[Iamamartianchurch]

Originally Posted by Umami

"Liberal" and "conservative" are worthless. We should come up with a better set of descriptors for this sub. I can start with a few:

Classical Liberal
Fascist
Christofascist
Ecofascist
Anarchist
Socialist
Collectivist
Progressive

Hmm, I need more. I suppose Republicans tend to include Christofascists, Fascists, and a few Classical Liberals (odd mix). Democrats tend to be Ecofascists, Collectivists and Progressives.

Thoughts? I know I'm throwing around a lot of labels here, but the thread's about labels anyway so oh well...

It is a good idea, the only contention that I have is with certain terms being demonized.

For example, fascism and socialism. Each has an extraordinary amount of negative....dogma... levied against it by the political left and right. This won't pose much of a problem for the open minded among us, but those who aren't, will have a hard time. Though, this may be good to weed out those people. The only issue I see is an increase in troll posts and emotion.

[Iamamartianchurch]

Originally Posted by TheSilentAssassin

I would argue the bigger problem isn't people pretending to be something they are not, but rather the sheer inconsistency and ambiguity between the definitions of conservative and liberal.

@Umami:
I very much agree that we need to drastically rework our language of political theory before we can have proper discussions.

Resolving that ambiguity was the intention of the thread.

[TheSilentAssassin]

Originally Posted by Iamamartianchurch

Resolving that ambiguity was the intention of the thread.

lol, do you think it succeeded? It appears believe we simply created more ambiguity (because as I have said we are going about it the wrong way). Also, how many people in here that often portray their partisan beliefs as something other than that really read this thread?

[barrel roll]

Over time, people have a tendancy to simplify things. We're going to have to sift through the silt to figure everything out, because those that have come before us have been content with just dumping everything at the mouth of the river.


I swear, I am going to end up shooting myself in the face. If it isn't brain dead, wrapped around the axle/ideology NeoCons/Progressives I am arguing with it is my god damn wife who refuses to leave things where I put them. If I put something in a peculiar place, odds are in favor of me doing it for a god damn reason. That reason isn't for me to run around the house looking for widget X when I need to fix something that I was planning on fixing. What makes it worse is I tell her to leave it alone, that it is there for a reason. **** me.

[Iamamartianchurch]

Originally Posted by TheSilentAssassin

lol, do you think it succeeded? It appears believe we simply created more ambiguity (because as I have said we are going about it the wrong way). Also, how many people in here that often portray their partisan beliefs as something other than that really read this thread?

Not as many as I might have hoped for. I expected to throw people off, since, as barrel roll is fond of mentioning, overton window often leads to much misconception.

To be honest, I think I did a decent job of keeping it concise and simple. If anyone is still confused as to where they fall on the political spectrum in accordance with my OP, well that's why this is here. I welcome a challenge to the OP as well, so long it is backed by more than, nuh uh!

[TheSilentAssassin]

I am going to post my criticism again as it was ignored last time:

Originally Posted by TheSilentAssassin

I can't imagine a more ridiculous way to talk about a political spectrum than by tradition. The confusion stems from this. Why not subject political systems to judgement of value (communal v personal autonomy, divisions of power, etc) instead of this archaic method of historical evaluation?

Which leads to this mistake:

Originally Posted by barrel roll

A government controlled economy is conservative, while a free and unhinged economy is liberal.

Originally Posted by TheSilentAssassin

This hinges upon the idea of "government controlled economy" in being traditional with no distinction between the types of government controlled economics. I would be wary of painting with such large stokes.

If we view conservative and progressive as a historical judgement, then government controlled economies are historically conservative (because humans have trended from government controlled to free market), but that is working under the fallacy of lumping together very different things: traditional government controlled economies and theoretical modern government controlled economies (socialism, communism). It also creates a false dichotomy of planned v free economies, ignoring dual economies, natural economies, autarky, etc.

--

The first step towards better political understanding is to break this association of historical evaluation from the mix.

[Iamamartianchurch]

Originally Posted by TheSilentAssassin

I am going to post my criticism again as it was ignored last time:



Which leads to this mistake:





If we view conservative and progressive as a historical judgement, then government controlled economies are historically conservative (because humans have trended from government controlled to free market), but that is working under the fallacy of lumping together very different things: traditional government controlled economies and theoretical modern government controlled economies (socialism, communism). It also creates a false dichotomy of planned v free economies, ignoring dual economies, natural economies, autarky, etc.

--

The first step towards better political understanding is to break this association of historical evaluation from the mix.

Which is essentially what my initial premise does. I think it is better suited for matters of politics opposed to economics, for reasons I already explained. I don't think the manner in which a society distributes, accumulates, or manages their wealth is relevant to their social organization. As already stated, I don't believe economics to have a conservative or liberal bias.

[TheSilentAssassin]

But that's not what you are doing. You are not giving an evaluation of politics; you are looking at politics through lenses: the lens of authority v autonomy, the lens of hierarchy v plurality, the lens of inequality v equality. None of these things are inherent judgement of political systems any less than they are judgments of economic systems. I see no reason why one cannot apply the lens of authority and autonomy to economic systems any more than political systems. You claim that "There is no historic precedent which gives credence to their being an inherently Leftist or Rightist form of economics", but if we are redefining left and right through subjective judgments i.e., authority and autonomy, we surely can see economic systems through that lens.

[marcozombie]

Originally Posted by barrel roll

Over time, people have a tendancy to simplify things. We're going to have to sift through the silt to figure everything out, because those that have come before us have been content with just dumping everything at the mouth of the river.


I swear, I am going to end up shooting myself in the face. If it isn't brain dead, wrapped around the axle/ideology NeoCons/Progressives I am arguing with it is my god damn wife who refuses to leave things where I put them. If I put something in a peculiar place, odds are in favor of me doing it for a god damn reason. That reason isn't for me to run around the house looking for widget X when I need to fix something that I was planning on fixing. What makes it worse is I tell her to leave it alone, that it is there for a reason. **** me.

goddam I feel your pain...just let it go...and think of the nookie.

[Iamamartianchurch]

Originally Posted by TheSilentAssassin

But that's not what you are doing. You are not giving an evaluation of politics; you are looking at politics through lenses: the lens of authority v autonomy, the lens of hierarchy v plurality, the lens of inequality v equality. None of these things are inherent judgement of political systems any less than they are judgments of economic systems. I see no reason why one cannot apply the lens of authority and autonomy to economic systems any more than political systems. You claim that "There is no historic precedent which gives credence to their being an inherently Leftist or Rightist form of economics", but if we are redefining left and right through subjective judgments i.e., authority and autonomy, we surely can see economic systems through that lens.

I'm not going to debate you on my evaluation of politics. Moving on. You can apply those lenses to economics if you want. Here's my problem:

Even lazy faire capitalism produces a hierarchy, for as much as it may tout autonomy. Prussian socialism stressed mobility through hierarchy, based on merit, without determining ones class by their wealth.

Personally I think it is far more muddled in the economic sphere and not worth discussing. Please feel free to debate economics in regards to Left and Right political philosophy, but I most likely won't join in.

[TheSilentAssassin]

lol well I guess that is that

[tsbalr120]

One thing I've noticed from right is they try to use common sense for complex problems.

Like the deficit, if anyone watches even 5mins of faux news it's mentioned several times, and their mentality is "we can't spend more than we take in, if debt gets too high then we'll be cut off" but it's not near that simple, and alot of people don't even see it as a problem really.

Am I making any sense?

[licence2kill]

i'd say theres a reason why economist overwhelmingly vote democrat.

[BOBBYTUCSON@DP]

While I do believe in a more perfect union, I favor individual sensus (independant)instead of a socially engineered mass collective conscience (I.e. left right red blue ect ect).what I'm starting to realize after delving into Marx, first shift in euro attempt at democracy(france) is that we are back to sqaure one which is oligarchy or perhaps feifdom were the few elite are playing tug of war for control while the masses of the people think they can have a say or stand (vote) when that's just not the truth.actually having a debate right now in our class as to why isn't America a direct democracy the way it was intended to be rather than this representative democracy we ended up in? I'm a right wing Democrat with an independant conscience.

[Iamamartianchurch]

Originally Posted by BOBBYTUCSON@DP

While I do believe in a more perfect union, I favor individual sensus (independant)instead of a socially engineered mass collective conscience (I.e. left right red blue ect ect).what I'm starting to realize after delving into Marx, first shift in euro attempt at democracy(france) is that we are back to sqaure one which is oligarchy or perhaps feifdom were the few elite are playing tug of war for control while the masses of the people think they can have a say or stand (vote) when that's just not the truth.actually having a debate right now in our class as to why isn't America a direct democracy the way it was intended to be rather than this representative democracy we ended up in? I'm a right wing Democrat with an independant conscience.

This has nothing at all to do with this thread.