The founders idea of a political spectrum

[Mr.Fitnah]

Sorry that was your cheerleader who hates libertarians.
http://www.usmessageboard.com/2287216-post33.html
Yeah I got it you dont like the charts
Dont use them, and **** off.

 

[Kalam]

Sorry that was your cheerleader who hates libertarians.
http://www.usmessageboard.com/2287216-post33.html
Yeah I got it you dont like the charts
Dont use them, and **** off.

"The following can indicate a delusion:

1. The patient expresses an idea or belief with unusual persistence or force. (Adrian James Honan)

...

4. The individual tends to be humorless and oversensitive, especially about the belief. (John Parsons)

...

6. An attempt to contradict the belief is likely to arouse an inappropriately strong emotional reaction, often with irritability and hostility. (Matthew Ludgate)(Adrian James Honan)

...

8. The patient is emotionally over-invested in the idea and it overwhelms other elements of his or her psyche."​

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

YAK YAK YAK

for a while we felt something.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKk0eFiHYpg&feature=related]YouTube - Naked Lunch: Talking Asshole (William Burroughs)[/ame]

 

[JakeStarkey]

Mr. Fitnah and Kalam are delusional wacks one who believes in unregulated libertarianism with a religious emphasis (silly Cleon Skousen and John Birch Society trash) and one who believes it is OK to kill children and women in a cause.

Disgusting philosophies both of them, harmful to mankind and human progress.

Neither of them are more than shittenpuppies.

 

[Vast LWC]

Dang, who resurrected this partisan thread?

Fitnah, it was you, wasn't it?

 

[Foxfyre]

the typical inaccurate spectrum

A more accurate spectrum

I haven't read the whole thread and will do so which could cause me to change my comments here, but I'm sleepy and ready for bed.

But my initial response to the graph is that Facism is misplaced. It belongs at the other end and not to the right of conservatism. Libertarianism (Capital L) belongs to the right of conservatism. And then I saw the second graph that was done correctly.

And yes, that makes sense in one way, but I'm not sure that Libertarianism leaves the people as free to form the kind of society they wish to have as Conservatism does. So I think Libertarianism should be to the left of Conservatism.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

This thread is partisan nonsense. Anyone who think they can read the founder's minds and tell you what they would have thought is by definition FULL OF SHIT.

 

[Foxfyre]

Nobody has to read the Founders' minds. All we have to do is read what the Founders wrote.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Nobody has to read the Founders' minds. All we have to do is read what the Founders wrote.

Not quite, no. Subjectivity kinda ruins that argument.

 

[Foxfyre]

Nobody has to read the Founders' minds. All we have to do is read what the Founders wrote.

Not quite, no. Subjectivity kinda ruins that argument.

There wasn't a heck of a lot of subjectivity in the stuff they left for us to read. Nor was much of it ambiguous as to what they intended.

Now would they have drawn and labeled that graph as it is? No, because most of the words or formal political systems as we understand them now didn't exist in their day. But they saw very very well the flaws and pitfalls in each concept just the same.

 

[Vast LWC]

I haven't read the whole thread and will do so which could cause me to change my comments here, but I'm sleepy and ready for bed.

But my initial response to the graph is that Facism is misplaced. It belongs at the other end and not to the right of conservatism. Libertarianism (Capital L) belongs to the right of conservatism. And then I saw the second graph that was done correctly.

And yes, that makes sense in one way, but I'm not sure that Libertarianism leaves the people as free to form the kind of society they wish to have as Conservatism does. So I think Libertarianism should be to the left of Conservatism.

The chart doesn't work at all, and there's a simple explanation. They forgot the x-axis:

It's really simple once you add another dimension.

Trying to put it all on one axis is really just trying to make the world black and white, usually with your side as "the good guys".

 

[JakeStarkey]

Slavery, representation, women's equality, judicial review, separation of church and state, a national banking system, new territories - all of this plus more in the first 20 years. Yeah, subjectivity and ambiguity certainly characterized the Founders.

 

[Foxfyre]

I haven't read the whole thread and will do so which could cause me to change my comments here, but I'm sleepy and ready for bed.

But my initial response to the graph is that Facism is misplaced. It belongs at the other end and not to the right of conservatism. Libertarianism (Capital L) belongs to the right of conservatism. And then I saw the second graph that was done correctly.

And yes, that makes sense in one way, but I'm not sure that Libertarianism leaves the people as free to form the kind of society they wish to have as Conservatism does. So I think Libertarianism should be to the left of Conservatism.

The chart doesn't work at all, and there's a simple explanation. They forgot the x-axis:

It's really simple once you add another dimension.

Trying to put it all on one axis is really just trying to make the world black and white, usually with your side as "the good guys".

Any time you try to put a general concept into an absolute frame, as you point out, you run into immediate conflicts and problems.

I still prefer this definition (adapted and modified from Wiki) for the general concept of what Modern American Conservatism is:

Modern American Conservatism (MAC) is bascially Classical liberalism as understood by the Founding Fathers.

It is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

It is based on the simple principle that if the function of government is other than to secure and defend the unalienable rights of the people, no freedom is possible.

MACs promote strong national defense and necessary regulation to prevent the citiziens/states from doing violence to each other, but are otherwise suspicious of all but the most minimal government necessary to perform its Constitutional mandates and object to most of a federal welfare state.

So Nazism, Marxism, Facism, Socialism, Totalitarianism, Dictatorship, Monarchy, and/or any other political structure that uses an authoritarian government to enforce its tenets will be to the left of Conservatism as most modern American conservatives understand conservatism to be.

 

[Vast LWC]

Any time you try to put a general concept into an absolute frame, as you point out, you run into immediate conflicts and problems.

I still prefer this definition (adapted and modified from Wiki) for the general concept of what Modern American Conservatism is:

Modern American Conservatism (MAC) is bascially Classical liberalism as understood by the Founding Fathers.

It is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

It is based on the simple principle that if the function of government is other than to secure and defend the unalienable rights of the people, no freedom is possible.

MACs promote strong national defense and necessary regulation to prevent the citiziens/states from doing violence to each other, but are otherwise suspicious of all but the most minimal government necessary to perform its Constitutional mandates and object to most of a federal welfare state.

So Nazism, Marxism, Facism, Socialism, Totalitarianism, Dictatorship, Monarchy, and/or any other political structure that uses an authoritarian government to enforce its tenets will be to the left of Conservatism as most modern American conservatives understand conservatism to be.

That is actually the defintion of a Libertarian. If you believe the above, you are a Libertarian, not a "Conservative".

A "Conservative" believes in all of those things as it applies to economic concerns.

But on social issues, like Gay Marriage, Abortion, Freedom of Religion and Speech... Conservatives are in fact for more government regulation, not less.

And, as an extension of that tendency, Conservatives believe in spreading their moral beliefs through a strong military and world presence, which recently would include things like "spreading democracy" in Iraq.

 

[Vast LWC]

Any time you try to put a general concept into an absolute frame, as you point out, you run into immediate conflicts and problems.

I still prefer this definition (adapted and modified from Wiki) for the general concept of what Modern American Conservatism is:

Modern American Conservatism (MAC) is bascially Classical liberalism as understood by the Founding Fathers.

It is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

It is based on the simple principle that if the function of government is other than to secure and defend the unalienable rights of the people, no freedom is possible.

MACs promote strong national defense and necessary regulation to prevent the citiziens/states from doing violence to each other, but are otherwise suspicious of all but the most minimal government necessary to perform its Constitutional mandates and object to most of a federal welfare state.

So Nazism, Marxism, Facism, Socialism, Totalitarianism, Dictatorship, Monarchy, and/or any other political structure that uses an authoritarian government to enforce its tenets will be to the left of Conservatism as most modern American conservatives understand conservatism to be.

To the left of Conservatism, and to the right of Liberalism.

 

[Foxfyre]

Any time you try to put a general concept into an absolute frame, as you point out, you run into immediate conflicts and problems.

I still prefer this definition (adapted and modified from Wiki) for the general concept of what Modern American Conservatism is:

Modern American Conservatism (MAC) is bascially Classical liberalism as understood by the Founding Fathers.

It is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

It is based on the simple principle that if the function of government is other than to secure and defend the unalienable rights of the people, no freedom is possible.

MACs promote strong national defense and necessary regulation to prevent the citiziens/states from doing violence to each other, but are otherwise suspicious of all but the most minimal government necessary to perform its Constitutional mandates and object to most of a federal welfare state.

So Nazism, Marxism, Facism, Socialism, Totalitarianism, Dictatorship, Monarchy, and/or any other political structure that uses an authoritarian government to enforce its tenets will be to the left of Conservatism as most modern American conservatives understand conservatism to be.

To the left of Conservatism, and to the right of Liberalism.

I can accept that to a point, but modern American liberals do heavily promote government involvement in just about everything and want more and more resources and authority to be in the hand of the Federal government. The only areas they are right of those other leftwing groups is in that they don't want the government to have power to interfere with stuff they personally want to do.

 

[Vast LWC]

To the left of Conservatism, and to the right of Liberalism.

I can accept that to a point, but modern American liberals do heavily promote government involvement in just about everything and want more and more resources and authority to be in the hand of the Federal government. The only areas they are right of those other leftwing groups is in that they don't want the government to have power to interfere with stuff they personally want to do.

But only as far as economic issues are concerned.

When it comes to social issues, it is the Conservatives that want governmental control.

A fascist, or a Stalinist, desire BOTH moral and economic control.

Pretty much the only social issue that modern conservatives want less government control over is Guns, and that is only because they imagine they can use guns to help control the moral behavior of other people in their immediate environment.

 

[The T]

Makes total sense to me.

 

[Foxfyre]

To the left of Conservatism, and to the right of Liberalism.

I can accept that to a point, but modern American liberals do heavily promote government involvement in just about everything and want more and more resources and authority to be in the hand of the Federal government. The only areas they are right of those other leftwing groups is in that they don't want the government to have power to interfere with stuff they personally want to do.

But only as far as economic issues are concerned.

When it comes to social issues, it is the Conservatives that want governmental control.

A fascist, or a Stalinist, desire BOTH moral and economic control.

Pretty much the only social issue that modern conservatives want less government control over is Guns, and that is only because they imagine they can use guns to help control the moral behavior of other people in their immediate environment.

No, conservatives don't want the federal government managing social issues either.

Conservatives want the federal government to secure and defend our rights and then leave us alone to form whatever society we wish to form. So if the people of Podunk Junction don't want abortion clinics or strip clubs or drive up liquor windows or gambling casinos, they aren't required to have them. They can form whatever social contract they want and have the kind of society they want just so long as they don't trample on anybody's unalienable rights.

But if Center City down the road wants abortion clinics, strip clubs, drive up liquor windows, gambling casinos, or anything else they want, they can also form whatever social contract they want and have the kind of society they want just so they don't trample on anybody's unalienable rights.

That is how the Founders saw it. The Federal government would secure and defend everybody's rights with whatever laws and regulation was necessary to do that, but would otherwise stay out of it. Short of violating those rights or interfering with each other, the states, counties, and cities could form whatever kind of government and society they wanted to have.

 

[Vast LWC]

Examples of Conservative moral issues where they desire more governmental control:

*Harsher prison sentences.
*Stricter drug laws.
*Warrantless wiretapping.
*The Death Penalty.
*Illegal Immigration control.
*Pornography Laws.
*Language censorship in the media.

These are just some examples, I could go on.