Is liberalism a mild form of insanity?

[MigL]

Its not the cause that makes them wingnuts.

Al gore and Neil Young are telling us "Do as I say, not as I do". I expect that from priests.

And Bono should have stayed in Ireland and paid his fair share of taxes, to support social programs to help the needy.

 

A former liberal Prime Minister of Canada who is a Billionaire and owns Canada Steamship Lines should register his boats in Canada and pay the proper taxes, not in Liberia.

Affluent and liberal anti-vaxxers in states like Oregon and Colorado, should not deny the science and should get their kids vaccinated before a serious epidemic.

All the self-professed liberals who reject Gentically Modified foods should realise that the science is sound and the only way to feed a world with ever-increasing population.

 

And as I said earlier, and someone else posted in the other 'insane' topic, the number of liberal evolution deniers is also signoficant.

No one group is without its anti-science platform.

 

You brought up an interesting point earlier about Republicans moving even further right so as to move the 'confortable middle' position that many Americans want to occupy, that much more conservative. It is certainly an idea worth discussing.

[iNow]

There are nutters on both sides, but both sides are hardly the same. The equivalence some here suggest is trivially false, and this is true even if I stipulate that name calling and labels can be a useful shorthand yet sometimes counterproductive in parallel.

[Phi for All]

But I've agreed many times that there are conservative wingnuts Ten oz.

I just assert that there are also liberal ones.

 

That doesn't however, justify me calling ALL liberals insane, does it ?

 

No offense, but this makes it seem like you haven't understood the real argument here. Those converging studies showed that conservatives tend to make decisions using an area of the brain more associated with emotional memory than liberals, and liberals use an area more associated with detecting and solving problems.

 

The contention is not about crazies on both sides, it's about how making serious decisions based on mostly emotions is NOT a good way to approach politics. In fact, it's so counterproductive and detrimental that it's a little insane when you look back and see all the wacko decisions made in the last several decades. People are more easily manipulated when they don't think things through, and rely instead on fears and hopes.

[Willie71]

Its not the cause that makes them wingnuts.

Al gore and Neil Young are telling us "Do as I say, not as I do". I expect that from priests.

And Bono should have stayed in Ireland and paid his fair share of taxes, to support social programs to help the needy.

 

A former liberal Prime Minister of Canada who is a Billionaire and owns Canada Steamship Lines should register his boats in Canada and pay the proper taxes, not in Liberia.

Affluent and liberal anti-vaxxers in states like Oregon and Colorado, should not deny the science and should get their kids vaccinated before a serious epidemic.

All the self-professed liberals who reject Gentically Modified foods should realise that the science is sound and the only way to feed a world with ever-increasing population.

 

And as I said earlier, and someone else posted in the other 'insane' topic, the number of liberal evolution deniers is also signoficant.

No one group is without its anti-science platform.

 

You brought up an interesting point earlier about Republicans moving even further right so as to move the 'confortable middle' position that many Americans want to occupy, that much more conservative. It is certainly an idea worth discussing.

 

 

You are trying to establish a false equivalency. There are a few on the left who take nutty positions, but why is that? Are schools doing an adequate job educating people on science? They clearly aren't. The ongoing assault on science by networks such as Fox works to fill people with fear. Who pushes for control of the science class? Who pushes to remove evolution from science? Who pushes to have intelligent design or creationism taught as science? Like the conservatives say about Muslims: where is the outrage? Where is the speaking out? By voting for representatives who push the agendas, people are being complicit. You can't vote these people in on their policies, then say conservatives don't believe these things. That's why they got voted in.

 

The stats on evolution deniers is based on misrepresenting a study on sociologists who were asked what personality traits were based on genetics, one of the areas that is very difficult to research, and draw definitive conclusions. By saying they were unsure how much jealousy was genetic, or intelligence was genetic, conservatives claimed that meant they didn't believe in evolution. ??????? False equivalency again. The current generation of mental health professionals generally accept a 70:30 balance between environment:genetics in personality development. Some of the dinosaurs have not kept up with the research. Your answer will depend on who you poll in this field. There is rapid growth in the research.

 

I agree with you on the shift to the right, and how that affects what people believe their party stands for. What many don't believe is that the same people who want to oppose gay marriage also believe that homosexuals should be stoned to death. That isn't advertised. It is part of the dominionism that funds much of the conservative party.

It might be interesting for some to take this quiz and see where they actually fit on the political scale.

 

http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/

 

There are a number of charts and diagrams that show the spread of beliefs on the issues we have discussed here.

 

http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/

 

The evidence just does not support equivalencies between the parties.

 

 

When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust. And whether discussing politics online or with friends, they are more likely than others to interact with like-minded individuals, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

The project – part of a year-long effort to shed light on political polarization in America – looks at the ways people get information about government and politics in three different settings: the news media, social media and the way people talk about politics with friends and family. In all three areas, the study finds that those with the most consistent ideological views on the left and right have information streams that are distinct from those of individuals with more mixed political views – and very distinct from each other.

These cleavages can be overstated. The study also suggests that in America today, it is virtually impossible to live in an ideological bubble. Most Americans rely on an array of outlets – with varying audience profiles – for political news. And many consistent conservatives and liberals hear dissenting political views in their everyday lives.

Yet as our major report on political polarization found, those at both the left and right ends of the spectrum, who together comprise about 20% of the public overall, have a greater impact on the political process than do those with more mixed ideological views. They are the most likely to vote, donate to campaigns and participate directly in politics. The five ideological groups in this analysis (consistent liberals, mostly liberals, mixed, mostly conservatives and consistent conservatives) are based on responses to 10 questions about a range of political values. That those who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions have different ways of informing themselves about politics and government is not surprising. But the depth of these divisions – and the differences between those who have strong ideological views and those who do not – are striking.

Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:

• Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.
• Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.
• Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.
• Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.

By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:

• Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.
• Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.
• Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or “defriend” someone on a social network – as well as to end a personal friendship – because of politics.
• Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.

 

If you want to see how people actually answered the polling questions on various issues, have a read:

 

http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/typology-comparison/

[overtone]

Al gore and Neil Young are telling us "Do as I say, not as I do".

Technically, this is type specimen "bullshit". By definition, deception or distraction employed without regard for its truth or falsity - might be true, might be false, doesn't matter to its deployer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Frankfurt

 

That entire bizarre and incoherent line of "argument" is an example of the craziness of current "conservatives".

 

Who exactly is supposed to care whether Neil Young or Al Gore has a large carbon footprint, and why?

 

Wingnuts in this way, which is central to their dealings, are misrepresenting the issues of tax and industrial policy, control of the the waste products of an industrial civilization, the causes and issues in which debates those public figures have taken public sides, as an issue of personal hypocrisy involving celebrities. They are projecting their own infantile dependence on authority and celebrity figures unto adults with genuine concerns about matters of importance, and constructing an entire and exclusively framed public debate around an ad hominem argument.

 

They think the "other side" depends on the opinions of some ever-changing collection of celebrity opinion purveyors in the same way as they depend on Fox and Limbaugh and Coulter and Hannity and the Ailes/Murdoch media shitfling, and that difference of opinion demarcates the issue at hand.

 

That is a denial of the role of reality. And that's crazy.

 

 

 

 

No one group is without its anti-science platform.

There is currently no anti-science platform in any US political group except the current "conservatives". None. The "conservatives", as a faction, have an effectively complete monopoly on science denial.

 

And these people, with that approach, dominate the political faction currently labeled "conservative" in US political discourse, and thereby the center of US political discourse. They are not the fringe of the "conservatives" - there is no other center. The "conservatives" represent a fringe of the political spectrum taking over the center of effective political action.

 

 

 

 

You brought up an interesting point earlier about Republicans moving even further right so as to move the 'confortable middle' position that many Americans want to occupy, that much more conservative. It is certainly an idea worth discussing.

No, it isn't. It's an obvious fact of US political life for forty years or more, an overwhelmingly significant factor in every US political debate since 1968, one that has been brought up and illustrated with examples and used as the basis of argument hundreds and hundreds of times in the political discourse of this country. The idea that such a dominant fact of life and aspect of reality would appear to a "conservative" as an "idea worth discussing" is yet another illustration of the basic point: "conservatives" live in fantasy land. They are, collectively and as a faction, crazy. Edited February 11, 2015 by overtone

[Wolfhnd]

I don't think this we are smarted than the other side is helping the liberal cause. If we take the position of being more rational the general population will see that as arrogant. One thing that separates scientist from other intellectual pursuits is a strong tradition of admitting when you are wrong. If we focused on past mistakes and explained why we were wrong and how we intend to move forward we may get a better public reception. Let the conservatives show their major weakness which is an inability to reconsider any previous position. People have a natural distrust of the the dogmatic authoritarian.

[overtone]

 

 

If we take the position of being more rational the general population will see that as arrogant.

If we don't take the position that the "conservatives" are incoherent spouters of amnesiac nonsense, we will end up in reality condescending and smarmy. Take your pick. The general population is, by presumption, capable of evaluating reality, clearly presented - the goal is to separate them from the "conservatives", not to appear properly humble or whatever.

 

One thing that separates scientist from other intellectual pursuits is a strong tradition of admitting when you are wrong. If we focused on past mistakes and explained why we were wrong and how we intend to move forward we may get a better public reception.

You are overlooking the actual position you have allowed the "scientist" or "rational person" to be boxed into, in the US public arena. You are starting out on the defensive, having pre-admitted what the propaganda operations have decided should be your mistakes for this campaign season. Getting to a situation in which you can admit your actual mistakes and appear honestly humble etc is not going to be easy.

 

You're going to appear arrogant, regardless. You cannot avoid that, because it's one of your assigned mistakes

 

Let the conservatives show their major weakness which is an inability to reconsider any previous position.

That's not a weakness. They don't have to reconsider anything, because they don't have to admit anything - they just adopt the new position, forget the other one ever existed, and continue accordingly accusing you of your mistakes as described in their new position.

 

People have a natural distrust of the the dogmatic authoritarian

They have a natural acceptance of anything they've heard a thousand times and never heard contradicted.

 

If you don't want to see it accepted, whatever, you are going to have to contradict it. Right out loud.

[Wolfhnd]

"You're going to appear arrogant, regardless. You cannot avoid that, because it's one of your assigned mistakes" overtone

 

I agree with almost every point you made but I'm trying to be innovative.

 

Recent polls indicate that scientist are losing respect not gaining it. This has nothing to do with the rationality of their positions in my opinion. Clearly media sensationalism bears the greatest responsibility for the decline in acceptance of scientific "truth". The need for sensationalizing the significance of findings in order to secure funding is a fact of the system. The need for funding however does not leave the community innocent of the unintended consequences.

 

Let's just take one example Global Warming.

 

Global Warming is a fact but a fact that is still struggling for acceptance. A little bit of humility and public awareness should have been enough to warn climatologist that there message was going to be a hard sell. To some extent the public was justified in not having a lot of faith in the people that can't get the daily weather right. It is also clear that the topic wasn't something new and startling in terms of discovery. Economist, historians, paleontologist, geologist and other specialist had talked about it for decades before it became headline news. It's also clear that these other specialist had long established that we were in a warm period between glaciers a fact the public was aware of. Why the climatologist decided to ignore these other specialist and sensationalize their findings is hard to understand. Historians were in fact justified in pointing out that the greatest immediate threat was another mini ice age. I think it is also clear that pointing out the obvious fact that carbon trapped during the carboniferous period would cause warming is not very impressive nor should it have been sensational. What the public took aware from the discussion was that the experts didn't agree when in fact they had more or less agreed for decades.

 

The elephant in the room is the lack of a reliable prediction of back ground temperatures to plot warming on. The other problem is the evident lack of ability to predict geological disruption of climate. The public is not so stupid to have not noticed these problems. The political problems surrounding climate change could have been avoided by more interdisciplinary approach including economist, historians, paleontologist, geologist who apparently were denied a share in the spot light. There was a clear lack of political savvy displayed by the way scientist interacted. I'm not even sure they should have elected to present their findings to the public directly at all.

 

Is global warming causing a mass extinction event? I would say it was self evidently yes, but that has to be put in the perspective of other possible calamities that we know exist. What we don't know is in this case as important as what we do.

 

The real culprit here is that journalism is incapable of creating an informed public in a politically divisive environment. A politically polarized environment calls for a spirit of cooperation, compromise, and humility or an abandonment of democracy.

[mothythewso]

To Phi for All,ref #8: seems like it turned out to be a pretty long thread afterall.

To Swansont, ref#11. I think people quoting the original source article "Political Conservatism as a Motivated Social Cognition", have no idea what "N = 22218" means, have no idea what that articles states, that in roughly 35 pages the word "insanity" is not mentioned once, that the authors specifically say that they relied to much on undergrads for their data, that further research of the liberal belief system is desirable. From this source a self-confessed anti-conservative remembered to write an article on political conservatism as a mild form of insanity, his deduction, not the authors of the source paper.

I think I accomplished what I wanted in this thread, that some agreement comes about stereotyping each other. It's a lot easier than having a discussion.

And now, adieu. When I said I didn't have any time to waste on a bunch of vacuous blather, I was referring to some posts I made on another Forum, which I guess nobody bothered to go to. In fact , I am dying, colo-rectal cancer, in the final days. I've really enjoyed these Fora over the past couple of weeks, even the gentle bickering with Overtone, sorry I won't be around longer to raise liberal hackles any longer

Tim O'Hare

aka mothythewso

[MigL]

Hope you find as much pleasure as possible in the time you have left with your family and friends.

I'm sure I speak for everyone, we may get pretty adversarial in our discussions, but we're all friends here.

We're glad to have had you share your opinions with us, and hope you stick around for a while yet.

[Wolfhnd]

Liberals deny science, too

 

"Liberals get a lot less flack, in general, for ignoring scientific findings. Yet there is also reason to think they, too, are susceptible to allowing their political biases influence their reading of certain scientific questions. And now, a new study just out in the journal Sociological Spectrum accuses them of just that."

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/28/liberals-deny-science-too/

 

This topic is just too important to let go. For a long time I thought that I was the only Liberal who thought that science was pointing us away from what Pinker calls the "blank slate" ideology of my generation. The simplicity of the "blank slate" ideology should be repugnate to anyone with an open mind. We have become addicted to easy fixes and the idea of unlimited flexibility but throwing government money at problems has become a two edged sword. Most problems require more than just money and words to solve they need sophisticated analysis and social cooperation.

 

One of the most painful experiences of my life time was to watch Liberalism being taking over by the simplistic moral positions favored in the 60s. While students were running around screaming the real work of reforming society was being done by a preacher from Atlanta Georgia and a red neck from Texas. Even the one issue where the counter culture made progress, sexual liberation, came with a huge price. I would argue that most of the real gains made by woman rest more on what the civil rights movement did than on feminism. Mind you without feminism woman may well have been left out of civil rights movement but it's the anti discriminatory laws that came from the civil rights movement that were critical.

 

Liberals need to focus as much on responsibility as they do on rights or at least on a more complete moral palette to compete with the appeal of conservatism.

[overtone]

How does anyone get from that survey of academic sociologists to a statement about "liberals" in American society?

 

Trying to set that kind of observation up as a counterweight to the kind of stances we see in "conservative" US politics is just desperate. Do you really want to stretch that far to get a "both sides" claim on the table?

 

"Liberals" focus plenty on "responsibility" already - the nanny State is freaking famous for assigned responsibilities, backed with hectoring and moralistic lectures from "liberals". We don't need any more adjustments of supposed "liberal" politics to match the appeals to bigotry and ignorance and authoritarian law and order from the local "conservatives".

 

 

 

While students were running around screaming the real work of reforming society was being done by a preacher from Atlanta Georgia and a red neck from Texas.

If it hadn't been for those students "running around screaming" (http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/images/DemConv68.jpg) we'd still be getting drafted to go fight the war that redneck from Texas was escalating, and the black women that preacher from Atlanta was canoodling with would still be barefoot and beaten and getting their birth control with a coat hanger.

Edited February 19, 2015 by overtone

[Wolfhnd]

How does anyone get from that survey of academic sociologists to a statement about "liberals" in American society?

 

Trying to set that kind of observation up as a counterweight to the kind of stances we see in "conservative" US politics is just desperate. Do you really want to stretch that far to get a "both sides" claim on the table?

 

If it hadn't been for those students "running around screaming" (http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/images/DemConv68.jpg) we'd still be getting drafted to go fight the war that redneck from Texas was escalating, and the black women that preacher from Atlanta was canoodling with would still be barefoot and beaten and getting their birth control with a coat hanger.

 

Just curious were you there in the 60s to watch events unfold?

 

So you think that eliminating the draft after the war was all but over in 1973 was an important event?

 

I guess you also think that the current system where the majority of people join the military as an economic necessity is fair? Perhaps you think there is no need for a military? That is going to be a long discussion for another time.

 

In Roe vs Wade you certainly have a stronger case. It in fact represents one of the successes of the Feminist movement. What you have to remember however was that by 1971 the movement for woman's rights was a hundred years old. What that has to do with student protests is hard to understand.

 

Here is what that red neck from Texas said when he was trying to figure a way out in 1964 "Well, they'd impeach a president, though, that would run out, wouldn't they?" Johnson never wanted the war it just happened to him while he was trying to build his great society. I guess ruining Johnson and giving us Nixon could be seen as one of the great accomplishments of the Student movements in the 60s.

 

The majority of American people wanted out of Vietnam but a few of the more savvy or worldly types knew that Stalin had killed 30 million in Russia and could see the same thing happening in Southeast Asia. The War protesters were just lucky that there were only 1,040,000 political deaths following the Hanoi victory, it could have been much worse. That also doesn't count the 2 million the Khmer Rouge killed and there were no protests of either of these atrocities. The obvious truth is those kids had no idea what they were talking about. All they knew was what the majority of American knew and that is that nobody cared what really happened in Vietnam. The center piece of American foreign policy has always been why do I care about a bunch of foreigners and I don't want to die in a foreign war. The same kinds of protest proceed both world wars so they are not in any way unique.

 

The only thing I'm suggesting is maybe we are the side that should get the facts right? Let the conservatives wallow in their own fantasies.

 

None of this really matters as long as people on both sides are more swayed by emotion than reason. I hope we can at least agree on that?

I want to elaborate on my last post a bit.

 

What I see as the real difficulty is that liberals have tried to corner the market on positive emotions, brotherly love etc. which is in part due to the conservatives dominance in negative emotions. Take welfare for example, a liberal may say we should love and care for all people and a conservative will counter with lazy people need to get jobs. Because of the way our brains work the second statement has more impact. We are programmed to respond more intensely to fear, anger, and other "negative" emotions more than empathy. It's hard to have empathy with something you are afraid of. Rational argument in general has even less emotional impact.

 

Assuming that conservatives actually are more inclined to "think" emotionally I don't see that as much of a disadvantage for them. The rise of Adolf Hitler could be seen as his ability to tap into the power of negative emotions. The popularity of Reagan could be seen as his ability to tap into the fear of change and uncertainty. People attributed Reagan's success to the comfort and warmth of returning to traditional values but that would have had little appeal if it was not in opposition to the perceived dangers of continuing liberal reforms.

 

The best course of action then for a liberal agenda is to constantly remind people how bad the good old days really were. Convincing people how dangerous "traditional" values really are seems like the best strategy. To do that we need to get the history right as nothing could undo this strategy quicker than making it appear as propaganda.

 

Denying what that this photo is the epitome of sophistry is not good for our cause.

 

Edited February 19, 2015 by Wolfhnd

[Ten oz]

I want to elaborate on my last post a bit.

 

What I see as the real difficulty is that liberals have tried to corner the market on positive emotions, brotherly love etc. which is in part due to the conservatives dominance in negative emotions. Take welfare for example, a liberal may say we should love and care for all people and a conservative will counter with lazy people need to get jobs. Because of the way our brains work the second statement has more impact. We are programmed to respond more intensely to fear, anger, and other "negative" emotions more than empathy. It's hard to have empathy with something you are afraid of. Rational argument in general has even less emotional impact.

I think welfare as a dueling example of both sides being emotional is a false equivalency. The whole modernized western world practices various forms of social aid. It is provably successful. The counter approach of sink or swim & personal responsibility has no successful examples in the current times. One is more logical than the other once emotions are placed aside.

 

 

Assuming that conservatives actually are more inclined to "think" emotionally I don't see that as much of a disadvantage for them. The rise of Adolf Hitler could be seen as his ability to tap into the power of negative emotions. The popularity of Reagan could be seen as his ability to tap into the fear of change and uncertainty. People attributed Reagan's success to the comfort and warmth of returning to traditional values but that would have had little appeal if it was not in opposition to the perceived dangers of continuing liberal reforms.

 

Reagan's success is regularly overstated. His average approval rating was actually lower than Bill Clinton's and H.W. Bush. It is almost religious in many ways the way conservative media has cultivated Reagan's legacy akin to that of a prophet. Reagan was not as conservative, popular, traditional, religious, or etc as partisans insist.

 

 

 

The best course of action then for a liberal agenda is to constantly remind people how bad the good old days really were. Convincing people how dangerous "traditional" values really are seems like the best strategy. To do that we need to get the history right as nothing could undo this strategy quicker than making it appear as propaganda.

 

Denying what that this photo is the epitome of sophistry is not good for our cause.

 

Do liberals constantly remind people how bad previous eras were or simply attempt to learn from mistakes? When I insist my people where eye and hearing protection when in industrial environments am I thumbing my nose at the past when people worked without such protections or taking advantage of knowledge gained?

 

As for Jane Fonda she was not an elected political figure. Insisting that she represented liberals is simply guilt by association. She was no ones other than her own advocate. Hauling her out as an example of liberalism in actions is useful as if I dragged out Timothy McVeigh as an example of conservatism.

[Wolfhnd]

I'm just going to respond to one of these comments because I don't want to waste anymore of your time. Let me know if that is ok?

 

"I think welfare as a dueling example of both sides being emotional is a false equivalency. The whole modernized western world practices various forms of social aid. It is provably successful. The counter approach of sink or swim & personal responsibility has no successful examples in the current times. One is more logical than the other once emotions are placed aside."

 

All I'm trying to do is remove the rose colored glasses that we Liberals wear when we look at history. Marxism is Evidently a huge failure everywhere it has been tried. I don't think that says much about Marx because he was just another philosopher trying to find his way out of the "fly bottle". The false equivalency in my opinion is equating socialism with ideas that have long since been discredited. I also think that the idea that liberalism should not be as emotional as conservatism is a mistake. Their is nothing wrong with a bit of emotional "intelligence" if it doesn't distort history.

 

​That socialism is evidently the preferred system is in my opinion undeniable. That doesn't give us an excuse to not admit it's short comings. It also doesn't allow us to ignore Historical evidence that suggest that welfare is detrimental to personal dignity. Prior to the "great society" programs instituted by Johnson (who was a liberal by the way) the illegitimate birth rates of black teenagers was lower than white teenagers. Part of what extended welfare did was destroy a sub culture of interdependence and social mores. The reasons for this are complex and beyond the scope of this discussion but it is in part due to what Johnson had to compromise to get his ideas of social justice even looked at. The main concession was that he made was to make welfare a profitable business for some industries like construction and the food distribution sectors. It is the same problem that Eisenhower ran into when he talked about the "military industrial complex" you have to make compromises. Painting Johnson as an enemy of liberalism is not only unfair it takes the discussion out of the realm of historical context.

 

My main point is that I don't want to pull the same non sense as conservatives and rewrite history to fit my personal perspective.

 

[Ten oz]

@ Woldhnd, I wrote "social aid" in my post not Marxism or even socialism.

 

As for the illegitimate black birth stuff being linked to welfare that is a total red herring.

"There are 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. One in three black men can expect to spend time in prison. There are 2.7 million minors with an incarcerated parent. The imprisonment rate has grown by more than 400 percent since 1970."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-imprisoners-dilemma/

 

Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and left office in 1969. Beginning in 1970 the United States has experienced a 400% increase in imprisonment. Blacks making up a disproportionate number of those imprisoned. No country imprisons their citizens at a higher rate. I think it can be argued that this massive increase in imprisonment happened in part as a means to subtly continue segregation in many ways and is a major driving factor in any number of negative statistical trends in todays black communities. Blacks living in South Africa during Apatheid experienced a lower imprisonment rate that blacks living today in the United States.

"The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that, in 2010, the incarceration rate for black men in all of the country’s jails and prisons was 4,347 people per 100,000. For whites, the rate was 678 people per 100,000. America imprisons people far more in general than comparable countries. Among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, the United States is the clear leader with an incarceration rate about two and half times higher than the second place country, Chile."

"Most of the arrests and imprisonment in South Africa were for pass laws offences," Worger told PunditFact. "The incarceration rate in South Africa in 1984 -- the midst of apartheid -- was 440 persons imprisoned per 100,000 population. Blacks comprised around 94 percent of those incarcerated."

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/dec/11/nicholas-kristof/kristof-us-imprisons-blacks-rates-higher-south-afr/

[overtone]

The majority of American people wanted out of Vietnam but a few of the more savvy or worldly types knew that Stalin had killed 30 million in Russia and could see the same thing happening in Southeast Asia

Your notion of "savvy or worldly" and mine varies considerably. People who mistake the Ho Chi Minhs of this world for the Stalins are fundamentally screwed up in their thinking.

 

 

 

 

All I'm trying to do is remove the rose colored glasses that we Liberals wear when we look at history. Marxism is Evidently a huge failure everywhere it has been tried.

For example?

 

You aren't thinking of the Soviet Union, surely. Your general American liberal is not a rosy-viewing fan of the USSR, for one thing. The Russian revolution, State, and expansion of empire was organized counter to Marxist principles, for another. And the USSR was not exactly a "failure", for a third.

 

Marxist theory has of course been adopted, in part, more or less universally by everyone - it is useful and produces insight, and is no failure whatsoever.

 

 

 

 

Johnson never wanted the war it just happened to him while he was trying to build his great society.

He escalated the war. Dramatically.

 

 

 

The War protesters were just lucky that there were only 1,040,000 political deaths following the Hanoi victory, it could have been much worse.

In the first place, that's bullshit. In the second, all the bad consequences of the Vietnam War belong in the laps of the conservative, rightwing, warmongering, corrupt, Redscare politicians in the US who pushed the country into that mess on lies and bribery - the Congressmen Johnson was talking about when he worried over impeachment. None belong in the laps of the liberals who worked to get us out. It wasn't the liberals who were going to impeach Johnson for extricating the US from that corrupt and dishonest war.

 

The liberals and leftists would have been happier backing Hanoi in the first place, successfully freeing Vietnam from its corporate colonial masters - imagine all those atrocities of the war avoided, and Vietnam allied with the US on the eve of China's rise.

 

 

 

 

I guess ruining Johnson and giving us Nixon could be seen as one of the great accomplishments of the Student movements in the 60s.

Now you are blaming the student protesters for the success of Nixon's Southern Strategy? Get a grip. You'd be more accurate blaming MLK for that, if the actual responsible parties - non-liberals who voted for him - don't fit your bill.

 

 

 

 

That also doesn't count the 2 million the Khmer Rouge killed and there were no protests of either of these atrocities.

So? More stuff to blame on the warmongers and their cynical evil, especially Nixon's crowd in Cambodia's case, but I'm not sure why you think stuff done by Cambodians to Cambodians should motivate huge protest demonstrations in the US. The liberals at least recognized the US role in that horrorshow, and didn't whang on about Communism and dominoes.

 

 

 

 

The obvious truth is those kids had no idea what they were talking about.

They had far more of a clue than the people who voted for Nixon. And they were right - doesn't that count for something?

 

 

 

 

Part of what extended welfare did was destroy a sub culture of interdependence and social mores. The reasons for this are complex and beyond the scope of this discussion but it is in part due to what Johnson had to compromise to get his ideas of social justice even looked at. The main concession was that he made was to make welfare a profitable business for some industries like construction and the food distribution sectors. It is the same problem that Eisenhower ran into when he talked about the "military industrial complex" you have to make compromises.

So the liberal part was good, but the compromises with the corporate Right and the "conservatives" produced a loss of dignity and some destruction of social mores. Agreed.

 

Your point was what, exactly:

 

That the liberals need to accept blame for the consequences of their compromising with US rightwing corporate authoritarians?

 

I'll buy that. That seems a reasonable point.

Edited February 20, 2015 by overtone

[Wolfhnd]

This is clearly evolving into to long of discussion for a single topic. We can take it up issues by issue again sometime. I had prepared a long reply but I think that a blog may be a better mechanism for this type of discussion.

[JohnSSM]

The writtings of Ayn Rand inspired 2 big movements...conservatism and satanism...hmmmm