So, How Come You're Still A Leftie?

[Bfgrn]

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Hey PC, I've been around since Harry Truman was President, so I lived through a good portion of the liberal era that started with the New Deal and ended with the Great Society. It was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city on the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the end of the 1960's and the conservative era began. It has continued ever since. It has been a negative mirror image of the liberal era. We now lead the world only in the dubious like incarcerating human beings, killing innocent people and launching Hirohito sneak attacks on sovereign nations.

So my question PC, what blame do Republicans and conservatives deserve? You can't have the power, profess 'personable responsibility', then turn around and blame those without power.

Did you just say the new deal was was America's finest moment? Really? You truly are a whack job.

I said the liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. But I don't subscribe to right wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people.

 

[Oddball]

I said the liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. But I don't subscribe to right wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people.

Irony can be so.....well.....ironic.

 

[Liberty]

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Hey PC, I've been around since Harry Truman was President, so I lived through a good portion of the liberal era that started with the New Deal and ended with the Great Society. It was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city on the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the end of the 1960's and the conservative era began. It has continued ever since. It has been a negative mirror image of the liberal era. We now lead the world only in the dubious like incarcerating human beings, killing innocent people and launching Hirohito sneak attacks on sovereign nations.

So my question PC, what blame do Republicans and conservatives deserve? You can't have the power, profess 'personable responsibility', then turn around and blame those without power.

Did you just say the new deal was was America's finest moment? Really? You truly are a whack job.

I said the liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. But I don't subscribe to right wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people.

So, I take it you support Woodrow Wilson then?

 

[Bfgrn]

Did you just say the new deal was was America's finest moment? Really? You truly are a whack job.

I said the liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. But I don't subscribe to right wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people.

So, I take it you support Woodrow Wilson then?

Why? Woodrow Wilson preceded the New Deal.

 

[newpolitics]

There is no causal relation between crime and which party is in office. That is fucking stupid. Terrible arguement, so you can drop that one from your list.

My only response is, I would be fucking insane to go to the right. The right is the dumbest bunch of whackjob asshole ignorant dumb motherfuckers I have ever seen. I am not happy with any distance too far, either to the right or the left, but the entire right has become insane.

 

[Bfgrn]

I said the liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. But I don't subscribe to right wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people.

Irony can be so.....well.....ironic.

Ignorance can be so.....well.....ignorant.

Your usual Dudeball, empty emote.

 

[Liberty]

I said the liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. But I don't subscribe to right wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people.

So, I take it you support Woodrow Wilson then?

Why? Woodrow Wilson preceded the New Deal.

Yes but his ideology was relatively identical to FDR. Care to answer the question instead of being a weasel? Thanks.

 

[Bfgrn]

So, I take it you support Woodrow Wilson then?

Why? Woodrow Wilson preceded the New Deal.

Yes but his ideology was relatively identical to FDR. Care to answer the question instead of being a weasel? Thanks.

No it wasn't relatively identical to FDR.

Next...

 

[QUENTIN]

Interesting post.

Actually, I only post in favor of the Republicans when lefties, Democrats, say biased things about them, and I try to show that almost always the Dems are worse.

I consider myself a conservative, and vote with the party that most closely represents my views...

Your attempt to separate liberal from Democrat is a similar attempt, except that it is a distinction without a difference...as the Democrat party has been co-opted by liberals/progressives.

"...a leftie/liberal with being a Democrat when not only are they not the same thing but they're in opposition to each other."
This is totally false.

They are one and the same.

Their aims, policies, methods and provenance is the same.

a. Does President Obama believe in three separate branches of government? Well, Congress refused to pass his commission idea, so in the SOTU he said he’d just use executive order to create it. And he insisted that Congress overturn the Supreme Court decision…or, I guess, another executive order?

b. Ms. Clinton: “"I prefer the word ‘progressive,’ which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century.” Hillary Clinton: I’m Not a Liberal
Hillary Clinton: I’m Not a Liberal

c. Axelrod claims the WH is Progressive:

[youtube]<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/j4PxJ4uH-t4&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/j4PxJ4uH-t4&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/youtube]

And I consider myself a leftist and as such don't vote for the Democrats because they don't represent my views at all. This is true of all the genuine leftists I know.

There are a lot of people out there who are loyalist to the Democratic party and think that's the same thing as liberalism, so they call themselves liberals, but that's not the case.

In the same sense, the Republican party during Bush's term wasn't particularly conservative (sure, they cut taxes, but they were also intrusive into people's private lives, dramatically expanded the federal government, spent with abandon, and a million other things diametrically opposed to conservative principles) but is just lazily labeled as such.

The conflation you made is a common one in our discourse, people use Democrat/liberal/left and Republican/conservative/right interchangeably, but they are demonstrably not the same thing.

Liberalism, progressivism, leftism, like conservatism or libertarianism, is an ideology that can be defined and demonstrated throughout history. The ideology behind leftism is not the same ideology as the Democratic party and the agenda of liberals is significantly different than the agenda of the Democratic party, in fact they're directly opposed.

I suggest perhaps you check out this thread on the subject, and how Democrats and those in power who enable them have long abandoned any significant traces of liberalism:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/139598-the-world-liberal-opportunist-made.html

The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class is guilty. The liberal class, which continues to speak in the prim and obsolete language of policies and issues, refused to act. It failed to defend traditional liberal values during the long night of corporate assault in exchange for its position of privilege and comfort in the corporate state. The virulent right-wing backlash we now experience is an expression of the liberal class&#8217; flagrant betrayal of the citizenry.

The liberal class, which once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible, functioned traditionally as a safety valve. During the Great Depression, with the collapse of capitalism, it made possible the New Deal. During the turmoil of the 1960s, it provided legitimate channels within the system to express the discontent of African-Americans and the anti-war movement. But the liberal class, in our age of neo-feudalism, is now powerless. It offers nothing but empty rhetoric. It refuses to concede that power has been wrested so efficiently from the hands of citizens by corporations that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty are irrelevant. It does not act to mitigate the suffering of tens of millions of Americans who now make up a growing and desperate permanent underclass. And the disparity between the rhetoric of liberal values and the rapacious system of inverted totalitarianism the liberal class serves makes liberal elites, including Barack Obama, a legitimate source of public ridicule. The liberal class, whether in universities, the press or the Democratic Party, insists on clinging to its privileges and comforts even if this forces it to serve as an apologist for the expanding cruelty and exploitation carried out by the corporate state.

The death of the liberal class cuts citizens off from the mechanisms of power. Liberal institutions such as the church, the press, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions once set the parameters for limited self-criticism and small, incremental reforms and offered hope for piecemeal justice and change. The liberal class could decry the excesses of the state, work to mitigate them and champion basic human rights. It posited itself as the conscience of the nation. It permitted the nation, through its appeal to public virtues and the public good, to define itself as being composed of a virtuous and even noble people. The liberal class was permitted a place within a capitalist democracy because it also vigorously discredited radicals within American society who openly defied the excesses of corporate capitalism and who denounced a political system run by and on behalf of corporations. The real enemy of the liberal class has never been Glenn Beck, but Noam Chomsky.

The purging and silencing of independent and radical thinkers as well as iconoclasts have robbed the liberal class of vitality. The liberal class has cut itself off from the roots of creative and bold thought, from those forces and thinkers who could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with the power elite. Liberals exude a tepid idealism utterly divorced from daily life. And this is why every television clip of Barack Obama is so palpably pathetic.

...

The liberal class no longer holds within its ranks those who have the moral autonomy or physical courage to defy the power elite. The rebels, from Chomsky to Sheldon Wolin to Ralph Nader, have been marginalized, shut out of the national debate and expelled from liberal institutions. The liberal class lacks members with the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies. It offers no ideological alternatives. It remains bound to a Democratic Party that has betrayed every basic liberal principle including universal healthcare, an end to our permanent war economy, a robust system of public education, a vigorous defense of civil liberties, job creation, the right to unionize and welfare for the poor.

...

The liberal class is finished. Neither it nor its representatives will provide the leadership or resistance to halt our slide toward despotism. The liberal class prefers comfort and privilege to confrontation. It will not halt the corporate assault or thwart the ascendancy of the corporate state. It will remain intolerant within its ranks of those who do. The liberal class now honors an unwritten quid pro quo, one set in place by Bill Clinton, to cravenly serve corporate interests in exchange for money, access and admittance into the halls of power. The press, the universities, the labor movement, the arts, the church and the Democratic Party, fearful of irrelevance and desperate to retain their positions within the corporate state, will accelerate their purges of those who speak the unspeakable, those who name what cannot be named. It is the gutless and bankrupt liberal class, even more than the bizarre collection of moral and intellectual trolls now running for office, who are our most perfidious opponents.

This "liberal class" - those in positions of power generally in or directly tied to the Democratic party who call themselves liberal- are not actually liberals since they don't believe in, support, or act on behalf of liberal values or policies. Words have meanings. I could go around calling myself an elephant, but my mere proclamation wouldn't make it so and anyone paying any attention would quickly catch on that what an elephant is and what I am are wholly incongruous.

In the same sense that there has been a legitimate backlash among genuine conservatives against the Republican party and its abandonment of many traditional and fundamental conservative ideas, there is a legitimate backlash going on for decades now among genuine leftists against the Democratic party for the same.

A bailout for corporations who raped the economy, a bailout for insurance companies and secret quid pro quo deals with the pharmaceutical and hospital industries disguised as "health care reform" that leaves the same corrupt corporate thieves in place and just funnels them money, a refusal to restore habeas corpus, not only the continuation but the escalation of foreign wars now in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and still in Iraq (the only place they scaled down, but are still very much active in combat despite the rhetoric), the lack of respect for civil rights seen in the refusal to repeal DOMA or DADT, the continued use of Guantanamo Bay and many more secret, lawless prisons throughout the world, the indication that counterproductive and senseless federal drug laws will be enforced even if and when citizens vote directly to repeal them, the constant invocation of State Secrets to hide any government wrongdoing even if it is not in any sense a state secret, and lack of transparency generally, the use of orders to assassinate American citizens far from any battlefield without due process, I could be here all night describing all of the policies actively pursued or enacted by the Democratic party that are simply anathema to liberal values, ideology, and goals.

Clinton is a corporatist, just like Obama who Axelrod represents, just like her husband was, just like most Democratic party politicians are. Yes, they proclaim themselves to be liberals or progressives to appeal (mostly but not always successfully) to the many people who consider themselves liberal but either don't know that the policies put forth by those politicians aren't liberal or those who don't care because they're actually Democrats and not liberals. But there's a simple lesson most people learn early on that applies here: don't trust what politicians say, watch what they do.

And what Democratic politicians do, what they advance, the vast, vast majority of them including the last two Democratic presidents, is not in any meaningful sense leftism. It's contradictory to the basic tenets of leftism in fact.

It may be "to the left" of what you like and support, but that's not the same thing. Lining up the primary policies associated with leftism and the policies enacted by Democrats would produce a vast disparity on most issues. I'm with you if you say the Democratic party sucks, but you're wrong if you think it's leftist.

Therefore, what the Democratic party does, the policies it enacts that then frequently fail, should have no effect on deciding to continue to be a leftist (and may even offer further support as a demonstration that non-leftist policies don't work) because they aren't a reflection of leftism. Again, it'd be like asking a libertarian why they're still libertarian after the Bush era or a Communist why they're a Communist considering North Korea - the two just aren't related.

 

[JBeukema]

So the FF were idiots and fucked up the nation?

I'll grant you that.

Yeah, they weren't political geniuses like Lenin who built and empire that has stood the test of time and...

Oh, wait.

Who said I was a Leninist? More like a right schachmanite.

 

[JBeukema]

The Constitution was written by Liberals

there is a difference between classical john locke style liberals and modern social liberals, idiot.

Social Liberalism =/= Liberalism

While related, they are not the same thing.

 

[JBeukema]

Socialism is a stage of socio-economic development following the failure of capitalism and the rise in the consciousness of the proletariat. It is marked by the unequal distribution of capital, the growing role central planning in the economy, the attempt to curb capitalism and prevent the rise of oligopolies and monopolies, and the increasing socialization of resources...

I see you have read marx. I am slightly amused that you are dumb enough to agree with him. I will enjoy watching your ideology crash and burn. The American people will reach the tipping point and fight for freedom once again. Just wait.

You seem to have some moronic idea that I'm a Marxist...

Browse my posts in the Economics section; you'll find many references to the Mises Institute.

Yes, I've read Marx (although I never quite finished Capital because it was too damn long and I got distracted by something else). I started Keynes' General Theory, but had to stop after 2-dozen pages because the obviously wrong things he kept saying were just plain irritating. Ditto for Ricardo. Most of my education in the Austrian school comes through Thomas E. Woods Jr, as I find his writing to be clear and easily understood. Mises is on my reading list, but I've only gotten around to some of his articles and haven't read any of his full books yet. Also among my study/reading list are Hayek and Schachtman.

Ideologically, I can be called a moderate/right social democrat with a fair degree of accuracy.

My economic perspective could be called Austro-Marxian. The Marxian lens provides a good perspective for the understanding of the past development and possible future trends of socio-economic systems in a broad sense, while the Austrian school forms the base of my understanding regarding the day-to-day and year-to-year development of the market.

All in all, I'm just a Beukemaen.

 

[daveman]

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Hey PC, I've been around since Harry Truman was President, so I lived through a good portion of the liberal era that started with the New Deal and ended with the Great Society. It was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city on the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the end of the 1960's and the conservative era began. It has continued ever since. It has been a negative mirror image of the liberal era. We now lead the world only in the dubious like incarcerating human beings, killing innocent people and launching Hirohito sneak attacks on sovereign nations.

So my question PC, what blame do Republicans and conservatives deserve? You can't have the power, profess 'personable responsibility', then turn around and blame those without power.

Did you just say the new deal was was America's finest moment? Really? You truly are a whack job.

I said the liberal era from the New Deal through the Great Society was America's finest moment. But I don't subscribe to right wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people.

Looks like you subscribe to left-wing revisionist history that tries to deceive the American people, though.

 

[daveman]

There is no causal relation between crime and which party is in office. That is fucking stupid. Terrible arguement, so you can drop that one from your list.

My only response is, I would be fucking insane to go to the right. The right is the dumbest bunch of whackjob asshole ignorant dumb motherfuckers I have ever seen. I am not happy with any distance too far, either to the right or the left, but the entire right has become insane.

A compelling argument, to be sure, but I'm not quite ready to register Democrat. Perhaps you should insult my belief system some more.

 

[daveman]

So the FF were idiots and fucked up the nation?

I'll grant you that.

Yeah, they weren't political geniuses like Lenin who built and empire that has stood the test of time and...

Oh, wait.

Who said I was a Leninist? More like a right schachmanite.

Oh, that's different. Utterly unworkable and doomed to failure, but different.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Interesting post.

Actually, I only post in favor of the Republicans when lefties, Democrats, say biased things about them, and I try to show that almost always the Dems are worse.

I consider myself a conservative, and vote with the party that most closely represents my views...

Your attempt to separate liberal from Democrat is a similar attempt, except that it is a distinction without a difference...as the Democrat party has been co-opted by liberals/progressives.

"...a leftie/liberal with being a Democrat when not only are they not the same thing but they're in opposition to each other."
This is totally false.

They are one and the same.

Their aims, policies, methods and provenance is the same.

a. Does President Obama believe in three separate branches of government? Well, Congress refused to pass his commission idea, so in the SOTU he said he&#8217;d just use executive order to create it. And he insisted that Congress overturn the Supreme Court decision&#8230;or, I guess, another executive order?

b. Ms. Clinton: &#8220;"I prefer the word &#8216;progressive,&#8217; which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century.&#8221; Hillary Clinton: I&#8217;m Not a Liberal
Hillary Clinton: I&#8217;m Not a Liberal

c. Axelrod claims the WH is Progressive:

[youtube]<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/j4PxJ4uH-t4&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/j4PxJ4uH-t4&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/youtube]

And I consider myself a leftist and as such don't vote for the Democrats because they don't represent my views at all. This is true of all the genuine leftists I know.

There are a lot of people out there who are loyalist to the Democratic party and think that's the same thing as liberalism, so they call themselves liberals, but that's not the case.

In the same sense, the Republican party during Bush's term wasn't particularly conservative (sure, they cut taxes, but they were also intrusive into people's private lives, dramatically expanded the federal government, spent with abandon, and a million other things diametrically opposed to conservative principles) but is just lazily labeled as such.

The conflation you made is a common one in our discourse, people use Democrat/liberal/left and Republican/conservative/right interchangeably, but they are demonstrably not the same thing.

Liberalism, progressivism, leftism, like conservatism or libertarianism, is an ideology that can be defined and demonstrated throughout history. The ideology behind leftism is not the same ideology as the Democratic party and the agenda of liberals is significantly different than the agenda of the Democratic party, in fact they're directly opposed.

I suggest perhaps you check out this thread on the subject, and how Democrats and those in power who enable them have long abandoned any significant traces of liberalism:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/139598-the-world-liberal-opportunist-made.html

The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class is guilty. The liberal class, which continues to speak in the prim and obsolete language of policies and issues, refused to act. It failed to defend traditional liberal values during the long night of corporate assault in exchange for its position of privilege and comfort in the corporate state. The virulent right-wing backlash we now experience is an expression of the liberal class&#8217; flagrant betrayal of the citizenry.

The liberal class, which once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible, functioned traditionally as a safety valve. During the Great Depression, with the collapse of capitalism, it made possible the New Deal. During the turmoil of the 1960s, it provided legitimate channels within the system to express the discontent of African-Americans and the anti-war movement. But the liberal class, in our age of neo-feudalism, is now powerless. It offers nothing but empty rhetoric. It refuses to concede that power has been wrested so efficiently from the hands of citizens by corporations that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty are irrelevant. It does not act to mitigate the suffering of tens of millions of Americans who now make up a growing and desperate permanent underclass. And the disparity between the rhetoric of liberal values and the rapacious system of inverted totalitarianism the liberal class serves makes liberal elites, including Barack Obama, a legitimate source of public ridicule. The liberal class, whether in universities, the press or the Democratic Party, insists on clinging to its privileges and comforts even if this forces it to serve as an apologist for the expanding cruelty and exploitation carried out by the corporate state.

The death of the liberal class cuts citizens off from the mechanisms of power. Liberal institutions such as the church, the press, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions once set the parameters for limited self-criticism and small, incremental reforms and offered hope for piecemeal justice and change. The liberal class could decry the excesses of the state, work to mitigate them and champion basic human rights. It posited itself as the conscience of the nation. It permitted the nation, through its appeal to public virtues and the public good, to define itself as being composed of a virtuous and even noble people. The liberal class was permitted a place within a capitalist democracy because it also vigorously discredited radicals within American society who openly defied the excesses of corporate capitalism and who denounced a political system run by and on behalf of corporations. The real enemy of the liberal class has never been Glenn Beck, but Noam Chomsky.

The purging and silencing of independent and radical thinkers as well as iconoclasts have robbed the liberal class of vitality. The liberal class has cut itself off from the roots of creative and bold thought, from those forces and thinkers who could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with the power elite. Liberals exude a tepid idealism utterly divorced from daily life. And this is why every television clip of Barack Obama is so palpably pathetic.

...

The liberal class no longer holds within its ranks those who have the moral autonomy or physical courage to defy the power elite. The rebels, from Chomsky to Sheldon Wolin to Ralph Nader, have been marginalized, shut out of the national debate and expelled from liberal institutions. The liberal class lacks members with the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies. It offers no ideological alternatives. It remains bound to a Democratic Party that has betrayed every basic liberal principle including universal healthcare, an end to our permanent war economy, a robust system of public education, a vigorous defense of civil liberties, job creation, the right to unionize and welfare for the poor.

...

The liberal class is finished. Neither it nor its representatives will provide the leadership or resistance to halt our slide toward despotism. The liberal class prefers comfort and privilege to confrontation. It will not halt the corporate assault or thwart the ascendancy of the corporate state. It will remain intolerant within its ranks of those who do. The liberal class now honors an unwritten quid pro quo, one set in place by Bill Clinton, to cravenly serve corporate interests in exchange for money, access and admittance into the halls of power. The press, the universities, the labor movement, the arts, the church and the Democratic Party, fearful of irrelevance and desperate to retain their positions within the corporate state, will accelerate their purges of those who speak the unspeakable, those who name what cannot be named. It is the gutless and bankrupt liberal class, even more than the bizarre collection of moral and intellectual trolls now running for office, who are our most perfidious opponents.

This "liberal class" - those in positions of power generally in or directly tied to the Democratic party who call themselves liberal- are not actually liberals since they don't believe in, support, or act on behalf of liberal values or policies. Words have meanings. I could go around calling myself an elephant, but my mere proclamation wouldn't make it so and anyone paying any attention would quickly catch on that what an elephant is and what I am are wholly incongruous.

In the same sense that there has been a legitimate backlash among genuine conservatives against the Republican party and its abandonment of many traditional and fundamental conservative ideas, there is a legitimate backlash going on for decades now among genuine leftists against the Democratic party for the same.

A bailout for corporations who raped the economy, a bailout for insurance companies and secret quid pro quo deals with the pharmaceutical and hospital industries disguised as "health care reform" that leaves the same corrupt corporate thieves in place and just funnels them money, a refusal to restore habeas corpus, not only the continuation but the escalation of foreign wars now in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and still in Iraq (the only place they scaled down, but are still very much active in combat despite the rhetoric), the lack of respect for civil rights seen in the refusal to repeal DOMA or DADT, the continued use of Guantanamo Bay and many more secret, lawless prisons throughout the world, the indication that counterproductive and senseless federal drug laws will be enforced even if and when citizens vote directly to repeal them, the constant invocation of State Secrets to hide any government wrongdoing even if it is not in any sense a state secret, and lack of transparency generally, the use of orders to assassinate American citizens far from any battlefield without due process, I could be here all night describing all of the policies actively pursued or enacted by the Democratic party that are simply anathema to liberal values, ideology, and goals.

Clinton is a corporatist, just like Obama who Axelrod represents, just like her husband was, just like most Democratic party politicians are. Yes, they proclaim themselves to be liberals or progressives to appeal (mostly but not always successfully) to the many people who consider themselves liberal but either don't know that the policies put forth by those politicians aren't liberal or those who don't care because they're actually Democrats and not liberals. But there's a simple lesson most people learn early on that applies here: don't trust what politicians say, watch what they do.

And what Democratic politicians do, what they advance, the vast, vast majority of them including the last two Democratic presidents, is not in any meaningful sense leftism. It's contradictory to the basic tenets of leftism in fact.

It may be "to the left" of what you like and support, but that's not the same thing. Lining up the primary policies associated with leftism and the policies enacted by Democrats would produce a vast disparity on most issues. I'm with you if you say the Democratic party sucks, but you're wrong if you think it's leftist.

Therefore, what the Democratic party does, the policies it enacts that then frequently fail, should have no effect on deciding to continue to be a leftist (and may even offer further support as a demonstration that non-leftist policies don't work) because they aren't a reflection of leftism. Again, it'd be like asking a libertarian why they're still libertarian after the Bush era or a Communist why they're a Communist considering North Korea - the two just aren't related.

1. "And I consider myself a leftist..."
Let's begin with the necessity for definition of terms...Leftist: socialist, syndicalist, progressive, liberal, fascist, nazi, commuist, statist, collectivist...pick your poison...now tell how you differ from the other eight. I see all as being totalist philosophies.

"How ironic that the way [H. G.] Wells refers to the fascists and Communists could apply to today&#8217;s liberals: &#8220;they embody the rule of a minority conceited enough to believe that they have a clue to the tangled incoherencies of human life, and need only sufficiently terrorize criticism and opposition to achieve a general happiness,&#8230;&#8221; And even more prescient, when we consider the current administration against the backdrop of Wells&#8217; criticism of Soviet Communism as central-planning with &#8220;police-state thuggery.&#8221;
&#8220;The Godfather of American Liberalism&#8221;
The Godfather of American Liberalism by Fred Siegel, City Journal Spring 2009

2. "... Bush's term wasn't particularly conservative .."
No argument here.

3. "Liberalism, progressivism, leftism, like conservatism or libertarianism, is an ideology that can be defined and demonstrated throughout history."
Let's begin our argument here.
First, the classical liberalism
a. Unlike classical liberalism, which saw government as a necessary evil, of simply a benign but voluntary social contract for free men to enter into willingly, the liberalism of which you speak was of the belief that the entire society was one organic whole left no room for those who didn&#8217;t want to behave, let alone &#8216;evolve.&#8217;

b. &#8220;The American intellectual class from the mid 19th century onward has disliked liberalism (which originally referred to individualism, private property, and limits on power) precisely because the [classical] liberal society has no overarching goal.&#8221; War Is the Health of the State

c. After the resounding rejection of Wilson's progressivism, the progressives changed their title to 'liberal.'
&#8220;Finally, Dewey arguably did more than any other reformer to repackage progressive social theory in a way that obscured just how radically its principles departed from those of the American founding."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n45566374/

4. Now, that "...throughout history..."part: this is only true if history begins with the French Revolution.
The Enlightenment gave impetus to the French Revolution, which was an attempt to cast off both the oppression of the monarchy, and of the Church.

a. In France, there was the development of an apparatus of ideological enforcement for &#8216;reason.&#8217; But rather than necessitate liberty, Edmund Burke was prescient enough to predict that &#8216;enlightened despotism&#8217; would be embodied in the general will, a formula for oppression as in &#8216;tyranny of popular opinion&#8217; or even &#8216;a dictatorship of the proletariat.&#8217;

b. Although attributed to Rousseau, it was Diderot who gave the model for totalitarianism of reason: &#8220;We must reason about all things,&#8221; and anyone who &#8216;refuses to seek out the truth&#8217; thereby renounces his human nature and &#8220;should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.&#8221; So, once &#8216;truth&#8217; is determined, anyone who doesn&#8217;t accept it was &#8220;either insane or wicked and morally evil.&#8221; It is not the individual who has the &#8220; right to decide about the nature of right and wrong,&#8221; but only &#8220;the human race,&#8221; expressed as the general will. Himmelfarb, &#8220;The Roads to Modernity,&#8221; p. 167-68

c. Robespierre used Rousseau&#8217;s call for a &#8220;reign of virtue,&#8217; proclaiming the Republic of Virtue, his euphemism for The Terror. In &#8216;The Social Contract&#8217; Rousseau advocated death for anyone who did not uphold the common values of the community: the totalitarian view of reshaping of humanity, echoed in communism, Nazism, progressivism. Robespierre: &#8220;the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.&#8221; Himmefarb, Ibid.

d. In this particular idea of the Enlightenment, the need to change human nature, and to eliminate customs and traditions, to remake established institutions, to do away with all inequalities in order to bring man closer to the state, which was the expression of the general will. Talmon, &#8220;Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,&#8221; p. 3-7


There are, according to Talmon, in "Totalitarian Democracy," three stages in the development of &#8220;totalitarian democracy&#8221; in the French Revolution. First, there was the Rousseauist intellectual background, which rejected all existing institutions as relics of despotism and clerical obscurantism, and which demanded a complete renovation of society so that it would be an expression of the General Will&#8212;this last being no mere consensus but an objective standard of virtue and reason that imperfect humanity must be coerced into obeying in order to enjoy a bonheur de médiocrité for which it was as yet ill-prepared.

Second, there was the Reign of Terror, when an &#8220;enlightened&#8221; vanguard of Jacobins undertook to impose the General Will&#8212;when Robespierre acted out his role as &#8220;the bloody hand of Rousseau,&#8221; as Heine called him.

Third, there was the post-Thermidorean conspiracy of Babeuf and his associates, which added to political messianism the doctrine of economic communism, thereby pointing the way to Marx. The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy, by J. L. Talmon

5. "The ideology behind leftism is not the same ideology as the Democratic party and the agenda of liberals is significantly different than the agenda of the Democratic party, in fact they're directly opposed."

Here are some of the more important aspects of all of those:
a. The Constitution is outdated and must be repolaced with a 'living Constituition.'

b. The collective, or the state is superior to the individual. There is no private property beyond the needs and wishes of the state.

c. The result of the correct governmental polices, laws, leaders will be a utopia on earth.

d. There is no aspect of the life of the citizen which is beyond the purview of the state.

6. "...disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced."
Absolute left-wing nonsense.
a. no one is barred from choices that will improve or destroy their lives.
b. corporations are public, and owned, almost entirely by ordinary folks:

&#8220;Exxon Mobil, in fact, is owned mostly by ordinary Americans. Mutual funds, index funds and pension funds (including union pension funds) own about 52 percent of Exxon Mobil&#8217;s shares. Individual shareholders, about two million or so, own almost all the rest. The pooh-bahs who run Exxon own less than 1 percent of the company.&#8221; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/business/02every.html

The rich folk pay almost all of the taxes, and those evil corporations?

In 2006, the oil industry paid $81 billion in income tax, and while Exxon&#8217;s earnings increased 89% from 2003 to 2007, their income taxes increased 170%. Exxon: Profit Pirate or Tax Victim?

. Exxon's tax bill breaks down like this: income taxes, $36.5 billion; sales-based taxes, $34.5 billion; "all other" taxes, $45.2 billion.&#8221; Exxon, Big Oil Profits Evil Only Until You Weigh Their Tax Bills - US News and World Report
If Exxon&#8217;s 2008 tax bill of $116.2 billion were split equally among all tax filers who pay income tax, each filer&#8217;s share would be $1,259/year. Still hate Exxon? The Tax Foundation - Number of Americans Paying Zero Federal Income Tax Grows to 43.4 Million


Friend Q, I hope you are at an early point in your journey through life, because you have so much to learn....

 

[daveman]

I'm amazed that people believe modern liberalism, i.e., statism, is the same thing as classical liberalism.

"But they're called the same word! They HAVE to be the same!"

 

[JakeStarkey]

Political Chic, your basic concept that all the terms are "totalist philosophies" is nonsense. Any one who thinks, after reading your comment about definitions, realizes that you will twist facts to fit your philosophy, instead of your philosophy to fit the facts, and as such will dismiss you as having anything worthy to say.

 

[Liberty]

I'm amazed that people believe modern liberalism, i.e., statism, is the same thing as classical liberalism.

"But they're called the same word! They HAVE to be the same!"

it's funnier when they turn around and say "MLK's type of republican isn't the type of republican today!"

They love having it both ways. Unfortunately for them they just sound dumb.

 

[JakeStarkey]

You, daveman, and Political Chic sound dumb, Liberty. All of you need to realize that words have meanings, and that you can't twist definitions to meet your philosophies. There will be no need to respond to either you or daveman again.