False dichotomy - Conservative/ Liberal

Great Debates
1

Spawned from this thread.

Liberal: Proponent for lack of restriction

There’s only one political restriction that has ever been proposed during the history of the entire earth. A restriction of inequitable distribution of wealth.

Therefore, a liberal, is only meaningfully defined as a person who does not want to be restricted by the only proposal of restriction that has even been on the table.

Conservative: Proponent of restriction

Since there happens to only be one political restriction that has ever been proposed, a conservative is a proponent of this politically mandated restriction by default.
The restriction is the only ethical proposal submitted by human beings; restricting inequitable wealth distribution.

However, conservatives are commonly known to be the representatives of the valid definition for liberal; and liberals are commonly known to support the valid definition for conservative.

How did it get to be this way? The liberals won, or at least for the time being. Lack of restriction applies to valid arguments. The fact that the terms are inverted from their valid structure is proof that the liberals are in power for the time being.

Conservative: Protector of the status quo at all cost

The status quo happens to be inequitable wealth distribution. Contradicts the first consideration of the definition of “conservative”.

This particle/anti-particle clash makes the term undefined, meaningless, vague.

Liberal: Protector of freedom to choose.

“freedom to choose” is defined as ability to not have your intent circumvented or violated against your consent. This applies for all people, and as such contradicts the defition of “liberal” as formerly considered.

This particle/anti-particle clash makes the term undefined, meaningless, vague.

2

I had a plan to add redundancy on both sides… yeilding proof that conservatives are in power on the bottom. But since the point was to show how they are vague terms, I decided to not bother with this. This section made it into the final posting though. Not much I can do now. Please disregard it, unless it seems critically important to the argument of vagueness for the terms themselves, for whatever reason I cannot imagine right now.

3

I’m having trouble with that statement. Restrictions on speech, religion, assembly, gun ownership, marriage, etc. are reltated to the distribution of income???

But I do agree that the lib/con dichotomy is overly simplistic. It is much more prefereable from my perspective to speak of specific issues and whether or not they are consistent with one’s basic assumptions about human nature and the purpose of government, and whether or not the proposed solution will actually work or not.

4

The only problem of the ones you presented is marriage.
Gun control – Nobody owns guns or everybody owns guns are both examples of equitable distribution. Obviously, if the law is to say - let some people have special priviledges, then it’s inequitable.

speech/religion – these are both addressed by the ambiguity that an ethical proposal must necessarily combat. For example, mere validity was evidence that the liberals were in control in the first set of definitions — the fact that the definitions were inverted pointed to the success of restriction of validity. Technically, you could state that the only ethical proposal is that people accept validity; although, I’m certainly arguing that the only proposed validity is equitable distribution. But, admittedly, I haven’t quite touched upon THAT point.

Marriage is the tough one because it deals with the seemingly intractible problem of reproducing the species, when maybe everyone in the species wants the same exclusive access to the same mate. It’s actually, not really a marriage problem, so much as it is an exclusive access problem. And even this ultimately becomes about exclusive access to self - rather than with others. I have a method to circumvent this seemingly retractable problem, however this also moves into to where the argument asserts that equitable distrubition is the only valid submitted ethic. As it stands, I have an appointment and will be back.

Everything you referred to is a commodity - so distribution does apply to it.

5

OK, you really lost me now. I don’t even know what question to ask, because I can’t figure out what you’re talking about. I’ll assume it’s my fault and let someone else take a stab at this. I’ll check in later.

6

First let me say that, like John Mace, I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving it, particularly in your later posts, so the following could be way off-base. With that in mind, regarding the OP:

Your assumptions could just be wrong, couldn’t they? I mean, when you say “Therefore, a liberal, is only meaningfully defined as a person who does not want to be restricted by the only proposal of restriction that has even been on the table,” that doesn’t accurately grasp the way liberal thought has always been defined, so of course it causes a contradiction when you compare it to the way liberal thought has always been defined. You’ve phrased your statements in such a way that it seems true, but in reality, a liberal wouldn’t support the protection of inequitable distribution of wealth. With a new definition of liberal (for example, "proponent for maximum freedom for all", there’s no particle/anti-particle clash, as you say.

Either way, I don’t see how it’s a false dichotomy. At worst, the poles are just switched so that liberal and conservative stand for the opposite positions. There’s still a difference.

7

I tried to avoid the term “freedom”.
What does “freedom for all” mean? I encounter neo-cons on a regular basis. “freedom for all” to a neo-con means “freedom to make a choice”, to which it is always brought up that even a slave in the worst of conditions is making choices, or is able to make a choice. And, in the spirit of being a neo-con, they call themselves liberals - liberation from validity. The whole movement is encompassed in this shroud of Rand and Lyotard. (As if her philosophy is Objective, just because she calls it “objectivism”!). This phenomenon of inverting definitions is the bread and butter of what it means to be a neo-con. It coincides with the whole feminist movement, that if the argument is valid and sound, it cannot be correct if it interferes with ones right to exploit other beings. The common thread, is that exploited beings ALWAYS have freedom. End of ethical problem. In this sense, “maximum” freedom for all is pointless, because freedom is being defined by the perception that one has the ability to choose – freedom is defined by simply being aware of existence by neo-cons. You’re either an intelligent being, or you are DEAD – if you are an intelligent being, you have the freedom to choose. They argue that this is an inalienable right because they are rights deemed to be inherent, and you cannot meaningfully defend an inherent right, you can only declare them. If you are alive, you are free. Any other argument is an attept to enslave the neo-cons – a device of trickery used by lazy worthless scavengers who don’t do anything. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from logic. Freedom from ethics. Freedom to not be accountable to anything that may interfere with neo-con happiness; which is the highest individual goal of being to a neo-con. These clones are being churned out by the millions every year in America. It’s this idea that language is creating all of these barriers for people to chase their dreams; that “ethicists” are trying to put the powerful neo-con into a box because they are jealous and are trying to oppress a person who is capable of being successful and happy. This is the height of intellictualism in America.

You can try to ground the ethic by uttering “consent”, but then a neo-con will simple argue that consent doesn’t exist except as a fable used to bring down the neo-con. Consent is only a useful concept if it allows the neo-con to be happy, if they can get someone to agree that consent exists if it makes them profit.

This is America in a nutshell. This is every single human being on a television set of a sponsored program of any sort. Ambiguity is the most important resource to a neo-con; their entire purpose of existence depends upon non-transparency and ambiguity. Instead of actually doing work, they devote their energy to protecting ambiguity at all costs – fouling up real work, destruction without precision. The wealth is simply there for the taking… it doesn’t create wealth, but it does stratify it. And a neo-con being a neo-con accepts the wealth with the very circular reasoning that they used to stratify it in the first place.

You’re dealing with an entire media that has abstracted absolute value in ambiguity — so what I’m saying is that it’s all a false dichotomy with regards to what these folks are saying. It’s an entirely different climate out there. The terms conservative and liberal literally have zero meaning except for what profit they can bring in as linguistic tokens. That’s it, the only value of those two words. That is the current media environment; broadly so. FOX NEWS or CNN don’t have a half hour show each nithgt breaking down the entire philosophical gridwork of neo-conservativism because it tips their hand!! When you hear it described in detail, you can’t help as a human being to observe that they are describing their own content – then you get informed. Informing people is the anti-thesis of neo-conservativism.

8

OK. In the media. I apologize, because I was confused, for the most part, because I failed to read through the thread you linked. The other thread would’ve, and did, answer my question. I daresay you’re still speaking a bit over my head and then some, but I think I’m with you.

What would you say is the true dichotomy, then? Inasmuch as liberal and conservative don’t have any real meaning, what is the meaningful difference between a Howard Dean and a George Bush? Another way of asking this, I guess, would be to ask you to solve the dilemma you put forth in the OP, to create some transparency.

9

The point here is that every candidate in the media spotlight is a neo-con.
They certainly have some differing memories and physical features, but politically, they are uniformly neo-cons, totally in sync with the neo-con media system - which ranges to literally not only news shows, but to every show and commercial on television. “everything is art”, “no such thing as truth”. If you actually sit down and begin to peruse media, points are made hinging on an undefined term; and then the counter-point is made hinging on equally undefined terms. Then it is suggested that you are left to decide which of the undefined terms makes the point. Well, for most people, this just depends on the undefined terms that they have grown dependant upon for exploiting people in their circle of influence - so arguments made with those terms in undefined sequences will be the ones that they default to. The point is to erase the idea of transparency from the social consciousness. The reason for this is starting to become more clear, even in academic admissions. Although Professor Emeritus Alan Gewirth hinges most of his argument on absurdly undefined terms, and ultimetly goes out of his way to state that this has no bearing on material possession, the general point still conveys – consent violation is self contradictory.

Here’s a breif on Alan’s presentation at the 21st World Congress of Philosophy
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue43/43steinbauer.htm

Neo-cons are this mass of people trying to delay the inevitable. The saddest part of it is, most people aren’t even aware that they are neo-cons – they attach these false dichotomies to themselves – things like Libertarian, Independant, Republican, Democrat – yet they act like a text-book neo-con down to the core of their being. Neocons just feast on these people like a slaughter – neocons are aware of their apendage, whereas the others caught in these false dichotomies aren’t. This is the backdoor from which neocons can siphon wealth undetected.

This is basically the state of the union. This is the “brilliant” culmination of billions of dollars of tax dollars spent on game theory. Many egos and careers are dependant upon showing that this money actually revealed something substantive - we are seeing that substance. It’s pasted all over the media.

It truly astounds me that people think the media is a bastion of diversity. There are reasons that atomic secrets aren’t written on the blackboard of some hodink commercial in no-town America. The DoD analyzes and censors ALL content that hits these waves. Anything that hits the waves actually undergoes an analysis process. What Americans seem to reticent to believe is that the companies that own these waves are actually operated by the DoD itself. The DoD makes your movies, your MTV, your NYTimes. It’s at the point now that people are so dependant upon the use of undefined terms to convince people (coerce), that they not only are apathetic to it, they actually get angry at the suggestion that they subsist on this earth, as a niche of survival, by protecting ambiguity – it’s a community effort on a massive scale, that unfortunately is globally represented now. People are programmed like robots to protect ambiguity and act as unconscious detection and elimination systems for attempts to bring about transparency, the translation of wealth etc…