berg80
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- Oct 28, 2017
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Here is an answer given by NYT columnist, Ezra Klein, to the question..........“Why are you a liberal and not a democratic socialist?”
I think it really depends what you mean by liberal and democratic socialist. Because those things mean different things in Europe, where there are deeper traditions of both.
And I think here the liberal democratic socialist and left dimensions overlap — but are different and are referred to as different by different people. I will say — let me try to do this in stages. I’m a liberal because I believe life is fundamentally unfair. I believe both life is fundamentally unfair, and I believe we deserve partial credit at best for how we do in it.
Not our fault that we were born to poorer parents. Not our fault we were born with dyslexia or without the iron will somebody else might have had. And also, on the other side of that, often not our fault that we were such hard workers, that our particular mix of intelligence and capacity was the right fit for the society we were in at the right time, and we had the resources or good luck to take advantage of it.
I am very well suited to a society that highly values abstract communication and not that well suited to a society that requires you to know where you’re going or to work a lot with your hands.
www.nytimes.com
I have two friends in particular who have been very successful in life, financially speaking. I've known one since 1st grade and the other since I was 17. One is the definition of a "self made man," having come from a very modest background who became a multi-millionaire. They are both fine people I'm proud to call my friends and both are Repubs (they didn't start out that way). One voted for trump this time around, the other wrote in Nikki Haley.
Perhaps not coincidently, they have the same blind spot. They attribute their success exclusively to hard work. To be sure they have worked hard. But they had unmistakable advantages as well. Both are white men, both grew up in MA where opportunities abounded, both came from stable families with solid role models, both are highly intelligent, both were born with a drive to succeed.
When I saw Michael Moore's, "Capitalism; A Love Story," I was struck by some of the people he interviewed living in European countries (I can't remember which ones). I found the way they spoke about their less fortunate, fellow citizens verged on familial. They displayed, to me, what I considered extraordinary generosity of spirit as someone who has lived his life in a very different culture. Which is not to say Americans are not generous in their own way. But it's a different mindset.
So.........do people who are less fortunate deserve the support of their fellow citizens as Klein implies? Is a difference of opinion on that subject the fundamental reason some of us are liberals and some are conservatives?
I think it really depends what you mean by liberal and democratic socialist. Because those things mean different things in Europe, where there are deeper traditions of both.
And I think here the liberal democratic socialist and left dimensions overlap — but are different and are referred to as different by different people. I will say — let me try to do this in stages. I’m a liberal because I believe life is fundamentally unfair. I believe both life is fundamentally unfair, and I believe we deserve partial credit at best for how we do in it.
Not our fault that we were born to poorer parents. Not our fault we were born with dyslexia or without the iron will somebody else might have had. And also, on the other side of that, often not our fault that we were such hard workers, that our particular mix of intelligence and capacity was the right fit for the society we were in at the right time, and we had the resources or good luck to take advantage of it.
I am very well suited to a society that highly values abstract communication and not that well suited to a society that requires you to know where you’re going or to work a lot with your hands.
Opinion | What I’m Thinking at the End of 2024
Ezra Klein answers listener questions about fatherhood, ‘normalizing’ Trump and his outlook on 2025.
I have two friends in particular who have been very successful in life, financially speaking. I've known one since 1st grade and the other since I was 17. One is the definition of a "self made man," having come from a very modest background who became a multi-millionaire. They are both fine people I'm proud to call my friends and both are Repubs (they didn't start out that way). One voted for trump this time around, the other wrote in Nikki Haley.
Perhaps not coincidently, they have the same blind spot. They attribute their success exclusively to hard work. To be sure they have worked hard. But they had unmistakable advantages as well. Both are white men, both grew up in MA where opportunities abounded, both came from stable families with solid role models, both are highly intelligent, both were born with a drive to succeed.
When I saw Michael Moore's, "Capitalism; A Love Story," I was struck by some of the people he interviewed living in European countries (I can't remember which ones). I found the way they spoke about their less fortunate, fellow citizens verged on familial. They displayed, to me, what I considered extraordinary generosity of spirit as someone who has lived his life in a very different culture. Which is not to say Americans are not generous in their own way. But it's a different mindset.
So.........do people who are less fortunate deserve the support of their fellow citizens as Klein implies? Is a difference of opinion on that subject the fundamental reason some of us are liberals and some are conservatives?
