If we were only arguing for the informed would we have the economic and military policy we have? No. 50% of the nation has sub 100 IQ. That is why strictly rational candidates have no chance. That is why we are willing to have our manufacturing go overseas to give a few a “living wage” which voting yes for makes one feel virtuous.
And you don’t think Bernie Sanders form of Democratic Socialism or whatever it’s called isn’t a step closer to a centralized economy?
I doubt that anyone in Venezuela intended to turn it into Venezuela. What happens is certain ideas of governance when put into practice eventually result in Venezuelas. Or worse, Soviet Unions or People’s Republic of Chinas, where millions die from starvation or murder while everyone else is forced to live in deprivation and subject to the oppression required to keep them subjugated. Nobody on the left likes to acknowledge it but more people have died or lived in misery and oppression by far over the last hundred years because of liberal ideology than ever happened because of conservative ideology. Yet we’re the bad guys. :rolleyes:
“Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says!”
“No, it isn’t!”
Spare me how good and patriotic conservatives are when they vote Nay as a policy, even on things that, if they had happened to be introduced by anyone but Democrats, would have been approved.
You can feel free to show cites at any time.
Take a look at Venezuela. Progressives and liberals have done well there.
Oh wait. No food on the shelves. No toilet paper. People get up at 3 AM to queue in line for food, if there is any. Gangs running wild. The country is a military dictatorship. The poor are much poorer than there were 15 years ago when Chaves started. The people are starving and Maduro is only worried about keeping his power.
This is one of the richest countries in the world, in terms of oil reserves.
So there you have it. In one of the Western Hemisphere’s most progressive societies it is total chaos. But yet Republicans are “The Bad Guys” because they wish to avoid this type of a society. I would say a little bit of caution as urged by Republicans in not all a bad thing.
But the leftists didn’t “intend” for that! Because they care and caring is what counts. Maybe socialism will work next time.
That analysis breaks down to county level too - the redder the county, the higher the proportion on public welfare. Are you going to complain because it’s not broken down by block? A lot of Republican voters are poor, and a lot of them are on benefits. Some of them claim that they’re just getting back “their” money and it’s all the others on benefits which are lazy scroungers, much in the same way that some anti-abortionists think that their abortion is the only moral one, but rationalization is a very human trait. So is denial, of course, as those who continue to insist that liberals and minorities are the only beneficiaries of public largesse ought to consider.
And it’s not just benefit recipients who get treated this way. Who is currently actively characterizing all transgender people as perverts and child molesters? Who’s been doing the same to homosexuals for decades? Which party’s leading candidate wants to ban all Muslims from the country? Who is it that characterizes the poor as “animals” and “scroungers” who don’t work for a living? Which side is it that treats Hispanics as if they were all illegal immigrants? Which party are the White Nationalists flocking to? Which party, rather than coming up with strategies to help women combat rape, has dozens of examples of trying to redefine what “counts” as rape? Republican politicians and talking heads spend an awful lot of time saying negative things about entire demographic groups; they can’t really complain when those groups then largely vote for someone else.
And which side has spent decades claiming to be the party of wholesome family values, condemning those who think differently as “immoral” and “unAmerican”, only to have dozens if not hundreds of examples of them engaging in the same behaviors they condemn and worse - not just homosexuality but adultery, rape and pedophilia. The Republicans spend a lot of time excoriating and actively punishing the “Other” in a bid to portray themselves as the arbiters of all that is good and moral, yet in reality they often fall even shorter than those they condemn.
If you want to see why some people see Republicans as the bad guys you don’t need to listen to “Hollywood liberals” or “college professors” or “the mainstream media”. You merely have to look at what many of those Republicans say and do.
So. That has nothing to do with self reliance. There are many factors that are part of federal policy.
Works just fine in the UK.
And how did those right-wing utopias work out for the local population? The 1970s were a golden era for Argentina, no? Things were great in Spain under Franco - I mean, sure, they had mass murders and concentration camps but at least the Communists weren’t in power, right? And all those Central American states where we helped them oust left-wing governments - doing swell, are they?
Of course in South and Central America the end results worked out well for US businesses, and business is what counts, eh, octopus?
Yes. Business is what counts. Without private enterprise there would be no loot for the political class to plunder and redistribute in order to buy votes. Ask Venezuela if they’d like functioning businesses or more progressive government?
And food stamps are only a part of total aid.
What exactly defines aid? And who or what is receiving this aid? And who is actually paying the taxes? It’d be interesting to see if people who vote (R), not states or counties or apartment complexes, are paying more than those who vote (D).
Is the aid an interstate? Is it a military base? Is it social security which for those who have worked and paid into it their whole lives should not be looked at as aid? The argument that the left advances is besides the point anyways. You need to generate wealth before it can be confiscated and redistributed. And generating wealth requires that people, some people at least, live according to some value system such as hard work, self reliance, financial conservatism etc. are good.
A quick Google resulted in these countries as the top 10 “most socialist” in the world:
China
Denmark
Finland
Netherlands
Canada
Sweden
Norway
Ireland
New Zealand
Belgium
Last time I checked, all these countries were doing ok. Each may have their own problems, but they certainly aren’t bleak dystopias on the verge of collapse.
There are something like 30 million Americans still without health insurance (down about 9 million since Obamacare).
About 45 million Americans live below the poverty line.
How is capitalism “working” for these people?
The reason Republicans are viewed as the “bad guy” is because whenever there is a proposal to try to address these problems, they bring up vague and inaccurate accusations of “socialism” and cite worst case examples like Venezuela (a non democratic dictatorship) and Soviet Union as examples while conveniently leaving out the example of the “rest of the civilized world”.
Certainly neither party is perfect and we can cite failures of leadership or policy on both sides all day long. But there is not a equivalency between the two:
-Arguments based on religion always come from the Republican side. (I realize that religious fundamentalists don’t view this as a negative, but we don’t live in a theocracy)
-If it’s anti-gay, anti-minority, anti-immigration it’s always Republican (again, probably not viewed as a negative if you are a racist or xenophobe)
-If it’s a choice between the rights of corporations vs the rights of workers, Republicans take the side of corporations (not counting the right of workers to go find a new job if they don’t like how they are being treated)
-Republicans are anti-renewable energy. I get not wanting to put oil and coal workers out of job, but pretending fossil fuels are infinite seems to be a fairly shortsighted viewpoint at best.
Sorry, but I have trouble believing that most conservatives or Republicans advocate “free markets”, “states rights”, “the Constitution” and “religious freedom” because it is the most effective system. I believe they believe it’s the most effective system because they are the beneficiaries of the status quo.
Is it $8 billion in farming subsidies?
Is it $30 billion in fossil fuel subsidies?
Ask Argentina if they’d like higher stock prices for US corporations or to get all the “disappeared” people back.
There you go again. First you categorize everyone who disagrees with you as a liberal, then you paint all liberals as against working for a living, preferring a life of handouts to pulling their own weight. Easy to win an argument with that strawman, but that is not how it is.
FWIW, I don’t consider myself a liberal.
And I think Venezuela’s problem is that it is a petrostate at a time when oil prices have crashed. Petrostates always end up with big problems. Saudi Arabia is arguably more stable, and definitely not leftist. Does anyone want the US to be more like them? GOP politicians do- religious fundamentalism and aristocracy. No thanks.
Anecdotal: In my experience the only ones saying ‘Why work if the government gives you money free?’ are conservatives. This implies to me that these conservatives have a very poor work ethic. I’m a liberal and my (conservative) wife comments on my strong work ethic and ‘sense of duty’.
Do you have a cite of Republicans saying that they believe fossil fuels are infinite?
If not, then this would appear to be an example of strawmanning. If this is a reason to regard Republicans as “the bad guys”, it isn’t a very good one.
Which happens on both sides, certainly. On the SDMB, it happens mostly on one side, though.
Wild exaggerations are OK about Republicans, because they are the bad guys. And we know they are the bad guys because of the wild exaggerations.
Regards,
Shodan
Well if we’re keeping score of what’s worse I don’t think anyone on the right, even Hitler, can match the illustrious records of Mao and Stalin for sheer misery and devastation of a nation’s populace. I guess the left does outperform the right.
And even though Hitler is lumped into the right it was through the power of the state that his atrocities were committed. Let me know when you can find an example of a restrained government that is responsible for 7-8 figure death counts.
Socialism sounds good on paper. Shame we don’t live on a notepad.
Petrostate is not the issue. Norway has vast oil wealth correct? It’s the fact that there are price caps on goods. Wage floors and price caps lead to market distortions which can be quite serious as Venezuela proves. But sharing, “living wage”, and a chicken in every sound good and compassionate so the consequences, which are known ahead of time, are to be ignored.