Anyone familiar with me knows I have a low opinion of libertarianism. Like its leftwing twin, anarchism, it is a utoppian idea which falls apart quickly. The big difference between the two is that libertarianism wants to get rid of regulation and let the oligarch foxes run the chicken coop.
That said, this shows how the utopian ideal doesn't work.
The best part is that they defunded the police with the obvious consequences.
Yet another way to distract you from the US uniparty to give an illusion of choice. The people who scream socialism and communism would freak if either system were anywhere close to being implemented in the United States.
It's interesting what he is saying. It's not exactly what my last two posts have been about, but very similar.
Liberalism in Europe, today, is something like “libertarianism”—it is a right-wing ideology. There used to be a left libertarianism, which is probably better called anarchism, and that persists in various sectarian versions, but it isn’t much in the public eye. And then in the United States, liberalism generally means “New Deal liberalism.” It’s our very modest version of social democracy, and it isn’t a very strong doctrine, since many of its practitioners became neoliberals much too easily. So, the -ism is not a strong or coherent doctrine. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t liberals. But liberals are people who are best defined morally or psychologically; they’re what Lauren Bacall, my favorite actress, called “people who don’t have small minds.” A liberal is someone who’s tolerant of ambiguity, who can join arguments that he doesn’t have to win, who can live with people who disagree, who have different religions or different ideologies. That’s a liberal. But those liberal qualities don’t imply any social or economic doctrine. So, there are liberals in the world, and I can recognize them, but liberalism does not describe their actual political commitment. The word is better used to qualify the kinds of commitments that I write about: democracy, socialism, nationalism, et cetera.
He's making a good point since "liberal arts" is a field of study "based on rational thinking, and it includes the areas of humanities, social and physical sciences, and mathematics. A liberal arts education emphasizes the development of critical thinking and analytical skills, the ability to solve complex problems, and an understanding of ethics and morality, as well as a desire to continue to learn." That means the division is between closed mindedness and open mindedness: not whether one is on the left or the right.
The problem with US politics is that it is based upon fallacious thinking. "The Democrats are progressives/socialists/liberals/etcetera" and "The Republican Trump supporters, etc." Is the divide that clear cut? Fox news calls the democratic party "socialist", yet that party has a long track record of destroying the moderate "socialist" policies of the new deal. What Sanders was proposing wasn't too far out from where FDR was going, and what is pretty much expected in the rest of the world as far as social policy goes.
As I said, not exactly what I have been saying in the past few posts, but definitely something I agree with:
This points out that both want to protect. The conservative wants to protect the group and is sensitive to threat. The Liberal also wants to protect, but comes from a different point of view.
Take the issue of firearms. The right winger sees firearms as something which can be used as protection. The liberal sees the harm that comes from them. There is far too much based upon emotion and not enough relating to what the actual cost is to society.
A longer version of the above interview:
Monopoly vs. Democracy
In interpreting the First Amendment in 1945, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black emphasized that “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.” As giant media companies continue to push an interpretation of the First Amendment that focuses only on their freedom to speak, the freedom to hear “diverse and antagonistic voices” has all but disappeared.
While the country is becoming more diverse racially—and remains half female—the heads of all 20 corporations are still white males. Lack of diverse ownership leads to non-diverse newsrooms and viewpoints: According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors (4/16/09), ethnic minorities make up less than 13 percent of newsroom employees, less than 4 percent of television station ownership, and less than 8 percent or radio station ownership. This in a nation revealed by the 2010 census to be 36 percent minority. Women, meanwhile, are 37 percent of full-time newspaper newsroom staff.
Writing for Extra! (6/87), Bagdikian observed, “The American audience, having been exposed to a narrowing range of ideas over the decades, often assumes that what it sees and hears in the major media is all there is.” Since that day, the range of what the American audience hears is controlled by fewer and fewer people. As fast as new technologies are created, they are consolidated in the hands of well-positioned corporations for commercial use.
As the newspaper industry attests, the market is failing to protect the core principles of diversity and localism. Major cities like Houston, Seattle, Denver and Cincinnati are down to one local daily newspaper, a status that is becoming the default condition. While the Internet has sparked optimism, its current news production through blogs and web pages cannot replace well-funded investigations produced by experienced editors and journalists.
As companies collect vertically integrated media properties, market logic inclines them to produce lowest common denominator fare on a national level, neglecting not only their public interest standard obligations, but their crucial responsibility as the fourth estate. Without paradigmatic shifts in the way national media is consumed and regulated, communication technologies, old and new, will continue to serve a corporate minority that is inherently contradictory to the values of democracy.
I am not sure of what objective oppositional commenters are trying to persuade about their “point of view”, but basing any argument solely upon an idea’s being “liberal” or "conservative" isn’t valid, especially if the programme in question happens to have been suggested by the likes of Richard Nixon (e.g., environmental protection, gun control, limited abortion, universal health care that was the foundation for Roneycare)! If anything, all such an argument tends to show is that the conservatives are fairly ignorant.
I don’t give a rip if you are a rocket scientist with patents, because ignorance means being in a state of not knowing. That means you can be sharp as a tack in one narrow area, but you are still an ignorant fool outside that area.
To go a step further, ignorant arguments are not persuasive–no matter how much conservatives repeat them in the hope that repetition of a lie will make it true.
If someone is too lazy to actually look into the topic, I am not interested in wasting my time listening to repetitiona of nonsensical propositions.
First off, I actually have a life and things to do that are far more important than listening to uninformed babbling (even if it is on a keyboard). The fact that our harasser is spending an inordinate amount of time just reading this blog makes me wonder about him. He is putting far more into what I write than I do. [editor's note - harassers, like our current problem person appears to do, tend to read and/or comment upwards of a half dozen to a dozen or more times a day]
And as for comments, our harasser has been asked not to post them here since they are rude, harassing, and just plain off pointless. As I said earlier, he is only persuading us that he is a moron.
But, even more importantly, our harasser, a poster boy for ignorance of fact and poorly founded and poorly formed argument, is a moron who is coming close to breaking the law. The First Amendment only protects you against government interference with your speech, private entities are under no obligation to you in anyway.
And trust me, your “conservative” clowns will sell your arse out when it comes to free speech knowing full well that they would have to allow Unions, Socialists, and others to express their points of view. They can’t do anything which might cause people to actually think about what it going on--and you are one of the ones they prefer to see not thinking–because people might start to ask questions.
But, that is a digression, what you believe to be free speech can be seen as harassment, threats, and intimidation placing them firmly into the category of being illegal. That means such things as civil and criminal liability if you don’t get your act together (although, I seriously doubt you could get it together). You don’t want to loose your right to keep and bear arms, or are you hoping that people who harass and threaten are given a pass to keep their guns until they actually go on shooting sprees?
In short, he is losing his argument, but is too dim to realise it. That means continuing a course of conduct which is just downright counterproductive to everything you are hoping to achieve.
I am also going to ask where exactly these conservatives get their “facts” as they don’t coincide with reality. Maybe they do in his universe, but not in the one the rest of us are inhabiting.
Is that in simple enough language to understand, or do I need to dumb it down further?