Why Do So Few Admit To Being Liberals?

[PoliticalChic]

Welesa already made the list. He's a liberal labor organizer.

Now, you see, you just shot yourself in the foot...

Walesa is anti-Communist, so, by definition, not a liberal.

I guess that's what happens when you learn history from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You just make stuff up like that. Using your logic, since you seem to believe that everyone on the left is on the extreme left, then everyone on the right must be on the extreme right. Does that make all conservatives fascists?

Actually, the term 'fascist' comes from labor movements, and, historically, includes nazis, communists,and progressives, i.e. all of the totalist philosophies.

And, I learn history from a study of history. You'd do well to try same.

 

[Sallow]

Now, you see, you just shot yourself in the foot...

Walesa is anti-Communist, so, by definition, not a liberal.


And the strategy of trying to coalesce around various heros who are not liberal by careful analysis, you show the weakness of your argument.

And this might interest you:
"Today, in Chicago, anti-Communist hero Lech Walesa is headlining a Tea Party Rally. The Rally is in support of Republican Candidate for Governor Adam Andrzejewski. 20+ years ago an American President helped Lech take back his country. Today Lech returns the favor and helps us take back ours."
Friday Free-For-All: Walesa Edition - Big Government

Care to retract?

You're kidding right?

Liberals have been the most stauch anti-communists in history. Something about the implementation sucks. Usually they wind up being dictatorships or oligarchies.

See: Kennedy vs. Soviets.
See: LBJ vs. North Vietnam.

Although you have had tough competition, this is truly the most ignorant, falacious post in the thread....

rdeanie will be hard pressed to beat you to the bottom.

Being a Communist for much of the last century was not a theoretical matter. Communists working in Democratic administrations in the thirties, forties, and fifties, had a profound influence on which countries would fall under Communist control….The USSR ruined Eastern Europe, which was not exactly like East Timor. These were sophisticated countries. The Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe consisted of backwoods savages conquering sophisticated civilizations.

And the Democrats were rooting for the savages.

“On September 2, 1939, the day after the outbreak of war in Europe, Whittaker Chambers had told much of what he knew about Soviet espionage in the United States to Adolph Berle, Assistant Secretary of State and President’s Roosevelt’s advisor on internal security. Immediately afterwards, Berle drew up a memorandum for the President which listed Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and the other leading for whom Chambers acted as courier. One was a leading presidential aide, Lauchlin Currie….Roosevelt, however, was not interested. He seems to have dismissed the whole idea of espionage rings within his administration as absurd.” ‘The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archives, the History of the KGB,” by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin.p.107

Truman promoted known Soviet spies to positions of influence after having been warned they were Soviet spies. He denounced the investigation of Soviet spy Alger Hiss as a “red herring.” He responded to Winston Churchill’s historic Iron Curtain speech by inviting Stalin to come to America to give a rebuttal speech.

I'll assume that all of your posts pack as much knowledge and veracity as this one.
Dismissed.

Promoting conspiracy theories doesn't really count as sound debate either.

 

[JBeukema]

The greatest revolutionary changes of the 20th century were all the result of liberals.

Gandhi, Mandela, Walesa, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Havel just to name a few.

DMLKJ was no Liberal.

He was more of a democratic socialist or neo-progressive.

 

[JBeukema]

The greatest revolutionary changes of the 20th century were all the result of liberals.

Gandhi, Mandela, Walesa, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Havel just to name a few.

I'll see that and raise you Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, and Pope John Paul II

Really? Reagan?

 

[JBeukema]

Of course, you do realize that in today's political landscape, JFK would be a Republican, and would be pilloried by the left.

That's a time worn myth.

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."
Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party nomination (14 September 1960) TurnLeft:What is a Liberal?
John F. Kennedy - Wikiquote

Add in he was villified as a communist/catholic "manchurian" candidate by the Birchers, who are the equivalent of today's Tea Party.

The Birchers still exist

The John Birch Society

 

[JBeukema]

Walesa is anti-Communist, so, by definition, not a liberal.

Fail. Liberalism is at odds with Communism; they are antagonistic worldviews.

You'd know that if you knew what communism and liberalism are.

 

[JBeukema]

Now, you see, you just shot yourself in the foot...

Walesa is anti-Communist, so, by definition, not a liberal.


And the strategy of trying to coalesce around various heros who are not liberal by careful analysis, you show the weakness of your argument.

And this might interest you:
"Today, in Chicago, anti-Communist hero Lech Walesa is headlining a Tea Party Rally. The Rally is in support of Republican Candidate for Governor Adam Andrzejewski. 20+ years ago an American President helped Lech take back his country. Today Lech returns the favor and helps us take back ours."
Friday Free-For-All: Walesa Edition - Big Government

Care to retract?

You're kidding right?

Liberals have been the most stauch anti-communists in history. Something about the implementation sucks. Usually they wind up being dictatorships or oligarchies.

See: Kennedy vs. Soviets.
See: LBJ vs. North Vietnam.

Friedrich A. Hayek Literature Archive :: Mises Institute

Marx and Engels Internet Archive


contrast those and get back with us, PC

 

[PoliticalChic]

I think the reality is, there really aren't that many liberals. They are a true minority, albeit a very noisy minority...

And this is why most conservatives fight tooth and nail to restrict voting?

Yeppers..minority all right.

We can start by getting rid of the electoral college and see just who really are in the "minority".

Wow, just when it seems that you couldn't evince any more ignorance, you astound!

1.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter-identification law on Monday, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a “valid interest” in improving election procedures as well as deterring fraud.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/washington/28cnd-scotus.html

Now, here is the nonsense that you are willing to swallow,:

2.Democrats say the laws keep poor and elderly voters - meaning their voters - away from the polls because it's hard for those people to get photo IDs. But Republicans say such laws prevent voter fraud. The debate might explain why the voter-ID law in Indiana got all its "yes" votes from Republicans and all its "no" votes from Democrats.
Beer, Cigarettes and Voting: ID, Please : NPR


USAToday comes up with the usual Liberal Victimization Thesis:

“Voter ID laws raise ugly memories of poll taxes, literacy tests and other barriers once used to discourage blacks from voting. Critics contend that the laws are a thinly veiled effort to keep people without photo IDs — who tend to be poor, disabled or elderly, and tend to vote Democrat — away from the polls. Indiana's Marion County Board of Elections turned away at least 32 people in municipal elections last year for lack of photo ID.”
Editorials, Debates, and Opinions - USATODAY.com

And here...get ready!...is the truth:

3. Although liberal media support the old wives tale of GOP voter suppression by requiring identification, careful analysis shows a quite different reality:

“The findings of this analysis suggest that voter identification requirements, such as requiring non-photo and photo identification, have virtually no suppressive effect on reported voter turnout.

Controlling for factors that influence voter turn¬out, states with stricter voter identification laws largely do not have the claimed negative impact on voter turnout when compared to states with more lenient voter identification laws.

Based on the Eagleton Institute's findings, some members of the media have claimed that voter identification law suppress voter turnout, especially among minori¬ties.[80] Their conclusion is unfounded. When statis¬tically significant and negative relationships are found in our analysis, the effects are so small that the findings offer little policy significance.

More important, minority respondents in states that required photo identification are just as likely to report voting as are minority respon¬dents from states that only required voters to say their name.”

For a thorough statistical analysis of the effect of voter identification requirements:
New Analysis Shows Voter Identification Laws Do Not Reduce Turnout | The Heritage Foundation

 

[NYcarbineer]

[
JFK cut taxes. Democrats today want to repeal the tax cuts, which is effectively a tax increase, the exact opposite of what their supposed role model John F. Kennedy did.

Do you have any clue where the tax rates are today compared to the 1960's?

 

[JBeukema]

Now, you see, you just shot yourself in the foot...

Walesa is anti-Communist, so, by definition, not a liberal.

I guess that's what happens when you learn history from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You just make stuff up like that. Using your logic, since you seem to believe that everyone on the left is on the extreme left, then everyone on the right must be on the extreme right. Does that make all conservatives fascists?

Actually, the term 'fascist' comes from labor movements, and, historically, includes nazis, communists,and progressives, i.e. all of the totalist philosophies.

And, I learn history from a study of history. You'd do well to try same.

Actually Fascism goes right to Mussolini, who popularized it and took it as his own.


As for what it means:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

The reason many in the Labour movement have referred to this system as fascism- is because it is.


And that's how Republicans like it.
​

 

[Modbert]

DMLKJ was no Liberal.

He was more of a democratic socialist or neo-progressive.

Yeah. If he were still alive today, he'd be hated by the right on USMB for example instead of trying to be used as a figure for their cause as was seen as such when Glenn Beck had his little speech on the "I have a dream" anniversary.

 

[PoliticalChic]

As soon as I read 'liberal' and then 'progressive' and you thought they were the same, I knew you didn't have a clue what you're babbling about.

Is it history that is a problem for you, or reading, in general?

Clearly, you fail to understand that Wilson and the Progressives were so reviled by the American public, that John Dewey changed the name to 'liberal' to wrap the ugly political concept is the cloak of what he wished to be understood as: classical liberalism.

1. Wilson and the Progressives tried to make war socialism permanent, but the voters didn’t agree. They (Progressives) began to agree more and more with Bismarckian top-down socialism, and looked to Russia and Italy where ‘men of action’ were creating utopias. Also, John Dewey renamed Progressivism as ‘liberalism,’ which had referred to political and economic liberty, along the lines of John Locke and Adam Smith: maximum individual freedom under a minimalist state. Dewey changed the meaning to the Prussian meaning: alleviation of material and educational poverty, and the removal of old ideas and faiths. Classical liberals were more like what we call Conservatives.

2. “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. Like Ely and many of his fellow progressive academics, Dewey initially embraced the term "socialism" to describe his social theory. Only after realizing how damaging the name was to the socialist cause did he, like other progressives, begin to avoid it. In the early 1930s, accordingly, Dewey begged the Socialist party, of which he was a longtime member, to change its name. "The greatest handicap from which special measures favored by the Socialists suffer," Dewey declared, "is that they are advanced by the Socialist party as Socialism.”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n45566374/

3. “DEWEY'S influential 1935 tract, Liberalism and Social Action, should be read in light of this conclusion. In this essay, Dewey purportedly recounts the "history of liberalism." "Liberalism," he suggests, is a social theory defined by a commitment to certain "enduring," fundamental principles, such as liberty and individualism. After defining these principles in the progressives' terms--…” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_24_61/ai_n45566374/

 

[Modbert]

JFK cut taxes. Democrats today want to repeal the tax cuts, which is effectively a tax increase, the exact opposite of what their supposed role model John F. Kennedy did.

Well if that's the case, let's cut taxes to the level JFK cut them to.

 

[Sallow]

I think the reality is, there really aren't that many liberals. They are a true minority, albeit a very noisy minority...

And this is why most conservatives fight tooth and nail to restrict voting?

Yeppers..minority all right.

We can start by getting rid of the electoral college and see just who really are in the "minority".

Wow, just when it seems that you couldn't evince any more ignorance, you astound!

1.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter-identification law on Monday, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a “valid interest” in improving election procedures as well as deterring fraud.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/washington/28cnd-scotus.html

Now, here is the nonsense that you are willing to swallow,:

2.Democrats say the laws keep poor and elderly voters - meaning their voters - away from the polls because it's hard for those people to get photo IDs. But Republicans say such laws prevent voter fraud. The debate might explain why the voter-ID law in Indiana got all its "yes" votes from Republicans and all its "no" votes from Democrats.
Beer, Cigarettes and Voting: ID, Please : NPR


USAToday comes up with the usual Liberal Victimization Thesis:

“Voter ID laws raise ugly memories of poll taxes, literacy tests and other barriers once used to discourage blacks from voting. Critics contend that the laws are a thinly veiled effort to keep people without photo IDs — who tend to be poor, disabled or elderly, and tend to vote Democrat — away from the polls. Indiana's Marion County Board of Elections turned away at least 32 people in municipal elections last year for lack of photo ID.”
Editorials, Debates, and Opinions - USATODAY.com

And here...get ready!...is the truth:

3. Although liberal media support the old wives tale of GOP voter suppression by requiring identification, careful analysis shows a quite different reality:

“The findings of this analysis suggest that voter identification requirements, such as requiring non-photo and photo identification, have virtually no suppressive effect on reported voter turnout.

Controlling for factors that influence voter turn¬out, states with stricter voter identification laws largely do not have the claimed negative impact on voter turnout when compared to states with more lenient voter identification laws.

Based on the Eagleton Institute's findings, some members of the media have claimed that voter identification law suppress voter turnout, especially among minori¬ties.[80] Their conclusion is unfounded. When statis¬tically significant and negative relationships are found in our analysis, the effects are so small that the findings offer little policy significance.

More important, minority respondents in states that required photo identification are just as likely to report voting as are minority respon¬dents from states that only required voters to say their name.”

For a thorough statistical analysis of the effect of voter identification requirements:
New Analysis Shows Voter Identification Laws Do Not Reduce Turnout | The Heritage Foundation

What nonsense? Everything you point to are conservative attempts to squash votes and finally framed by the Heritage Foundation..no less.

In any case..seeing as this post completely skipped over the electoral college..I will pose this question.

Do you think the less then 700,000 residences' votes of Alaska should have close to the same weight as the votes of 19 million people in New York State?

 

[Sallow]

Actually, the term 'fascist' comes from labor movements, and, historically, includes nazis, communists,and progressives, i.e. all of the totalist philosophies.

And, I learn history from a study of history. You'd do well to try same.

This is an oxymoronic diatribe. And completely wrong.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I guess that's what happens when you learn history from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You just make stuff up like that. Using your logic, since you seem to believe that everyone on the left is on the extreme left, then everyone on the right must be on the extreme right. Does that make all conservatives fascists?

Actually, the term 'fascist' comes from labor movements, and, historically, includes nazis, communists,and progressives, i.e. all of the totalist philosophies.

And, I learn history from a study of history. You'd do well to try same.

Actually Fascism goes right to Mussolini, who popularized it and took it as his own.


As for what it means:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

The reason many in the Labour movement have referred to this system as fascism- is because it is.


And that's how Republicans like it.
​

Time to give you another history lesson?

It is Georges Sorel:

1. Georges Eugène Sorel (2 November 1847 in Cherbourg – 29 August 1922 in Boulogne-sur-Seine) was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. His notion of the power of myth in people's lives inspired Marxists and Fascists, it is, together with his defense of violence, the contribution for which he is most often remembered. Georges Sorel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. Mussolini incorporated the ideas of Sorel’s syndicalism to create his brand of fascism.
a. Syndicalism is similar to socialism but included violent, direction action.
b. Syndicalists believed in rule by revolutionary trade unions, from the French word ‘syndicat.’ The Italian word ‘fascio’ means bundle, but was commonly used as a synonym for unions.
c. Syndicalism proposed that society could be divided by professional sectors of the economy; this idea influenced FDR’s New Deal.

3. The propaganda of the New Deal (“malefactors of great wealth”) to the contrary, FDR imply endeavored to re-create the corporatism of the last war. The New Dealers invited one industry after another to write the codes under which they would be regulated. Even more aggressive, the National Recovery Administration forced industries to fix prices and in other ways to collude with one another: the NRA approved 557 basic and 189 supplementary codes, covering almost 95% of all industrial workers.
a. The intention was for big business to get bigger, and the little guy to be squeezed out: for example, the owners of the big chain movie houses wrote the codes that almost ran the independents out of business (even though 13,571 of the 18,321 movie theatres were independently owned). This in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘progress.’
b. New Deal bureaucrats studied Mussolini’s corporatism closely. From “Fortune” magazine: ‘The Corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt.’(July 1934)


I hope you appreciate the education that you are getting here.

You're welcome.

 

[AllieBaba]

For the same reason why Most Democrats will not admit to supporting their Agenda Items in Congress the last 2 years.

Because it is EXTREMELY unpopular to admit to.

What agenda would liberals be ashambed to admit to? And what agenda would the republicans be ashambed to admit to (for another thread)? Judging the 8 year blitz & 2 year Obama records, who should be ashambed for not helping the American taxpayer?? When you put into the light, I see nothing a liberal should be ashambed of.

That's because, like a true liberal, you deny all the tenets of your liberalism and pretend the consequences of liberal actions have no negative effect.

8 year blitz, lol. How you can say that, given the last two years, with a straight face...that's classic liberalism.

 

[AllieBaba]

Actually, the term 'fascist' comes from labor movements, and, historically, includes nazis, communists,and progressives, i.e. all of the totalist philosophies.

And, I learn history from a study of history. You'd do well to try same.

This is an oxymoronic diatribe. And completely wrong.

No, it isn't. If it's wrong, prove it wrong.

You can't. We've been down this road oh, about a thousand times before on this board.

 

[Modbert]

What PC doesn't tell you about her last post in this thread is that she's quoting from Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism". Obviously, PC has no original thought of her own, having to rely on the so called thinking of hackneyed writers.

 

[Sallow]

Did a quick check..the Italian word for Union is Unione.

Union:
English definition | in French | in Spanish
in context | images
Listen: US - UK

Concise Oxford Paravia Italian Dictionary © 2003 Oxford University Press:
union /ˈjuːnɪən/
nome

(anche trade ~ ) unione f. sindacale, sindacato m.;
to join a ~ iscriversi a un sindacato
pol. associazione f. , unione f.
(uniting) unione f.;
(marriage) unione f. , matrimonio m.
(anche student ~ ) BE univ. (building) casa f. dello studente;
(organization) unione f. studentesca
nome proprio
Union
AE pol. Stati Uniti m.pl.;
AE stor. Unione f.
modificatore

[card] del sindacato;
[movement] sindacale.