The End of Liberalism

[geauxtohell]

Why do I doubt that a political mentality that has been around for hundreds of years is going to suddenly cease to exist?

 

[NYcarbineer]

I'm not convinced it was a regional/geographical issue. It may have had some elements to it, but largely, I think it was ideology and party affiliation.

And why did the bi-partisan group that opposed civil rights legislation in the 50's and 60's call itself the CONSERVATIVE COALITION?

...again...

The could have called themselves the Kumquat Brigade. That wouldn't make them all Kumquats. Racism is devoid of party affiliation. But it is odd that the strongest racists now seem to be professing liberalism.

So the CONSERVATIVES, who called themselves CONSERVATIVES, who opposed civil rights legislation in the 50's and 60's, weren't conservatives? That's funny.

Still waiting for you to tell us who in the DNC is currently in the KKK. And waiting.

 

[amrchaos]

If liberals did not hate Insurance companies so much, there would be a very constructive method towards psuedo-UHC. (covers everyone at poverty and near poverty levels, allow middle class to opt in if they wish, exclude the upper middle class/wealthy except in cases of "majority of wealth in illiquid assets" situations. I have such a case and damn it, it hurts when you ar unemployed!!)

Contract out the lower class insurance coverage to the Private insurance providers, let government cover catastrophic care. OR, in short, EXPAND MEDICARE You damn idiot Democrats!! That was the simplest and easiest and least political testing methods of Health Care reform.


I swear, liberal politicians could mess up a dumpster if you leave them in it!!

 

[NYcarbineer]

We have not had at times the type of regulation of capitalism that has been needed since the 1880s. Otherwise, we would not have had the horrible experiences of 1893, 1929, 2007.

The Panic of 1893 was the result of bad economic policy coupled with no regulation. In this we agree. It helped bring about some reforms to the banking and finance system.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was ultimately brought about by holes in safe trading practices that brought about the stronger regulations that went, without problem till 2007.

The current financial collapse more accurately set in 2008 to present was brought about by rampant corruption and collusion between government regulators and greedy profiteers and exacerbated by horrid governmental policies that have interfered with proper market function... aka OVER-regulation and inconsistent application thereof.

You try but you fail to blame the Free Market for the machinations of bad government. How're those sweetheart loans going for Chris Dodd and Barney Fwank? Jamie Gorelick profiteer much from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Corruption in government? Nooooooo... couldn't be. Goldman Sachs being too close to the government causing conflicts of interest? Preposterous! Never happen >cough< Bear Stearns >cough<

It was OVER-regulation that caused banks to under-capitalize, over-leverage, and take too much risk?

lol

 

[PoliticalChic]

Political Chic, marxism and fascism were horrible. But your red herring stinks. Regulation of free market forces is neither marxism or facism, and the lack of such regulation harms the working family and the cultural structure of our society. Why do you avoid that truth?

You seem to feel that with the phrase 'red herring' you have latched onto some sort of anodyne to counter the facts that I have provided re: capitalism vs. socialism.

You have not.

Here is the operative phrase that I provided earlier:
"...Under capitalism, the standard of living of all was improving: prices falling, incomes rising, health and sanitation improving, lengthening of life spans, diets becoming more varied, the new jobs created in industry paid more than most could make in agriculture, housing improved, and middle class industrialists and business owners displaced nobility and gentry as heroes."

Ignore it as you will, it's truth is undeniable.

And the best you can come up with is to use the phrase 'red herring' to obfuscate.

I need better competition.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Political Chic draws a red herring with any reference to the atrocities of fascism and Marxism while ignoring the very real fact that unregulated capitalism has led at times to the terrible degradation of the working and poor classes in society. She draws a false comparssion to avoid recognizing the terrible atrocities produced by unregulated capitalism throughout the world since the 2nd Industrial Revolution.
Marxism and unregulated free market forces are both the enemies of mankind. Any good Republican recognizes this fact.

I have as one of my hobbies, reading. You must try it some time.

And a book that I am adding to my 'wishlist' is Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era, by Jean-Francois Revel, (Encounter, 300 pp., $23.95)

From a review of same:
'Revel tried to explain this utopian yearning through Rousseau’s influential doctrine: man was inherently good, society bad. Therefore, as Rousseau had it, reforming society—starting with the suppression of private property—would allow man’s fundamentally good nature to shine forth. Another source of the utopian fantasy, he believed, came from the European Catholic canon: good intentions count most.

He wondered why educated scholars would elevate utopian fantasy above reality? The failures of the Soviet Union, its mass cruelties, had been known in the West since the 1930s: André Gide had denounced them in his book, Return from the USSR. Scholars and journalists in the West did not need to wait for Solzhenitsyn to learn about the existence of the Gulag. Yet these truths had little consequence. Leftist intellectuals rationalized any bad news by explaining that the Soviet Union did not practice “real socialism.”'

I'm guessing that I'll probably read it before you do.

Isn't the European Union socialist? Why try to pretend that the now defunct Soviet Union is the be-all end-all one and only example of socialism?

 

[Big Fitz]

We have not had at times the type of regulation of capitalism that has been needed since the 1880s. Otherwise, we would not have had the horrible experiences of 1893, 1929, 2007.

The Panic of 1893 was the result of bad economic policy coupled with no regulation. In this we agree. It helped bring about some reforms to the banking and finance system.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was ultimately brought about by holes in safe trading practices that brought about the stronger regulations that went, without problem till 2007.

The current financial collapse more accurately set in 2008 to present was brought about by rampant corruption and collusion between government regulators and greedy profiteers and exacerbated by horrid governmental policies that have interfered with proper market function... aka OVER-regulation and inconsistent application thereof.

You try but you fail to blame the Free Market for the machinations of bad government. How're those sweetheart loans going for Chris Dodd and Barney Fwank? Jamie Gorelick profiteer much from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Corruption in government? Nooooooo... couldn't be. Goldman Sachs being too close to the government causing conflicts of interest? Preposterous! Never happen >cough< Bear Stearns >cough<

It was OVER-regulation that caused banks to under-capitalize, over-leverage, and take too much risk?

lol

Yep. When Freddie and Fannie guaranteed bad loans they effectively took away the risk, thereby encouraging the moral hazard. If you had not both guaranteed the loans, AND demanded they be given to those unable to pay them back you essentially took the bankers off the hook and put the tax payer on it. Combine this by allowing the resale of risky derivatives, creating a phantom investment market that was all but unregulated or ignored by regulators as dangerous (because EVERYBODY was making tons of dough on illusion) you all but guaranteed this disaster with the toxic investment mix.

Now to make matters worse, bail out the insolvent so nobody can be sure how truly bad off companies are, making them even riskier investments. Then sit there and bitch that nobody's lending the money because you're waiting with a hammer to go after the first person who screws up. This is nothing but whipping the horse in it's stall for not pulling the carriage.

You must end the bailouts, enforce all the rules you have in place and get rid of business persecution in government. Punish bad behavior, de-incentivize risky investment and shut down government 'insurance' of loans for investments.

It astounds me how ignorant many people are on the connectivity of actions and consequences of 'good intentions' can lead to disaster. Then they demand safe harbor when they are to blame because their 'heart was in the right place'.

 

[Big Fitz]

And why did the bi-partisan group that opposed civil rights legislation in the 50's and 60's call itself the CONSERVATIVE COALITION?

...again...

The could have called themselves the Kumquat Brigade. That wouldn't make them all Kumquats. Racism is devoid of party affiliation. But it is odd that the strongest racists now seem to be professing liberalism.

So the CONSERVATIVES, who called themselves CONSERVATIVES, who opposed civil rights legislation in the 50's and 60's, weren't conservatives? That's funny.

Still waiting for you to tell us who in the DNC is currently in the KKK. And waiting.

play semantic games on your own damn time. These games got old on Hannity too.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Political Chic draws a red herring with any reference to the atrocities of fascism and Marxism while ignoring the very real fact that unregulated capitalism has led at times to the terrible degradation of the working and poor classes in society. She draws a false comparssion to avoid recognizing the terrible atrocities produced by unregulated capitalism throughout the world since the 2nd Industrial Revolution.
Marxism and unregulated free market forces are both the enemies of mankind. Any good Republican recognizes this fact.

I have as one of my hobbies, reading. You must try it some time.

And a book that I am adding to my 'wishlist' is Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era, by Jean-Francois Revel, (Encounter, 300 pp., $23.95)

From a review of same:
'Revel tried to explain this utopian yearning through Rousseau’s influential doctrine: man was inherently good, society bad. Therefore, as Rousseau had it, reforming society—starting with the suppression of private property—would allow man’s fundamentally good nature to shine forth. Another source of the utopian fantasy, he believed, came from the European Catholic canon: good intentions count most.

He wondered why educated scholars would elevate utopian fantasy above reality? The failures of the Soviet Union, its mass cruelties, had been known in the West since the 1930s: André Gide had denounced them in his book, Return from the USSR. Scholars and journalists in the West did not need to wait for Solzhenitsyn to learn about the existence of the Gulag. Yet these truths had little consequence. Leftist intellectuals rationalized any bad news by explaining that the Soviet Union did not practice “real socialism.”'

I'm guessing that I'll probably read it before you do.

Isn't the European Union socialist? Why try to pretend that the now defunct Soviet Union is the be-all end-all one and only example of socialism?

Why would you suggest that I am 'pretending' anything?

Why not simply make your point, defend it, and deal with the back and forth. Wouldn't that be the adult way?

As to the EU, yes, more socialist than the US...temporarily. So?

Obviously there are levels of socialism, and different forms. The same for capitalism, as US capitalism, as compared to the excesses of, say Kuomintang China.

But we are I believe, taking the historical and general examples of both and comparing the results.

Nicht wahr?

 

[&#9773;proletarian&#9773;]

a book that I am adding to my 'wishlist' is Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era, by Jean-Francois Revel, (Encounter, 300 pp., $23.95)

Did you add that before or after I got here?

The USSR wasn't communist, btw, and the Bolsheviks weren't Marxists

Blanquism =/= Marxism

Classical Marxism distinguishes between “Marxism” as broadly perceived, and “what Marx believed”; thus, in 1883, Marx wrote to the French labour leader Jules Guesde and to Paul Lafargue (Marx’s son-in-law) — both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles — accusing them of “revolutionary phrase-mongering” and of denying the value of reformist struggle; from which derives the paraphrase: “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”.[4] To wit, the US Marx scholar Hal Draper remarked, “there are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike”.[5]

"All I know is that I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx, on the wide use of his name by people who've never read his works

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your analysis is off for 1929 to an extent. But regulation of trading practices, particularly on the Market, would have softened much of the blow. The horrors of 2008 were created by unregulated greed in the private sectors and corruption in the government sectors. We need stronger, more transparent regulation, is the answer.

 

[PoliticalChic]

a book that I am adding to my 'wishlist' is Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era, by Jean-Francois Revel, (Encounter, 300 pp., $23.95)

Did you add that before or after I got here?

The USSR wasn't communist, btw, and the Bolsheviks weren't Marxists

Blanquism =/= Marxism

"All I know is that I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx, on the wide use of his name by people who've never read his works

I see that you have carefully studied and assiduously enforce the 'Liberal Libretto."

And you will receive full credit for the use of Rule #7, at least a version of 7e:


7. Never, never criticize in any way any government or movement that is totalitarian, homicidal or anti-American.
a. Claim to idolize despots and tyrants. But always state how their people love them.
b. The corollary applies: never support traditional American values. Important terms: imperialist, oppressor
c. Deny atrocities by tyrants. If not possible, explain they were necessary. Finally, justify them, and, show how America was ultimately at fault.
d. Support government officials and appointees.
I. This does not apply to uniformed government employees such as police or military.
e. When endorsing a plan that has clearly failed in the past, it is entirely appropriate to maintain a cognitive disconnection from the failures, by claiming:
1. it wasn’t tried long enough
2. enough money wasn’t provided
3. or, the ever-popular: “It’s different this time.”


Your bonus:
[youtube]<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fCFibtD3H_k&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/fCFibtD3H_k&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/youtube]

 

[geauxtohell]

The country is more liberal than it was 20 years, 40 years ago, 80 years ago, 200 years ago. It will be more liberal 20 years from now. Progress always wins eventually.

And that is the bottom line. Society always trends towards progress and permissiveness.

It was once considered "liberal" to allow women to vote. Now "conservatives" don't even consider woman's suffrage as an issue (and would be appalled if anyone suggested that women lose their right to vote).

Progress is the natural state of things. You just have to have a memory that can go past one to two decades to realize it.

 

[&#9773;proletarian&#9773;]

Is PC always such a liar. I have never defended the Soviets or any other totalitarian regime. If I loved authoritarian police states with no respect for human rights, I'd have voted for Bush Nor have I ever denied any atrocities committed by the USSR or anyone else.

That you feel the need to insult me for calling you out on your ignorance of Marxism stands as evidence that everthing I have said is correct.

For the record, I prefer

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovAfRU2oF8g[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoQnuD_ONdw[/ame]

 

[geauxtohell]

7. Never, never criticize in any way any government or movement that is totalitarian, homicidal or anti-American.

1939-1965: Armed resistance to Franco | libcom.org

 

[PoliticalChic]

Is PC always such a liar. I have never defended the Soviets or any other totalitarian regime. If I loved authoritarian police states with no respect for human rights, I'd have voted for Bush Nor have I ever denied any atrocities committed by the USSR or anyone else.

That you feel the need to insult me for calling you out on your ignorance of Marxism stands as evidence that everthing I have said is correct.

For the record, I prefer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovAfRU2oF8g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoQnuD_ONdw

Regularly, one finds that the use of the pejorative term 'lie' is the hallmark of the left.


One totalist doctrine is the same as another.

As in:
" “[The] relationship [between communism and Nazism] may never be fully understood. But the Russian Red Terror, in its emphasis on the elimination of entire classes of peoples, in its description of opponents as "vermin" to be exterminated, does seem like a precursor of the German concentration camps. Moreover, Nazism profited greatly not only from Lenin's and Stalin's Gulag system--Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, solicited reports about the operations of Soviet camps--but also from Bolshevism itself, which served as both a whipping boy and, at times, a political idea that could be collaborated with. The two ideologies validated each other.

After World War II, the prestige of the Soviet Union was at its height. The country had fought on the side of the democracies, U.S. war propaganda had painted pipesmoking "Uncle Joe Stalin" as a friendly fellow. In Europe, communists made a comeback in France, Italy and Germany with the flowering of the myth that communists were merely heroic anti-fascist freedom fighters. Thus the gruesome Soviet record was suppressed.

After the halo wore off the Soviet Union, China emerged as a new beacon for credulous Westerners. Mr. Margolin writes that "one myth was common in the West: the idea that China was far from being a model democracy, but that at least Mao had managed to give a bowl of rice to every Chinese person." In fact, nothing was further than the truth. Mao, like Stalin deliberately engineered a famine that killed untold millions.”
WALL STREET JOURNAL MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1999


Or is that a lie?

 

[JakeStarkey]

Your OP does not stand up to history, PC.

Corporatists, facists, and marxists are all about power over common people, not empowering common people. Fascists made the trains run on time and industrialized mass murder on the factory line using modern management practices. Capitalism potentially has the capacity to be as much a beast as the others when unregulated, and it has produced horrendous depressions and recessions on the American working people.

 

[&#9773;proletarian&#9773;]

Awesome, you're shown to be a liar and you change the subject to the NAZIS and the Chinese oligarchy which took root after Mao chased the foreigners and the Kuomintang out of China.

No wonder we take you so seriously

 

[geauxtohell]

Awesome, you're shown to be a liar and you change the subject to the NAZIS and the Chinese oligarchy which took root after Mao chased the foreigners and the Kuomintang out of China.

No wonder we take you so seriously

Hey man, don't talk to Elisha Cuthbert that way!

 

[PoliticalChic]

Awesome, you're shown to be a liar and you change the subject to the NAZIS and the Chinese oligarchy which took root after Mao chased the foreigners and the Kuomintang out of China.

No wonder we take you so seriously

The problem is with your comprehension, not my post.

The post, if I must spoon feed you, is an indication of the correspondence of all totalist viewpoints.

Sorry you didn't understand the first time.

"No wonder we ..."
A clear indication of the fear of being alone.

Did you interview every one of the board members? Or is this "reporting" on the level of elementary-school gossip: "Everyone hates you"?

The joke is....you.