I can see how someone would feel that a liberal desire for regulation of say, air pollution, is controlling. I can see it for gun control. But I don’t see it for SSM. If you didn’t mean to include SSM, we can drop this now. But the most extreme liberal view of this I know of would be to amend the tax codes, etc., to allow a same sex couple to get the same benefits my wife and I do. How this is either controlling or authoritarian is way beyond me. I know some people consider giving that guy over there the right to do something they don’t like, or is against their religion, somehow diminshes their rights, but I certainly have never gotten the impression you agree with this.
First of all, I was not discussing what the cirriculum in public schools should be. My point was that if a parent decides that they don’t like the public school cirriculum, they have every right to take their child out of the public schools and put them in a private school, or teach them at home. And in this alternative schooling, they should not be forced to teach that child something that goes against their religious belief. Second of all, I said that certain skills (such as reading and math) are necessary to function in society. Understanding about evolution & germicides is not exactly what I would consider a necessity for life. (For that matter, plenty of college-educated people use germicides, even if they do understand they may be creating superbugs.)
The first vote I ever cast for president was for Nixon in 1972. Except for the paranoia, they guy was not bad - certainly better than the clowns we got now.
There is a slight difference between intolerance and authoritarianism. A “liberal” who thinks anyone who likes to shoot rifles at targets is a gun-nut is intolerant, but if he doesn’t want to ban target shooting he’s not authoritarian. Someone who thinks women wearing tank tops is an outrage is intolerant, if he wants to implement Islamic law to prevent it, he’s authoritarian. Libertarians don’t have to like the behavior they wish to keep legal.
The conservative response to this thread smells of political correctness. I haven’t seen anyone addressing Dean’s data, or even asking to see it (which would be useful.) It’s all “don’t you dare call some fraction of conservatives authoritarian!” The left clearly does not have a monopoly on political correctness after all.
So you DO think that parents have a right to deprive their children of an education which would be adequate enough to allow them to pass a cllege entrance exam with some basic questions in science.
Look, if parents want to lie to their children and tell them that evolutionary theory is false, no one can stop them, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t at least have the responsibility to make sure they know what it IS and can pass a simple test about it. Teaching them the CONTENT of the theory does not mean they have to teach it as TRUE or that they can’t teach that it contradicts their own religious beliefs. The kid has a right to at least know that the theory exists and what it says. No one is saying he has to believe it.
My above post was addressed to Sarahfeena, of course, not Voyager.
Wrong. Unless we define “rights” as “those things which **DtC **calls rights”. The SCOTUS has ruled that 3rd trimester abortions are illegal except when the health of the mother is threatened. Hence, rights.
What I find amazing is how the Constitution always supports your particular poltical position. It’s such an amazing coincidence that one might think you start with the answer you want and work backwards for a constitutional justification.
Thing is Diogenes, you define “authoritarian” as an antonym to “liberal”, then ask for examples of authoritarian liberals. So when we talk about “social liberals”, you define them as those that are not authoritarian, anyone authoritarian cannot be a liberal.
But lets get back to more ordinary non-tautological definitions.
How about the whole “all sex is rape” crowd, like Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, and Sheri S. Tepper (author of “The Gate to Women’s Country”). People who believe that since all current social relations are defined by the Patriarchy, all social relations are coercive, and therefore current society MUST be destroyed to have true freedom/equality/whatever, and in the coming utopia all women will be lesbians and all men will be eunuchs.
Pretty much any leftist who believes in “The Revolution”, that current society must be destroyed before any sort of progress can be made, is an authoritarian. Anyone who believes that liberty must be sacrificed in the name of equality is an authoritarian.
Or will you claim that these leftist revolutionaries are/were really conservatives, since conservative==authoritarian?
I absolutely agree that parents have the right to either home school or privately educate their kids. And I’m not concerned with detailed curicula, but what are the minimal standards required for a kid to be said to have completed a grade, or get a diploma. Standards based education is nothing new to me - when I was in school, in New York, we had to take regents tests to show we learned the contents of major subjects. I don’t agree that some very minimal set of standards is enough. And I don’t care if the parents don’t believe in it - or even believe the opposite. Even when I believed in God I never believed in Christianity, but I still feel that a decent education includes the fundamentals of that and other religions. It’s perfectly all right for a home schooler to teach evolution and creationism both, and to tell the kid why their family doesn’t believe in evolution. But I do have a problem not teaching it at all, or teaching it incorrectly, like evolution teaches monkeys became mans or cats become dogs. I’d have just as much of a problem with an atheist parent teaching lies about Christianity.
ambushed, are there some tables of major results in the book that you could post - real data, not opinions, of course. Maybe we can elevate this discussion a bit.
Thanks.
What a ridiculous way to frame the question, and let’s have some cites to confrim your statement that you need knowledge of evolution in order to pass a college entrance exam. Parents have the right to direct the education of their children and only an authoritarian leftist (I hate to use the term “liberal” there) would oppose that.
Cite? No such right exists except in your own head.
SCOTUS has never ruled any such thing. Roe allowed states the OPTION to outlaw 3rd tri abortions but SCOTUS has never issued any ruling itself that such abortions are unconstitutional.
You’re probably right about that, but is there any state that allows 3rd trimester abortion on demand? If it’s outlawed in all 50 states, that’s the same as if it were outlawed nationally.
Cite/
I’m opposing any attempt by parents to deprive their children of the right to Equal Protection. Only a right wing authoritarian would say that parents should have that ability.
14th Amendment, as well as basic human decency.
You were trying to argue that third tri fetuses have constitutionally protected rights. They don’t. States can legalize 3rd tri abortions on demand if they want to. SCOTUS only ruled that they can’t prohibit them if the mother’s life is in jeopardy.
Back to picking on Diogenese personally.
Diogenes, honestly, how can anyone with a shred of empathy believe that an unborn baby one day before birth is an inhuman thing, while the same baby one day after birth is a human being entitled to full human rights?
That’s just as silly–actually, more silly–than the religious belief that personhood begins at the millisecond the sperm penetrates the cell wall of the egg. Ensoulment/enpersonment at the moment of birth is nonsense scientifically, and I can’t believe anyone with kids actually holds such an opinion.
Of course, that means I think you don’t really hold such a belief, you just pretend to do so, maybe even to yourself. And why? Because you are in favor of a general right to abortion, and feel the need to stake out an illogical and ludicrous position because your political opponents have staked out an equally illogical and ludicrous opposite position. Give em and inch and they’ll take a mile. Fight fire with fire! The Republicans are evil, lying bastards, to win we need to be more like them!
So, please add yourself to your tally of “social liberals” who lack empathy. You honestly can’t concieve that anyone could disagree with you in good faith, the only explanation is mental deficiency or out and out evil. And thus, your authoritarian streak…since all arguments contrary to yours are so much sophistry you feel free to simply dismiss them as the ravings of madmen and monsters.
Self-righteousness is a drug, man. Seriously.
Well, I don’t have one, but at least I’m intellectually honest enough to admit it…
What a pathetic piece of crap. Tell me where I click on “basic human decency” and verify that such a right exists.
Forget about college entrance exams. Does this right you speak of include the right to not teach the kid to read? Anything about American history? That the Founding Fathers were nothing but a bunch of capitalist racist slave holders, and no one believes any different? Then, does this right of directing an education include the right for a kid to get a diploma or official recognition of completing a grade without knowing any of this stuff?
If you agree that kids must learn to read to get a diploma, whether they need to learn evolution is just arguing about the price, as it were. If the state can require one, it can require the other.
How SHOULD a liberal be defined?
I think this whole thing is a strawman construction. There is no “all sex is rape” crowd and Catharine MacKinnon never said that (neither did Dworkin). The Gate to Women’s Country is a science fiction novel.
I don’t know where you’re getting all this “destroy society” stuff or anything a bout a lesbian and eunuch society but it didn’t come from any of the women you cited.
I’ll grant that the anti-pornography crusades by MacKinnon, Dworkin and Gloria Steinem were authoritarian bullshit. I’m still trying to decide if hating porn is “liberal,” though. Banning it certainly is not libertarian. Maybe we should better define out terms here. I’m starting to think that civil libertarianism is what I’ve really had in mind when I’ve been talking about “social liberals.”
Who has said they believe that? Not me. Not any liberal I know. Who are you talking about? Show me a liberal who says that doctors should be allowed to kill full term, in vitro fetuses.
I’ve said the woman has a right to remove it from her body but that the state has a right to keep it alive if it wants to. Do you think that an early inducement of labor is a form of abortion? I don’t.
I’ve been mulling that around in my head for a couple years. I think civil libertarianism is different from social liberalism, to a small extent.
For instance, social liberalism would include those who believe in some measure of authoritarianism if theoretically used in the pursuit of a more “equal” society, for instance, banning private discrimination, pushing affirmative action, banning porn, etc.
Civil Libertarianism shares much of the same goals but does not recognize society’s right to limit freedom of association or freedom of one’s body. (As to what is a body, that’s an issue that no one can know and so muddies the definitional waters immensely.) So civil libertarians would be against privately-mandated AA, continued illegalality of prostitution and drugs, etc.
Of course, there are shades of grey between the two, but I don’t think they are really the same.