[quote]ExNole wrote:
Locke was a major major influence on the founding fathers.
“I didn’t think Mill really proved anything regarding the authors original assertion”
I’m not sure what this means.
Yes, I am a very recent alumni of FSU.[/quote]
Ok, ok, uncle! 
I was wrong with Locke… in my impassioned haste I misspoke. A girl can admit when she’s wrong. (But just in case, you guys will be around to help!)
However, I stand by my distaste for Mill.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
Liberal= Professor X, ALDurr, Harris447, vroom, thunderbolt23, FightinIrish…
Conservative= BostonBarrister, Zap Branigan, Headhunter, Rainjack, ZEB,…
:)[/quote]
I’m not a liberal; I’m a benevolent despotist without an army. Or a flamethrower.
I really want a flamethrower.
[quote]NorskGoddess wrote:
ExNole wrote:
Locke was a major major influence on the founding fathers.
“I didn’t think Mill really proved anything regarding the authors original assertion”
I’m not sure what this means.
Yes, I am a very recent alumni of FSU.
Ok, ok, uncle!
I was wrong with Locke… in my impassioned haste I misspoke. A girl can admit when she’s wrong. (But just in case, you guys will be around to help!)
However, I stand by my distaste for Mill.
[/quote]
Are you at FSU?
I never really felt much one way or the other for Mill. I’m really only familiar with Utilitarianism and his moral theory though, and very brief sections of his political stuff. Very influential, but not compelling, to me.
[quote]DPH wrote:
ExNole wrote:
If you want to be technical, Mill had zero influence on the founding fathers, as he was born after the founding of the country.
But on the Locke thing you’re spot on.
damn you!
I wanted the hot looking college chick to catch that…
now I’ve got to come up with a new pretext to chat with her…[/quote]
Well, I’m actually a dude. I’m 43 yrs old, 330 pounds (and bulking!) – and I live in my mom’s basement. At least until the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ manuscript I’ve been working on starts bringin in the dough.
[quote]NorskGoddess wrote:
Well, I’m actually a dude. I’m 43 yrs old, 330 pounds (and bulking!) – and I live in my mom’s basement. At least until the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ manuscript I’ve been working on starts bringin in the dough.
[/quote]
good luck with the bulk…LOL!
[quote]vroom wrote:
A liberal believes the government must respect the people, while a conservative believes the people must respect the institutions of government.
I know, I know, hack away…[/quote]
In modern lingo, a liberal is most likely not to trust or respect the people much at all - popular government is not particularly popular among liberals in America these days. There is very few decisions of an overarching nature that liberals want to trust ‘the people’ with these days.
Conservatives do want respect for the institutions of government, and also other institutions. That does not mean conservatives thinking that government is unerring - but that a healthy balance between respecting proper authority and placing limits on that authority. And, generally, liberals are much happier with entrusting more and more power to the government, and as a corollary to that expanse of power, want more respect for the institutions of government.
And…I am a liberal.
You heard it here.
If conservatives would actually try to conserve things like gasoline and our environment I would move a little more into the conservative camp.
As it stands my beliefs span both camps but I tend to prioritize some of my conservative ideals a little higher than my liberal ideals.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
In modern lingo, a liberal is most likely not to trust or respect the people much at all - popular government is not particularly popular among liberals in America these days. There is very few decisions of an overarching nature that liberals want to trust ‘the people’ with these days.
Conservatives do want respect for the institutions of government, and also other institutions. That does not mean conservatives thinking that government is unerring - but that a healthy balance between respecting proper authority and placing limits on that authority. And, generally, liberals are much happier with entrusting more and more power to the government, and as a corollary to that expanse of power, want more respect for the institutions of government.[/quote]
Thunder,
It’s possible we are reading each other the wrong way.
However, what part of the government banning supplements and other “personal choices”, placing insitutions over people, should a liberal like?
I think you are twisting my use of the word respect. The government needs to respect the rights of the people, and not try to increase the powers of the government instead.
Of course, then we get into the issue of what those rights should be. As much as I dislike taxes, they are not imposing in the same way that a rule that prohibits certain messages on clothing is. One places limits on some people while the other is somewhat more neutral.
Of course, it is easy to flip that around and say liberals don’t like the laws passed, and that would certainly be true, when they conflict with rights and freedoms which arguably have guarantees or help keep the government in check.
Do you have examples otherwise, where liberals don’t like legal government when it doesn’t impose on rights and freedoms?
[quote]vroom wrote:
However, what part of the government banning supplements and other “personal choices”, placing insitutions over people, should a liberal like?[/quote]
I am not sure exactly what your question is, but I know that conservatives aren’t uniformly behind the banning of supplements.
As for placing ‘institutions above people’, liberals show a tendency to love two things: a sizeable welfare state and a judiciary acting as a super-legislature. Those two institutions combined negate any real claim that liberals are all about letting people be their own masters.
I think you are twisting my use of the word respect. The government needs to respect the rights of the people, and not try to increase the powers of the government instead.
I agree - figuring out those rights is the tricky part, but even more importantly, I think, is figuring out who should be deciding what those rights are. Conservatives tend to favor a bottom-up approach, whereas liberals tend to favor a top-down approach these days.
I am not sure what you are asking - but I’ll be happy to respond if you could clarify a bit.
Liberal definitions:
(1) loser of elections
(2) someone who enjoys spending other
people’s money
(3) an archaic individual who refuses
to believe people can actually run
their own lives.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Mikeyali wrote:
I think people need to remember what a liberal is. Before we go around bashing liberals, remember that Locke, Mill, Friedman, and most of our founding fathers were liberals.
I guess what I’m getting at is why have real liberals allowed today’s neo-liberals to hijack the title? Today’s neo-liberal is merely a socialist, a complete antithesis to what the original liberals were.
Mike
In one sense, you are right - ‘liberal’ meant something different 200 years ago. Most ‘conservatives’ - if they sat down long enough and pondered what the heck it is they are conserving - are conserving old liberal traditions.[/quote]
That was very concise and very well said.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Liberal definitions:
(1) loser of elections
(2) someone who enjoys spending other
people’s money
(3) an archaic individual who refuses
to believe people can actually run
their own lives.[/quote]
The sad part is the (2) and (3) can be used to describe the GOP and the Democrats will be able to hang (1) on the GOP after this November.
Arrogance comes before a fall.
It happened to the Democrats and the GOP has not learned from the Dems mistakes.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
vroom wrote:
However, what part of the government banning supplements and other “personal choices”, placing insitutions over people, should a liberal like?
I am not sure exactly what your question is, but I know that conservatives aren’t uniformly behind the banning of supplements.
As for placing ‘institutions above people’, liberals show a tendency to love two things: a sizeable welfare state and a judiciary acting as a super-legislature. Those two institutions combined negate any real claim that liberals are all about letting people be their own masters.
I think you are twisting my use of the word respect. The government needs to respect the rights of the people, and not try to increase the powers of the government instead.
Of course, then we get into the issue of what those rights should be. As much as I dislike taxes, they are not imposing in the same way that a rule that prohibits certain messages on clothing is. One places limits on some people while the other is somewhat more neutral.
I agree - figuring out those rights is the tricky part, but even more importantly, I think, is figuring out who should be deciding what those rights are. Conservatives tend to favor a bottom-up approach, whereas liberals tend to favor a top-down approach these days.
Do you have examples otherwise, where liberals don’t like legal government when it doesn’t impose on rights and freedoms?
I am not sure what you are asking - but I’ll be happy to respond if you could clarify a bit.
[/quote]
I’m not sure how conservatives are more representative of the people’s wishes, or more for letting people make their own decisions.
The entire conservative social agenda is about people not being able to make certain choices.
I fail to see how regulating someone’s personal behavior (sexual, medical, etc) can be considered letting someone be their own master. Aborion, medical marijuana (I think) also enjoy majority support, if with qualifications.
And how does the welfare state remove someone’s autonomy?
NorskGoddess wrote:
“Well, I’m actually a dude. I’m 43 yrs old, 330 pounds (and bulking!) – and I live in my mom’s basement. At least until the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ manuscript I’ve been working on starts bringin in the dough.”
pox?
JeffR
[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Liberal definitions:
(1) loser of elections
(2) someone who enjoys spending other
people’s money
(3) an archaic individual who refuses
to believe people can actually run
their own lives.
The sad part is the (2) and (3) can be used to describe the GOP and the Democrats will be able to hang (1) on the GOP after this November.
Arrogance comes before a fall.
It happened to the Democrats and the GOP has not learned from the Dems mistakes.
[/quote]
I have to agree. The Republicans did not fulfill many of the things they promised in the ‘Contract with America’. It was a lost and golden opportunity for a rebirth of this country. They decided instead to mimic the Dems, which their election belied doing precisely that.
I suspect that this will polarize the country even more, and eventually a truly radical party will ascend.
Hello, Republicans? Think ‘Weimar Republic’.
[quote]ExNole wrote:
I’m not sure how conservatives are more representative of the people’s wishes, or more for letting people make their own decisions.[/quote]
Moreso from the standpoint of letting democratic action solve the problem. Less substance, more architecture of how it is decided. Letting people participate in democratic action - even when they come out on the losing end of a policy - is allowing them to be their own masters.
That is a weirdly broad pronouncement, because it really doesn’t mean much. Do conservatives want to live in a society where anyone can do anything they want at any time, which is absolute choice? No. But then, neither do liberals.
People are not atomized - their actions are subject, to some degree, to the scrutiny of the public. It is a difficult line to draw to be sure, there never has been - nor will there ever be, thankfully - a society in which such individualism is allowed unrestrained.
By reducing responsibility. With freedom of choices comes the responsibility to absorb the consequences of your decisions made freely. The welfare state continually attempts - and makes promises - that it will underwrite the risk of your free choices, so you don’t have to manage the risks of your free choices. Autonomy means both freedom and responsibility, and the welfare state erodes one half of that - the latter half.
So, you get a nasty side effect of people making poor decisions and the rest of us paying for them.
Thunder,
I’m with you that a traditional welfare state has bad (and presumably unintended) consequences that certainly need to be addressed.
However, you should see that a government working to provide opportunties to people does not impinge on their freedoms in any way. In fact, people are generally free to not accept welfare if they wish.
I think you are swallowing the common twist on what liberals want, to turn it into a negative. Even so, these programs are about supporting people, not empowering institutions – though of course it required an institution to administer it.
Do you see what I mean? You’ll never be rid of government institutions, but they don’t have to impose on rights to have an impact. The history of welfare does nothing to eliminate behavioral options, though the effect may not have been positive. See the difference?
As for the judiciary, this is another political hot potato. Generally, this is another institution that will never go away. When it protects personal rights and freedoms, then liberals will like what it is doing. When it expands government powers then perhaps not.
Again, I think you are talking about political twists on tools or pograms that may perhaps have been used to protect people, sure via institutions, but not at the expense of peoples rights or via growth of power boundaries for those institutions.
Anyway, again, these are political hot potatoes, so it is going to be hard to dig past that rhetoric.
Personally, I don’t believe liberals are “for” big government, but I suspect that it has been how significant programs have been conceived and administered in the past. However, the two ideas of helping people and big government are not synonymous.
Political ploys making such ideas synonymous are in fact master strokes. It villifies the other party for having the principles it does, because it equates them with principles the opposing team finds themselves directly opposed to.
We see it all the time in the forums. Speech breaks down into short buzzword snippets representing opposing views. It is powerful, but unfortunate.
What a liberal wants to do is ensure that everyone has the opportunity to share in the American dream while enjoying all their rights and freedoms.
I guess on top of that you get social concepts of equity, such that opportunties are also provided for those that traditionally haven’t been able to take advantage of them.
These basic ideas are pretty sweet. Now, on the other hand, conservatives are supposed to help keep watch on these ideas, to make sure that business isn’t unduly restricted and that spending and government programs don’t balloon out of control.
Also, wise and laudible goals.
How have we progressed from those types of concerns to the near ideological warfare we have now?
One guess may be the introduction of religious issues into the mix. This raises the importance of issues above and beyond that which they would otherwise have – making discussions and actions extremely heated.
Another obviously, as I said above, is the ongoing attempts to translate the ideals of each camp into negative outcomes which unfortunately have been associated with earlier attempts to implement those ideals.
I guess another would be the ridiculous level of pork and corruption that the government seems to encourage around elected officials. This will certainly discredit everyone involved in politics… especially since both parties have been shown vulnerable to this.
LOL. Okay, I’m done rambling… obviously many of these points aren’t really addressed at your post.
"That is a weirdly broad pronouncement, because it really doesn’t mean much. Do conservatives want to live in a society where anyone can do anything they want at any time, which is absolute choice? No. But then, neither do liberals. "
My statement may have been too broad, but you know exactly what I meant. The social conservative agenda is anti abortion, and in increasing cases, anti contraceptives, it is for the illegality of gay marriage, and until recently, gay relations. It’s for abstinence only sex education. It’s clear that the agenda is clearly to limit the personal choices people can make, to legislate a very specific Christian morality.
No one wants to live in a society where anyone can do anything, but its clear that this social agenda is regressive, at best.
"People are not atomized - their actions are subject, to some degree, to the scrutiny of the public. It is a difficult line to draw to be sure, there never has been - nor will there ever be, thankfully - a society in which such individualism is allowed unrestrained. "
Again, there is a big difference between regulating the behavior of people that effects society, and regulating people’s personal decisions. Whats more of a nanny state- the one that controls your sex life or the one that gives poor people health insurane?
"By reducing responsibility. With freedom of choices comes the responsibility to absorb the consequences of your decisions made freely. The welfare state continually attempts - and makes promises - that it will underwrite the risk of your free choices, so you don’t have to manage the risks of your free choices. Autonomy means both freedom and responsibility, and the welfare state erodes one half of that - the latter half.
So, you get a nasty side effect of people making poor decisions and the rest of us paying for them. "
This isn’t entirely clear.
You have to manage the risks of your free decisions, but you don’t have to be kept desitute because of conditions over which you have no control. There are more people than jobs. While more people are wealthy under capitalism, everyone can’t be. The responsibility of the state is help the people that are a by product of its success.
How much responsibility do you want to give people? Do you seriously think if someone makes some bad decisions they, or their children should starve?
-Social conservatives differ greatly from economic conservatives in a lot of areas. It’s hard to say with a straight face that religious conservatives aren’t out ot limit people’s freedom. And currently, its the religious conservatives message that is louder.
[quote]JeffR wrote:
NorskGoddess wrote:
“Well, I’m actually a dude. I’m 43 yrs old, 330 pounds (and bulking!) – and I live in my mom’s basement. At least until the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ manuscript I’ve been working on starts bringin in the dough.”
pox?
JeffR
[/quote]
Hmm… not sure what/who ‘pox’ is. Chicken pox? In hindsight, it was a really lame-ass joke.
No more impulse typing for me.
So, for clarification, I’m not a guy… I was being facetious.
(So please, so more PM’s about Dungeons&Dragons, guys… I have no idea, and NO, I don’t want to play in your online group. 