your beliefs as something because that term may not describe every belief you have. And my point here is that liberals try and define their beliefs by what makes them look better than those who disagree with them, instead of the more official term that already exists.
Listen up, Libs! You must call yourselves "Liberal"! And by that, I mean limp-wristed, socialist, tax and spend NAZI's who are weak on defense, hate our country and want to impose sharia law.
OP...........you are not acknowledging the fact that 20 years of propaganda administered by crafty fuckers like Carl Rove and Newt Gingrich effectively altered the meaning of the term "liberal" in Americam political discourse.
It worked well. But not well enough. The word is being reclaimed. Your OP barely scratches the surface of the matter. And that.......is very "conservative" of you.
The term liberal has been stained since the progressive era when "progressives" moved in and claimed themselves "liberals". Today's "liberals" have absolutely NOTHING in common with liberalism in the classical sense. Nothing. Zilch. Nathan. Nadda.
◾an ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society,
◾the support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system,
◾the desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals' rights from others and from its own expansion, and
◾the universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions.
The Rise, Decline, and Reemergence of Classical Liberalism
Which is why most modern day classical liberals find themselves somewhere beween the rhetoric of the republican party and libertarianism. Which was a name given to a faction that moved passed the neoliberals of the mid 1900s.
But if you ask a modern LOLberal, they will tell you that classical liberalism was made up by conservatives as some type of propaganda.
Listen up, Libs! You must call yourselves "Liberal"! And by that, I mean limp-wristed, socialist, tax and spend NAZI's who are weak on defense, hate our country and want to impose sharia law.
OP...........you are not acknowledging the fact that 20 years of propaganda administered by crafty fuckers like Carl Rove and Newt Gingrich effectively altered the meaning of the term "liberal" in Americam political discourse.
It worked well. But not well enough. The word is being reclaimed. Your OP barely scratches the surface of the matter. And that.......is very "conservative" of you.
The term liberal has been stained since the progressive era when "progressives" moved in and claimed themselves "liberals". Today's "liberals" have absolutely NOTHING in common with liberalism in the classical sense. Nothing. Zilch. Nathan. Nadda.
That is true. Our Founders were Classical Liberals and they promoted a theory of freedom and self governance that no modern day American liberal can possibly embrace.
If we strip it down to its most fundamental and barest components I like this definition of Classical Liberalism:
◾an ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society,
◾the support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system,
◾the desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals' rights from others and from its own expansion, and
◾the universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions.
The Rise, Decline, and Reemergence of Classical Liberalism
I don't think any person who is willing to admit that he is a modern American lbieral could support any one of those four components.
The term "right wing extremist" conjures up for me people like White Nationalists/Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, abortion clinic bombers, and banjo music.
Right wing extremist ideology has been bleeding over into the rhetoric of what I call "UnConservative" thinking. UnConservatives are right wing nutjobs not to be confused with the extremists. Nutjobs are people who say stuff like "Obama watched as they died", or "Nazis are left wing", or "Maobama", or "show me the birth certificate" or "gun grabbing EOs".
Right wing nutjobs are regular consumers of The Daily Caller, The Blaze, WND, The Washington Times, CNS News, and of course Fox News. A right wing nutjob believes these are journalism and not political organs.
A necessary component of being a right wing nutjob is to have a weak mind ready to absorb and believe anything that aligns with the right wing nutjob world view. A story is true for a nutjob simply based on the fact the nutjob wants to believe it. Thus "Obama watched as they died" is accepted at face value. Obama using strips of the US Constitution to write gun grabbing EOs is accepted at face value as an obvious truth, and this belief will be used as foundational evidence when the next story is manufactured about unconstitutional behavior by Obama. "He has done it before." This is the Möbius loop world in which the right wing nutjob lives.
The right wing nutjobs have mulitplied like retarded rabbits and are destroying the GOP from within, enabling incompetent boobs like Obama to win victory after victory because of their ineptitude.
What kind of dumb fucks do victory laps over an election which was months away? Right wing nutbjobs, that's who.
The Founders were 100% libertarian (little 'L') which can be used interchangeably with Classical Liberal. They were not "Libertarian" (capital L) of the sort that translates Constitutional freedoms in ways the Founders never intended or who would demand that every society and social group should respect and live according to their definition of freedom.
Classical Liberals or libertarians (little 'L') see freedom as a choice of how we live our lives. They saw freedom as the people being able to form themselves into the societies they wished to have however religious fanatic, Atheist, restrictive, or anything goes they wished that society to be. But they also resisted outsiders telling a society how it must live. Chicago would have no authority to demand that Detroit live as Chicago people live, etc. If Texas wanted to be the wild and wooly west and New York wanted to be up class snooty and rigidly proper, each should be able to have what they want and would leave the other alone.
I got his recently as one of those political e-mail things that goes around and I think it is pertinent to this thread.
Some object to how conservatives define liberals--blame Karl Rove et al for that? I don't think so--but look how many liberals define conservatives.
I'm a RACIST if I criticize the current President.
I'm a TERRORIST because I believe in my 2nd Amendment Rights.
I'm a TEA-BAGGER for supporting the Constitution.
I'm a THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY because I refuse to shut up.
I'm a TROUBLEMAKER for asking unanswered questions.
I'm a BIRTHER if I think it is curious how much of the President's former life is under lock and key.
I'm a TRAITOR for blowing the whistle on my corrupt government.
I'm a CONSPIRACY THEORIST for presenting documented facts.
I'm ANTI-AMERICAN for supporting Constitutionalists.
I'm a RELIGIOUS FANATIC if any of my convictions are guided by my personal faith.
I'm a WAR MONGER because I support the Troops.
I'm a HOMOPHOBE because I believe in traditional marriage.
I'm a GREEDY AND HEARTLESS CAPITALIST because I believe that you are not entitled to what I have earned.
I'm a SEPARATIST because I oppose Illegal Immigration and Sharia Law.
And yet when liberals are defined as the opposite of these things, it is called bullshit.
I got his recently as one of those political e-mail things that goes around and I think it is pertinent to this thread.
Some object to how conservatives define liberals--blame Karl Rove et al for that? I don't think so--but look how many liberals define conservatives.
I'm a RACIST if I criticize the current President.
I'm a TERRORIST because I believe in my 2nd Amendment Rights.
I'm a TEA-BAGGER for supporting the Constitution.
I'm a THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY because I refuse to shut up.
I'm a TROUBLEMAKER for asking unanswered questions.
I'm a BIRTHER if I think it is curious how much of the President's former life is under lock and key.
I'm a TRAITOR for blowing the whistle on my corrupt government.
I'm a CONSPIRACY THEORIST for presenting documented facts.
I'm ANTI-AMERICAN for supporting Constitutionalists.
I'm a RELIGIOUS FANATIC if any of my convictions are guided by my personal faith.
I'm a WAR MONGER because I support the Troops.
I'm a HOMOPHOBE because I believe in traditional marriage.
I'm a GREEDY AND HEARTLESS CAPITALIST because I believe that you are not entitled to what I have earned.
I'm a SEPARATIST because I oppose Illegal Immigration and Sharia Law.
And yet when liberals are defined as the opposite of these things, it is called bullshit.
You really believe that liberals say/think those things.....don't you. Odd.
You claim to be a paid lecturer? Wild.
I was going through some of my old posts when I found something I wrote a few years ago:
I've found that many liberals really dislike admitting that they're liberals. I don't mean that they would rather pretend to be conservative, but I think they hate admitting that they're liberals because that would suggest they're biased and partisan and perhaps even closed-minded to other ideologies. It's the Jon Stewart "restore sanity" BS. Of course "sanity" means "criticizing Republicans and Democrats who embarrass us". They love to decry conservatives for being incurious and hidebound by ideology, and conversely pretend that they have researched the facts and have come to what they feel is the smart, rational, logical conclusion, but that's not the case. They'd rather believe they're just smart and logical and truth-seekers rather than partisan hacks.
I'd forgotten I even wrote that, but I got a few Thanks' and repped for that post. I'm reposting it because I think it's part and parcel of the reason why it seems people are still so concerned about right-wing extremism and seemingly in disbelief that liberals could ever be extremist, given recent events with this cop-killer dude on the loose.
I've always had two thoughts when it came to the idea of right-wing extremism: 1) it's not as serious as liberals make it out to be...they just like painting us as crazy to make their ideas more tenable to people in the middle; and 2) to the extent that right-wing rhetoric is more animated than liberal rhetoric these days, it's probably due to the fact that each side has to have a period of that to figure out what they stand for and how to achieve their goals...liberals had their period of violence and extremist rhetoric in the 60s and 70s, which is where many of their ideas came out of.
But, I think it's something else, too. I think conservatives, right-wingers, Republicans are castigated as "extremist" because they dare to define themselves. Think about it. How often do liberals admit to being liberal? How often do Democrats call one of their own a "liberal"? How often has Obama called himself "liberal"?
Think about how offended liberals get whenever people accuse Obama and the Democrats of supporting socialist policies. Why is that? Socialism is an actual thing that exists. There's even a voting member of Congress who identifies as a socialist (Bernie Sanders).
Think about how, day after day, all the main hosts on MSNBC do is point to the sins of the Republican Party and conservative ideology, and yet, how often has Maddow or Ed Schultz or Chris Matthews called themselves a liberal? Jon Stewart does nothing but criticize Republicans and FOX News for being crazy, he had a "Rally to Restore Sanity", and yet, only when he's pinned down, will he admit he "has a bias".
How often do you hear about people warning the far-left about their extremist rhetoric? It's almost like they don't exist.
It really seems like the only place liberals have the courage to call themselves what they are is through the anonymity of the Internet.
Contrast that coyness with the right-wing. All we do is define ourselves. We wave our conservative banner proudly. We call ourselves libertarian. We make our representatives call themselves conservative or libertarian. We gravitate to people who proudly define themselves as such. Our ideas about government -- less taxes, less spending, less regulation, conservative social policy, etc -- are all apart of who we are. We have disagreements and fights about how much is too much, but we don't shy away from labeling ourselves with vague language...and that's our problem.
If you agree with our ideas, you're probably a conservative. At the very least, you aren't a liberal. But see, a lot of people don't like what being a conservative implies, or liberal for that matter, implies. So they hedge on defining themselves. So what liberals do is wrap up their ideas in the conceits of "intellect". Their ideas about soaking the rich in taxes, universal healthcare, more spending on the environment, etc. aren't "liberal", no, it's what any person who feels, thinks, respects science, respects math, respects facts, has common sense and the ability to use logic would conclude about the world. "Smart people" vote for Democrats, "conservatives" vote for Republicans, see what I mean?
The problem is, our ideas, conservative though they may be, are also based in fact and logic. I think that's why older people tend to be conservative; they no longer need the social validation of siding with the "smart crowd", which means they're free to actually make up their own minds and see things for what they are.
The liberals have been having fun with "conservative" as well, Wry Catcher.
