I'm sure this doesn't apply to everybody who adopts the label "Liberal", but why is it that most of the "Liberals" I meet are some of the most intolerant people around? I thought that the basic Liberal philosophy was live and let live. So why are so many of them so violently opposed to opinions that don't reflect their own beliefs? I just walked away from another message board that claimed that its members were very open and accepting of people. I wandered onto a Bush-bashing thread and expressed an opposing viewpoint, apologizing for any vulgarities (I use certain imagery when dealing with politics and taxes, and I kept it as clean as I could without losing the, um, flavor), and asked them to show me any president who, while in office, genuinely had the public's best interests at heart.

I might as well have been a Jew in Nazi Berlin. What's worse is that their return arguments were little more than long-winded versions of even more Bush-bashing. There was no substance to the rebuttals except for a couple that actually addressed a couple of issues but still failed to show why those things were uniquely Bushy and couldn't apply to any other president or any other world leader. (Nobody was offended at the anal sex imagery of taxation.)

So can somebody answer my question? Did the definition of 'liberal' change?

associated with ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives

Has it been rewritten to
anyone who firmly believes that you have the moral obligation to agree with them
???

"Did the definition of 'liberal' change?"

Yes. Words like "liberal" and "conservative" have in fact lost all useful meaning. They are now most commonly used to summarily dismiss people with a differing view on a particular issue.

If the growing popular distaste and even raw hatred for the Bush administration bothers you, you could confine yourself to a physical community like Celebration, Florida (http://www.celebrationfl.com/), or online fora like Free Conservatives (http://freeconservatives.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/Cat/) and the real world may not intrude so disconcertingly, at least for a while. If you sincerely think that there is no substantiation for Bush-bashing, then you, like your Dear Leader, should scrupulously avoid unvarnished news and unfiltered contact with the world for as long as possible, in order to stay comfortable.

Try also to avoid the many registered Republicans like myself, who still believe in a small and accountable federal government. The present Bush Administration is losing true conservatives in droves, as the results of their uniquely gratuitous expenditure of our national credibility, blood, and treasure comes home to roost.

Defensively defaulting, from any perspective, into dividing people and issues between extremely simplistic left-right extremes are most often those who have never taken the time to understand the complexity of the real world, and find it frightening. It's a similar defense mechanism to constructing a persecution complex when your assumptions feel shaky, in danger of being debunked.

If you are going to support this Bush Administration's policies in the future, you had better get used to feeling vulnerable, because you are not defending a conservative, responsible, effective, or honest world view. Your most ardent fellow Bush supporters are feeling increasingly singled-out not because everyone else is vicious, but because the Bush Doctrine is running aground. Look out ahead for yourself.

I'm sure this doesn't apply to everybody who adopts the label "Liberal", but why is it that most of the "Liberals" I meet are some of the most intolerant people around? I thought that the basic Liberal philosophy was live and let live.

that's kind of an odd question, we have "liberals" and "conservatives" certainly but in practice I have yet to actually meet one that truly fits comfortably into any single catagory. Of course many "liberals" are intolerant pricks, I've even met some smart, considerate and eloquent "conservatives" here at sciforums... who'd have guessed?

I can't think of a more common human trait than inconsistency and contradiction.

I was actually raised a conservative Democrat, but if you tell someone that phrase today they look at you funny, like you just made it up. Never mind the fact that that group includes some of the most respectable politicians ever elected to office. Zell Miller, Sam Nunn, George Busbee, Lester Maddox, etc.

I agree with Hypewaders' comment above about small-government Republicans -- that's what a "conservative Democrat" was all about as well. Cutting taxes, etc. But I see those as moderate Republicans, not "true conservatives", although I understand what he's saying.

What REALLY irks me is when I hear people from the left claiming that anybody with an ounce of conservative thought in their body must be a religious zealot. I actually heard this woman on Bill O'Reilly the other day say that anybody who opposes abortion must be doing so because of their religion. This from someone who no doubt opposes capital punishment, and yet is no doubt a secularist! If she can understand the value of life without being a religious zealot, then surely someone else can as well!

And as long as I'm ranting, why is it that today you have to actually *sell* people on the value of cutting taxes?! I've been involved in online and real-world debate for over 20 years, and I've never seen anything like it. People actually OPPOSED to cutting taxes!

The founding fathers are rolling over in their graves.

I think we'd all agree that in any complex society, taxation on some level is required (physical infrastructure/goverment/police/etc.). So I assume the reason an argument persists is the question, "how much taxes are needed for the most effective society"?

I'm not sure about the specific discussion you're reffering but I'd imagine it's a more complex than you are letting on.

The problem is dogma.

Main Entry: dog·ma
Pronunciation: 'dog-m&, 'däg-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural dogmas also dog·ma·ta /-m&-t&/
Etymology: Latin dogmat-, dogma, from Greek, from dokein to seem -- more at DECENT
1 a : something held as an established opinion; especially : a definite authoritative tenet b : a code of such tenets <pedagogical dogma> c : a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds

I don't like Bush, or anything about him. But even a stopped watch is right twice a day.

I dislike orthodoxy of the left or right. But it seems that intellectual conformity is the norm. If you're pro-choice, then of course you are also for gun control (not). If you support the second amendment, then of course you support school prayer (not).

Deciding issues based on their individual merits can be some lonely territory.

But if it is intolerance you want, these guys make me afraid for the future of the country. (http://www.nicedoggie.net/)

Deciding issue based on their individual merits can be some lonely territory.

That was all I could think about while watching a recent debate. I get SO angry when hearing a good idea get shot down only because the opposition thought of it first or a bad idea being supported because they need to show a 'unified front'.

If there is one single thing that makes me loathe politics it's this, "tow the party line, no matter how stupid it is!" attitude displayed by all sides of the political spectrum.

If the growing popular distaste and even raw hatred for the Bush administration bothers you, you could confine yourself to a physical community like Celebration, Florida, or online fora like Free Conservatives and the real world may not intrude so disconcertingly, at least for a while. If you sincerely think that there is no substantiation for Bush-bashing, then you, like your Dear Leader, should scrupulously avoid unvarnished news and unfiltered contact with the world for as long as possible, in order to stay comfortable.


This is exactly what I mean. I never said I was a "bushie" (for those who prefer media-imposed labels), and yet because I'm not trashing the guy, you assume I'm some sort of head-in-the-sand fogie with no grip on reality. Spare me the insults and just try to answer the question, Hype.

And as long as I'm ranting, why is it that today you have to actually *sell* people on the value of cutting taxes?

It's not the cutting itself that is the problem; it's who gets the cuts and who doesn't. Cuts for the rich are not widely appreciated - except by the rich. :)

Oh I'm not so sure about that. I've been in debates recently where people tried to convince me of the value of raising taxes in general. Or that cutting taxes in general was a bad idea. Maybe it's just the people I was conversing with, but it struck me as a more general problem. Have you guys not had that experience?

Pangloss:

Taxes fund government. If the government decided not to tax anybody any more, then it could not run. Now, think of the services the government provides via taxes. Think of things like the post, the roads, the street lights, etc. - basic things you take totally for granted. Think about police, and courts and the army. Think about education. And so it goes on.

In general, liberals tend to take the view that the government should provide more services to the public, generally according to their need. So, rather than just the basics, liberals would like to see things like universal health care funded by government. Where will the government get the money? Answer: taxes.

Conservatives, of course, disagree. They think that if some people can't afford to pay for their own health care, that's their tough luck. Those people should just work a bit harder, and then they'd be able to pay their way. Why should government prop them up? For reasons like this, conservatives tend to be in favour of cutting back government, and hence lowering taxes.

In practice, though, the present US conservative government has cut taxes inequitably. It has decided that rich people should get richer at the expense of the poor. Now, maybe that isn't a problem for you. If not, I'm guessing you're rich and benefitting, right? But perhaps you can imagine why some people might have a problem with this.

See what I mean? James is completely forgetting or ignoring the fact that there used to be a whole horde of Democrats that were all about cutting taxes (Zell Miller is not some kind of freak, people!). Even JFK was a legendary tax cutter. Not to mention the fact that there have been plenty of Republicans who had no interest in tax cuts whatsoever. (Put a Republican in Congress and boy, just watch the spending fly!)

This argument also completely ignores the fact that entitlements in the early 1960s, when Kennedy CUT taxes, were a *fraction* of what they are today. And yet they still found ways to run the post office, police, courts and army.

So to me the argument of "taxes fund government, so we need more of them" just doesn't hold water. But what I'm failing to understand here, and the reason I bring this up, is why this argument is resonating with the general public right now.

It depends partly on how much more the gvt does now than it did back then. And if you want betteer regulations, that usualy takes more people to administer them. Furthermore, things involving people, ie the varieties of paper shuffling aren't subjected to the same increases in efficiency that for example steel manufacturing is.

As for where have all the liberals gone, well, all I can say is that in my experience there are intolerant people on all sides, and its impossible to make any real comment about it. ASide from that I agree with everyone about the dangers of toeing the party line, dogma, etc etc.

What's the US foreign debt running at these days?

What's the US foreign debt running at these days?

~$3.5 trillion? Something like that. What's that, about three year's worth of total budget expenditure?

So outrageously high that the idea that you can eliminate it solely by increasing taxes, without cutting entitlement services, is ridiculous.

:confused:

As society grows more superficial, the latter definition in the topic post will seem the more apparent.

We must remember that conservatism gives the illusion of worrying about the individual. At its philosophical core, this is true, though the mystifying adoption of the conservative cause by so many working Americans lends a further dimension to the illusion--conservatism in America only worries about certain individuals, and that has sort of been the hallmark of conservatism in history: conservation of the balance of power.

Liberalism, on the other hand, alleges to think in terms of society at large, on behalf of the common mass of humanity. As such, the connection between one's choices and the adverse effects on others any given choice may have are at least one degree more apparent.

One has a right to believe whatever they want. But there is a moral line drawn by liberalism, and to deviate from the core idea of community strength is a deviation difficult to quantify.

So as society becomes more superficial, so will that quantification.

In its most simplistic form, the liberal believes that the choices s/he makes are motivated by conventional moral obligation, and therefore other decisions are rejections of that moral obligation.

A very simple example would be the idea of feeding the poor. The conservative might wonder why his or her hard-earned dollars should go to feed a non-working person. That conservative will also complain most loudly when the non-working person resorts to theft in order to fulfill his or her needs. The liberal sees in terms of society a condition whereby the social evil of theft is largely eliminated as a specific symptom of the human condition. Modernity teaches that we cannot extinguish certain deviations entirely; there will always be some rapists, there will always be some thieves, and there will always be a Cain to love and then reject his Abel. But what of the proverbial stealing to feed a child? Robbery does not remain so relatively benign. Shall we merely punish the criminals for individual and common satisfaction (e.g. conservatism) or seek to stop the pollution at its source by addressing the suffering that compels such deviations (e.g. liberalism)?

Suddenly, you'll notice, we've moved from charity to crime and punishment, and why not? One seeks to address the other, but throughout the whole progression, conservatism reiterates itself: "Me, me, me. What do I get? What does it give me?"

Well, who loses?

"It's not necessarily a zero-sum game."

Then let's find out.

"There's no profit in finding out. I won't get anything out of it except maybe a headache."

And suddenly we're left discussing profits while the whole time we might prevent a man from deciding to steal if he is fed. How many people need we not argue about how to punish if they never enter that part of the cycle in the first place?

And so at a certain level, disagreement seems somehow immoral.

And so there seems a moral obligation to agree.

In reality, the moral obligation is more toward recognition of the problem and also agreement on the confines of the solution,° but in a society more superficial than the day before, a certain depth of consideration is lost: The solution proposed could still be wrong; the liberal must guard against declaring the moral obligation to subscribe to a bad idea.

At first it looks like stupidity vs. immorality, but when we consider that immorality in general tends to spring freely from stupidity, it becomes a coin-flip. When we focus the moral obligations and condemnations as evil on the superficial, we attempt to alienate our political opposition.

There's general enough agreement on certain problems (e.g. "crime") but most days it seems enough to simply invest the deepest anger in the most superficial elements of what we disagree with. Lacking real evil, the sense of moral obligation arises from a fundamental difference of starting points which cause people to disagree on the confines of the solution to a vaguely-agreed problem.

I mean ... we could solve the problem of poverty by rounding up the poor and shooting them all. But then there would be nobody to clean the toilets and bring you freedom fries. Sure, there's humanitarian concerns that nag at me on that one but, hey--I don't want to oblige anyone to my particular moral stance. The practical considerations of who will actually do what the poor do presses to the fore in such a consideration. Just because I would find it morally abominable to adopt such a spartan value of life doesn't actually make anyone a bad person for believing otherwise. In the end, though, it won't be the mere fact that I disagree with that person that makes him or her immoral, but rather that the basis of disagreement lies in a self-centered, demeaning expression of the value of human life that results in a demand for what nobody else is good enough to deserve. Such a slander against the value of human beings is what I find immoral. Hell, there are plenty of people with whom I agree on many things but whose characters I hold in contempt. It works that way, too.

The symptoms will always fester as long as we fail to treat the disease itself. One is better for the individual if the individual sells a treatment for the symptoms. To treat the disease itself not only aims to save the individual suffering the symptoms but also protect society from the advancement of the disease.

Perhaps because there is no known purpose of life; perhaps in lieu of God; perhaps for no better reason than a philosophical security blanket, the idea does take on a moral urgency.

To this day I wonder why we are taught such things as compassion and justice; it couldn't possibly be for the immediate convenience of the caretakers, could it? Perhaps that's what we lose when we cease to carry a widespread initiatory rite of passage in society? There's no time to take a young person aside, string them out to the point of hallucination, and then explain to them that their entire childhood was an exploitative joke designed to ensure the mere perpetuation of the species while posing as little inconvenience as possible to the caretakers? At thirty-one years old, I still can't actually come to believe such bitterness is true, but it would explain a lot.

But somewhere in that blurring of reality in favor of the human endeavor, some start to believe in human communities, and see the strength the individual gains in such a setting. And all they want is to have that strength for themselves, and for others to have it for themselves as well. And that's how they become a liberal.

From there, life seems to get more and more superficial, but that process is not dependent--though somehow interrelated--on the choice of a specific known political boundary.
___________________

Notes:

° recognition of the problem . . . confines of the solution - Oscar Wilde, noted of "the majority of people" spoiled by an "unhealthy and exaggerated altruism, that, "They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor." It is as ridiculous as it sounds, and no real solution at all but rather a complication of the problem at hand. "The proper aim," Wilde wrote, "is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible."

As such, people might agree on a problematic condition--e.g. correlations between poverty and certain forms of crime--yet still disagree on the scope and scale of the solution. People may believe they seek a common resolution (e.g. "world peace") yet have no common recognition of the problem. Some might look at the present conflicts possessing the headlines and speculate that Islam and Americanism are the problems. Others might look beyond the superficial and see themes of poverty, dignity, and the human struggle.

Generally speaking, most folks don't wake up each morning and wonder, "Whom can I injure and how best can I do that?"

It seems almost a relief to many of my American neighbors to have a vague enemy--"terrorism"--to serve as a peg upon which they might hang that fear: The terrorists wake up in the throes of such evil. That is what makes them so alien and dangerous, and why their utter obliteration serves well enough for so many people in lieu of justice.

So it's not some devious guise that compels someone who blames "the Jews" or "Islam" or "Amerika" or Africans or women or whomever for the world's ills. They honestly believe that their hostility in some way serves the better interest of general humanity. In terms of liberals or conservatives, it often seems a difference of starting points. To conservatives, self-interest is logical to the point of being self-evident. It is foolishness that compels people otherwise. To the liberal, though, the starting point does become an ethical or moral issue because the idea that individuals in a society are inextricably interconnected is self-evident, and therefore the ramifications of extraneous self-interest are immediately apparent. Since those ramifications spill out into the communal, connected, societal element--in other words, are visited upon others--the state of moral violation is glaring. Everything else in politics--the fingerpointing and backstabbing and child abusing--is merely repetition of seemingly self-evident principles symptomatic of the pseudomoral structures in which they exist and upon which they are founded.

And so the band plays on. And nobody can stand the weather. And we're all reading different maps. At least, when we're not bailing water.

(Click this link (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=36274) for a recent Sciforums discussion of the length of footnotes and endnotes.)

O2: "Spare me the insults and just try to answer the question, Hype."

Please read my initial post again, it was a good-faith attempt to answer the question, and I partially agreed with you.

"Did the definition of 'liberal' change?"

I won't allow you to squirm away, blubbering liberally:

"I never said I was a "bushie""

-because you defended this man who is presiding over the launching of a truly epic American catastrophe:

"I wandered onto a Bush-bashing thread and expressed an opposing viewpoint..."

There is no excuse for that. A lot of people are dying. Nobody's getting through this unabashed, you bashibazouk.

Nice post, Tiassa.

My mistake, David, thanks. Of course that just underscores my point. (shrug)

There is one school of thought that holds that without the extra money injected into the econmy by gvt borrowing, we'd all be stuffed. And i think there is more than a little truth in it.

David F:

This is a common LIBERAL line I just don't understand. How can you cut taxes for people who don't pay taxes? Since the poor don't pay taxes, aren't all tax cuts for the rich? (...rich being defined by the federal government as anyone who makes more than $35,000/yr).

There's also disparity between middle-income earners and high income earners, which you seem to have overlooked.

O2: "Spare me the insults and just try to answer the question, Hype."

Please read my initial post again, it was a good-faith attempt to answer the question, and I partially agreed with you.

"Did the definition of 'liberal' change?"

I won't allow you to squirm away, blubbering liberally:

"I never said I was a "bushie""

-because you defended this man who is presiding over the launching of a truly epic American catastrophe:

"I wandered onto a Bush-bashing thread and expressed an opposing viewpoint..."

There is no excuse for that. A lot of people are dying. Nobody's getting through this unabashed, you bashibazouk.

Read my response. Can you answer without putting words in my mouth? Or are you psychic and claiming to know what I really meant? An opposing viewpoint isn't necessarily a Bush-glorifying one. Don't expect any responses from me until you can behave intelligently.

Maybe you've been too much around the wrong people, and "liberal intolerance" is rubbing off on you. Or maybe they're just getting to you. Or maybe I really haven't taken the thread seriously enough. Sorry about that.

The United States has indeed enjoyed Presidents who kept the public's interests at heart, and whose records show it. On a list for this category, I would place Jefferson, Buchanan, Eisenhower, and Carter. I have no reason to believe that these men sold out to anybody as sitting Presidents. It's interesting to ponder how integrity does not make a President popular. We seem to value comfort over honesty, and to reward Presidents who overstep their Constitutional powers if they can help us feel more potent.

We Americans don't seem so sure about participatory democracy- we default instead to flirting with monarchy wrapped in "democratic" camouflage, mostly because it requires less effort. Bush '43 fit the bill in a pinch, especially for those who responded positively to name recognition: Dubya's shady election was more about dynasty than recognition by the public of the actual qualities of the actual man- The 2000 race would certainly never have been so close, had Dubya's last name been Smith.

So far as ideals, intelligence, and ability, Dubya doesn't compare well at all with other Presidents, even considering those who history shows did sell out to the centralization of power, the trampling of the Constitution, to special interests, etc at the public's expense. Of course we can glimpse more of the personal man in office now, more than we can of his counterparts in history. But from speeches and debates alone, you can detect higher intelligence in any President you want to compare. Before TV sound-bytes, leaders had to be more eloquent and intelligent to succeed in politics.

So yes, you glorify Dubya. He is a monumentally disastrous President, and it is insupportable to defend him by saying that all US Presidents have failed to serve the public interest. Employing the busted schoolkid's excuse, "but, everybody else was doing it" for this President is in fact a desperate attempt at salvage, if not loyal glorification. The ready sensitivity about being criticised for defending Bush seems healthy, though- so there's hope for you.

I still don't see how you think I was glorifying Bush. If someone says "That hog is fat" and I say "Aren't they pretty much all fat?" then how am I glorifying that one hog? It's not all black and white. There is a middle ground, unless we're subscribing to the "you're either with us or against us" philosophy. (DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about hogs, so I don't know what constitutes a fat hog from one that is of normal weight for a hog. It's just for illustration based on a specieist stereotype.)

But back to the subject of Liberals who aren't very liberal, I used to work for the opposite example, a crew-cut conservative who acted more like a liberal than a conservative. Small businessman, favored the Republican party, served in the USMC, nice house in the suburbs, and while service in the Corps taught him to not discriminate based on race, he claimed to not want any dealing with homosexuals because they were "unnatural" and were "that way by choice". In practice, however, he really didn't care about a person's private life so as long as they dealt squarely and honestly with him. He believed a government should support the arts and provide welfare for the truly needy, and he was constantly trying to think of ways to help the less fortunate. The cost of running a business kept him from being able to donate much money to causes, but he favored doing business with other small businesses because by sharing the wealth on the local levels helped create a demand for work locally, which helped create more jobs locally. He had a habit of hiring the financially desperate and helping them turn their fortunes around. More than anyone I've ever met, he helped people get back on their feet. We were always asking him "Are you sure you're a right-wing conservative?"

Eh, labels. Like was said earlier in this thread, they don't mean much anymore.