Political Stripes
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Friday, January 20, 2006 14:33
VIEWED: 4118
PAGE 3 of 4
Perhaps you do not take the Libertarian thought far enough. Any time two or more humans(Or whatever that has a mind and opinion) have/wish to do something togeather there must be a method to decide who does what and who gets what out of it.
Color it or spin it how you will, that method by any name is Government. What you wish to accomplish, who is cohersing who, and who gives/gets what etc is just the details of that government.
If your spaceship is motorhome sized or a whole planet, you had better cooperate as you need to for the duration of the trip or everybody dies. After that how pleasant the voyage is depends on just what those government details are and how you can hold any leader responsible.
Most folks are involved with dozens of governments and subject to dozens more, each their own satrapy. You participate in your household, job, friends, this site etc, and live under the thumb of power companies, phones, computer operating systems etc. It could be as ephemeral as two people talking as they walk down a street, deciding how fast to walk, or as complex as a country trying to accomplish a civilization. Someone makes the rules and all have to follow or be rouge, and all held accountable, or all is chaos, or something in between.
Everyone wants to do as they please, and would like everyone else to do the best job of pleasing them. Everything else is how you negotiate. Play nice and play fair and everyone can do well, play not nice or fair and you might do better, or those who notice might be fair and give you a very bad day.
Firefly had a real chance to explore those kind of thoughts. This government has a worthy goal, and I am willing to devote a bit of time, thought and taxes to make it work.
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Quote:Actually, it wasn't even in a Supreme Court ruling. It was in some sort of margin notes (or something) written by a law clerk. THAT particular travesty begs to be revisited!
Also, corporations are economic entities and should be legally treated as such (though a long-ago Supreme Court ruling said they were 'individuals' with constitutional rights). As anyone with half a brain knows, they are not individuals.
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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In theory self-organization is simple. In practice - not so much.
In general, the more powerful organizations supercede the less powerful. So corporations run governments and people are out of the loop, even in 'democracies'. That's what makes FSF, Linux, open-source biology (founded by an American in Australia) et al so fascinating. They break the paradigm money = power.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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I take it that 'progressive' has over the past 5 to 6 years developed into a term that refers to that wing of the democratic party which sees itself in opposition to both the strategy and many of the policies of the Clintons and the Clinton wing of the party. They way I would characterize the Clinton wing of the party is that they wished to move to the right on economic and foreign policy issues, and stay to the left on social and cultural issues (gay rights, abortion, gun control, prayer in school, etc.) Recently Hillary has unveiled a new tactic whereby she renounces none of the rightward movement on economic and foreign policy issues, and also moves to the right on the social and cultural issues.
Less importantly progressives tend to think that what is important is the clash of ideas, and not the clash of parties. The conservatives in this country have dominated the political discourse in this country since the mid 70's, because they put the work into spreading their ideas, even if it meant sacrificing electoral success. The Clintons sacrifice all at the altar of electoral success. This is a short sighted strategy whereby more of the feild shall be ceded to the right, for the purpose of electing officials from the left who are unable to pass any genuine leftist policies.
I am actually fairly conservative on many of the social issues. I don't support as much gun control as many liberals. I don't mind restrictions on abortion rights so long as the first trimester remains open. I am fully accept and support gay marriage, but mostly because of the terrible arguments that have been advanced against it, not so much because I think it is an important issue.
The issues I care about are almost all related to the economy and foriegn relations. I think that for us to be a true democracy we cannot be an economic oligarchy, which is what I take us to be. I don't think that democracy can survive when a small group of people control the economic fortunes of so many. I think we should return to some of the policies of the 1950's and 60's, with much higher tax rates on the top bracket (they were around 90% back then, and I don't think that is necessary, but i think a doubling of the current rate would be good). I think our growing reliance on finance as the engine of our economy is a bad thing and should be fought, both by tax policy, but also by protecting and nurturing industries in the 'real' economy. I am against free trade, I think that the power of multinationals should be curtailed, and I think that corporations that take lots of jobs out of the US should have their charters revoked. I am very pro-labor, and I am very pro-government involvement in the economy (not in setting price supports and things like that, but more in public works projects and investment). I think that supporting the poor and unfortunate is a moral duty, and that government should see to that task. I am very green, not for the sake of the cudly animals, but for the sake of us not so cudly human beings.
In foreign policy I think that China's growing power needs to be dealt with, and that this is the second most important issue in the world today (the first being nuclear proliferation). I think that tariffs and blocks on investment in China until it starts respecting human rights and enforcing labor protections are appropriate, though they will hurt to put in place. I think we should pull out of the Mideast completely, stop supporting governments like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and put some conditions on our support for Israel (like granting the Palestinians a real state eventually, and in the meantime working to pull them out of poverty. they technically live in the mideast country with one of the highest standards of living, but they live in the worst poverty in that region). I think that this would cause terrorist reserves of suicide bombers to dry up, and would render the problem much easier to deal with. Since we are probably approaching peak oil, there is not that much left to gain from our presence there anyway.
So the
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No one commented on this before, but I think rather than argue that Clinton is no closer to what I consider conservative than the old dems, I thought maybe I would repost this. Tell me what you think.
The idea here is politicians are most likely to fall somewhere on the circle, and you can view it as left right, and if you go left long enough you end up in the far right. I know this may be illogical, but given the perspectives I read, many people think of Boxer et al as far left, yet policywise they have a lot in common with a lot of republicans.
So really, what we have is three political camps in each party:
1. party loyalists like ted kennedy and john warner, solidly in the middle of their respective party curves.
Next: Two schools of moderate:
2. top-mods or power-mods who supported both the clinton administration and the bush administration most of the time.
3. bottom-mods or free-mods who opposed both the clinton administration and the bush administration most of the time.
I remember recently reading a political analysis refering to Feingold and Leiberman and some others as the "moderates" of the democratic party, and then cited some states as to party loyalty, %s. According to the story, I haven't checked it, Russ was most likely to have voted republican, and Joe was second.
But this line of logic is totally deceptive. Russ voted with the GOP during the 90s with those who were opposing Clinton. Joe voted with the republicans under Bush with those who were supporting Bush. The reality is that Joe and Russ have been on opposite sides of the vote an alarming portion of the time. It would be more honest to say Russ and Joe are polar opposites, but not on a left-right axis, but an axis perpendicular to the left-right. What we are fighting against, IOW, is a one dimensional mind set, which is mainly being fostered I think by the top-center power-mods.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Fletch,
Don't assume the entire world uses words the way you do either.
I don't redefine the meaning of words to better conform to my own political bias.
What she wrote was completely unabiguous on either side of the Atlantic, it was your attempt at "clarification" that was problematic.
"Economically liberal" or "liberal on economic issues" is not the same as "liberal economics," "liberal economics" does not mean "the economics of liberals" it means a relatively free and unregulated economic system. That is it's meaning everywhere, even in the US press so I know this is not a Euro/US conflict.
And I dont care what definition exists in Wiki.
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Fletch,
I still don't know what she meant 'til she gives it the 'fletch is right.'
I don't twist words to support my ideology, I speak the language as I know it to be. Somehow, every post of yours has a dreamtrove is a ignorant, arrogant, dishonest pig hidden in it somewhere. I'm beginning to wonder why I bother.
Not to belabor the point, but in the us press this "I lean ... liberal on economic issues" does not automatically mean automatically laissez-faire. Often when people talk about economic/political positions, they mean govt. spending, and if they do, then by liberal they would me in favor of liberal or generous spending, and
just gach! could you be any more argumentative? This wasn't said as a means of starting an argument, just honestly I thought it was ambiguous. It's not like I'm hung up on the answer.
She didn't say 'liberal economics,' she said 'liberal on economic issues.' I thought it was ambiguous. But it wasn't an attack. Could you give the partisan and personal attacks a rest?
I'm trying to help us reach an understanding here. I'm sorry that there's an evil republican president roaming about the world bombing everyone, I really am. But this is not my fault, and there's precious little I can do about it. I feel as if I walked into a war zone here, and I am trying to get people to at least understand where one another is coming from so maybe we can debate things out like civilized folk.
I know you'll try to spin this post one way or another, and frankly I don't care. I'm sick of it. I'm being totally upfront here, as always, and not attempting to redefine words or spin or trying to say anything is what it isn't. I'm really quite ticked off.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
...I gave you a chance to show us the groundwork for your "team evil" conspiracy theory but apparently you don't have the time. Consequently I no longer read anything you post that mentions "team evil" (which means just about everything) because if I had time to read fiction there are some Firefly fanfics that would be more entertaining.
TEAM EVIL
Excellent, so that means you won't be posting quibbling nonsense to derail these threads anymore, right?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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