Why is there so much liberal hate?

Post Reply New Topic

Well I think history tells us that. Not all the time do you need concrete evidence. The philosophy and ideology is flawed as well. And thanks for making me feel welcome lol.

Well one thing is that American Liberalism is completely different than european liberalism apparantly. History is just written by the victors, and interpretation can be done in whatever way suits the reader. Concrete evidence is not needed, sure

Liberal used to mean something different. when now it means social democrat.

I really don't like this term 'Liberals' with an s. It is just a way of generalizing, but then again that isn't helped by the process.

Politics is easily polarized, and people support political parties in much the way they support football teams. There is also an obsession with manifesto politics, which is one of the reason why people are so dissatisfied.

Pragmatism is is short supply, and that is my and everybody's fault.

I also think the cold war damaged critical thinking quite a bit because of the level of mutual suspicion and paranoia which has become ingrained over the years.

Then I hope you appreicate that a breif history, that being the 20th century showed us the practise of both astute and objective politics in tandem. Liberals have failed to conceive the electorate and when they nearly did (in the last election) they failed to establish themselves as a committed party. We can see a short history tells us that anyway you look at it inferences tell us that Liberalism is too weak a concept in or out of government and you can look at the Liberals here in England tenure as evidence for that.

They are social democrats. They just like to portray themselves as centrists. As embarassing as facism really.

I am 'mercun. Anything outside of our borders does not matter unless it involves terrorism or it makes us feel threatened.

What I meant to say is your definition of liberal is probably different than mine.
And the last 10 pages or so have centered more on welfare/American liberalism

The failure of the Liberal party in England is rather microscopic in the grand scheme of things. Liberal democracy - as that phrase is understood - is the dominant political paradigm of the most powerful nations on the planet, and all mainstream parties throughout the developed world and beyond appeal to its values, regardless of semantics or Orwellian attempts to shift meanings of words.

At its peak, in the postwar years, liberal democracy presided over an expansion of liberty and living standards that was simply unprecedented in history. But it is always under threat from reactionary and radical politics, witnessed as a polarization of political life, as we saw with the rise of fascism and communism, as we see again. Economic disaster, repression, and armed conflict are the only witnessed products of illiberal politics in the modern age.

Fascism is not so much embarrassing as totally despicable.

However the irony is Mussolini's fascism was about collusion between big business and government. Not really that different from what we have now. He would be proud. What's more this practice is widespread across the political spectrum, left and right. So there is a massive gulf between rhetoric, and practice. In reality political parties aren't so different. however it is pointless blaming just the party we are all culpable.

We give far to much credit to ideology. The reality is the development in socio-political life coincided with developments in energy and technology.

If we practice what we preached then we might be a better off. For example competition. Far from nurturing it we stifle, we offer protection for some firms that wouldn't otherwise exist due to diseconomies of scale, and neglect small and medium size business.

The reason is we are idealistic, we follow the logic that the alternative is idealist therefor we are not. This what I mean by the lack of critical thinking. One thing we don't like to admit is competition is fragile, and companies naturally don't want to compete. It is pretty obvious when you think about it. Instead of ideology thing of mechanism that we know, work. It work best in diverse markets where companies have no choice but to compete. What's more, these produce far stabler macro economies. The sector that come crashing down are the ones where there a very few, but very large entities that are getting every privilege bestowed upon them.

The irony is companies don't exist without the legislation that defines them in the jurisdiction, yet they are bigger and more powerful than the countries they reside in. Their political influence is more direct then the subject of these countries, because both left and right think they are the solution to all the problems.

Both Conservatism and Liberalism are weak concepts if you are going by the definition of the word only.

The reality is most people are not total illiberal, or completely conservative. However people tend to get caught up in manifesto politic, so there is an element disagreeing, for the sake of being opposite. If you look at equivalent parties in different countries you will see than many of the position don't actually make sense or be comparable except in the context of historical opposition in that country. However it makes it in into the manifesto and it become engrained in people's minds, despite there not being an obvious position intern of conservatism or liberalism.

Tony Blair didn't invent, but was the master of the technique of policy stealing. He knew how to time it time it perfectly to totally take the steam out the opposition initiative. However occasionally they call bluff, and switch position. They can afford to, because they hadn't made any major declarations that point, but it is difficult to policy steal then reverse it. Not in a single term, so this is how policy can become engrained with a party.

I see you are engaging in more personal attacks. Well, don't let me stop you. That grave gets deeper by the minute. It just shows that you are scraping the bottom of the barrel for your argumentation. Which is actually the only method you have, since you have not even demonstrated mild understanding of the topic you are engaged in



Maybe if one isn't too bright, is not intellectually honest and has only disingenuous methods of defending one's arguments, your following leaps of illogic would make sense



Either respond to what I say, or don't respond at all. Your weak, half-assed straw men are utterly laughable and just show how little you actually know about the subject you are engaging in.



This is coming from the guy who ends his posts with self-congratulatory BS like this. I actually have addressed the main issue of your posts, and every single time you avoid it and focus on replying to my commentary towards your contradictory life status because it is bruising your massive libertarian ego complex



I can't believe Dox would waste his time defending this guy. At this point I feel like I am communicating with an automaton

The thing is you're just asking for abuse when you attack people who do rely on the state for assistance as "lazy" while you yourself aren't even working. If you can't understand why that attitude gets people's dander up I guess there is no hope for you. It's the exact thing that gives the whole "libertarian" movement a bad name. It begins to look like a philosophy for selfish brats.

I think this demonstrates the futility of arguing with libertarians. All they do is state their own annoying subjective black-and-white opinions (i.e. government is baaad, force is evil) from which the rest of their ideology flows. No explanation for how their ideal society would actually work is given. Give a logical refutation of the pragmatics of their ideology and they simply respond with more bloated opinions ("voluntary exchange = good", "force = baaad", "government = baaaad") on and on ad nauseam. That or they attack a straw-man acting as though there is no possible middle ground between 100% communism and 100% anarcho-capitalism.

Are you saying you would prefer to be told what to do and then forced to comply when you don't?

Are you claiming that voluntary exchange is bad and force is good?

It depends really on what kind of libertarian we are talking about. There are a lot of very dilettante-ish libertarians who trumpet a lot of inane ego-masturbatory Randism but there are also many who have a reasonable viewpoint. I have a lot more in common with a lot of libertarians than I do with parties closer to my own "alignment". This is why I prefer not to associate myself with a specific ideology. It tends to force association with all of the baggage attached, either from one's own view (stick to the party line) or from critics (you are N therefore Z!)

It's less a question of 'bad' and 'good' and more a question of 'reliable' and 'unreliable'. Enlightened self-interest is, sadly, rare, which means that 'force' solutions such as, say, taxation? They're necessary in order to get the essential functions of a society (law enforcement, fire fighting, waging war, providing for a defense, implementation of currency, etc) executed. Would voluntary exchange be 'morally better'? Perhaps. But since it can't be relied upon to work, force must take its place.

It's not a matter of my personal preference. Of course I'd love to be able to do whatever I choose if there were no negative consequences for myself or others. The issue is I live in a world containing other people and I realize that some degree of cooperation raises the standard of living for all. Complaining about ever being forced to do anything for the common good is just childish and narcissistic.