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When it comes to this conversation, are we speaking about the American usage and conceptualization of liberalism or the international understanding? It can be helpful to define this early since the term is often confusing and used as an empty epithet even within the US alone. I think one of the things that the Democratic Party has largely failed at is engagement with the public; in the bitterest irony, the membership and participation is largely closed off in lieu of a largely unaccountable elite. Are people who register to vote as Democrats actual members or are they a separate category altogether? My understanding is that "membership" is reserved for the people who become superdelegates, not the public who registered their party preference.
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Jan 19, 2017 07:14
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Read the post right above yours, yo. Sorry, I was writing it on my phone before yours showed up. I agree that we should probably use that definition of liberalism, but it still feels somewhat vague for my liking.
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Jan 19, 2017 07:18
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Yeah, as I said I don't think the guy is a political scholar - he probably knows less terminology than the average D&D poster by a good margin. But I really really don't want this thread to become Libertarianism thread #985 or yet another host to the tedious sniping from euro posters about americans using a word differently than they do. Americans co-opted an existing politics word and now use it to describe a different thing than it originally did. That happens in language sometimes and it's okay. I think a part of what makes it difficult is that they really don't understand their own ideology very well, to the point that admitting even having one at all is akin to taboo. The "economic conservative, social liberal" canard is less a statement of what they actually believe in terms of policy outcomes or desired society, but rather a projection of an ideal identity that appears to be unique and discerning; they want to appear like their beliefs are put together like a shopping list that they carefully put together by weighing the merits of each idea. They want to look like a smart shopper rather than a slave to branding. It's a form of political atheism where they look upon people who buy in to an existing ideological framework as true-believer dupes that allow dogma to define their worldview for them. The reality is that these self-imagined snowflakes have no idea what many of these political terms even mean, nor how politics and civic society intersect.
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Jan 19, 2017 07:47
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Crane Fist posted:The road to hell is paved with leftists quibbling over slight variations in their polsci terms When it comes to the general public, I'm less concerned with fealty to the denotation of polsci terms and more about how people craft their ideological identity for appearances rather than thinking about how they want society to be structured.
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Jan 19, 2017 07:55
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I feel like it's become popular to take swipes at the idea of "civility". The problem with this is that civility, per se, isn't the problem. There's a difference between civility and spinelessness, IMO. You can be perfectly civil while saying "no I don't agree with you in any way and your ideas are atrocious". I think the critique is of people who promote civility as an end rather than means, or believe that civility as strategy should never be abandoned in the face of shameless fascism.
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Jan 19, 2017 08:08
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I think we can safely agree that anyone who wants "civility" as a primary political goal is at best a silly ninny. Obama just got slammed!
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Jan 19, 2017 08:39
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White Rock posted:Tribalism hasn't gone away, tribalism of nations it has been replaced of tribalism of the urban. City livers have more in common with other city livers then the rest of the citizens of their nations. Copenhagen and London has more in common then the rural parts of their own nations. However, this is not some sort internationalist, "the world is one" attitude, it has material prerequisites, like being able to fart about the globe in cheap budget airlines. One can now ignore class, and ignore nationality, if one has the means to, but those things aren't gone. That is a temporary illusion. Nations continue to exist, and the worse the situation the more you will rely on them. I think it has more to do with the fact that the logistics of living in cities are universal; people are more exposed to each other on a daily basis in urban areas and in order for things to function, people developed compromises and social structures that tends towards the collective needs of the denizens. You're also more likely going to encounter people of many different classes and backgrounds in cities, whereas suburban and rural areas are far more likely to be homogenous in that regard.
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Jan 22, 2017 13:50
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