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Post by AGB on Nov 27, 2013 22:20:14 GMT -5
Because it's the term for those who, from what I've read, feel liberal is equal to socialist/communist (take your pick or combine them, at your leisure). It's not my term. It appears to be the media's term. I just borrowed it. Substitute whatever you like. I'm pretty apolitical. It won't bother me. You seemed in favor of people self-identifying, as opposed to someone else slapping a label on them. No big deal. I don't know why we'd have such misunderstandings. Until you told me, I had no opinion regarding your stance on those issues. I also had no real interest. I didn't see "we", I said "in general". And if you have no interest, please feel free to ignore my words.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2013 22:24:39 GMT -5
When people create their own idiosyncratic meanings for words, which differ from standard definitions... there are bound to be "misunderstandings". "Language" is, like "communication", a "socialist" phenomenon... and is, sadly, vulnerable to subversion- from subversives with a penchant for distorting and twisting.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Nov 27, 2013 22:27:06 GMT -5
Ahh. I see what you're getting at, AGB. I wasn't referring to individuals when I used the word neocon, really. I was using the word in the way the media uses it - as a very broad term. As I said, I don't know if someone is a neocon, or not - unless that person chooses to tell me. That's probably because I'm really not interested in someone else's politics. Again, I'm pretty apolitical.
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Post by AGB on Nov 27, 2013 22:34:45 GMT -5
Ahh. I see what you're getting at, AGB. I wasn't referring to individuals when I used the word neocon, really. I was using the word in the way the media uses it - as a very broad term. As I said, I don't know if someone is a neocon, or not - unless that person chooses to tell me. That's probably because I'm really not interested in someone else's politics. Again, I'm pretty apolitical. It just struck me as funny, but I will take your word for it. Thanks for clarifying.
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Post by mmhmm on Nov 27, 2013 22:37:41 GMT -5
Ahh. I see what you're getting at, AGB. I wasn't referring to individuals when I used the word neocon, really. I was using the word in the way the media uses it - as a very broad term. As I said, I don't know if someone is a neocon, or not - unless that person chooses to tell me. That's probably because I'm really not interested in someone else's politics. Again, I'm pretty apolitical. It just struck me as funny, but I will take your word for it. Thanks for clarifying. Sure! I'm glad we got the chance to clarify for one another. It makes things a lot more pleasant when there's some understanding. Message boards are, by their very nature, difficult because of the lack of visible cues to what's really being said. Having some small idea of where someone else might be coming from is usually helpful. Heck, I'm much more interested in cawiau's possible purchase of a new house than I am in all this political caterwauling!
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 27, 2013 23:15:06 GMT -5
You don't know anything, really, about the way I think or about my politics; nor, do you know anything about how "most people" who self-identify as liberals actually think. If we accept your premise that our observation, studies, and experience mean nothing, and none of us can draw reliable conclusions about others' political views, even in aggregate, on what do you base your assessment of what I do and do not know?
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Post by mmhmm on Nov 27, 2013 23:22:24 GMT -5
Virgil, you have never observed, studied, or experienced me, and vice-versa. I know this, for certain: You do not know me, and you do not know my political stances. You might think you do; however, you would be wrong - just as you were wrong before. Get used to it. You'll be wrong a lot more before you've done it all here on the big, blue marble.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:40:00 GMT -5
I never said CA was going to be the first, but it is inextricably in a financial death spiral- a nose dive from which it can never pull up out of. who's first then? Texas?
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:41:11 GMT -5
I know quite a few liberals; albeit, not many in my part of the country. However, I can't say most of those I know claim themselves to be socialists any more than most of the conservatives I know (lots of those locally) claim themselves to be facists. I tend to let people decide for themselves how they think and what they are. I sometimes wonder how one who is not a liberal knows so much about how liberals think of themselves, though. This is why I prefer the terms "Utopian" or "Statist" because the point is that ANY ideology that would subordinate the rights of the individual to the state to achieve ANY collectivist goal is NOT classical liberalism. Our founders were liberals. Today's liberals despise our founders. well, you are half right, for once. best to quit while you are ahead.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:42:52 GMT -5
I sometimes wonder how one who is not a liberal knows so much about how liberals think of themselves, though. He need only take note what certain people call themselves (which may or may not include "liberal"), and then observe which policies, ideologies, etc. these people support. That's the crux of the ISI article: the cohort of Americans that support socialist policies overwhelmingly self-identify as "liberals", leading to an interchangeability of the terms "socialist" and "liberal" in North American politics in spite of the incongruity between their classical definitions. Thus the US has embraced the very thing you've suggested: letting people call themselves what they want to, and embracing the misnomers for sake of expediency. DJ is the language puritan guarding the door of "liberal", insisting that it apply only to the increasingly esoteric classical definition. the dictionary is the chronicle of accepted meaning. you refuse to accept that, but it is a fact.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:44:22 GMT -5
Do you actually think you see, expressed here, all the policies, ideologies, etc. posters support, Virgil? I'd beg to differ. If people don't call themselves "liberals", who are you to decide to call them "liberals"? People have every right to decide for themselves who they are and what they support. You have absolutely no right to do it for them. I don't see what this has to do with ISI article or the present debate. The article is talking about Americans who self-identify as liberals. no, the article CLAIMS that. do they offer any evidence? no. they don't.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:45:29 GMT -5
I don't see what this has to do with ISI article or the present debate. The article is talking about Americans who self-identify as liberals. You're the one who proclaimed " ... most Americans ascribing to the label "liberal" are in fact socialists." I did not. That isn't people self-identifying, Virgil. That's you identifying for them. or, more accurately, liberal haters identifying for them. Virgil is merely repeating their dreck.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:48:02 GMT -5
Liberal does not equate to socialist just because the neocons have decided it does. Presumably the neocons have all self-identified as such... But I am glad to hear you're in my corner on self-identifying, so allow me to state for the record that I do not self-identify as a member or supporter of hate groups, nor as a racist, nor is my dislike of presidential policies in any which way related to the president being of mixed race... glad that's settled once and for all. AGB- i haven't seen you around much. but i wish you a happy Thanksgiving, if you are inclined to celebrate it.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:51:28 GMT -5
You don't know anything, really, about the way I think or about my politics; nor, do you know anything about how "most people" who self-identify as liberals actually think. If we accept your premise that our observation, studies, studies? what studies?and experience mean nothing, and none of us can draw reliable conclusions about others' political views, even in aggregate, on what do you base your assessment of what I do and do not know? i would posit that if your experiences and observations are sufficiently narrow, that you could not possibly know how a term is used outside of that experience.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 27, 2013 23:59:50 GMT -5
i just love it when people call liberals immoral/perverts/irrational. it is just so cute.
Another danger lurks in the emancipation of sexual deviations. Our sexuality is of a rather “plastic” nature—even in its normal course. For instance, a male will more easily fall in love with an extremely slender girl, if thinness is the fashion, or with one of opposite bodily qualities, as in the fashion of Rubens’s age, if that is the day’s trend. Perversions or other forms of immorality often become fashions and can destroy nations. For instance, generations of fatherless children from single mothers will likely lead to social perdition.
Contemporary liberalism reveals its hedonistic character with the mass murder of the unborn. What we have in the West is Childermass of “unwanted life,” similar to the practices of National and International Socialism in Europe and East Asia. What did Nicolas Gomez Davila, brightest thinker on the Right, tell us? “The cult of man must be celebrated with human sacrifices.” As a result, pregnant women no longer walk as cradles but as swinging coffins.
what an a-hole. seriously. this is not a "study". it is an a$$-pull. he tries to come off as an academic, but really he is just a small minded bigot.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Nov 28, 2013 0:04:26 GMT -5
Who in the heck wrote that, dj?!?
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 0:12:44 GMT -5
Who in the heck wrote that, dj?!? Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn that was the ISI article that Virgil can't stop gushing over.
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Post by mmhmm on Nov 28, 2013 0:16:02 GMT -5
Eeeew. Okay. I'd never read anything quite like that before. I hope I don't read anything quite like that again.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 0:22:33 GMT -5
Eeeew. Okay. I'd never read anything quite like that before. I hope I don't read anything quite like that again. there is not much to recommend it, unless you are a fan of opinion and flowery language. lord knows i am.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Nov 28, 2013 0:55:32 GMT -5
If that was flowery language, the guy must have been thinking of "corpse flowers".
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 1:07:26 GMT -5
If that was flowery language, the guy must have been thinking of "corpse flowers".
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Nov 28, 2013 1:16:35 GMT -5
You haven't lived until you've been within sniffing distance of one of those suckers. Once you have, you'll wish you hadn't lived!
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Nov 28, 2013 2:36:57 GMT -5
i just love it when people call liberals immoral/perverts/irrational. it is just so cute. Another danger lurks in the emancipation of sexual deviations. Our sexuality is of a rather “plastic” nature—even in its normal course. For instance, a male will more easily fall in love with an extremely slender girl, if thinness is the fashion, or with one of opposite bodily qualities, as in the fashion of Rubens’s age, if that is the day’s trend. Perversions or other forms of immorality often become fashions and can destroy nations. For instance, generations of fatherless children from single mothers will likely lead to social perdition.
Contemporary liberalism reveals its hedonistic character with the mass murder of the unborn. What we have in the West is Childermass of “unwanted life,” similar to the practices of National and International Socialism in Europe and East Asia. What did Nicolas Gomez Davila, brightest thinker on the Right, tell us? “The cult of man must be celebrated with human sacrifices.” As a result, pregnant women no longer walk as cradles but as swinging coffins. what an a-hole. seriously. this is not a "study". it is an a$$-pull. he tries to come off as an academic, but really he is just a small minded bigot. It doesn't claim to be a study. It's a frank expression of how social conservatives (present company included) view particular issues. It's presenting doctrines by which one can identify the "liberals" it's talking about, and being brutally direct about it. Funny. I read through the many traits and doctrines it identifies, and by the end of it I know exactly who it's talking about. Fair enough, and so I'll tell you what: if betwixt my meanderings about the world I should happen upon a self-identifying "liberal" American who doesn't fit the ISI rubric, I shall amend my worldview. You are correct. I don't accept it. It is a fact with many notable exceptions. But seeing as you do accept it, we can at least put the issue of transgenderism to rest. Any reputable online dictionary I could find defines "male" exclusively as "of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring", and in some cases more specifically as "a person bearing an X and Y chromosome pair in the cell nuclei and normally having a penis, scrotum, and testicles, and developing hair on the face at adolescence; a boy or man". On top of this, "man" in the individual sense is defined as "an adult male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman". Ergo a transgendered woman who wishes to "live as a man", making any of the necessary cosmetic changes, in no way meets the definition of "male" and thus does not meet the definition of "a man". A similar proof follows for a transgendered woman. Thus an individual who is born a woman will always be a woman; one born a man will always be a man. An individual's self-identification as "male" or "female" irrespective of the established dictionary definitions is meaningless. I happen to agree with this assessment. Hence we can at least agree that transgenderism is a lie and a farce (in all but the tiny fraction of cases where an individual possesses ambiguous genetics). That's one issue put to rest at least.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 11:16:45 GMT -5
i just love it when people call liberals immoral/perverts/irrational. it is just so cute. Another danger lurks in the emancipation of sexual deviations. Our sexuality is of a rather “plastic” nature—even in its normal course. For instance, a male will more easily fall in love with an extremely slender girl, if thinness is the fashion, or with one of opposite bodily qualities, as in the fashion of Rubens’s age, if that is the day’s trend. Perversions or other forms of immorality often become fashions and can destroy nations. For instance, generations of fatherless children from single mothers will likely lead to social perdition.
Contemporary liberalism reveals its hedonistic character with the mass murder of the unborn. What we have in the West is Childermass of “unwanted life,” similar to the practices of National and International Socialism in Europe and East Asia. What did Nicolas Gomez Davila, brightest thinker on the Right, tell us? “The cult of man must be celebrated with human sacrifices.” As a result, pregnant women no longer walk as cradles but as swinging coffins. what an a-hole. seriously. this is not a "study". it is an a$$-pull. he tries to come off as an academic, but really he is just a small minded bigot. It doesn't claim to be a study. my mistake. i thought YOU were claiming it was one.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 11:18:01 GMT -5
Funny. I read through the many traits and doctrines it identifies, and by the end of it I know exactly who it's talking about. in other words, it confirmed your biases. yeah, that feels nice, doesn't it?
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 11:19:19 GMT -5
Fair enough, and so I'll tell you what: if betwixt my meanderings about the world I should happen upon a self-identifying "liberal" American who doesn't fit the ISI rubric, I shall amend my worldview. i accept your challenge. give me a minute to deposit the rubbish on my hard drive so i can spend the next week picking it apart one sentence at a time. edit: i am only going to address the points that i find serious fault with. there is simply not enough time or space to do anything else. edit: as to the rest of your post, i don't share your view on transgenderism. the dictionary definition works for me.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 11:32:52 GMT -5
liberalism answers the question: “How should government be exercised?” false. liberalism is a branch of political philosophy that asks the question "what form of government is legitimate"? it doesn't, as a first principle, posit any method for governing, only tests for when government has exceeded it's boundaries and is treading upon liberty. in other words, liberalism doesn't answer that question. it asks: "when is government intrusive on liberty"? books.google.com/books?id=KhSDAAAAMAAJ&hl=en
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 11:38:08 GMT -5
Since its beginning, this union suffered from the democratic principle of equality, the antithesis of liberty.
he is using equality in the trivial sense here (equal measure). but i see NOTHING antithetical to liberty in the principle of "equal justice under law" or "equal opportunity". it is in THIS sense that equality is used in the Declaration of Independence. and it is in this sense that liberty is conceived by liberals, and i fervently disagree that it is antithetical to liberty in this sense.
he goes on for two paragraphs blathering about this red herring.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 11:49:08 GMT -5
The term “liberal” in the political sense originates from Spanish. The supporters of the 1812 Constitution of Cadiz called themselves liberales and their opponents serviles.false. Purely in reference to political opinion, "tending in favor of freedom and democracy" it dates from c.1801, from French libéral, originally applied in English by its opponents (often in French form and with suggestions of foreign lawlessness) to the party favorable to individual political freedoms. But also (especially in U.S. politics) tending to mean "favorable to government action to effect social change," which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of "free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions" (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform), which dates from 1823.www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=liberalnote: even in 1823, we can see why there is a negative sense of the word "liberal". we are in opposition to traditionalists and dogmatists (those that refuse to rely on reason, and instead are guided by scripture), and thus "outside" of political and religious establishment. heathens. rebels.
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Post by djAdvocate on Nov 28, 2013 12:02:31 GMT -5
There are four genuine liberalisms that have freedom as their ideal. The first group I call “Pre-Liberals,” like Adam Smith and Burke. The second group, which includes Alexis Tocqueville, Montalembert, and Lord Acton, I call “Early Liberals.” These noblemen had few economic interests. Then came the “Old Liberals,” who were indeed economically committed, yet somewhat “anticlerical,” and inclined to flirt with philosophical relativism. These include founders of the so-called Austrian School of Economics, such as Carl Meyer and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, with Ludwig von Mises being the last modern representative. Finally, the more modern “Neo-Liberals” are those who formed the Mont Pélerin Society in 1961..
i guess he means "before the term existed" when he says "pre-liberal", because there is nothing NOT liberal about Smith, Locke and Burke. the second group was more interested in politics than economics, but that is no less liberal than anyone who is just interested in economics. but here we see this tendency to dice liberals up into smaller pieces, rather than see the movement as a continuum from the enlightenment until today.
what is interesting about this passage is that he basically demarcates political, economic, and social liberalism, then basically dismisses the ones interested in social liberalism as not being "economically committed". he doesn't view neo-liberals as "liberals which refuse to address social concerns". rather, he sees economic liberalism as the only TRUE descendant to "classical liberalism", and that, thus "philosophical" or "social" liberalism are totally disconnected and untrue to liberalism. however, most liberal philosophers think precisely the opposite: that the Hayekian school has jettisoned the social aspects of liberalism for a purely economic perspective. this tension continues as a tacit "rule" throughout this essay.
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