Liberal vs Conservative: The Useless Dichotomy

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I don't who started the whole libs vs conservative debacle and who decided that Democrats always belong in the former and Republicans in the latter. Sure we humans have difficulties with stuff that falls outside of two opposing categories but when it comes to politics just call me a hermaphrodite because I tend to use both adjectives in my thinking about policy issues because to me loyalty to some obtuse label is not as important as finding and improving on what actually works. Maybe I just hate being judged in a subjective manner or I am sick and tired of having those words spread like feces all over the place. What ever it is politics will never get passed the blame game and the fu@k ups if people keep using a label to justify their own positions on issues no matter how rational, moral, or logical those positions on issues may be.

What ever happened to finding out what people really think about political issues versus just filing them away as being on one team or the other? Times like these I wished I lived 70 years ago.

'divide & rule' - its a strategy of subverting meaningful political analysis that suits the elite - both sides (of the same coin?)

I think it goes back centuries, you just see it in different forms. 70 years ago the rich-poor power divide would have been maintained in a different way. The liberal/conservative dichotomy dominates atm because it happens to serve corporate interests best in the current era of mass-media & 'democracy'.

I think that the time when we really thought about issues is just some magical time frame that never happened but that we like to imagine. Ugly, stupid, and idiotic politics has been around for the entire duration of the US's existence it seems to me and likely could be extended beyond that even. Now, the current political divisions arose over time and based upon various historical trends, but, the US has tended towards a 2 party system for many years with different positions for different reasons. Life is subjectivity though......(eww, I can understand how the phrase might be detestable, but logic is only a tool towards ends, not anything independent of the hand that guides it).

70 years ago we had crap going on.... you would not want to live 70 years ago though. Politics was dominated by FDR, who got into office originally by attacking Hoover on his lacking fiscal conservatism and then went on to make Hoover's unbalancing of the budget seem meek. Not only that, but it was the great depression, a time when unemployment was high as well as the suicide rate, and we were heading into WW2. The time was quite horrible.

The elites always have power, if they didn't then they wouldn't be called elites. Even your analysis is a strategy of "subverting meaningful political analysis" to suit an elite group. In your case the elite group would more likely be a group of left-wing sociology professors who seek to cast all human action into a neo-Marxist or a class struggle framework. I think that even if your framework has some elements of correctness, it is still an oversimplification of American political tradition as we have still had a dichotomy even when some of the biggest elites were the ones in political power.


Well, power goes back centuries. American political tradition goes back to American tradition, which has tended to have 2 political parties that despite being different really hold a lot in common despite their screaming to the contrary. 70 years ago politics was very much tied to FDR, who was one of the most popular presidents. There were definitely some who attacked FDR, but he was the top dog without question due to the fact that he took actions and was charismatic. Well, American politics has always had a dichotomy, even before corporations. Current politics didn't drop out of the air; people just like to see their world as fundamentally different from an ideal past.

politics are stupid i think. plus theres to many people on the planet for it to be done the right way

Politics is stupid but there is no right way to do it or perhaps infinite.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 03 Nov 2007, 7:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What I see most prevelant with people running for office is they won't stand up for whats right but support dumb ideas in a vein attempt to please everyone.

Well, after spending so much time in political office they probably have no clue on what is right.... not that anyone does. They do support dumb ideas in an attempt to please all sorts of people.

There is no right way to most people because s**t like reality TV has eroded your ability to think. Any time there is a problem, there is a right way to go about solving it, and there is a wrong way.

It's a lot like I told someone else, lets say I have a red apple, and I go to someone and say "hey, I have a red apple". This person wants to believe the apple is blue, so I can not convince him it isn't blue because he can't deal with this truth. So instead he brings up a BS argument "red and blue are human inventions, who is to say what is red and what is blue". The fact remains, we designated a certain color red, and a certain color blue, for a reason, and that whole line of thinking "what is red or blue?" negates the entire premise. Most sane people by the definition of red that humanity has unanimously decided and agreed upon would see that apple as red.

There are right ways, but people might not emotionally like the right way. They might choose to be ignorant of it.

Richardbenson's comment was spot on.

I don't watch TV. Well, part of that is because by identifying a problem you also create a framework in which correct answers exist. My argument is partially that objective frameworks for what constitutes a problem do not exist, this can be reduced to at least a statement on the importance of any given problem.

Well, the dispute is on definitions. The only way you can convince him is if you deal with this matter of common definitions. The way you can convince him is either show his belief as inconsistent(like smurfs and apples are both blue in his mind despite him recognizing them as different colors) or if he is not inconsistent/does not see the issue, then you can merely say that you define your apple as being red.


Well, on some level that can have some truth. If he grew up thinking that apples were blue and everyone he knew did that, then I would say that he is being somewhat fair here. You can't prove that something should be given a certain title. You can only show inconsistencies in current trains of thought.

No we didn't. I was not a part of this designation process so therefore a we does not exist. Not all of humanity even speaks English, so not all of them necessarily use the term "red" and some people may not recognize red at all, such as the color blind.


But the issue is that you cannot absolutely prove that any way is truly the right way. You are right, people may choose to be ignorant of truths, but can you ever prove ignorance to those people? Can you prove that you aren't being ignorant to some truths? I say no to both.

The apple is blue - check the label of the Ringo Starr single 'Back Off Boogaloo' from 1972. I'll have a green one, or even a Golden Delicious.

Here, the term for conservative or right wing is 'liberal', where left wing perople are either Labour or Socialist voters. But in the end, it's a crap anyway, because politics is just a game of who can achieve power and who they can shaft to get it.

In this country we have too many people who support one side just because of some cultural wedge issues (like abortion, gay marraige, etc.). 99% don't take the time to understand the more pressing issues. Politics in the US is all about money and silly cultural cliques. Unfortunately democracy doesn’t work as well when people refuse to think for themselves.

I apologize if I came off that way I am not usually a past-luster but sometimes I get hit by maudlin moods and I just throw the baby out with the bathwater and want to start from a different point of origin whether it be a different time, place, or point of view which I am fond of.

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Yeah but people were much more aware of issues and policies around them in previous times of American history. There was more attention placed on the details and that certain political decisions could make or break the future of the country. Do you think if George W. Bush was president a hundred years they wouldn't have impeached him for the whole Scooter Libby debacle? Perhaps due to globlization the future of any country is irrevelant if you got Yahoo peddling information to foreign states and mercenaries fighting American wars.




As someone mentioned on this post already the positions between the two major political parties are not even that different so it doesn't make sense to treat them as such just because they are labeled that way.



I think life has both subjective and objective elements. By being a biological being we can't escape our fate of being a measured mass. Whether we like it or not empirical observations can be made of us not just as individuals but as groups as well. I see logic as more of a mathematical process that forms and modifies the structures of us and around us. True, life somtimes tends to deviate from the pattern whether due to hybrids or mutations but it is the patterns that sustain the system and given that if the hybrid or mutant forms or unable to produce patterns they disappear from existence. I agree with you that even before modern technology people (and perhaps other species as well) have been manipulating nature through the use of logic such as Mendel and his peas but the process has existed before our manipulations on it.



We always have crap going on. Speaking of which given that China has found an effective and economical sound way to kill us (and by us I mean Americans) through the accumulation of meaningless crap I don't necessarily see our current time period as much better. Instead of not having access to any food and dying of malnutriton now we are just dying a slow death by malnutrition by having access to a bulk of cheap nutriently deficient (antibiotic / e coli /god know what else) calorie empty food. Sure my belly is full but do I really want to know with what?

I mentioned the 1930s because a lot of my favorite authors or from that time and because it the last time in American history in which political/ philosophical intellectualism really mattered for large groups of people. When America lost it hold on science it lost it value of great literature as well. Both stem from inventive minds and both tend to gel together quite nicely in philosophy. TV medium kind of wiped out the written word. One of the negatives of technology it could be argued but it certainly didn't have to be that way.

The way that modern business people (which is laughable to me btw) see themselves as warriors because they are merciless at getting what they want has always rubbed me the wrong way. When hearing about how Harvard business graduates read "the art of war" like it was some kind of training manual as to how associate with people and run an "empire" it kind of makes me feel disgusted to be part of the human race. Perhaps another maudlin imagary of mine but I always see warriors as ascetic people who sacrifice themselves to a cause they deem as worthy of their life (if not more so ). My only regret is I have only one life to give to the cause sort of a deal. Not who is the biggest producer of material crap or services that no one really wants and no one really needs.


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That is what befuddles me about the whole thing. 95% of the population does not benefit from corporate interests and is untrustworthy of the media but yet they will accept such neo-feudalism policies such as trickle down economics? That is what I don't understand. I just watched a forensic case on stolkholm syndrome recently, perhaps the whole US has come down with it. We are constantly bombarded with the messages to live in fear ( perhaps creating a pseudo_tramatic condition), indoctrinated with what the power elites want us to believe, given our location on the globe we are fairly isolated, and we are promised a reward that if we go along with corporate interests that we will be rewarded with stuff and the possibility of becoming part of the power elite.

Well, my claim is that your different place is not one that really existed.


I don't really think that things were different at all. I think Bush's impeachment would rest entirely upon the whims of other politicians no matter what time it was, presidents have outright defied the supreme court and avoided impeachment but they have also defied meaningless rules and gotten impeached.



They are different though, and you are avoiding the cognizance of that in order to make your case. It does make sense to treat them as different. The issue is that we will not have political parties that insanely push in opposite directions and I don't think that such has often been the case either.



Hmmm.... you have gone way further with that comment than was necessary. I can understand science, but I was speaking on the nature of normative statements versus positive statements.


Not really, they just sell stuff. If you don't like the food then pick a different one, we have a better food selection than most people on the face of the earth much less past generations.


What makes you think it ever mattered to large groups of people? I still think that there is a divide between mass culture and high culture that is ignored because of the prevalence of mass culture today whereas only high culture endures. I dunno, I just tend to doubt that people were really that much more intellectual in an age where education mattered so much less and where information was so much less available.

How should they see themselves? We are not a warlike society but rather a society of traders. I mean, what is wrong with our traders seeking competence? This is a matter of imagery, and it is because you associate warriors with your kind of hero and that is why business leaders act in this way: they seek to be heroes and men of success. Given that they are less philosophical, more driven, and more of the backbone of our society means that they will have a greater propensity than many other groups. Different people have and care about different causes, it is life.


That depends on the "corporate interests" and the period of time over which they are practiced. A large part of this also relates back to our cultural heritage which includes individualism and capitalism. I don't think that this is stockholm syndrome because the US has historically been very capitalistic. I think what this really ends up being is that you think your political beliefs are correct and that the system is corrupt because it does not perfectly reflect that. My own political instincts are often described as very capitalist and I have thought about them a lot as well and read a significant amount of economics in my free time.