Liberals, Conservatives

persons who are not liberals (and therefor don't share their opinions on how things need to be run) think being a liberal is a bad thing. like how if you're not a conservative, calling someone else a conservative has just the same effect. actually there are more active (politically) conservatives than liberals, so the norm is not with the liberals.

conservative

\Con*serv"a*tive\, a. [Cf. F. conservatif.] 1. Having power to preserve in a safe of entire state, or from loss, waste, or injury; preservative

like a fetal pig in a jar of formaldehyde!

Most people are Liberal. They don't vote, of course, so it doesn't much matter.

so, you could be a conservative liberal if you wanted. I'm not a bigot, but I'm more "conservative" on some issues, and more "liberal" on others.

Of course, that's what most presidents have been lately. They're so moderate on their respective views, there's hardly any distinguishing between republican and democrat in higher levels of office.

[QUOTE=Ozymandias]Most people are Liberal. They don't vote, of course, so it doesn't much matter.[/QUOTE]

true true.

[QUOTE=ireLocus]so, you could be a conservative liberal if you wanted. I'm not a bigot, but I'm more "conservative" on some issues, and more "liberal" on others.

Of course, that's what most presidents have been lately. They're so moderate on their respective views, there's hardly any distinguishing between republican and democrat in higher levels of office.[/QUOTE]
you can be a conservative liberal, or a liberal conservative. both are nouns and adjectives, depending on how you use them in context.

[QUOTE=lofivinyl]conservative

\Con*serv"a*tive\, a. [Cf. F. conservatif.] 1. Having power to preserve in a safe of entire state, or from loss, waste, or injury; preservative

like a fetal pig in a jar of formaldehyde![/QUOTE]
bush's brain?

I'm a 'liberal' as the term was understood in the late 19th/early 20th Century. Which makes me something of a reactionary in modern parlance.

The semantics of liberal vs. conservative is nonsense in the political mainstream because both the Depublicans and the Republocrats want a big, invasive, central government. They differ slightly in what they want to be total control freaks about, though they govern in very similar ways. Bill Clinton didn't let up on the drug war or cut defense spending, and neither Bushes have done much in the way of deregulation.

I love the old bit from a British comedy troup in the 60's explaining the similarities between Great Britain's government and America's. "You've got a two houses of Congress to match the two houses of Parliament, a President that is roughly the same thing as a Prime Minister. Then you've got the two party system. Americans have the Republican Party which is basically the same thing as our Conservative Party. On the other hand, they've got the Democratic Party which is the same as our Conservative Party."

I wish I could remember the name of the comedy troup. I think it had Dudley Moore in it, some of his first work.

I hate how there's only two choices: liberal or conservative. pick sides now, people. you're either with us, or against us.

my roommate's friends are lesbian christians, so where exactly do they fall?

i have a non-capitalist leaning, but that doesn't make me a liberal, you know. like i don't think women should vote and blacks should only be counted as 2/3 of a person...

[QUOTE=lofivinyl]conservative

\Con*serv"a*tive\, a. [Cf. F. conservatif.] 1. Having power to preserve in a safe of entire state, or from loss, waste, or injury; preservative

like a fetal pig in a jar of formaldehyde![/QUOTE]

Great. Now I have to switch parties.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]I hate how there's only two choices: liberal or conservative. pick sides now, people. you're either with us, or against us.

my roommate's friends are lesbian christians, so where exactly do they fall?

i have a non-capitalist leaning, but that doesn't make me a liberal, you know. like i don't think women should vote and blacks should only be counted as 2/3 of a person...[/QUOTE]
There are those who blame extending the vote to women for the whole Prohibition disaster...

But you're right, I'm registered to vote as a Libertarian and generally vote that way, but I'm also anti-abortion (and not for religious reasons), and my party's national platform has included legal abortion going back to pre-Roe v Wade days.

And while I'm distrustful of Big Government, I'm not foolish enough to think that Big Business (or big anything) is benevolent. Probably not even benign.

And I'm not the biggest walking contradiction I know. Thinking for yourself leads to strange places. A good friend of mine is a hard-right Republican vegetarian Jew. His wife was career military and is a Christian anarchist.

Personally, I blame Wyoming for killing our country's future by letting women speak up. Goddamn Wyoming...

Anyways, I'm against abortion on principal, but I'm not against abortion 100% all the time, like if the mother's sure to die or say she was raped. And I think the morning after pill should be handed out like candy. The problem I have with abortion is mostly that it's so goddamn easy for people, they don't have to give any sort of second thought to what they're doing. People should know that if you're going to have sex, there's the chance you're going to have to pay for it, whether its a disease or pregnancy (some say one and the same. not me, of course...). But people respond 'well, what if the condom broke?' Well, fucking sucks, huh? The only way to prevent pregnancy 100% is to not have sex, so if you have sex and get pregnant, put up with it for 9 months, give birth, put the kid up for adoption, then think better next time, m'kay?

I'm also pro-death penalty. I'm for taking away a lot of weapons like automatic rifles and whatnot, those should all be illegal. you don't need a goddamn bazooka to hunt with, or to protect your family, which are the only two reasons you should own a gun. maybe aruge about collecting, but that's something seperate.

i'm for prostitution, gambling and drug use, which are, i think, all liberal standpoints, but i'm also for drilling for oil in alaska, which is definitely not a liberal point of view.

i just can't say that i'm associated with any particular party. i have no clue who i'm voting for this year.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]Personally, I blame Wyoming for killing our country's future by letting women speak up. Goddamn Wyoming...

Anyways, I'm against abortion on principal, but I'm not against abortion 100% all the time, like if the mother's sure to die or say she was raped. And I think the morning after pill should be handed out like candy. The problem I have with abortion is mostly that it's so goddamn easy for people, they don't have to give any sort of second thought to what they're doing. People should know that if you're going to have sex, there's the chance you're going to have to pay for it, whether its a disease or pregnancy (some say one and the same. not me, of course...). But people respond 'well, what if the condom broke?' Well, fucking sucks, huh? The only way to prevent pregnancy 100% is to not have sex, so if you have sex and get pregnant, put up with it for 9 months, give birth, put the kid up for adoption, then think better next time, m'kay?

I'm also pro-death penalty. I'm for taking away a lot of weapons like automatic rifles and whatnot, those should all be illegal. you don't need a goddamn bazooka to hunt with, or to protect your family, which are the only two reasons you should own a gun. maybe aruge about collecting, but that's something seperate.

i'm for prostitution, gambling and drug use, which are, i think, all liberal standpoints, but i'm also for drilling for oil in alaska, which is definitely not a liberal point of view.

i just can't say that i'm associated with any particular party. i have no clue who i'm voting for this year.[/QUOTE]
As far as abortion goes, if the mother's life is actually in danger, that's a self-defense killing in my view and understandable from an ethical standpoint. That's not the reason for anything like a significant percentage of abortions. Rape as conception doesn't affect the humanity/innocence of the fetus. The one to kill is the rapist.

I'm in favor of the death penalty provided you've got thorough accountability and it's swift and terrible. Having 15 years of appeals and then executing the wrong people is not a deterrent. Bring out the DNA testing, etc., but the appeals process should be a couple months tops, then execution. Not lethal injection. Hanging, the electric chair, the gas chamber. When you make it clinical and clean, it's pointless. I'd extend it to child molesters and rapists. First offence.

I'm in favor of drilling in ANWAR, though I'm not in favor of entrusting the Federal Government to manage natural resources, I'd have no such thing as a state park.

Prostitution, gambling, drugs, these are crimes where the criminal is the victim. There's nothing the law can do to hookers, johns, addicts, that is even close to as bad as what they do to themselves. That's why laws don't deter people from the activities: they're gonna scratch the itch no matter what. All the drug war does is make prison a growth industry and promote spin-off crimes with artificially high prices for dope.

And as long as there's a sex drive and as long as people want the thrill of risk-taking, there is no way you're getting rid of prostitution and gambling. It's just too much fun.

That's one of the problems with the legal debates: neither a John Kerry nor a George Bush will defend a guy's right to own a bazooka, visit a prostitute, shoot heroin, bet his rent money on the river card, etc., on the basis that it's fun.

As far as weapons law goes, I'm of the mind that you're neglecting the most important reason the 2nd Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights: to protect those other rights. In the modern world, alas, there's no competition between the State and the people, not in the U.S. anyway. And since violent revolution so seldom yields a regime less oppressive than its predecessor, probably so much the better. I still like the idea that maybe Uncle Sam shouldn't have a monopoly on these things. And I don't see why a guy can't have a Thompson .45 or a mortar or whatever for fooling around with. I shoot skeet, but I've never assassinated a duck with a shot gun. Shooting guns is fun.

[QUOTE=Chixulub]As far as abortion goes, if the mother's life is actually in danger, that's a self-defense killing in my view and understandable from an ethical standpoint. That's not the reason for anything like a significant percentage of abortions. Rape as conception doesn't affect the humanity/innocence of the fetus. The one to kill is the rapist.I agree with you on the last sentence, and the majority of this thought. What I don't agree with is the humanity/innocence of the fetus bit. i'm saying it was not the woman's choice to get pregnant, so had no say in the matter, and therefore she has the right to end the pregnancy. if it was consentual sex, and she gets pregnant, then no. but its really not a strong no, though. more like, if she doesn't get the abortion taken care of in the first couple weeks, then no go. also, i think a woman should get manditory therapy if she goes in for a second abortion.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]I agree with you on the last sentence, and the majority of this thought. What I don't agree with is the humanity/innocence of the fetus bit. i'm saying it was not the woman's choice to get pregnant, so had no say in the matter, and therefore she has the right to end the pregnancy. if it was consentual sex, and she gets pregnant, then no. but its really not a strong no, though. more like, if she doesn't get the abortion taken care of in the first couple weeks, then no go. also, i think a woman should get manditory therapy if she goes in for a second abortion.[/QUOTE]

Whether it was the woman's choice to have sex or not, the fetus is still a human being, and has as much right as his/her mother to exist. It's not a warm fuzzy thing, it's about protecting a human life regardless of tangential tragedy.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]
90% agree with here. I'd make it, with the exception of murderers and republicans, it's a 2nd time thing. I mean, honestly, child molesters and rapists are the scum of the earth, but people can get treatment to get better. they're sick, they deserve punishment, but to be fried for a first offense, that's a little too tough for me.[/QUOTE]

The recidivism rate for sex offenders is too much of a risk for society. This is where I make the distinction between innocent life. Bugger a five year old boy, dope a college girl so you can use her as a fuck-doll, and as far as I'm concerned you suck as a human being and I'm not willing to take the chance you MIGHT be rehabilitated. I'm much more willing to make it known to others who might have those proclivities that the stakes are that high. Act on the impulse and don't be too surprised if you're hanged by year's end. That's a deterrent. If no one else is deterred, at least you know the rapest/molester in question is not going to recidivate.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]
If we didn't have goverment controling state parks, then we'd have no state parks. I'd hate to go visit yellowstone in five years and stay at a goddamn 17 story marriott.[/QUOTE]

I don't have a great deal of trust in corporations, really any group of people tends to be either an unruly mob or a dictatorship, both are pretty bad. It's a fallacy to believe that the State can do better than individuals at protecting natural resources.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]
Exactly: 'victimless' crimes shouldn't be crimes at all, and everyone should benefit from other people's addictions. if i'm addicted to jerking off, then someone is reaping the benefits somewhere. if i'm addicted to caffeine, someone's making a living off it. same should go for hookers and drugs, in my opinion.[/QUOTE]

They may not be truly 'victimless' crimes but they are at least self-inflicted wounds...

[QUOTE=alex cassun]
yes, but i'd like to see them goddamn injins pay their fair share (whoa) of taxes.[/QUOTE]

This is a common mistake people make: the problem is not that the Native Americans sometimes get out of certain taxes. The real problem is that anyone pays them.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]
People shouldn't have the right to own bazookas.[/QUOTE]

They do have the right to own bazookas, we just have a particularly oppressive government that violates that right, and a docile, fat, and complacent population that thinks its okay for only the government to own such equipment.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]
Shooting guns is fun, but I don't feel comfortable with the thought that my next door neighbor might have his hands on a grenade or a landmine because he might think it's fun. Same goes for an uzi, bazookas and assault rifles. The 2nd ammendment was put there because the government needed someone to carry guns and get shot at in case of a war. We have that now. They're called the Army. So, the only other reason we'd need guns is to protect our family and to hunt fuzzy animals. And when was the last time you hunted a fuzzy animal? There's no need to, because we can go buy them already hunted down at the grocery store. But I'm not arguing taking away guns because people have no need to hunt anymore. I'm just saying, if you're going to hunt something, hunt with a rifle or a shotgun. If you're going to protect yourself, buy a handgun or a rifle or a shotgun from an authorized dealer, there's no need to go out and buy anything more than that.[/QUOTE]

The thing that people miss, including a lot of the gun nuts, is that anything you own, a car, a house, a gun, a nuclear warhead, anything, adds to your responsibility level. You are accountable for what damage your car does to other people. Or your gun. In my view, just as we require liability insurance for autos, a sensible approach would be to require bonding or insurance on firearms, and the insurance agencies can figure out what sort of premium they have to charge on a given weapon. Weapons that are likely to cause large claims to be filed would be very expensive to insure. This might mean it would be more expensive to insurea snub-nose .38 than a .50 caliber belt-fed machine gun. Because the .38 is more likely to be used in a crime. The sort of hobbyist who would invest in a military type weapon is probably much less likely to use it inappropriately. Of course, one guy in shopping mall could run the rates up for all the others...

As far as the army having a monopoly on these things, the fundamental reason the 2nd Amendment is there is that the framers believed in the right of people to overthrow a repressive regime. Considering that the colonial tax rates & regulations they were bucking are minimal compared to what Washington exacts from us today, it's understandable that the central government is uncomfortable with that idea. But as I say, I'm not 100% comfortable with it just because the history of violent revolution has mostly been to replace a bad regime with a worse one. America was a bit of a fluke that way. Still, if Bill Gates wanted an F-14 and was willing to bond it against the potential damage he could do with it if he went off his nut and started firing missiles at a competing software company's headquarters, I'm okay with that. For that matter, I'm more comfortable with a nuclear missile owned by Warren Buffet than I am with one owned by Pakistan, Israel, North Korea or for that matter, the U.S. Government.

[QUOTE=Chixulub]Whether it was the woman's choice to have sex or not, the fetus is still a human being, and has as much right as his/her mother to exist. It's not a warm fuzzy thing, it's about protecting a human life regardless of tangential tragedy.
I'm not telling you you're wrong in your opinion here, I'm just not argumenting that life--anyone's life--is so precious as to have it protected at the expense of others. The woman was raped, became pregnant, and doesn't want the child. That should be her right. The only problem I see with having this the only viable option for abortion, of course, is that the amounts of reported rapes would skyrocket, and many innocent guys would be executed (under your idea below) falsely.

Yeah, except I can accept the possibility of a world in which the Government has to get its funding legitimately instead of by force/fraud. All people really have to do to make the John Nikes of the world powerless is not buy $2000 sneakers just because of a marketing campaign.

And hey, who has the biggest interest in protecting skyscrapers? The government? Or the corporations that own them?

It's all a matter of power, and I'm uncomfortable with concentrations of power. I like a really decentralized model. I used to live in Kansas City, Missouri, and their school district is utterly and perpetually fucked. It is also unfixable as long as it's budget is the better part of a billion dollars a year. That money translates into huge power for school board members, meaning that politicians run for school board, people with the Will to Power. Meanwhile little schools in metal buildings turn out well educated students in a safe environment for a song in terms of cost per student. Those schools aren't run by power freaks, they're run by parents and educators.

You mentioned the toll road scenario: what makes you think you pay less when you percolate it through a system that sends the money to Washington and then disperses it back out into Federal highway projects? And traffic congestion is a classic example of excess market demand for a commodity priced at zero. At least in terms of visible price, people think it's free so they use it without regard to whether the economic benefit outweights the cost. Privatize the roads and you'll cut down on the gross weight of typical cars, the miles driven, the foreign oil, etc.

For that matter, government as I'd define it, is the exercise of force or fraud against others. A mugger in an alley is a government of one over one. The Mafia is an alternate government with its protection rackets and so on. Viewed in its proper light, government is something that should be viewed like carbon monoxide or asbestos: something you don't want any more of than you have to have.

99% of the money in the country belongs to 1% of the people, or something like that. How can you get power more concentrated than that?

And yeah, I pay taxes so that we can fund highways that get conjested. But what happens when all roads are privately owned? The scenario in Jennifer Government wouldn't be far off. The major trucking companies would buy all the major roads and privatize them for shipping purposes only. Traffic gets worse, not better.

As far as schools go, I agree with you: throwing money at them doesn't make them better. It's how I view the army, as well. $400,000,000,000.00+ should be more than enough money for the military, but people are still calling for more spending. It's ridiculous.

I'm with you on the runaway military spending, we match the world combined on defense spending last I heard. As far as trucking companies buying all the roads, I doubt it. Companies do best when they specialize and there's nothing about being able to run Yellow/Roadway that would lend itself to running a highway company. They didn't buy the railroads when they went intermodal.

Private ownership of the roads is hard for a lot of people to grasp, but there's no reason to believe it wouldn't work at least as well as private ownership of telecommunications/internet bandwidth. The market does a pretty good job of matching supply with demand and finding a price where the provider makes money and the customer can handle the cost. Government is terrible at all those things.

I'm not sure you've got the wealth ratio accurate, I know that the mega-earners are conspicuous, but I also remember when Bill Clinton was talking about taxing the 'wealthiest Americans' and when pressed for a number, it turned out they were talking about households earning over $50,000 a year. There have been points in my life where that would have sounded like more money than I could spend, but having passed it, I can say that it doesn't take much to eat that up. What's fucked up is that we have a tax system so progressive that more than 50% of the population pays no income tax, and a lot of those nonpayers get an earned income tax credit. Thus any tax break is a break for the wealthiest 1/3 or so. You can't cut the taxes of someone who's not paying any.

As far as concentration of power goes, the economy is pretty dynamic as far as where people are on the spectrum. I saw a thing a few years back where census data indicated that something like half the bottom 1/5 of incomes moved up to a different quintile in a two year time frame and that the top 1/5 had downward motion over the same time. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are famous because they are so off the charts, and so much the exception to the rule.

And since the American Way tends to be spend more than you make, even those high income earners in six figure range often don't have any financial security long term. Something like 80% of households in the U.S. with net worths over $1 million are first generation, self made millionaire households, not inherited estates. The typical millionaire is a tightwad extraordinaire, an obsessive compulsive about financial security who just won't spend a dime they can get out of. I know one of these guys, when I asked him how he was able to retire into the winery business, I found out the only job he ever had was cutting hair. As a barber he put together a nest egg that let him open a farm winery as a retirement project. And he still gets more pleasure out of finding a way not to spend money than he gets out of anything he can buy.

[QUOTE=Chixulub]Companies do best when they specialize and there's nothing about being able to run Yellow/Roadway that would lend itself to running a highway company. They didn't buy the railroads when they went intermodal.
true, but what i guess i meant was the situation in JG, when all the major corporations picked sides and fought back and forth. it's really not hard to imagine that trucking companies leasing roads from the companies that own them, but only trucking companies carrying cargo that corrisponds with other companies who deal with the road-owning companies, dig? like, lets say the people who own a specific road will let trucks carrying pepsi drive, but they won't let companies that carry coke.

The guy in the Porsche is not the millionaire. You get to be a millionaire by being too smart to spend that kind of money on transportation. You get to drive a Porsche by leveraging a relatively high income (treading water fast) or by inheriting the fortune amassed by someone too smart to buy a Porsche.

When I say over half pay no tax, that's Federal Income Tax after deductions (you can earn $200,000 as a contractor, but if you can come up with $150,000 in business expenses, have three kids and a hefty mortgage interest write-off, you can look as poor as the fry-guy in terms of your taxable income). Of course the fry-guy does have to pay FICA, including 7.5% of his wage that he never even sees that's falsely billed as an employer match (this kind of accounting is what got Enron in trouble).

[URL=http://]http://www.taxfoundation.org/ff/zerotaxfilers.html[/URL]

According to this site, I slightly overstated the case. Their 2004 estimates are 44% of the U.S. population being zero-or-less on Federal Income Tax. They also bear out your 99% at least in terms of income distribution (income and accumulated wealth being seperate things, someone could have $10 billion invested in land that theoretically might generate no 'income' though they're obviously not poor...) According to their figures, and I've read 'How to Lie with Statistics,' so I realize it could be innacurate, are that $40,000 is the cut off for the top 3% of income eaners, and $75,000 for the top 1%. Consider that a pair of high school teachers could have a household income that puts them in the 1% with captains of industry...

I <3 statistics.

[QUOTE]99% of the money in the country belongs to 1% of the people, or something like that. How can you get power more concentrated than that?[/QUOTE]

He said money, you said income.

Other than that I like reading what's going on so far, and maybe I'll write up a post after a while.

I lean toward conservatism, everyone says, oh its your up bringing, and my moms the most liberal fuck i know so its not that, and she's a damn catholic. I'm what is commonly known as a "compassionate conservative" and I'm against organized religion. I mean yeah i know alot of conservatives are "bible beaters" but alot arent. most of my conservative friends are not christian, and the ones wh are certainly arent "bible beaters". I don't know what my point is, but i hate being classified as part of a certain political party on my "religious beliefs" or lack there of, b/c it simply doesnt apply to alot....

damn jewish liberal bastards.....

haha...
no but really. I dont think religion and politics should mix what so ever, and it pisses me off to no end that they do so much.

I have a hard time with the majority of christians being republican. it seems backwards to me. republicans (not all, but in general) worship money, not god. liberals might hate god, but they've got more compassion for individual people, which, i think, is what jesus advised us to do. if jesus was alive today, he'd be a liberal.

[QUOTE=alex cassun]I have a hard time with the majority of christians being republican. it seems backwards to me. republicans (not all, but in general) worship money, not god. liberals might hate god, but they've got more compassion for individual people, which, i think, is what jesus advised us to do. if jesus was alive today, he'd be a liberal.[/QUOTE]

I know plenty of christian republicans. And they are mostly the same homophobic intolerant people. I have nothing against religious people, But I hate religious people who try to force their beliefs on others. Didn't our forefathers leave England because of this? Enjoy your religion, be happy, but the minute you try to preach to me, you can shove it up your arse. My neighbor sends out emails ranting about abortions and gay marriage, and I once asked him why gay marriage bothered him so much, and he went on about how God doesn't like it, etc, and that since he was christian it was up to him to make sure he tried to fulfill God's plan or something. He thinks everyone should live by the bible. Hello? What about jews and muslims? i'm babbling now...it's early.