There is more than one ideology that isn't 'right wing'!

Describe how a cheche oppresses you? Or a 5th grade school Christmas Pageant dictates anything.

 

Nothing oppressive about a school Christmas pageant, in my opinion, as long as kids aren't told that Christianity is the only 'right' or 'permissable' way to believe, and non-christian parents can exclude their children from any worship that isn't appropriate to their family/personal beliefs, if they choose to do so (many, of course, will not, and wil be perfectly happy to allow their kids to participate in all religious festivals as a learning experience so that they can freely decide for themselves what they believe in later life).

I also see no problem with kids being taught about, and even 'celebrating', other festivals from other religions (my kids certainly learnt about celebrating Diwali in primary school, for example, as well as about Christmas and so on). I think that is a good think to promote understanding between faiths (although the principle of withdrawing kids by parental choice should also apply). Religion and belief is a matter for individuals, families, and so on. It should be a free choice for everyone. It shouldn't be something imposed by the state, or by any other organisation.

I know there have been some instances of 'politically correct' 'banning' of religious celebrations. I don't support those. I support freedom of choice. As long as non-Christian kids don't have to take part in Christian celebrations, and likewise Christian kids don't have to take part in non-Christian celebrations, the actual holding of those celebrations shouldn't be an issue, in my opinion. It only becomes an issue if children (or adults) are having the beliefs of others forced upon them.

If people believe that the schooling of their children should be entirely based around their own religious beliefs, of course, I don't have a problem with them forming or joining specific religious schools (of whatever denomination). That then is their free choice. Using 'public' schools to force the beliefs of one group onto all in a compulsory manner, however, is something that is wrong. That is the effective removal of the freedom of worship and belief, which as a liberal is not something I could ever support.

 

Then we do agree. In school we sang songs in music class related to the holidays upcoming, Christmas, Thanksgiving, before school ended patriotic July 4th type music, etc. No one complained, no one opted out. The school was not promoting anything.

 

No. Liberty is the freedom to act within the bounds of consicence. To define it any more broadly than that is to conflate it with license, and ultimately to subject the freedom of the conscientious to that of the licentious.

So should those inclined towards thievery and murder be allowed to exercise free choice?

Then why is it that liberals can so consistently be relied on to twist the first amendment so as to abridge the religious freedoms of Jews and Christians?

 

This.

I understand what "real" liberals mean. I understand the distinction they are trying to make.

But the reality is that it doesnt mean the same thing in the modern lexicon anymore. People will associate these words with the people who use them (or the people that are labeled by them).

In modern America, most liberals are socialists, or are friendly to socialism. That has been my experience. The two are associated with each other because they are friendly to each other, and are often on the same side of a given political issue.

 

The irony is that the left didn't adopt the term for themselves until the notions of socialism fell out of favor. Now that the term liberal has developed negative connotations, they've rebranded again as "progressives"...

But it's always been the same movement.

 

Conscience is defined by one's own beliefs and opinions. To restrict 'freedom' to mean that people are only allowed to be free as long as they conform to a certain set of 'moral ideals' that have been defined by one particular group within society is to not allow people to be free at all. That isn't liberty, it's oppression.

No, because as I have said all along, personal liberty reaches its boundaries at the point where their actions seriously restrict or destroy the freedom of others in society. The freedom of all to exist without being killed or having their property stolen easily overrides in importance the 'freedom' of an individual to commit thievery and murder!

 

That is the major flaw of the 2 party system that has created the impression of an entirely polerised 'left/right' battle. It has thrown people together in a way that suggests that their ideologies are the same, or closely related - the same is true to an extent of different ideologies that tend to be 'on the right' of relatively 'left-wing' opinions.

The problem that created is that of the assumtions associated with the labels. 'Liberals' being 'friendly' to some similar social measures that 'socialists' want doesn't mean they think the same thing about those specific measures (in anything more than a very general sense), let alone about general ideologies (and in particular issues of 'authoritarianism' versus 'liberty). The lines have become so blurred, that as soon as a liberal mentions anything to do with equal opportunity or social justice, they are immediately labelled as 'socialists' who want an authoritarian state, collectivism, and so on. That isn't true, and it skews the entire politcal debate to such an extent that reasoned debate becomes almost impossible, because anything a liberal then says about 'freedom' gets them effectively accused of telling untruths about their own political beliefs and agenda.

The result of this is that 'natural allies' on some issues, such as liberals and 'libertarians', are cast at opposite ends of a political spectrum by inaccurate assumption. This actually prevents them from working together to emphasise the importance of freedom as they should be doing (libertarians ultimately would want to go further in some ways, of course, but there are alot of stages between that potential end point and where the USA currently is where liberals and libertarians would be in broad agreement in opposition to socialists, but that isn't possible because they are just assumed to be 'leftists who must be trying to hide their true agenda').

Actually, now I think about it that way, the best way for the political elite and federal government (and corporate interests) to get away with increasingly centralising their power is to keep this system, with all its assumptions, in place - it prevents the forces in favour of freedom from actually uniting in opposition to its removal. Perhaps it's not so much that 'socialists' have usurped the term to hide their agenda, but that that impression has been created and perpetuated over a long period to stop the combined voices opposing the removal of freedom from ever being heard!

'Socialists' and 'liberals' will appear, on the surface at least, to be in agreement on some issues, because social justice and equality of opportunity is an important part of liberalism. However, they should also appear to be in fundemental opposition to each other on other issues, but that is what is being prevented from happening by the assumptions.

The same happens to an extent with those considered to be on the 'right wing' politically. 'Christian Conservatives' and 'libertarians' might agree on some things, but they certainly shouldn't be assumed to be in agreement on all of the others, even though they may ultimately end up voting for the same one of the two main political parties (mainly because they disagree with them less than they disagree with the other lot, and they only effectively have 2 choices).

There are, I think it's not unreasonable to say, four main general political viewpoints in the USA - Conservatism, Libertarianism, Liberalism and Socialism (I'm sure there are others, but I think those are the big ones). They are all different, but they will all share some vague common ground with one OR MORE of the others on some specific issues. The two party system effectively representing those 4 broad ideologies is creating an impression that there are actually only two ideologies - 'left wing' and 'right-wing'. That isn't true, but the assumptions associated with it are corrupting reasoned political debate.

 

Not so. Plenty of people have beliefs which are vile, but not one of them harbors such beliefs in good conscience.

And since understanding the meaning of conscience is fundamental to everything I've said here, there can be no intellectual common ground until the deficiency on your end is remedied.

 

'Vile' beliefs, such as? Or is any belief that isn't Christianity (or Judeo-Christian) to be considered 'vile' because it is 'different'? Enforced conformity dictated by one section of the population (on religious grounds, as much as on any other grounds) is not liberty - it is oppression.

 

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Again, there are more lies available to the human mind than any religion can warn against, so the question is a dead end.

But you just got through saying murderers and thieves shouldn't be allowed to go murdering and thieving, so how do you propose to prevent that without either executing them or forcing them into some degree of conformance by incarceration or some other penalty?

 

If someone commits such a crime, they have forfeitted their right to liberty for whatever period the court system deems appropriate in order to both punish them and protect society. There's no problem with that - how else can the rules that are designed to protect freedom for all be effectively enforced?

 

All that is fine, as long as there are the options there for parents to withdraw their children from certain activities on the grounds of their own beliefs, and that there is some degree of 'balance' provided in information about beliefs other than Christianity. Promotion of any religion by 'public' schools is not something I'd support, but celebration of religious festivals in school I don't see a problem with.

To give you an example of what I mean, when I was in primary school the assumption was, of course, that most pupils were broadly 'Christian', although there would have been a range of deniminations (Anglican, Catholic and Non-Conformist, so any 'Christain' worship was non-denominational), and certainly a number of atheists and agnostics. We also had several Jewish children in the school (one of whom I used to sit next to, and was one of my best friends, as it happens). When it came to Christian festivals, they weren't excluded from the general celebrations and 'fun' elements, but I seem to remember they didn't take part in the actual acts of worship, which was fair enough.

When it came to big Jewish festivals, the rest of the kids took part in a morning Assembly led by the Jewish children, telling them all about the festival and what it means to their religion (and we used to sing a Hebrew song - it was just a sort of 'help them celebrate their festival while learning about it' kind of idea). When my children went to primary school, things were similar . There were some Hindu children in the school, so they took a similar attitude to Hindu festivals - let the children have fun learning about it all, while supporting the kids from that religion in their religious festival (without it becoming an actual 'act of worship').

When it comes to Christian school nativity plays or the like, I still don't see a problem, as long as that play isn't in any way attempting to portray other religious groups themselves as being 'bad'. Children, at quite a young age, are quite capable of understanding that the story is something that Christian children believe, and that being in a play about a story doesn't mean you actually personally have to believe the story. To a non-Christian child, it can just be a story other people believe, and a fun play to be in to have fun celebrating along with the Christians, and that's fine (and the same applies to other plays, based on stories from other religions - schools should be able to do them too). As long as the school can accept that's how some of the kids see it (and aren't attempting to tell them that they are 'wrong' for thinking like that), and as long as parents still have the right to remove their kids if they do have a problem with it (I certainly remember Hindu children being involved in nativity plays in my children's school, and the parents coming along to enjoy the play like everyone else - it didn't seem to be an issue for them), I can't really understand why anybody would be making a big fuss about it.

All that seems to me a positive thing to promote understanding between religions, and kids of different religions, so that other groups aren't marked out as somehow 'wierd' or 'scary', but just as having different beliefs (and that it's fine to have different beliefs). Both by me as a child and by my kids when they reached that age, all that was just accepted. We accepted that most children there were broadly Christian, and just enjoyed the positive things about celebrating the festivals, singing the hymns and so on (of Christianity, and of other faiths). While the emphasis was (for obvious reasons) towards Christianity, nobody was promoting it as 'right' and dismissing everything else as 'evil' or anything, and nobody was forcing non-Christians into either 'acts of worship' that they weren't comforable with, or into acts of 'defiance' (which is also important, particularly in the current world climate!).

Of course, for those who had religious parents, there were Sunday Schools, and there were Church, Chapel, Synagogue, etc. based education and activities, and, of course, there was the home. Nobody was stopping anybody educating their children into their religion - that was a family choice, though, and not forced on them by the school system.

Ultimately, for the larger groups, there were also 'religious' schools available that could be chosen by parents so that their children would be educated entirely in an environment or their own particular denomination (as far as I remember, at the time I was in school, there was only a Roman Catholic school locally, but I suspect there may be more now). Again, that was parental choice, and I have no problem with that as long as the school is educating to the required standards generally, and is not actually promoting any kind of religious 'hatred' or 'bigotry' among their pupils (to be educated in your own religion does not need to mean, and should not mean, being educated to hate people of other religions, in my opinion).

There are some people who make far too much of a fuss about such issues, in my opinion, and on both sides. There are those who think all religious activities should be entirely removed from schools, but I don't see any need for that at all. There are also those who think that all schools should be places of religious indoctrination where children are effectively told they must follow Christianity or else - I also don't agree with them. We should, as a society, be educating our children about religions, and then allowing them and their families to make the personal religious choices for themselves while understanding that it's fine for other people to make different personal choices, and that doesn't make those other people something to be hated or feared. We don't need to do that by avoiding the subject, or treating in in any heavy-handed manner, but simply by allowing kids to be relaxed about the choices they and others have made, whatever choices they may be.

'Liberalism' is about liberty for all, equality of opportunity for all, and tolerance for all, in the belief that it is only by promoting the latter two elements that the first and primary goal can ever truly be achieved. It's about understanding and celebrating our differences in an open and positive way so that people feel genuinely free to make and express their choices, not about making everyone conform to anything. That includes any ideas of making people conform to any ideas that religion itself is somehow 'bad' and should be removed from the lives of the people, every bit as much as it includes the idea that religion shouldn't in any way be forced on others by any kind of coercion, indoctrination or social intolerance.

 

Of course there isn't - but there is sure as Hell a problem with you saying out of the other side of your mouth that one group enforcing conformity on the other is inimical to liberty.

 

One group forcing conformity on everyone else is not liberty, it is oppression. The removal of freedom. The destruction of free choice for individuals. Cultural dictatorship.

Society imprisoning those who have broken the law to damage others is not oppression, it is protection of the liberty for all in society to go about their business as they choose without others (the criminals) threatening them or their freedom.

The freedom of one stops where it destroys the freedom of others. Criminals destroying the freedom of others through crime is wrong. Groups destroying the freedom of others by enforcing conformity to their ideals, even though it would not interfere with the freedom of that group to hold those ideals if others held different ones, is wrong. Liberty is about the protection of free choice for the individual, not about domination by one group over everyone else.

 

Why do you keep repeating this? Do you think I failed to understand it when you said it the first time, or the other million times I've heard if from others?

But it IS forced conformity, which you just got through saying IS oppression, so you need to figure out whether you're gonna run with the rabbits or hunt with the hounds.

Look, if you insist on lecturing, the exchange will terminate, because I've heard it all before, and it's becoming tedious.

 

Why is it a flaw?

They apparently are, in the ways that matter.

No one is forced to compromise under our system. They simply choose to compromise.

In my experience people who complain about that tend to be actual closet socialists.

The problems are caused not by the system, but by people who are not honest about their own ideology.

 

Because it makes it appear there are only two possible ideologies - 'left' and 'right', which isn't true. In order to avoid voting for the 'left' party, you have to vote for the 'right' party, and vice versa. There is no real space for other political positions which aren't truly represtented at the moment by either party. It encourages 'negative' voting - voting for the one you hate less, rather than the one that has policies that you think are actually the right ones.

And there's the problem - the assumption that anybody who votes for the 'left' party to keep the 'right' party out must be either a self-confessed socialist, or lying about their ideology because they are actually really a socialist, when all they were doing (from their point of view) was vioting for the 'lesser of two evils', in order to keep the 'right' or perhaps specifically the Conservatives that are the largest group in the other party, from gaining control.

 

In general, there are only two ideologies. Its appearance mirrors reality. Most people, in general, fall into one of those two categories.

No you dont. Thats what "moderate" means in our system. It is someone who leans toward the center. Just because you are Republican does not necessarily mean you are hard right. There are degrees.

A supposed "two party system" still reflects those degrees.

Give me an example of a political position not represented within one of the two major parties.

That is called compromise. No one is forced to compromise unless they want to.

How exactly did you determine that they were not sincere in their vote? How did your determine their "real" motives are other than what they seem to be?

 

Obviously that is something we disagree about. I think the left/right model fails because it fails to take into account all the varous factors (even the basic ones) which differ between various ideologies.

No, it doesn't, because the policies of those parties aren't really reflective of either the 'extreme' or the 'moderate' views. Having only two parties means that those two parties are so diverse in their membership and support that there is inevitable as much internal debate within them as there is external debate wit the other party.

None of the major ideologies are truly represented by the parties on an ongoing basis. Some individual policies on some issue for all of them will be, but the whole agenda within the party will be a combination of compromise and the results of the battles between the internal groups (depending on who has 'won' or 'lost' those at a particular time). Of course, this happens to some extent within any political party, but when you have parties composed of ideologies that oppose each other in some of the most fundemental basics of their views, the end result is a party with policies that don't fully reflect either main ideology within them.

That one is quite simply. You only have to read and listen to what people say. Many people do vote negatively in any democratic society - they vote for the ones they dislike least, not because they actually agree with everything (or almost everything) they are saying.

Looking at it the other way, what if there were 4 parties in the US system? A Conservative Party, a Socialist Party, a Liberal Party and a Libertarian Party. How would that be worse than the current system? Each group could agree on certain issues where they agree, and disagree on others where they disagree, and the public could vote for the party of their ideology, not of theirs and somebody else's. 'Socialists' would not longer be hiding behind a 'liberal' label - they would be socialists, and could put their message across. Same for everyone else - 'liberals' wouldn't need to be bogged down with the accusations of 'socialism', and could get on with putting their 'liberty' based message across, and so on. Wouldn't that be better than a 2 party system.

I'm not claiming the UK has any perfection in its democracy (in fact, it is in some ways more flawed than the US system overall, because it is more blighted by 'tactical' voting), but it does have the benefit of having 3 parties to individually represent the main broad political viewpoints which exist (or 4 in the case of Wales and Scotland, where a further view of 'secessionism' exists in the mainstream), and other, smaller parties which can very effectively act as a 'pressure group' for 'protest votes' if one of the larger parties is failing to represtent its own core support sufficiently. Not only does that allow people to vote for what they actually want (in theory at least, although the tactical voting becomes a problem in practise, of course), but it may also contribute to politics being generally perhaps a little more civil and constructive, and a little less vitriolic and combative, with people getting accused of believing in something they don't much less often. It's not just an entrenced 'us' against 'them', it's an 'us' and 'them 'and those others' and 'that lot too', all disagreeing on most things, but still capable of working together sometimes on issues where we actually agree (like the current Conservative/Liberal coalition government - something that I think would be hard to see happening in the US! Of course, it should be remembered that we don't have a significant 'Conservative' element in politics in quite the way it exists in the US - there's no 'Christian Conservative' type view among the population or politicians, and our politics is generally far more secular).

 

I was talking about the anarchism. Where you have individual freedom, the greatest and also equalisation of wealth.

I consider social democracy as capitalism. And Brown and Blair are neoliberals, they killed all the rests of socialdemocracy of the labourism. And also made the Labour party that was more libertarian in the 70s become authoritarian and almost as neoliberal and conservative as the Tories.

 

The Labour Party has often tended towards 'authoritarianism' and state control in one way or another. All Blair and Brown did was reduce the previous state control of the economy and means of production policies into an apparently somewhat more 'liberal' economic stance, while trying to increase direct government authoritarianism and micro-management of the population and their daily lives. Everything is relative, of course, but 'liberalism' has never been a central part of Labour's agenda, and it still isn't.

 

it should be noted that many right wing americans intentionally discredit liberalism as socialism for political gain.

liberals sometimes appear to be ignorant in order to make an argument in favor of liberalism under the label of socialism.

 

Yeah. The Labour party nowadays is a neoliberal party. And how almost all neoliberal parties is authoritarian. And yeah it was a very liberal party in economic stance. For me the Labour Party is another party of rights of GB.

 

Weird -- I scored a 0 on that "moral matrix" test. Not really sure what that means, lol