No. The so-called Alt-right no doubt has people in it who are also anti-liberals.
What I am specifically referring to, are people who decide courses of action, and who to vote for, and what to rant about, based on whether or not they think liberals like it or not. These are the people, for example, who are supporting Putin and other foreign leaders, in spite of their obvious hostile intentions towards the US, simply because they think that liberals DISLIKE Putin. These are the people who oppose doing anything at all about climate change, not because it isn’t already affecting the entire world, they oppose doing anything about it because people who they think are liberals, brought it up first. They don’t oppose lying government officials, they APPLAUD liars who aren’t liberals (or who they think aren’t liberals).
In short, the people I am concerned about here, are the ones who pretend to have principles, but actually do not. Or rather, they only have one principle: if a liberal wants it, they will oppose it, even if it’s desperately needed to do something such as, oh, for example, retain the United States once unrivaled credit rating.
I said it! I think that extreme polarization is a greater danger than anti-Liberalism, and thus I think you are wrong that anti-Liberalism is the “greatest danger.” I think there are several other worse dangers, and I gave one example.
Hm… I partly agree, partly don’t. I do agree that the reasons for this inequality are dismaying, but I also believe that the existing magnitude of the inequality is, in itself, hazardous to our republic. It puts far too much political power into the hands of the rich…as E-DUB quoted.
Potentially, yes. If you are so intently anti-nazi that you oppose anything and everything that any nazi ever did or said, without stopping to figure out if it were independently a good idea, then your anti-naziism would be a problem. The nazi’s, for example, believed in defending their homeland from foreign invasion or intervention. If you are so anti-nazi that you discard defense of your homeland, then you are the kind of Anti-ist I am referring to.
This is EXACTLY correct. Anti-ism is NOT a laudable pursuit, no matter how vile you think what you oppose is, and no matter how wonderful whatever you think you are being an Anti-ist in defense of, is.
[ul]
[li]Liberal has two quite different meanings–one is liberal democracy, which really underpins a lot of the West (cherising eg individual liberties) and illiberalism in this sense is pretty troglodytic–so in that sense anti-liberalism is bad, for both American (party) liberals, and conservatives alike.[/li][li]In the American-political-party-liberal sense, I can recall a recent NYT article on how elements in America’s political right/conservatives have turned to bashing party liberals as a kind of sport, a safe bet when they might not have too much in the way of concretized/practical agenda at this time to advance (snarled for example by the complexity around the healthcare debate)–one could make the argument that this is also bad, in principle, irrespective of political leanings.[/li][/ul]
Naming a specific individual isn’t giving a concrete example? Sorry, but you can’t get more concrete than that.
I made no accusations.
I haven’t said anything that pretty much everyone else posting here has said. When you get a bunch of people saying they don’t understand your writing, don’t blame the readers. Lashing out at people because they don’t understand what’s going on in your mind is not an effective debate technique, btw.
So, just to be clear: Is Trump not an example of the people you are talking about? He seems to fit the bill pretty well to me. But then, as noted, your OP is less than clear.
At its heart being a liberal means being open minded and what we are seeing now, particularly in college campuses, is there is no such thing as free speech or being open minded.
Also its a rare democrat or liberal who will criticize welfare fraud or fraud in government programs. So millions thats supposed to go to the needy gets scammed but the supporters of those programs wont say a word about it.
What seems clear to me is that the actual topic of this thread hits a little too close to home, so you are repeatedly trying to turn this into “Trump” thread, where you already have well-used arguments all ready to go.
Edited to add: If you are wondering if a thread is about Trump, look for his name in the title of the thread and/or the OP.
Hogwash! No Democrat has any love whatever for welfare fraud or any other kind of fraud. That wastes money, and takes money away from the truly needy. We hate fraud exactly as much as Republicans do, and we want it eliminated whenever possible.
Your first sentence doesn’t even make sense, btw, other than a very poor attempt to link college kids to Democrats and Liberals, in general. The second paragraph is an assertion based on… what, exactly? I’d ask you for a cite, but it would impossible for you to find one. I think we have to go with gratuitous swipe.
Here’s an article from the NYT that I think speaks to what the OP is talking about:
The gist is that “Liberal” has become a politically meaningless and derisive term that describes a particular urban knee-jerk quick-to-offend reactionary hypocritical latte sipping cultural hipster.
That right there is called ‘negative partisanship’, and it is a thing. Analyzing right-wing political positions feels like making logical sense of The Red Queen until you realize it boils down to this:
[ul]
[li]create a strawman of what a “liberal” is.[/li][li]wait for people to take the bait and become the strawman[/li][li]poke them, laugh at their reaction, congratulate yourself for being too shrewd to give a shit[/li][/ul]
To be fair, there is an identitarian strain of liberalism that would do well to get over itself. But when poking these people in the eye and calling them snowflakes is your whole political strategy, well, that’s how we get dodgy shit like the [del]heath[/del] elite tax care bill, the border wall, and Trump’s infamous “impenetrable cyber security force” WTF ever that is.
How much welfare fraud is there? You can’t say. How do you fix welfare fraud, and would that fix help more people than it hurts? You haven’t thought that through. What’s your solution? You don’t have one.
Why would anyone be willing to talk about a problem that you haven’t even thought through yourself?
Ironically, a lot of these extremist college kids look down on both other groups as being wishy-washy, and don’t want to be associated with what they see as the further-to-the-center “liberals”.
