Reticent Liberalism vs. Unabashed Liberalism

Post Reply New Topic

I call you a "rightist", Dox47, because many of your talking points are decidedly rightwing and I view the distinction between right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism as significant. Right-libertarians may be less conventionally rightwing than movement conservatives, but they still are rightwing under my classification system.

As for your points, much of national "defense" deals with dolling out research grants and big government money to weapons developers to fight Soviet Russia if she ever emerges again (Stealth Jets and the like) and meddling (covertly or transparently) in other nation's affairs (especially when they try developing their regional industries). So, unless you make it clear that you support reforming the military-industrial complex, I consider you an advocate of HUGE and DUMB government (there is a lot of waste in the US military).

As for your "flyover states" talking point, the extent left-liberals express condensation is hugely exaggerated. Many left-liberal activists come or represent people in the Midwest - Michael Moore (Flint, Michigan), Tom Frank (Kansas) and Al Franken (representing the Upper Midwestern State of Minnesota), for example. And given the extent the unbashed conservatives liked to bash people on the Coasts ("San Fransico values" or "Massachusetts liberals", if you failed to pay attention to the way conservatives talked about the state before Scott Brown), then you'd realize such regional hubris is hardly confined to left-liberals or even necessarily fatal.

While I disagree with your use of the stereotype "Hick" (even though I'll admit that you're closer to the fray as a native of Ohio), I'm wondering if you've heard anything about Canada's Conservative (minority) government trying to scrape the long-form census. I think, if the Opposition Parties played it well, they could frame the issue as a talking point about "dumb government conservatives".

I spent the first nineteen years of my life right across the river from Kentucky. They are hicks, and often proud of it.

And I don't really follow Canadian politics, so I haven't heard anything about your census disputes. In this day and age though, the notion of a census is rather antiquarian. You can't just go around the country and count how many people there are. Much simpler, cheaper, and more accurate to have some statisticians tell you what the current population distribution is.

Again, we aren't talking about conservatives here now are we? I'm not in here to defend conservatism or to attack liberalism, the OP seemed to be musing on why liberal politicians seem so ineffective at pursuing liberal policies, and I'm expressing some of my thoughts as to why. I'm not here to play concern troll either, I have better things to do with my time than rile up a bunch of liberal Aspies.

To address your question though, from a purely political perspective (i.e. this is not me talking here) an anti-elitist/anti-intellectual stance is much more palatable, compelling even, than an anti-proletarian one, you ought to know that. I won't even get into the irony of left leaning politicians and commentators dripping contempt onto the working man, but the working man seems to appreciate it just fine, hence the popularity of right wing radio.

I've sheldom heard righwingers praise unions. The poorest members of the working class (who tend to be minorities) have rather consistently voted Democratic, by the way.

The reason why the Democratic Party can't sell liberalism is because they fail to frame it in terms of economic populism - and they fail to do that because their donors are plutocrats.

If the Democrats took a page from Nader, flipped common conservative talking points (talking about "corporate crime" and "corporate welfare") and spoke of economic elites, then liberalism would fly high.

Well, I just find it odd that something is seen as obnoxious from one side and not from the other.


I disagree. Tearing down the scientists, engineers, etc who make modern society possible is not a good idea. Making ignorance commendable is a terrible road to follow. Perhaps it is more compelling to rage against the "elites" and claim to represent the "common man," but we both know that's not what the GOP does, so I still don't understand how they are perceived as better on that front (not necessarily by you, but just in general).


Not so much contempt for the working man, given liberal support for unions and various pro-worker labor laws, but rather a disdain for the uneducated and ignorant. The GOP manages to win the propaganda war on this front by making everyone believe they represent the common folk, while it's quite plain that the GOP acts against the interests of the working class. I think this simply demonstrates MP's point: liberals are so weak in promoting their agenda that they have failed to capitalize on any anti-elite sentiment and direct it against the über-wealthy who are the real base of the Republican party. It is astonishing how effective the Republican machine is at getting people to vote against their interests.

I put the important part in bold, where you make it clear that you're not talking about any conventional measure of political alignment but your own subjective views. Fair enough, I'd put you and Xenon13 at the fringe of the left here in PPR, so I'm sure from your perspective I do seem right wing in my opinions, but then again you two seem to think of most Democrats as being right wing as well. I'll also point out, not for the first time and likely not the last either, that my social view are hardly conservative in that I support gay rights, abortion rights, unlimited free speech, legalizing of all drugs and drastic reform of the prison system including severe restrictions on privatization, just to name a few things off the top of my head. I'd like to call your attention to the accepted definition of a "right libertarian", which is someone who espouses libertarian economic ideas while still promoting social conservatism. Does that sound like me?



Where did I say I was in favor of just dumping money onto private companies, defense related or not? For that matter, where have I ever even mentioned the reemergence of "Soviet Russia" as a potential threat and/or as a motivating factor for supporting national defense? You can consider me whatever you want, hell I think you will regardless of what I actually say because it's convenient for you to stereotype me rather than actually engaging me, I'm just glad my avatar keeps your ilk from trying to trot out the "racist" accusations.



So, conservatives do something similar and that makes it OK? That seems to be the knee jerk response I get when I post in this thread. I thought some people would be interested in claiming the moral high ground, but apparantly I was mistaken. See my response to Orwell for an explanation of why anti-elitism sells better than snobbery over the proles.

I didn't say it isn't obnoxious, I just said it's more effective they way they spin it.

I happen to agree with you about anti-intellectualism, it's a very destructive ideology that has among other things, ravaged parts of the black community (as any black comedian worth his salt can tell you). However, it's also a powerful one that needs to be dealt with carefully, and one of the ways is to refrain from saying things that are seen as condescending to working class and/or religious people. I for one long ago learned to tone down my anti-religious rhetoric; it doesn't convince anyone who's not strongly on the fence already and it pisses off more people than it reaches. It's a hard road to follow, I readily admit, but one that I think needs to be walked if certain ideas and programs are going to be sold to the masses.

Ah, I see. Then it appears we were talking at cross purposes. I agree; the anti-intellectual spin is more effective. I do think the other side could do a much better job at that particular propaganda war.

And why should they? The ugly political reason is that unions spend billions to elect their opponents and opposing the unions is thus political survival. The more nuanced reason might be that unions have become every bit as corrupt and exploitative as the robber barons they were originally created to oppose. I don't like the additional layer of bureaucracy and inefficiency that they bring to the table, and I also dislike the way they've stagnated areas like school and policing where they prevent incompetent and sometimes abusive employees from being properly dealt with.

In other words, dislike of unions is not the same thing as dislike of the working classes.



What does that prove?

The nastiest answer (again, this is not me talking here) would be that Democrats traditionally keep the government taps flowing and are more likely to espouse a redistribution of wealth, making it economically in the interest of the poor to vote for them. Conversely, this same mechanism prevents conservatives/Republicans from seeing any value in pursuing the poor vote or the black vote; they're going to vote Democrat no matter what so why waste time and resources on them? It also politically aligns the wealthy with the Republicans, since it's in their economic interest to oppose a party that wants to redistribute their income.

And the true genius of the Republican strategists is in convincing a host of upper-middle-class, middle-class, and even working-class Americans that they are the ones whose income would be "redistributed." If the GOP had to rely on the votes of people whose economic interests are served by Republican policies, they would be a fringe party.

My "own subjective views" are probably much closer to the conventional left-right spectrum then yours are. Property rights libertarians (hencefourth known as "right-libertarians) are frequently grouped on "the Right" by conventional commentators and political scientists. I'm sure some could argue that anarcho-syndicalists or mutualists don't count as being "on the left" because they support "small government" (or, rather, no government). But few have made such a hair-splitting point because (well, for one, they've been included on the Left since the beginning, it's only in post-30's America that this dichotomy of left vs right even started to make sense) people recognize the family resemblances in spite of the differences.

The Nolan Chart is a lot less conventional than the one-dimensional left-right spectrum. If you must know my own system, it's pretty much on axis for socioeconomic equality vs. socioeconomic inequality (Left vs. Right) and another for how centralized power is (authoritarian vs. libertarian).



I'm going to ask whether, for some quirky reason, your subjective system places social democrats to the left of Communists. There are atleast three Communists I know of who frequent Wrong Planet and two of them have written a fair amount about their views, so this is a very strange statement to make.



Aside from the anti-privatization of Prision, I consider most of those issues thoroughly consistent with right-libertarianism.



Where the hell are you getting that definition from? Here is mine:


http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewconten ... widerquist



When I brought up issues with Reagan's expansion of the military-industrial complex - noting how it was a case of corporate welfare (dumping money into private companies) - you're only response was to approve of "national defense".



If you paid attention to criticisms of the defense industry, you'd note a common undertone is to criticize how military research and weapons systems and even the structure of the military is as if America were fighting the Soviets again. The "Stealth Jet is a cold war era project" critique is quite common, actually.



http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-030309-1.html



I only accuse immigration alarmists, birthers, and people who whine about minorities undermining their country of being racists. Until you start doing those things, I won't bring up the word - in spite of your paranoia that I'll bring up the word.

As for my "stereotypes" - when someone uses rightwing talking points, I will call them a "rightist". When someone creates a thread detailing a paranoid militia right idea about coming up with a system that would kill civil sevants who get on your nerves of random people and wants to discuss the merits of the idea and later whines when the moderators deleted the post - I consider them of a milita right mindset. Not all militia right ideologues are racists or social conservatives - some simply embrance a rather extreme brand of anti-government right-libertarianism.



Uh.... NO. A successful ideology does it, so that does not mean it is absolutely fatal to making your ideology successful.



See my entire serious of posts in which I note that conservatives have elitist tendencies, especially when it comes to unions, and see the posts where I disagree with Orwell's use of the insult "hick".

By the way, way to avoid my more important rebuttals - that there are numerous "flyover state" liberal activists and that the whole "Costal liberal snobbery" thesis is exaggerrated.

I found this quote attributed to Ronald Reagan of all people, and I think more people (many of them in this thread) really ought to adopt this philosophy:

"The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor."

I think both of the mainstream political parties need to think long and hard about the ideological purging that they're doing; there are plenty of people like myself out there that don't really fit in either organization and alienating us for no good reason will cost in the long run.

As opposed to the multimillion dollar corruption and defense of incompetence that corporations (the main opponents of organized labour) harbour? The incompetence unions harbour are far outweighted by the incompetence corporate monopolies harbour and, quite frankly, unions are the only way to fight for workers rights in an environment of monopolistic competition. Either split up corporations or learn to make peace with unions or live with the continued abuse of workers rights. Those are the three options.

Unions try and keep wages as high as possible and corporations try and keep wages as low as possible. Those are the rules of the game.



You like the working classes, but you just don't like to seem them working under decent conditions?



http://www.cepr.net/documents/publicati ... 010-02.pdf



That - in spite of all the claims of elitism and snobbery - liberal Democrats obviously are singing the same tune as the working poor on economic policy.



More like liberal Democrats ensure some of the water gets to the poor person's neighborhood so they may drink rather than giving the billionaire a chance to build another seven store high aquarium at their home. That'd be a better analogy.

Also, it could be that liberal Democrats support upward mobility and opportunity for the poor, whereas Republicans and conservatives are willing to see the poor stick to the floor in destitution.

The main problem with a massive amount of politically ambivalent and alienated working class people is that they haven't heard a consistent narrative that makes sense. The Republicans talk about "welfare queens" or "illegal immigrants stealing jobs" or "gay marriage undermining society" and that doesn't really answer the problems of stagnating wages and diminishing benefits. The Democrats almost avoid economic issues or obscure it in overly technocratic language and workers are still confused.

The fact of the matter is that America's dispossed workers would almost surely swing Democratic if the party adopted Ralph Nader style rhetoric and economic populism.