Can you please stop calling yourselves Liberals

The BBQ Pit
21

Eclectic Skeptic Wha you and Chomsky describe is not capitalism, but government welfare for business - crony capitalism

Halo13 There is in fact little difference between a libertarian and a classical liberal (Locke is often seen as the philosophical father of both)

I note that in typical Marxist fashion you refuse to call anyone radical that does not adhere to that ridiculous, divisive and collectivist system.

Ignorant high horse? Isn’t that rich coming from a socialist? You and Marx ay share somthing though. A basic misunderstanding of economics and society, that and I suspect, a bitter hatred of anybody who can achieve in their own right.

22

[bMorrigoon** With the proviso that I am not really up to the play with US politics, would that describe a Goldwater republican? What little I have read on him seems to fit - but that is very little.

23

Bingo. I would instead ask for people to stop calling everyone that disagrees with them “liberal”. I pretty much instantly ignore anything these kinds of people have to say when all they do is blame problems on some unspecific person or idea they call “liberal”. Classic example: Ann Coulter, and whoever draws Mallard Fillmore.

The word is often misused with too wide a brush, because what people believe is often complicated. For example, it does no good to categorize the anti-war crowd as “liberals”, because there are conservatives that oppose the war, too.

24

I thought John Stewart Mill was generally seen as the philosophical father of libertarianism.

25

Only for those who choose the utilitarian route. I do not, and nor do I know of many who do. I much prefer a natural rights based libertarianism. Frankly utilitarianism scares the hell out of me

26

What exactly is “utilitarianism”?

27

wow…

First of all, liberal means dynamic and conservative means static.

Now that we got that out of the way…

Radical is an extreme liberal.

Reactionary is an extreme conservative.

Let’s go a bit further…

Socialism and Communism are not the same. Calling Karl Marx a socialist is a bit like calling Stalin “a bad guy”. Marx was a radical. The idea of revolution (which is a large part on which commuinsm is founded) is radical. Being socialist is liberal, but not radical. The United States has many socialist ideals. In fact, the very concept of taxation is a socialist ideal. People tend to put a negative stigmatism on socialism because of the communist uprisings of the twentieth century. Socialism is not evil. In fact, a perfect government is a perfect blend of socialism and free enterprise.

Next step: When talking about coservatives and liberals, there are basically two different agendas that need to be classified: economic issues and moral issues.

When it comes to economic issues, the liberal side of the fence is, of course, the side that favors government aid. The more government aid that is rendered, the closer we become to socialism. The less government aid that is rendered, the closer we become to a completely free economy where monopolies rule. These monopolies are generally called government utilities because, after a time of free enterprise, the government either gives power to these monopolies or it loses its powers to these monopolies. The most such powerful monopolies are either the military monopolies that existed in the middle part of the twentieth century in Europe or the religious monopolies that existed in during medieval times in Europe.

When it comes to moral issues, liberals are generally in favor of a lack of government intervention while conservatives are in favor of dictating morality to the public. The pure liberal side of this fence generally leads to either anarchy or a situation where the government doesn’t dictate morality at all and may actually destroy institutions that preach morality (religion). Of course, the end result is a policy of order through scare tactics where the only morality is “loyalty to the state”. The pure conservative side of this fence generally leads to a situation where the government becomes the all powerful force in a citizens life. Concepts like “motherland” and “homeland” generally arise from a very conservative point of view.

One can see that there is truly little difference between pure reactionary and pure radical, hence, the confusion in definitions. The difference is what it takes to achieve those extremes.

Hence, given the above examples, extreme liberal (radical) equals communist while extreme conserative (reactionary) equals fascist.

Right smack dab in the middle is democracy.

28

The thesis of utilitarianism is that the correct ethical choice is the one that will result in the greatest total happiness of the society in which the choice is made. The most famous (and one of the first) utilitarian treatise was written by John Stewart Mill, who has earned his place among the most famous philosophers in Monty Python’s drunken philosopher song.

29

Oops, that’s Stuart with a “u,” not a “ew.”

30

A philosophy that says an action is right if it gives the greatest possible happiness to the greatest amount of people.

And Unwritten Nocturne, remember, Mill was the first person to state one of the main credos of libertarianism

And, like Mill points out, merely adopting liberalism, natural right theory, and the philosophy of the social contract theorists doesn’t prevent the majority from coercing the minority.

31

Friedo, unwrittenNocturne, call it crony capitalism or corporate welfare, but it is the way that capitalism is actually practiced and succeeds. You are envisioning some form of ideal capitalism, like anarcho-capitalism, which I would actually support, but it is not what succeeds right now. 80% of small businesses fail. When was the last time a mom and pop grocery store got a billion dollar government bailout?

32

The word “liberal” means different things in different places. In the UK it means centrist; in the US it seems to mean left-wing. Maybe in Australia it means something else altogether - the confusion of differing countries using the same term for different things could be what is causing your ire.

33

On the subject of Chomsky, did anyone else hear his opinions on the Iraq situation? A couple of months back when it was clear that many Islamic countries were not supporting the US in its efforts to oust Saddam Hussein, Chomsky “explained” what was happening. You see, most of these nations were familiar with Saddam’s tyranny and didn’t like it. So they were mad at the US for supporting Saddam for so many years (although Chomsky never explained when this happened) and therefore opposed the US. So to summarize Chomsky’s thesis, Middle Eastern countries are supporting Saddam Hussein as a sign of their opposition to Saddam Hussein.

In our next episode, Chomsky explains how up is down and black is white.

34

Even better, Little Nemo, try to find Chomsky’s writing from the late 1970’s in praise of Pol Pot, and then read what he says about Mr. Pot later.

I have yet to see any evidence that Mr. Chomsky knows anything deep on any subject except linguistics.

35

In the U.S. “liberal” used to mean what it’s been described to mean on these boards, but over the last decade or so right-wing media types like Rush Limbaugh have used it as a catch-all phrase whose semantic content is roughly equivalent to “evil.” The right’s command of the media has so defamed the term “liberal” that anyone who is politically ambitious won’t go near the term. They use the term “progressive” instead, which has not yet been defamed into uselessness by the right.

36

Please give a cite for that article by Chomsky, so that I can see to what extent you are mischaracterizing his argument. In this article, Chomsky is quite lucid:

http://www.austinagainstwar.org/chomsky09_02.html

The US support for Saddam Hussein is a matter of historical record, and I am surprised that anyone at this point would be ignorant of it. Here is a good summary from the Columbia Journalism Review:

http://www.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp

The situation in the Middle East is quite complex, and not a simple matter of black and white. The US armed both sides in the Iraq-Iran war, hoping that they would neutralize the other. The US gave token support to the Kurds and the Shiites and then allowed Saddam to slaughter them. The US gives arms to Turkey to slaughter Kurds in Turkey.

The US frequently employs this divide and conquer strategy to ensure that nobody emerges as a strong power. It is all part of our geopolitical strategy.

It is quite possible that Iraq’s neighbors are angry at the US for supporting Saddam, but also do not like the US war of aggression against Iraq. The world is a complicated place, and the Arab world especially is full of deviousness. Even more devious is US foreign policy.

37

GQ, you are confused. Chomsky stated the obvious, that the US denied their responsibility in creating the situation in Cambodia with their murderous and illegal bombing campaign. Chomsky was called a Pol Pot apologist, which is of course as illogical as calling anti-war protesters Saddam supporters. Read this explanation to clarify your muddles mind:

http://www.media-criticism.com/Washington_Post_Pol_Pot_1998.html

Chomsky and Herman are 2 critics of US foreign policy who have, IMHO, the deepest understaning of what America is all about. Read “What Uncle Sam Really Wants” for a simple easy-to-read summary.

38

Ah, I see. I do like Mill, though, I’m not even remotely libertarian.

39

Classical liberal (Jefferson style) checking in to say RIGHT ON. I’m not a big fan of many of the people who support the libertarian party, but the great part of this ideology is that I DON’T HAVE TO BE!! They’ll do their shit, I’ll do mine, and we can both be free of each other’s meddling.

Yeah.

LC

40

True, but I was referring to common usage, which, in the minds of the Unwashed Masses, holds that there can be only two sides to any issue. Just another case of simplistic Ignorance infesting the populace.