Do you think Wal-Mart is evil?
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Sunday, November 27, 2005 20:12
VIEWED: 21084
PAGE 9 of 17
My point was that, to the best of my understanding, "liberal" as a word came into english as generous, not free. Certainly in the US, the world, even outside of, and before being used in politics, it was used to mean generous as it still is.
To say that liberal is the believe in individual freedom is not only patently false, it's a politicization directly aimed at convincing firefly fans that they are already liberals. The reality is almost 180 degrees away. Liberal govts. are anti-individual liberty, because they are so strongly pro-govt.
Liberal, when applied to politics is not just generously giving freedom, it is more spefically generously giving services. Since interest in personal civil liberties is one of the main reasons I became a conservative, I'm very aware of how NOT pro-presonal freedom the political left and its liberals are.
If they were honest about it, and willingly admitted that they wanted to help poor people, I wouldn't oppose that as readily. I would say: okay, let's find a way to help poor people that doesn't bankrupt business, halt progress, reward out of control population growth, encourage laziness and create overbearing government control. I am a member of the working poor. I certainly am familiar with the problems of our society and the way it is hurting the little guy. But I'm not about to hand over all of my freedom to the govt. in hopes that it will somehow make it better. I think this would not only be naive, but that the whole thing is more of a political ploy used by the leaders of left to both get the consciencious to support them, and to get the poor to hand over power. I think the Democrats have done this routinely, and I think Bush is doing it right now with his medicare plan.
This discussion, and the reason it angers me, is that it is attempting to spin the word liberal a new meaning. The word liberal as a very definite well defined meaning, and everyone uses it daily with no connection to politics, and it is not the result of any spin.
1. "Sprinkle liberally with pepper," does not mean you're free to put the amount of pepper you want, be it much or little, it means generous amounts of pepper.
2. "There was a liberal allocation in the company's budget for supplies" does not mean there was a lot of freedom for the allocators to spring or not spring for supplies, it means there was a large amount of money allocated for supplies.
The derivation we use, at least here in America, of the root liber, when we want to mean freedom is "liberty." The political derivation of liberty that applies to personal freedom is "libertarian."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Walmart offers crap pay. But guess what? SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE! Those girls in the high-priced depratment stores are making the same crappy pay and getting the same crappy benefits as the Wally-World people...but THEY have to dress up nicer.
Hourly workers, sales clerk, customer service reps...all are WAY underpaid. Walmart did not create this. I was poor long before Walmart even existed. Walmart just made it possible for people getting crappy wages to afford more stuff.
~~~~~
"Funny and sexy. You have no idea. And you never will."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
You can replace liberal with versions of "free" in both those sentences and they still make sense
Sprinkle freely with pepper
There is some freedom in the budget for office supplies.
That liberal can be used to denote "generous" is not in question. Of the 4 definitions listed in the OED quotation I posted one was just that. The point is that the other 3 meant "free" including the one specifically as the word applied to political useage.
I hadn't given Finn's thoughts on the American usage of Liberty much thought but he's correct. Many thinkers had spoken of Freedon but no state had actually said it was a birthright prior to 1776. The founders being a pretty highly educated and well read bunch would certainly have know the meaning of the word and would probably have called themselves "liberal."
Actually there are a lot of similarities between watching a US Libertarian convention and a UK Liberal one. They are both generally made up of intelligent underachievers who come to the conclusion that they never got anywhere because society is rigged against them. Both want widespread political changes that neither of the mainstream parties that actually run things will ever grant. Both seem to have a permissive, leftist fringe, the Libertarian debate on legal pot would not have looked out of place at a Lib Dem fringe meeting.
Liberals used to be the leftist party in UK politics roughly equivalent to the Democrats. They occupied the political spectrum slightly to the left of center and while the Tory's were the party of big industry and big landowners Liberals were middle class with socially active minor nobility taking the lead. They held political power on and off until the 1920's when the Labour party, a truely leftist party formed by the trade union movement, displaced them. They wondered in the political wilderness for 60 odd years, they are too right wing to be an alternative for hard line Labour voters, too leftist and ineffectual for Tory voters. Then in the early 1980's after Labours defeat by Mrs Thatcher a group of Labour MP's from the right of the party split off and formed the SDP -- Social Democratic Party. For a time they generated some excitement but in the end they formed an electoral pact with the Liberals and eventually the parties merged.
I'm told Lib Dems are extremely good in local government since they view politics as a public service and not a career. They fall down in national terms because they don't tend to have a clear vision that is an alternative to the other two. Their only two initiatives of note "proportional representation" and an "education tax" failed to win support because proportional representation means changing the electoral system in a way that favours the LibDems (and can be writen off as self serving) and the 1% income tax increase to pay for better education panders to their base --- a lot of Lib Dems are teachers.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Fletch,
True, but that is the relation. It is how we use the word. No one says it was a liberal assignment, they say it was a flexible assignment. People just don't use the word liberal, outside of politics, to mean that it grants individual freedom.
But more importantly, the political left has favored big govt. and social safety net to the point where they have created the zero freedom police state many times. The liberals here in new york are repeatedly destroying freedom and the way of life in the name of state quality control and equality.
Now we have social services that come into people's household and steal their children for no greater offense than living as poor people do. No beating of kids is necessary, just lack of new clothes or away all day at work is enough to classify as abuse. People on public assistance are set to accord to all sorts of rules I could never abide, and nor could any normal person. If you're poor in this system it's basically like being on parole. For this reason I've never sought these services, I've just known too many people the state has stuck its nose into. So, I have seen decades of liberal work, and became convinced over time, that, while liberal voters care, liberal leaders don't really care, they want power.
So I can't accept a ploy to paint liberal as pro-freedom. It's as bad as painting democrats as pro-business on the grounds they have corporate sponsors, or as painting republicans as champions of affirmative action on the grounds that they ended slavery. It's just not an honest appraisal of what's going on here. It's pure spin.
Back to liberal, the word shows up in the US around the time of the revolution meaning free from restraint, use in ideas such as 'liberal spending.' This supports the 'generous' idea.
It shows up in politics in England in 1801 refering to pro-democracy, which lends it's more to the freedom. It's possible that two long traditions of using the word in politics has continued along these lines.
I certainly don't think that liberal has been used frequently to mean pro-individual liberty in the US, and I don't think that liberals in America would even be friendly to the usage, outside of this forum. I need to make that classification because, though on a right left spectrum we are all across the board here, there is one political area where firefly fans are different from everyone else.
Firefly fans have libertarian symathies, in some way or other and to some extent, because if we didn't feel pro-individual liberty, the show would not appeal to us.
Contrast this with Star Trek Next Generation fans. I used to be a star trek fan, and if you had asked me then, I'd probably would have defined myself as pro-govt. It's a very pro-govt. show, STNG particularly. Other variations of trek have different political slants.
So, would the liberals here also have libertarian sympathies? Sure. Do the bulk of American liberals? No. Not ever close. Most liberals in America find the idea scary. They think it would erupt into bigotry and bias, and crackpots with guns and personal nukes. I talk to a lot of liberals, and I am very sure of this.
Some conservatives, possibly a majority, possibly not, but a smaller % than the % of liberals, here in America, feel the same way.
I have more to say on the subject, but this is SO not about walmart, that I'll start a new thread to do it.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Well I researched some English political sources that basically says that what we are talking about is the same thing.
Liberal, way back was an advocate of both personal freedom and social justice. The argument was that freedom to starve was no freedom at all and that you could have economic as well as political tyranny. I suspect this is a question of circumstances. When the UK industrialised it was free market capitalism with no restraints. At best we got industrial feudalism which at least meant that the companies did some things to help their workers, at worse was industrial indentured servitude, with systems like the butty system and scrip intended to milk the workforce as much as was practical. It would not be hard to see how economic control was as big a threat to liberty as political control.
So in the UK the liberal movement developed 2 threads, social liberalism essentially advocating that man was not free if he was economically controlled, and libertarianism that said that personal freedom was the more important of the two principles. Libertarianism itself had two threads, one that disliked central control and was allied with the collectivist and cooperative movements, and personal libertarians who didn't mind what government system was in place so long as it stayed out of their way.
In fact British libertarians were considered "of the left" as late as the early 20th century. They dropped out of sight because they were smeered as being Anarchists (if you dislike government structures you're an Anarchist right....?) So the name fell out of favour for many years. Today you have Libertarian wings in both political parties over here, those on on the left work to take down central authority and localise democracy, while those on the right favour personal lifestyle freedoms.
Several of my friends from back in the Young Conservative days called themselves libertarians, but UK conservatives are the party of centralised govenment so in this case "libitarian" meant pro free trade and pro personal freedom rather than being down on the central state.
The US small government (or "nightwatchmen" government) style libertarians never really did take off in the UK for much the same reason as it is a fringe movement here, both main parties are too heavily invested in keeping central control. However the libertarian fringes in teh Labour and Liberal parties did force through devolution, the returning of some powers from London to regional assemblies in Scotland and Wales and the election of new parliments there. As a group they still dislike european centralisation.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
A curious historical accident mixed this sort of limited govt. libertarianism into our political right.
In the beginning there were 13 colonies, as you know, and in the interests of resisting English rule, the US was formed. But doing so involved a lot of compromise. The federation split into two political factions, federalists, who supported a moderate amount of federal control, which then was limited govt. but grew over time. The opposition was the anti-federalists who wanted to minimize federal control.
Anti-federalists were in a minority and couldn't win out in the first few elections, and federalism took over. Federalists split over the indian question, with Andrew Jackson and the Democrats breaking off as an anti-indian group. The remaining group was the national republican party, whose membership became the whigs, and then just the Republicans.
For the freedom loving libertarians, there was the wild west, and people with an anti-federalist streak were inclined to settle westward out of strict federal control.
As the focus of debate switched from indians to slavery, the large slave state populations of the south were the only pro-slavery contingent, and the rest of the country was pretty much anti-slavery as anyone who doesn't benefit from it would tend to be.
The democrats picked up the torch for the slave states, and the republicans took up the anti-slavery standard. The west, being anti-slavery tended towards republican.
But at this point the west was largely a political non-entity. In an effort to win the debate against the populous south, the northern republicans pushed for new states to be partitioned by size instead of population. They new that this would give them a majority in the Senate which would allow the abolition of slavery.
The South saw that it would lose the battle in control of what happened to western states, which were more closely tied to the north now by party, the slavery issue, and the origin of their population.
Most people don't see this as the instigator of the Civil war, but in the declarations of secession by the southern states it's very clear. They say it over and over and over again. They knew that within a few years the south would be completely marginalized in the Senate, and slavery would be banned. After the slavery issue was gone, they would still be marginalized, and who wants to be part of a union in which you're marginalized. Such was the argument they put forth also to their people.
So, the south seceded, thus removing any opposition to the partitioning of western states. This created a large number of new republican leaning senate seats with a decided libertarian bent.
Post-war, as the Democrats picked up the sort of pseudo-socialist govt. as equalizer and social justice plaque, and the GOP became pretty much the party of limited govt.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
My view, which I fully expect you to disagree with, is that America moved profoundly to the left of British politics when it won it's Independence. The central tenets of the American Revolution have their basis on lot of what the British left would see as their ancestry. Like a said it was a progressive movement, a US conservative in 1776 would have been a loyalist.
What happened then I think was interesting. In the US there was a power vacuum, and while I agree with your analysis of the players I don't nescessarily agree who was who. Back at the time of the Civil War the Democrats were the party of the south and conservative, Republicans were the party of the Industrial north. I think that continued into the 1950's when the Dems went left and the conservative elements migrated to the Republican party. Reagan voted Democrat remember? He had that great quote "I never left the Democratic party -- they left me." If you look at a redstate/bluestate map of today it's pretty similar to the map from the 1930's except the colours have flipped. The Republican west is now that crazy liberal west coat....
Now in the UK things were different. Until the 1830's power was firmly with the Tory's then a party of rural land owners. This was not surprising since you had to own land to vote. Some large land owners just appointed MP's. As urbanisation increased so did two disenfrancised groups, the urban middle class and the industrial working class. The Liberal party came to represent both and so a complete spectrum of political thought existed within one movement. Through the reform acts the franchise was slowly and painfully extended and over time the Liberal parfty started to split into various factions as improved political freedom allowed smaller parties to exist.
There was no "West" for those unhappy with the government to move to. There was the Empire, and most of those that didn't like central authority went there. This probably explains the strong independent streak in most Australians. Those that stayed pretty much accepted the idea of a strong central state, and the apparatus to run an Empire was equally adept at running anything else. British life right or left was about order and the enforcement of order not nescessarily about liberty. If you don't like something you dont have the option of heading a few 1000 miles west until it got better or ceased to exist. You were forced to compromise.
I think that had an effect on what happned later in both nations. America has always had the idea of personal liberty and the space to express it. The UK has neither. So though America moved left compared to the UK of the 1770's it didn't really have the need to go any further that way. There was space enough and a political vacuum big enough that risk of conflict over all but the most pressing of matters could be avoided. In contrast forced to live with each other and divided by class Britain radicalised in every conceivable direction. Since maintainence of order was always paramount we moved left in fits and starts over the next 200 years, eventually passing the established US status quo until now you are to the right of where any of us are. You might find a Conservative willing to cut services to finance tax cuts but you wont find any that think that all in all Government was a bad idea. Most Conservatives believe that people and industry should stand on their own two feet but that doesn't mean that they plan to give up any economic controls. No Conservative believes freedom is more important than order.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Fletch
You're right. I disagree. Australia was britain's equivalent of the west, sure. But there wasn't really a left/right swap. The GOP always meant business, at least since the beginning of the 20th c. and possibly always. The dems always meant govt. esp. since FDR.
Reagan was a democrat, and was still a democrat when he got elected as a republican president. He had to compromise with republicans, like gh. bush, but he was initially part of a big fight because his backers, the social dems, and the christian right, were not part of the traditional republican base.
If there was a shift, it was that the christian right became a republican, and black people became democrats. But there wasn't such a major policy flip flop of the parties themselves at the core.
Prior to WWI, the dems were heavy into govt. regulation and public service, social safety net, the republicans were very much pro-business, pro-family values or whatever, white picket fences and stuff. None of that changed.
If the infection of creationists and social militarism can't be purged from the GOP, I'll give up on it, but I don't think we're nearly there. If I had to give up on the GOP at some point, it would be towards a third party split back to what the GOP used to be like, such as something like the Reform Party, but not to the democrats.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I really got a chuckle from some of the comments:
"Wal-Mart will have a sizeable hand in making Earth-that-was"....that's fully.
"They are categorically evil and un-American (spelled with a small a)"...that's twisted.
Someone put it the simplest. "If Wal-Mart is evil, then all corporations are evil." That's the question you have to ask, not just Wal-Mart. All corporation have the same primary goal...beat the competition, put them out of business." The truth is, and like it or not, that’s the cold hard reality of our society. I’ve tried two businesses and shut them both down for the same reason. I was spending more time working, and not enough with my family. Somebody claimed they were "breaking laws", well prove it or clam it. Trust me; there are enough eager DAs out there, in all 50 states that would love to further their careers by busting a Wal-Mart. I have this to thank Wal-Mart for. My 75 year old mother went to work for Wal-Mart about a decade ago, as of all things, a greeter. We've all heard the jokes about Wal-Mart greeters, but when they are directed at your mother it's hard to take. Anyway, she eventually moved to lawn and garden, and really enjoys it. Is she getting rich? Hell no! But that's not why she went their. She took a small cut in pay to get health benefits, which she did not have at her previous job (btw…that business is still there), and that decision paid off recently. My Mother was out of work for 6 months having a knee replaced. For the entire time she was off, Wal-Mart long term disability provided her with a paycheck. Thank God for Wal-Mart. If she were still at that paint business, she would have been SOL, cause not only would they have done nothing for her financially, she would lost her job. Wal-Mart took her back the day she was ready.
One more comment on the comments: "Kill it. Kill it soon and fast. Maybe torture it, send it to abu Ghraib." Now, wishing for the unemployment of 200,000 plus people, wishing that all of their suppliers and vendors loose that business, adding to the thousands of Americans already out of work...now that's evil.
Spaceracer
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME