As I said, I’m fairly ignorant of this subject and I’m here to learn. I know posting in GD can be a thankless task, so thank you for your perspective.
No doubt, I’m trying to find a generally agreed upon point so I can make a meaningful comparison. I do have to wonder if there is one of course, but the search has it’s own rewards.
I can’t give examples due to lack of knowledge, but I’m certainly getting the feeling in this thread that there’s plenty at both ends.
Indeed, my awareness of that is what made me post the thread and ask. If I’m gonna understand I need an American perspective.
I’d love to, but I’m afraid my limit knowledge would embarrass me, remember this was a theory based on a little evidence that I’ve come here to have assessed. Now I think about it, what about that O’Reily character I’ve heard about. I’ve heard he’s got some extreme positions on certain matters and enjoys a lot of time telling people about them. Is there someone that loony on the other side of the issues ?
From what people are saying it would seem that there may be a perception of what I’m talking about, but the America is not so hostile to the far-left-type politics as I thought.
There’s barely a left at all in this country. The right doesn’t have influence; it has control. That’s why I credited the survival of libraries to inertia and not the nearly-irrelevant left.
Small, rich, and powerful. Numbers don’t matter; bank accounts do. This is America.
Yes, that’s what Americans have been doing my entire adult life; why would they stop now ?
More silliness. I may support many things like welfare programs, libraries, and fire departments and not consider myself any kind of socialist. And indeed I wouldn’t be one, since I would leave nearly all businesses and charities in wholly private hands.
The futility of even debating this point – that the United States population is typically, historically and systematically hostile to left-wing extremism – is that there is no definition so far of left-wing extremism. **Der Trihs’ ** example of publicly-supported libraries is not something most of us would consider “left-wing extremist.” It’s a liberal idea, certainly, and so are most of the individual liberties we enjoy in the U.S. But many of the common-good responsibilities we are asked to shoulder – service in defense of the nation, for instance – are decidedly conservative notions. Still others are equally praised and vilified by both left and right. Taxation to pay for government and infrastructure is as old as human society itself; does that make it inherently conservative?
Before we start debating real or perceived American hostility toward a political position, let’s all agree on a definition of that position first. Otherwise, this is just another verbal brawl.
“Why should my tax dollars go to books for poor people? If they want books they can go out and buy them, just like I can. Are there no rummage sales? Are there no charity drives? Is there no eBay?”
If there is barely a left at all in this country why do they still have so much influence? If there is barely a left at all in this country why are such programs not being shut down left and right…why do folks like Gates give away billions to various charities?
Again, you seriously need a reality check. Libraries are neither going away nor are they about simply because they have always been about. Trying to take them away would be political suicide…and even if you cut all funding from the federal government (which you would never get through) you STILL wouldn’t get rid of the things.
Horseshit. If that was the case then Forbes would be President…and Clinton would NEVER have been President. Besides which, rich people are some of the biggest donators to things like libraries. Several very large public libraries in the US were originally donated BY your small, rich and powerful folks.
Not enough rolley eye’s out there for this statement. I forgot who I was ‘debating’ with here…and your antipathy to anything American, to the point where your mind is completely fogged on this subject, making any reasonable discussion pointless. My bad.
Actually, it was Zoe who pointed out that libraries are essentially socialist entities. Whether libraries are palatable or not to most people is beside the point. It is very interesting to me to see how some people here try to recast the matter in terms they find more comfortable or distance themselves from the idea that they support an instance of socialism. This is perhaps one of the great dangers of labeling things - it makes one stop thinking about what they actually believe and endorse.
Speaking of labeling things, how could a library be an example of “individual liberty”? That just makes no sense. Using the library, reading books without censorship, these are examples of individual liberties. Libraries are a collective entity, using communal resources to provide a service available to all the members of the community. There’s no profit and no advertising revenue. There’s no agenda to be pushed.
Only if “conservative” is equivalent to “enduring,” which I don’t think any reasonable person would propose. Otherwise, we could speak of prostitution being conservative.
Chris Matthews had Ann Coulter on Hardball yesterday for an hour-long session, and it made me think about this thread. Here is a woman who has said this:
What the hell? Why is this woman still getting airtime and column space in newspapers? Why did she get an hour on MSNBC? No left-wing equivalent would ever see the light of day.
No, I meant the idea of publicly funded libraries is a liberal idea. The individual liberties we enjoy are another, different, example of liberal ideas. Some liberal ideas are centered on individual liberties, others aren’t.
Let me make the point a different way: Picture in your mind a man who avidly supports the Second Amendment – even wears an NRA ball cap, loads his own ammunition, charter member of the local gun club, rather extensive collection of firearms. Conservative fellow, yes? And yet, the individual, relatively unrestricted ownership of firearms is, when compared with governments around the world, a rather liberal – some would say radically liberal – idea.
I actually know such a man – have known him all his life. He adamantly supports a woman’s reproductive choice, foams at the mouth when talking about the gross inequities visited on the world’s gay population, abhors the very idea of “gender reassignment,” publicly and noisily supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, just as publicly and noisily opposed the invasion of Iraq, pays all his taxes without blinking an eye (calls them “freedom’s price tag”) and stumps tirelessly for the abolition of Social Security and in favor of mandatory retirement investment every chance he gets. He believes the convicts in the state prison in our town (Colorado’s largest prison) should be offered almost unlimited free education opportunities as part of their rehabilitation, and that Colorado should adopt Texas’ “death penalty express line.”
If you were trying to make the point that defining the concept being debated is nearly impossible, I think that’s a valid point. Maybe the OP’s proposed question is overly broad and needs to be reworded in more narrow terms. If the OP’s description of left-wing ideas includes Social Security, I would answer no, most Americans are not hostile to that idea. If “left-wing” means free distribution of heroin, and free condoms dispensed in junior high schools, then, yeah, I think most Americans would be hostile to those ideas. My question is: What does “liberal” mean and how far left does one have to lean to be on the wing?
Maybe so, but the public library system in America is largely the work of a philanthropic capitalist, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie donated more than 2,500 library buildings to communities and universities between 1883 and 1929. The catch was, Carnegie donated only the library building. To accept the gift (and how could they refuse it?) and get any use out of it, the town fathers had to make an open-ended political commitment to use city funds to acquire a collection of books, hire a staff, and cover operating costs. Most of them did just that, and before long a general perception grew that a public library is something no self-respecting town should be without.
I’m Dutch, so take my opinion on US <waving broad brush> for what it is worth.
I think the OP is on to something. Only I don’t think the divide he’s looking for is left-right, but religious-non-religious. I think a lot of extremist loony’s can hide in some form of “religion”. But openly loons who are also not church affiliated, I suspect run a much higher chance of being noticed and persecuted.
The irony that never seemed to affect Mr. Carnegie was that is libraries were open during the hours that his employees were at work, and closed when they were not.
Don’t know much about the steel business, do you? Those mills never close. And a glance at the history of the earliest libraries - those that directly benefited the mill communities, shows that the biggest winners in that deal were the children of the workers.
Those earliest libraries in Pennsylvania were truly the centerpieces of community life, and incorporated everything from open library stacks (an interesting innovation for the time, most libraries then discouraged browsing) to music halls and organized community orchestras.
. Sorry, that was completely irrelevant but I do!