Delta1212

I think you may be confusing progressivism with... whatever the opposite of obstructionism is? Genuinely can't think of a good word there. Cooperatism or something, maybe. In any case, blocking something that someone wants to do is not inherently anti-progressive if the thing in question is a regressive policy, nor is advancing an agenda of any kind a progressive act. Progressivism as a political ideology stands in contrast to conservatism and is associated with left-wing politics and policy positions. Although, frankly, I think the GOP has actually gotten less conservative, which I would be more sympathetic to in some areas, and actually gone regressive, both economically and especially socially. In my ideal republic, we'd have a give and take between an idealistic progressivism that pushes us to do better and a pragmatic conservativism that keeps us from accidentally breaking those things that already work well. Unfortunately, the GOP has completely ceded the ground of pragmatic conservatism in a process that has gone on for a couple of decades now and is currently extremely reactionary rather than particularly conservative. Meanwhile, the Democrats have moved in and attempted to fill both roles. The results have been less than stellar. As I said, while I lean left on probably most issues, especially socially, there are conservative principles that I am sympathetic too, and I think we need a strong, stable conservative party to champion those positions and that outlook, even in those cases where I don't fully agree with it. The problem we have is that we don't currently have such a party. Trump is the culmination of all of the problems that have been plaguing the GOP of late. He is not actually particularly conservative but is extremely reactionary. Election year anti-the-other-side rhetoric tends to heat up on both sides, but if you go back over the last few years, you will find the Democrats saying "this is what we want to do" and the Republicans saying "This is what we want to undo" or "This is what we want to stop others from doing" at very disproportionate rares. Likewise, Donald Trump is defined more by what he is against and who he is fueling with than by anything that he is specifically for. We're at a point in time where we desperately need people to come together and while I definitely don't think Hillary Clinton is the best positioned person to pull that off, I challenge anyone who has been paying attention to this election to state with a straight face that Donald Trump has given any indication so far during this campaign that "reconcile with those who are opposing me" is something that would even occur to him to put on a to-do list let alone actually pull off.

Republicans aren't getting more progressive with time. They may on certain issues as the next generation grows up, but they've been pulling further right in a lot of areas for a while. As far as Hillary's Reagan comments go, I don't think those were a mistake. One thing I noticed immediately watching the Democratic primary debates, especially the first one, was that Hillary was already playing to a general election audience as much as she was to the Democratic base. She was already running for President more than the Democratic nominee. In addition to praising Reagan, she was also the only person on stage in the first debate who referenced God. I think I counted five or six mentions, a couple of which were in the repeated phrase "God-given talents" or something similar. As far as her being conservative goes, conservative and liberal, in American political terms, are fairly relative concepts, as are where given issues falls along that particular axis. Her current views in the current political climate are, I think, considerably to the left of the average self-described conservative. Now, with things being what they are, that may still make her more conservative than much of the left wing of the Democratic Party is especially comfortable with, but "more conservative than me" and "conservative by comparison with the rest of American politics" are very, very different things. In comparison with most American politicians, Hillary is decidedly progressive. Restricting that analysis to "sane" politicians might make her come across as much more conservative, but that's really stacking the deck. Follow-up: Also, while I would personally love a candidate a bit further to the left on a number of issues, I'm not sure that Jill Stein is actually all that great of a candidate. Because she doesn't have a realistic chance to win, she occupies a sort of "generic leftist" space that is attractive if you support more left-leaning policies. But if she were an actual serious candidate with a real chance to win, I'm not so sure how happy about that ai would be. A win for liberalism just getting someone with certain of her policies on the ballot yes, and I'd obviously vote for her over someone like Trump, but there have to be better, more qualified and competent people with liberal views who could run. I just don't think she could actually do the job if elected, and I don't like the idea of symbolically voting for a stand-in for policy positions that I don't think would make a good president if they actually won.

Definitely not exclusive to the UK.

It's specifically education for women, which was not as accessible for those who grew up before and during WWII and would have been having children immediately following the war. Education and career opportunities didn't really open up for women until well into the post-war period. Additionally, the fact that many people had put off marrying and having children for several years during the war, and the fact that the GI bill and other support for veterans that existed at the time meant that a lot of young men were coming home in a position to immediately or very rapidly acquire the means to support a family created a situation where a lot of people were having families at once. What would have been a lot of wartime children or children born a bit further on from the war once their parents had gotten into a more established position got condensed into a smaller period of time and greatly contributed to a baby boom that would not have existed under economic conditions of a similar level minus the impact of the war.

Oh, I just thought of a good one. Both of my parents are the babies of their family by a pretty fair few years and I was born when they were in their early thirties. As a result, I have cousins with children who are pretty close to my age. There was a time around elementary school, maybe 10-years-old give or take, when I worried that, because I was a generation "behind" that my peers were more evolved than me. Around the same time, I think I saw some signs for that Indigo child nonsense (posted in a Barnes & Noble of all places, I believe), and that didn't help things any.

How can the word "Jesus" show up fewer times than the phrase "Jesus Christ"?

No, but you can spend money on more than one thing at a time. I would love to be saddled with the problem that some of my tax money that is slated for healthcare purposes gets wasted on ineffective practices.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/29/pepe-the-frog-alt-right-mascot-racist-anti-semitic

As a tax payer, I would welcome my money being spent on homeopathy if it meant it was also being spent on healthcare in general.

It doesn't have to be cynicism. It's very easy for people to convince themselves of things that, we're they not true, would cost them a lot of money. It's less "I'll pretend this is true because my livelihood depends on other people believing it" and more "my livelihood depends on this being true so it must be true."

At best, you picked up a map that was created as a piece of white nationalist propaganda with no explanation for where the data used to create it, if any, came from and reused it to bolster your argument without taking a critical look at either the source or accuracy of the image. Perusing the source that you provided as an alternative doesn't do much to refute this. Cherry picking would be one thing and certainly is to be frowned upon. Uncritically regurgitating propaganda that you found on the Internet without first looking at where it came from or how it was created simply because it seems to line up with your own argument is considerably worse. Edit: As far as me being a liar. I did not state that you had only made use of materials from the white nationalist ecosystem. I said that you had made use of materials that are only found in the white nationalist ecosystem. There is a subtle but important distinction there. For what I said to be correct, any of your materials must have come exclusively from that environment, not all of them. Since the map did, in fact, come from that environment, I'm neither a liar nor incorrect. Perhaps you picked it up innocently, but that still doesn't reflect well on your ability to vet the sources you use for accuracy.

In a similar vein, I thought maybe all languages sounded like English to native speakers, but then I wondered what English sounded like to other people, and if we all heard the same thing when other people spoke their own languages depending on what your native language was. Like, did Spanish speakers here what we thought of as Spanish when they heard English speakers talk? But then what did a French speaker hear when an English speaker and a Spanish speaker were both talking in their native languages? I was fascinated in kindergarten when I learned our principal spoke fluent Spanish. I find this especially amusing now as someone who speaks passable German, very rusty Spanish and can read a smattering of other Romance and Germanic languages on a very basic level, mostly using one of those other two as a crutch for more advanced vocabulary.

They are, aren't they? And as long as we're laying cards on the table, meLothedestroyerofworlds' frog avatar is a character currently being used as an icon by the white nationalist/"alt right" movement. Throw in your own use of arguments and resources that only exist bouncing around that same ecosystem, and I'm becoming suspicious that the both of you might have motivations in this discussion beyond a deep and abiding scientific curiosity about the utility of taxonomic categorization as applied to the human species.

It's only a Godwin if it's a comparison to Nazis and not a discussion of actual Nazis. Being a Nazi doesn't give someone free reign to declare themselves the winner of every argument by default.

Ophiolite is not generally one to be impressed by "big science words." He's also not the one who attempted to use an unsubstantiated map of IQ scores taken from a neo-Nazi white supremacist site to back up his argument. That's not exactly something I would describe as "rigorous" in the science department.

Only Sith deal in absolutes.

I'm pretty sure the actions you just described are actually illegal, although I don't know the specifics of the story in question for context.

He means that you can't list things that Trump did before they became illegal as him breaking the law. I think there was recently a report about some dodgy tax stuff he did in the 90s that didn't actually become illegal until later, and so weren't against the law when he did them even though they are now.

The problem is that any hurdle that you are legally allowed to place between citizens and the ability to vote will, somewhere and somewhen, be used to disenfranchise people based on who they are likely to vote for, both on an institutional and individual level. Need to take a class every four years? Where are the classes located? What hours are available? Who teaches them? What class sizes do you have? How long does it take? Do you have to pass or is it just attendance based? If online classes are available, how do you ensure access to people without stable internet access? There are lots of details here that can be tweaked slightly to make it easier or harder for specific groups to complete the requirements, and most of them can be easily justified by pointing to budget considerations as the primary driver.

Of the mixed governments I've lived through, there have been two Democratic presidents with Republican Congresses and one Republican President with a Democratic Congress. Congress has shut down the government three times during that period. Twice during the first Dem President/GOP Congress and once during the second Dem President/GOP Congress. You are allowed to disagree with the Democrats and favor Republican positions on issues, for sure. Objectively, however, one party has been more obstructionist than the other. Democrats in Congress have a recent track record of cooperating, or attempting to cooperate, with Republicans far more than Republicand in Congress do. That doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but agreeing with one side doesn't change the tactics that side has been using to pursue its goals, and disagreeing with the other side doesn't make them equivalent in all respects in how they go about implementing their own agenda. I'm not pretending that both sides have not engaged in obstruction, but the degree to which each side has done so, and the methods by which they've gone about it, are decidedly asymmetrical.

Even with mandatory voting, there is always the option of handing in a blank ballot, or leaving blank whatever position you don't like any of the candidates for in the case of multiple elections. Has a similar effect and no one can do anything about it as long as it's a secret ballot.

I find it interesting that a reverse image search of that completely unsourced map provides but a single result going to The Daily Stormer.

What does that have to do with the thread topic?

Seems rather pertinent to me. You're free to disagree.

So I was responding to the last paragraph of the previous post.