Are autistics conservatives or liberals?

Post Reply New Topic

Using academic definitions, conservatives and liberals should agree on almost anything. Conservatives want to change the law only when there is a failure of the current law while liberals only want a law if there is a good reason to enact it in the first place. In the long run, they should largely agree. The major difference (again, suing academic and not contemporary definitions) is that conservatives don't think we're wise enough to know, a priori, what laws work. I see value in both positions.

The problem is neither conservatives nor liberals actually get elected. Instead we get authoritarian demagogues who pick a label with as much thought as a high school chooses a mascot for their team.

Contemporary definitions of these terms are like shifting sands in the Nairobi and are, quite frankly, utterly useless except in making us hate one another for irrational reasons.

/Agorist

But it's also true that a great number of Americans don't believe in evolution, had believed Saddam Hussein had attacked us on 9/11, and many still seem to think the president is foreign born.
So much for the wisdom of the masses.
Incidentally, the founding fathers feared rule by the masses as much as they feared one man rule.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Man, life is spooky and hard. Somebody's always going to get messed up.

Lol, of course there are exeptions. And exeptions confirm the rule.

I find it amazing and depressing in equal measure that some americans would use 'protofascist' and 'pinko commie' (the latter of which is self contradictory) in the same breath.

Politics isnt a binary system of good vs evil. Some people have genuine reasons for holding the political views they do, no matter how deplorable you may find them or how much the demagogues in the hack media and capitol hill tell you to.

I don't romanticise the Soviet Union or any of its failed satellite states nor would I want them back, however I hate the GOP, free market capitalism and the class system so to you I would probably be a 'pinko stinko commie'. If you actuallly care to communicate with progressives you'll find that these tenants are common denominators across many leftist-progressive ideologies, not just communism.

Logic 101. Exceptions confirm the falseness of a general rule.

ruveyn

The people's will is most important, not those of unelected bureaucrats. We have your type running the European Union and they're making a complete dog's breakfast of it. They frequently overrule our own (very imperfect) democratically elected parliament. They have consigned millions of Southern Europeans to misery through their eurozone project, they have taken away the ability for countries to govern themselves. They have made it forbidden for member states to secure their own borders or to sort out their own trade deals but they think they know what is best for us. I find this kind of dictatorship most damaging of all in Europe as these people simply can't be removed.

When you take people's ability to change their leaders, when these leaders have no regard or respect for democracy or the will of the people, you end up with these people having no means to change the policy of where they live and it starts to feel like oppression and occupation. This often leads to extremism and violence.

Democracy isn't a panacea, don't be ridiculous and the danger is that completely no-limits democracy that we end up with a tyranny of the majority. At the moment in Europe though, we have a tyranny of an unelected, self-regarding political class.

I think a form of genuinely representative direct democracy along local lines with a central parliament that directs matters relating to the state, a proper constitution that respects basic human rights, a population with a high regard for civil liberties and civil society would be the best way to go, something a little like Switzerland. Above all, what we really need is a democratic system where politicians aren't necessarily very important but the people are, as they are the ones that will have to live with their decisions, not the politicians.

Conservative auties are conservative and liberal/progressive autie are liberal/progressive.

Then there are sensible auties who are neither.

ruveyn

I find it hard to wrap my head around the notion that a person - autistic or otherwise - could be neither liberal or conservative without being apolitical.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

What a clever fellow you are! Politics is inherently corrupt and socially corrosive. They who are a-political are made of nobler stuff than those who are political.

True humans do not spend their time figuring out ways of controlling or thwarting others.

ruveyn

No, it's not a matter of trying to control or thwart people, but rather just having an opinion of what's best for how the world operates, and what isn't.
And I wasn't trying to be particularly clever. Anyone who knows me personally can tell you I am not.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Last edited by Kraichgauer on 22 Aug 2012, 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dearie me, you haven't spent any time outside the U.S., have you? If you did, you'd know that it's far, far more complicated than X v Y.

Nope, I haven't. Then again, I was speaking primarily about the USA.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Since I am not God, I have no idea of what is best for how the world operates. I know what is good enough for me to operate and I am not about to sanction the use of force to impose my views on other people. The only excuse for exercising force against another human is self defense. Everything else is thugary or tyranny. Politics is a bad sick thing. Politics and religion have accounted for most of the death and destruction that humans inflict on each other. In a good world neither would exist. Unfortunately neither you nor I live in a good world.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 22 Aug 2012, 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Are social democrats conservatives or liberals? Depends on the social democrat. To be honest, I find a system of authoritarianism and liberalism coupled with left-wing and right-wing and also other labels is more helpful.

There are some very 'conservative', actually quite authoritarian Labour (i.e. left-wing) voters and a lot of libertarian, right-wing Tory/UKIP voters. There's different kinds of conservatism and liberalism is what I mean.

I mean, personally, I'm a national conservative type and very anti-EU (i.e. I have a conservative nationalist outlook on the nation) who believes in a smaller, more efficient welfare state (whilst certainly making sure that the welfare state is there to help those in need) coupled with a free-market, smaller government outlook. On social issues, I tend more often than not to edge towards believing that people should be able to decide their own futures. I want Britain's democracy to be restored and revitalised. Where does that put me? I am both conservative and liberal (but neither in the real US sense of the term).

Last edited by Tequila on 22 Aug 2012, 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Again, it's just a matter of having an opinion, not a matter of enforcing it on others.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Last edited by Kraichgauer on 22 Aug 2012, 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.