Socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Anything else and you're an idiot.

[bump]

@septimus

No response? No “fiscal conservatives” ready to explain what the term even means? Given this silence, I think I’ll stick with my present model:

• A “fiscal conservative” is anyone who is bitterly angry about paying taxes.

That’s silly. At its core, being a fiscal conservative basically means that you’re against unnecessary spending, and unnecessary taxation, and that in large part, you feel like the two go hand in hand.

There’s also a pretty significant dose of “Is this the best use of our (scarce) resources (that we get from people who may be scraping by as it is)? Is this spending necessary? Is there something else that we can better spend it on? Are we throwing good money after bad? Will this actually make a difference, or are we just hoping it will (while spending citizens’ hard-earned taxes to find out?)”.

There’s also a big component of conservatism in general that holds that just because the government has deep pockets, that doesn’t make it prima facie the best vehicle for solving problems, and that the government’s role should be limited to providing certain essential services, not necessarily trying to remold society, or solve social problems.

I mean, I don’t mind paying my taxes, but I don’t really want to pay MORE in taxes, unless someone can show me a compelling reason why taxes need to be raised. And there are a lot of highly expensive ideas floating around out there that would significantly raise my taxes and that are essentially trillion-dollar fishing expeditions. So I’m more skeptical of those ideas than I would be ones that can be funded within the existing tax structure, or ones that could be funded without increasing my total out-of-pocket (i.e. UHC vs. employer insurance).

[DesertDog]

@eschereal

“The greatest libertarian crusade in history was the effort to abolish chattel slavery, culminating in the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement and the heroic Underground Railroad …”

Wow, that is some weak fucking sauce. Libertarianism has never been fundamentally opposed to slavery: if people want to keep and trade slaves and people are willing to be slaves, they should be free to do that, because, freedom. There is no space to claim the moral high ground or ideological connection here. This is 100% pure ret-conning.

Underline mine. Show me where someone was willing to be a slave. That’s a pretty serious element missing in your strawman equation.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@DesertDog

Underline mine. Show me where someone was willing to be a slave. That’s a pretty serious element missing in your strawman equation.

Indentured servants.

[drad_dog]

@DesertDog

Underline mine. Show me where someone was willing to be a slave. That’s a pretty serious element missing in your strawman equation.

In matters of philosophical speculaton that kind of thing shows up all the time. So it’s not a straw man.

[eschereal]

@DesertDog

Underline mine. Show me where someone was willing to be a slave. That’s a pretty serious element missing in your strawman equation.

You squeeze people hard enough, take away all their other options, and they will submit to almost anything. The baseline principle of glibertarianism converges to such situations, where some “hard working” people manage to accumulate large amounts of “freedom”, to be withheld from those other people who were not smart or diligent enough to prevent it.

Then there are those who fail to submit – those are branded “criminals”, who end up shackled, paving roads, or whatever else we can get away with forcing them to do.

The words that describe the libertarian ideal are not in concord with the ultimate reality that it would converge to.

[DrDeth]

@Mijin

Do you have a cite for that? I thought he’d only called himself a Democratic Socialist, which is not the same thing.

No, it’s not the same thing, but the word “socialist” is there. You are correct, that is his preferred nomenclature.

But yes, he has:
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/14-things-bernie-sanders-has-said-about-socialism-120265
In a speech he gave at the National Committee for Independent Political Action in New York City on June 22, 1989, reprinted in the December 1989 issue of the socialist publication Monthly Review: “In Vermont, everybody knows that I am a socialist and that many people in our movement, not all, are socialists. And as often as not — and this is an interesting point that is the honest-to-God truth — what people will say is, ‘I don’t really know what socialism is, but if you’re not a Democrat or a Republican, you’re OK with me.’ That’s true. And I think there has been too much of a reluctance on the part of progressives and radicals to use the word ‘socialism.’”

[DrDeth]

@DesertDog

Underline mine. Show me where someone was willing to be a slave. That’s a pretty serious element missing in your strawman equation.

People sell themselves into slavery fairly often in pooer areas of the world.

'It Was As if We Weren’t Human.' Inside the Modern Slave Trade Trapping...

It is hardly truely voluntary, sometimes it is that or starve.

But this is a side issue. Libertarianism is freedom of choice. In theory, that would be a choice.

In any case, your assertion that libertarianism abolished chattel slavery has been disproven.

[eschereal]

One thing that gets glossed over all the fucking time is the dual nature “wealth”. There is a level at which it represents food and toys and tchotchkes and cocktails, and that is what most of us think of: what would I do if I had a spare million.

There is a quantitative transition range beyond which wealth becomes a matter of expansive control. Billionaires do not need more billions for the sake of comfort or cool stuff, they seek it for the purpose of imperious influence. It becomes about being in control of more and more – which amounts to taking away our freedoms for their profits. Freedom is a finite resource, more of which we cannot simply manufacture out of thin air: it has to, like other stuff, come from somewhere.

Hence, fiscal conservatism cannot be about strict libertarianism because it represents the acquisition and consolidation of freedom, from the many to the few. Ultimately, it ends up being about plutocracy, in large part because it begins by being promoted by the plutocrats, framed in ways that trend in their favor.

[septimus]

@bump

That’s silly. At its core, being a fiscal conservative basically means that you’re against unnecessary spending, and unnecessary taxation, and that in large part, you feel like the two go hand in hand.

So a fiscal conservative is someone who wants to spend public money in ways which benefit the public, but doesn’t want to spend public money in ways that do not benefit the public. Sounds good! I guess I’m a “fiscal conservative” too.

Would it be fair to add that fiscal conservatives love their mothers, and are very attractive to members of the opposite sex?

ETA: Sometimes my tongue-in-cheekiness almost approaches the point of Snark. Sorry. Still, I hope I’ve made a clear point?