Considering Liberalism:

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tiassa, Mar 1, 2010.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Michael Sandel for Democracy:

    Imagine a president, or a presidential candidate, taking on Wall Street in blunt language such as this: “We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power of high finance would be greater than the power of the government. Have we come to a time when the president of the United States or any man who wishes to be the president must doff his cap in the presence of this high finance, and say, ‘You are our inevitable master, but we will see how we can make the best of it’?”

    Or this: “The supreme political task of our day is to drive the special interests out of our public life.”

    Or this: “Through new uses of corporations, banks, and securities,” a privileged economic elite has “reached out for control over government itself,” rendering political equality “meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group [has] concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives.”

    Today, mainstream commentators and editorial writers would disparage such talk as irresponsible populist rhetoric. But American political leaders have not always been as deferential toward economic power as they are expected to be today. The statements quoted above were not made by far-out radicals, but by Woodrow Wilson (1912), Theodore Roosevelt (1910), and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936).

    Sandel asserts an historical narrative that tracks the transformation of liberalism and American society in the twentieth century: Where once people worried about what Justice Brandeis called "the curse of bigness", they spoke of democracy; these days, we speak of economy.

    ... Brandeis had a different worry. For him, the “curse of bigness” was not about systemic risk in financial markets; it was about democracy itself. If corporations, trusts, and banks had too much power, he argued, they would control the government and deprive ordinary citizens of a meaningful voice in political affairs. This fundamental idea was central to the liberalism of Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, and FDR. As a result, from the Progressive era to the New Deal, liberals debated how best to assert democratic control over economic power.

    During the second half of the twentieth century, the focus of liberalism changed. Liberals stopped regarding bigness as a curse, and they made their peace with concentrated economic power. The agenda of postwar American liberalism was set out by FDR in 1944, when he called for an “economic bill of rights.” True individual freedom required more than the political rights enumerated in the Constitution, he argued. Under modern conditions, it also required basic social and economic rights, including “the right to a useful and remunerative job . . . the right of every family to a decent home, the right to adequate medical care . . . the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment” and “the right to a good education.”

    Unlike the anti-bigness liberalism of the progressive era and early New Deal, the social-welfare liberalism of FDR in 1944 is recognizable as the liberalism of our time. The great liberal causes of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s—civil rights, Medicare and Medicaid, racial and gender equality, federal support for education, a more generous welfare state—were about using government to provide equal opportunity and a social safety net, not about using government to rein in the political influence of big banks and corporations.


    (ibid)

    What Sandel notes of Roosevelt is nothing more than than a nearly prophetic vision of how society works. In the years since, Americans have become ever more guarded about what scraps of those asserted rights they have. Upsetting the bigness of economic institutions could imperil people's "useful" jobs, or—as we have seen—lose their homes or medical care. Our educational system is widely denounced as something approaching dysfunction, and in the last two years the spectres of "old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment" have risen to loom large over the land.

    And where people would not protest injustice for the alleged indignity of sounding like a Commie or granola, we now see many pretending they are ready to revolt, not because the system is leading toward a seemingly inevitable bad ending, but rather because they accept the fear of rocking certain boats.

    This is the appeal of greed:

    Social-welfare liberalism seems a more practical doctrine than the anti-bigness version of earlier progressives. It is hard to imagine how to break up the large financial institutions and corporations that dominate modern economic life. And yet I believe it’s a mistake for contemporary liberals to give up on the old progressive project of exerting democratic control over economic institutions. In fact, it’s a mistake that has backfired on the Obama presidency. The initial reluctance of Barack Obama and his economic advisers to take a tougher line on the banks has led to a populist backlash that now threatens his agenda.

    (ibid)

    What seems curious about Sandel's assessment is that the populist backlash would seek to empower large corporations (e.g., insurance companies, banks). Even stranger is that the period of transformation he considers is also marked by increasingly explicit demands based in religious rhetoric that defy the religious paradigm; Americans rejected the Book of Acts by the Cold War, yet stamped a theocratic motto on their currency as an affirmation of Chrisitan faith.

    In this sense, what Sandel overlooks is the liberal failure to challenge the basic conflicts of human nature. As he reviews a history that includes Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan, he considers more what liberals actually did than what they failed to do. That "market relations are not necessarily free" in an alleged free market is a complex idea, and one easily challenged by superstition, fear, and sound-bite. And, to a certain degree, Sandel understates the result:

    ... the terms of political argument had subtly changed. Conservative opponents of the welfare state had become the critics of bigness, and liberals the defenders of it.

    This shift changed the shape of American politics. In moments when Americans feel disempowered, victims of forces beyond their control, conservatives have become more adept than liberals at tapping the mood of populist anger and frustration—even while siding with corporate and financial interests. Consider this: Which American presidential candidate called for “an end to giantism, for a return to the human scale—the scale that human beings can understand and cope with . . . the locally owned factory, the small businessman, who personally deals with his customers and stands behind his product, the farm and consumer cooperative, the town or neighborhood bank that invests in the community, the union local”?

    The words could have been spoken by Brandeis or Woodrow Wilson. But that was Ronald Reagan, campaigning for president in 1976.

    But the end result of the liberal failure to account for the transformation is clear: "By the end of the twentieth century," Sandel asserts, "liberalism had lost its capacity to inspire." And, indeed, the greatest disenchantment with the Democratic Party—the nearest thing to a viable political institution liberalism has in American society—is that they have become bland, technocratic appeasers of superstition.

    Which brings us to Obama. In his 2008 campaign, Obama did not offer a new definition of liberal or progressive politics. But he did succeed in stirring a civic idealism and hope not seen in American politics since the short-lived campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Obama’s capacity to inspire was more than a measure of his rhetorical gifts. He galvanized the electorate because he articulated a politics of moral and civic aspiration that went beyond the policy-driven, technocratic politics to which recent Democratic candidates had been prone.

    Obama departed from the liberalism of his day in two respects. First, liberals in recent decades have been wary of moral and spiritual discourse in politics, seeing it as a recipe for intolerance and coercion. But Obama rightly argued that, from the abolitionists to Dorothy Day to Martin Luther King, reformers have long brought moral and religious themes to bear in politics; it was folly for progressives to desist from moral and spiritual language, and to cede to the religious right the most potent sources of political argument. Second, thanks to his background as a community organizer, Obama brought to his campaign a civic sensibility that recalled an older tradition of political reform. According to this tradition, democratic politics is not only about policies and legislation; it’s about mobilizing citizens to claim a meaningful voice in self-government. It requires solidarity among the participants—in neighborhoods, congregations, unions, and other local settings—and usually involves a struggle with entrenched economic interests. For a time at least, the Obama campaign mobilized a movement for change.


    (ibid)

    But thought and feeling are two separate issues. People may have felt the hope, but many are having trouble comprehending the translation.

    In his first year in office, Obama found it difficult to translate the civic energy and idealism he inspired as a candidate into a new progressive vision or a distinctive way of governing. Faced with the exigencies of the financial crisis, he appointed economic advisors whose views had more in common with Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers than with Brandeis, Wilson, and FDR; some had even promoted the deregulation that led to the crisis. When bailouts and bonuses prompted widespread public outrage, his administration treated populist anger as a force to be placated and contained rather than as a legitimate response to the unaccountable power amassed by the financial industry, and the easy terms on which the government had bailed it out. To his credit, Obama pressed ahead with the attempt to achieve universal health care—the biggest piece of unfinished business of postwar American liberalism. But the effort was stymied by two forces that the old, anti-bigness progressives would have understood: first, the power of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries; and second, populist backlash and lingering anger over the bailout.

    The Tea Party movement that rallied against Obama’s health-care reform was about more than health care. It was a protest against big government, the bailout, and a political system that ignores the concerns of ordinary people. Liberals, committed to greater opportunity for people of modest means, find it perverse that populist anger be directed against health-care reform and big government, rather than against Wall Street and the insurance companies. But when liberalism gave up on the project of holding economic power to democratic account, it opened itself up to this paradox ....

    .... The success of his presidency now depends on reviving the civic idealism his campaign inspired and mobilizing it to bring economic power to account. Obama has spoken of the unfinished work of America’s experiment in self-government. The financial crisis he inherited can be an occasion to reassert democratic control over the economic forces that govern our lives. If Obama can rise to that challenge, he will reshape the political landscape and redefine the meaning of liberalism in our time.


    (ibid)

    Sandel's outlook, obviously, is not crystal-perfect, but it is certainly a more intelligent consideration of the state of things than what passes in the common discourse.

    Who gains, and who loses, by raising the standard of discourse? There are, of course, many possible answers, including that we all gain, and that we all lose.

    Obama's woes testify to the challenges facing genuine liberalism in the United States. In the face of scary superstition, the more subtle and complex arguments are often forgotten or ignored.

    It may seem elitist, but compared to superficial accusations of betrayal, forfeiture, and socialist, white-slaving deviltry, our society would benefit greatly from elevating the public discourse out of the gutter. One of the reasons liberals reject so many conservative indictments of Obama, Democrats, or liberalism in general, is that the accusations are childish. Media and political discourse set the example for the public conversation, and presently those institutions are endorsing low rhetoric, brainless conspiracy theory, hapless melodrama, and anything else that might win ratings or a few cheers from the base. I can't believe that any remotely successful politician thinks their one-liners or idiotic distortions of rhetoric actually win them converts from the other side; what they're playing for is new voters, and much as a cigarette company needs new smokers, the lower the rhetorical bar, the better it is for the short-term political consideration of winning votes.

    Beneath the scandals, hatred, and capitalistic ruthlessness of our political drama, a fascinating story is playing out, the American tale. And, some days, if people feel stung by rejection, it might not be simple partisanship. It may well be that even an insufficient criticism attempted in a responsible voice carries far more weight, and offers more tools to work with, than the petty bullshit coming from America's right wing and allegedly centrist obsession.

    Liberalism itself needs to regroup, balance its political ledgers, and start shedding its centrist tendency. After all, centrism these days endorses torture, paranoia, greed, and bigotry. America, America, God shed His Grace on thee!

    Or maybe God really is dead.

    Or maybe, just maybe, we have squandered our liberty in order to dig a hole so that we can perpetually complain.

    Liberalism has a long task in front of it, and whether or not American liberals are up to the challenge is yet unknown. The spectrum between the revolutionary left and liberal centrism is riddled with absorption lines, blank spaces representing where idea and principle have been blotted out by political elements and considerations with vested interest in what colors of freedom and prosperity shine between the shining seas.

    In other words, Sandel does not represent anything conlcusive, but he could, on this occasion, mark a starting point.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Sandel, Michael. "Obama and Civic Idealism". Democracy. Issue #15. Winter, 2010. DemocracyJournal.com. March 1, 2010. http://www.democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID=6731
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2010
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  3. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    I think you're in the wrong country, Tiassa. America is a conservative country. It was founded on conservative principles, and most Americans are conservatives and moderates.

    I hear China or North Korea are loving their equality right now. Maybe you should check 'em out?
     
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  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    (chortle!)

    And what "conservative principles" were those?

    (Oh, yeah ... seriously: That was the best you could come up with?)
     
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  7. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    How about:

    individual liberty
    states' rights
    limited government
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    The tragedy of terminal selfishness

    All pretty liberal in their day. Sure, modern conservatives often like to live sometime in the past, but I find the intellectual constraints of conservative advocacy even more fascinating. Really, a critique of liberalism and that

    "I think you're in the wrong country, Tiassa. America is a conservative country. It was founded on conservative principles, and most Americans are conservatives and moderates.

    I hear China or North Korea are loving their equality right now. Maybe you should check 'em out?
    "​

    —was the best you could come up with?

    Such benefits your selfish philosophy promises, such tragic results it shows.
     
  9. CaliforniaDreamer Registered Member

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    It is more accurate to argue that this country was founded on liberalism rather than conservatism. The values that Norsefire cited (states' rights, etc.) are the tenants of classical liberalism. The conservatives of the day were those who supported the "Old World" and the policies of parliament and King George III. The idea that "all men are created equal" was more than liberal; it was radical for the era. While I think it is more accurate to say this country was founded on liberalism than conservatism, it is even more precise to argue that it was founded upon the pillars of libertarianism (not to be confused with conservatism).

    PS, hello all -- I'm new to the forums

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  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Liberal, the lot.

    Gay marriage, for example.

    Patriot Act and Homeland Security, examples.
     
  11. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    The country was founded on the principles of classical liberalism, but modern day liberalism is more of a socialist-democratism than any sort of classical liberalism. Conservatism and libertarianism have more in common than left-liberals with classical liberals.
     
  12. CaliforniaDreamer Registered Member

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    True, which is what I asserted earlier. However, if you are to make the argument that classical liberalism is miles away from modern day liberalism, it's fair to say that classical conservatism (i.e. libertarianism) is miles away from modern day "conservatism" perpetuated by the Republican Party and its allies.

    With all that in mind, modern day conservatism does not have much in common with libertarianism. On a party-by-party basis, the Libertarian Party criticizes the Repubs equally as often as they do the Dems.
     
  13. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    I completely agree. The mainstream conservatism today seems to be neo-conservatism, and it has very little in common with the original conservatism.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    A libertarian can hardly be a conservative, outside of some particular viewpoints that may be traditional in their society.

    If you shake loose from the Fox & Rove redefinition of terms that has destroyed your ability to think or talk sensibly about political matters, you will notice that these changes in meaning, such as the loss of "classical liberalism", are not like the weather.

    They are accomplishments, the fruits of organization and effort.
     
  15. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    I just need to say something important about this sort of thing, copied from a post that I made much earlier on this site because it is highly relevant in this thread...

    Ever since the first days of Ronald Reagan, the neo-conservatives have been on an insidious campaign to turn a very good word into a very bad word in the minds of the American people...

    That word is "liberal."

    For the past 25 years, Americans have been bombarded with a crapload of anti-liberal spin and hype, through the mass media outlets that are mainly controlled by big business. Many (if not most) of you have bought into that anti-liberal hype, without ever once bothering to fully investigate EXACTLY what liberalism actually means, or what it entails.

    Let me give you the names of some famous liberals from our own American history. See if any of these guys strike you as being "stupid" or "bad for America" in any ways whatsoever:


    ALL OF THESE GREAT PEOPLE WERE LIBERALS:

    John Locke
    Benjamin Franklin
    Thomas Jefferson
    John Adams
    Patrick Henry
    Thomas Paine
    Frederick Douglas
    Nikola Tesla
    Franklin Delano Rooseveldt
    Albert Einstein
    Robert F. Kennedy
    Martin Luther King, Jr.


    ...and far, far too many other great people to list here.

    And now, here are a couple of excellent definitions of what "liberalism" means:

    From an intelligent author on wikipedia:


    "Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. Different forms of liberalism may propose very different policies, but they are generally united by their support for a number of principles, including extensive freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market or mixed economy, and a transparent system of government. All liberals – as well as some adherents of other political ideologies – support some variant of the form of government known as liberal democracy, with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law."


    By President John F Kennedy:


    "What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."



    Does anybody have a problem with the above philosophy..? Yes..? No..? If your answer is "No," then please try to explain how "liberal" has become a "dirty word" in America.

    The reason some of you perceive it to be "bad" is because you grew up during the age of the insidious neo-con dogma that has quite possibly led us to the very brink of ruination in this country. I want all of you to understand this. Liberals are not the bad guys... it's the greedy, irresponsible and downright dangerous whackos known as "conservatives" who have brought us to where we were at the end of last year in American history. Look around... was that the kind of America you could have felt proud of? Don't just give me a glib, knee-jerk and Pavlovian answer to that question. Think it over for a minute, very slowly and with as open a mind as possible. As you are thinking it over, I want you to summon every ounce of intelligence and insight that you can muster and try to imagine what this country would be like right now, if we had spent the past 25 years following liberal policies, instead of neo-conservative ones. Would it be worse than it is now..? Or would it be better..?

    That is what all of you should be thinking about, whenever you watch the continuing bombardment of anti-liberal jingoism that you've had spoon-fed to you for most of your lives. Please don't be a follower in life. Don't be just another duped, cud-chewing sheep. Don't let your country be sold out from under you to the highest bidders in China, and in Kuwait, and in Saudi Arabia, and in Mexico. Don't mortgage your future grandchildren away just to serve the interests of the greedy, conservative warmongering piglets whose only skill was to ruin the country.

    "Liberal" was never a dirty word. But "propaganda" is definitely one of the dirtiest words of all and folks, you've been fed a huge lie for more than a quarter of a century. Try to divorce yourselves from that big lie, and use your own eyes, ears and heart to assess what you see happening in America. Nevermind what your friends want you to believe. Nevermind what the mass media idiot box blasts at you all day and night. Nevermind what your parents think or what your teachers tell you. You have a BRAIN of your own. USE IT... and take another look at everything as objectively as you can.

    Then just do what your heart tells you to do. Following your heart is a hard thing to do, but that's why it takes courage to be a free-thinking individual... and that, my friends, is what liberalism is truly all about. It has nothing to do with being a "bleeding heart," or being "weak on defense," or being "anti-big-business," or being "against god." or any of those other retarded things that you've been told for your entire lives. It's about being DECENT and improving the quality of life not only for the self, but for others. It's about EQUALITY and JUSTICE, and it's about KINDNESS and PEACEFUL PURSUITS.

    What sort of country do you truly wish to live in...? Think it over carefully.


    "Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term... to the general prey of the rich upon the poor. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    - Thomas Jefferson


    "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
    - Benjamin Franklin

    "I believe that wherever there is plenty, poverty is evil."
    - Robert F Kennedy
     
  16. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    WillNever, you're right, but also wrong on certain points.

    Firstly, some of the people you listed in "All of these people were liberals" are not even compatible with each other (FDR and Thomas Jefferson). That's because not all liberalism is the same.


    Left-liberalism has been made dirty because it is dirty. It's incompatible with the American dream, and it's all-around just an insidious, evolutionary communism as opposed to revolutionary communism.


    Classical liberalism is a good, positive thing....but nobody is disagreeing. Conservatives (not neo-conservatives) do tend to think of themselves as classical liberals.
     
  17. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    Norse, Thomas Jefferson was one of the most liberal people of his day. Thomas Jefferson believed in:

    -Mandated public education
    -Large-scale purchases by the federal government
    -Limited states' rights
    -Federal intervention in local trade
    -Dismantling the "aristocracy of corporations which dare to challenge the government"
    -Separation of church and state


    Most, if not all, of these things are opposed to by today's self-styled conservatives to varying degrees.
     
  18. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    Yes...because he was largely a libertarian. Thomas Jefferson believed in:

    Really? Never heard of this being something advocated by Jefferson. Paine, maybe, but not Jefferson. Jefferson was an agrarian.
    Land purchases don't make someone one way or the other.
    Actually he was ardently for states' rights. That was one of the central points of the Anti-Federalists and later the Democratic-Republicans
    Again, this isn't something I'm aware of Jefferson supporting. And further, if it is true, it still depends on your definition of "intervention". I'm not against protecting against fraud and having basic safety regulations...but "redistribution of wealth" like the left liberals advocate is just plain theft and communism.
    Yes, but then again, nobody is against this. This means that he is against large corporations challenging government......not large corporations in and of themselves
     
  19. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    I think you should research Jefferson's beliefs.
    Yes it does. An enormous and large-scale federal land purchase (as the Louisiana Purchase was) was an exercise of a federal power that is not enumerated in the Constitution, which is something that conservatives are supposed to be against. Thomas Jefferson was also a proponent of interpreting what are known as "implied powers" and "inherent powers" in the reading of the Constitution, something that conservatives (including your kind) are consistently against.
    In fact he was for limited states' rights. That is why he interpreted the Embargo Act, a federal law, as limiting the powers of the states to trade with whomever they pleased... and enforced it on that basis.
    Intervention as in limiting who the states were allowed to trade with. He was for that sort of limitation.
    Sure it's conservative. Just look at George W. Bush, who believed the American people wanted a president who "appealed to the angels" and believed "God told him to strike at Al Qaeda." Just look at Mike Huckabee, who wanted to amend the constitution to be more in line with the Bible. Just look at the distinctly conservative efforts to limit the teaching of evolutionary science in public schools and instead to invade the schools with their own god-myths about how the Earth was made.
    Norse, you aren't going to win this argument by throwing everything including the kitchen sink into your definition of conservatism. You either stick to your values or you don't.

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    Last edited: Mar 6, 2010
  20. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    No matter which way you paint the Founding Fathers, they were still are quite right-wing by today's standards. They weren't communists, and that is synonymous with modern-day progressivism.

    Thus we are both correct: the Founding Fathers were liberals. Classical liberals.

    And conservatism is about classical liberalism. George Bush and Huckabee are not conservatives. First of all, the former expanded government and engaged us in many wars...those are not the conservative things to do. Plus, he's more of a neo-conservative fascist than an actual Conservative.

    I do stick to my principles, and I have Conservative principles.
     
  21. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    None of the principles I decribed above are right-wing.
    No it isn't. They are actually wildly different.
     
  22. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    States' rights, limited government, free markets, civil liberties...

    All of those are right-wing.

    Classical liberalism and communism? Yes.

    Progressivism and communism? The only difference is that one is slow, and the other is revolutionary.
     
  23. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    I have just proven to you what things Thomas Jefferson supports, Norse. None of them are right-wing. Invoking unrelated and vague principles into the conversation does not bode well for your argument.
    Does progressivism support the abolition of currency..?
    Does progressivism support the abolition of private property..?
    Does progressivism support state ownership of all goods and services..?

    If the answer to even one of these questions is "no" (and it is, for all three) then progressivism is not even *remotely* close to communism, whose basic tenets include those three things. If you are interested in actual, intellectual conversation, Norse, then avoid hyperbolic and sensationalist topics and statements.
     

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