Opponents of Social Injustice/Intolerance and Socialists/Social Democrats
Why can't they be mutually exclusive??
Why are vocal members of the former always inclined to the latter?
It's an all-too-common thing that has exasperated me for years.
The end result is that it puts the two things I dislike the most, social conservatism (and the American Exceptionalism, tribalism, muted racism and Jingoism that go with it) and Socialism (and all its warmed over "lite" versions and moderations) on opposing sides when I wish they would just be parts of the same unsavory coalition. ;-)
Submitted by John on Sun, 2012-03-25 21:37
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Because that's the way the world works
Conservatives want to preserve society as it is unless there's an overwhelming reason to change a certain aspect of it. That includes acceptance (and comfort) of a hierarchical view of society. Liberals want to change society, they do not see the same need to preserve existing structures. They prefer an egalitarian model of society and see no particular value in hierarchies. Most conservatives don't even believe in the idea of "social justice", they only believe in individual rights and disagree with collective action in any form.
I think your answer gives a partial explanation
and you very well may be right. I just think there has to be more to it.
They don't see a difference
I think HankP just gave you the answer.
They don't see a difference. Which boggles my mind. Liberals who don't understand liberty. It should be an oxymoron but it's not.
But, on the other hand, I'm more inclined to think it usually just the yuk factor. Capitalism is full of yukky stuff like winners and losers and hard unpleasant realities that usually play out to someone's advantage and another's disadvantage. Anything that follows that meme----someone wins, someone loses, and it might be the "nice" one----whether sensible and realistic or not, is automatically bad.
It's a natural flow from the morally superior frames used by political partisans: "I am an enlightened human, therefore I am tolerant, therefore I am de facto against anything that has even the appearance of intolerance, such as capitalism and its brutal ability to make nice people lose."
To be fair, it works the other way, too. "I am a moral person who believes that only hard work and right actions should be rewarded, therefore I am against things that appear to condone or reward bad behavior, such as safety nets and their tendency to support both the deserving and the undeserving."
It certainly doesn't help that the peculiar form of "capitalism" that most people know isn't really free markets but rent-seeking gone wild. One would think that the supposedly better-educated left would be able to parse that distinction, but evidently not. Thus we are left with the meme of Capitalists Would Eat Babies If They Were Allowed To.
Who can't be against that? ;-)
Poetry, my lovely
;-)
Who doesn't understand what now? nt
.
I was just reading someone's facebook page
who has a zillion posts about defending gay marriage. She has other posts with pictures and clippings about the same thing....along countless others about free lifestyle and that it's nobody's business what people choose to do...yada yada yada. She's obviously very big on social freedoms and the rights of others to do as they please, when they they please and with whomever they please.
Marxism bans gay marriage?
Is it not possible to advocate for more state control of economic issues and less of social ones? That's pretty much how modern American Liberalism is defined.
Not every set of positions needs to be projected on a Totalitarian-Libertarian axis as a consistency check.
The point was how she was a poster child
for the topic at hand...
See
They really really really just don't see the difference.
They don't see the dissonance between HankP's " Liberals want to change society, they do not see the same need to preserve existing structures. They prefer an egalitarian model of
society and see no particular value in hierarchies" and corph's 'Is it not possible to advocate for more state control of economic issues and less of social ones? "
The whole "state control of economic issues IS an imposed hierarchy" thing just swoops on by.
Not to mention that recent history is replete with examples of state control of economic issues. We don't have to imagine how that might work out; the Italians, the Soviets, the Chinese, the Cubans, the Venezuelans, etc. have all tested that route.
Grrr
state control of economic issues IS an imposed hierarchy
The hell it is. Even interpreting "state control" in the strictest sense, invoking communist regime failures is a silly parade of horribles. The only thing swooping by is the caracitures in your imagination.
Social security, bans on insider trading, farm subsidies, taxes and the emoluments clause are all mechanisms of state control of economic issues. Some good, some bad, none of which lead to gulags and lines for toilet paper. Used wisely and judiciously, the state can foster economic opportunity. How's this: the government must intervene to ensure a free market (see trust-busting, price-fixing laws, disclosure requirements, etc.).
I'm sure you're aware of this, which makes your dismissive phrasing about "the left" all the more annoying (as you did with the coal power issue a while back).
Perhaps I could have been more specific about the degree and scope of the control I was talking about, but that's no excuse for practically equating the American left with central planning.
Great, we agree!
All of your examples (bans, farm subsidies, taxes, etc) are things imposed upon the markets by a governmental bureaucracy. Yes or no? I think the obvious answer is yes. Those things create a framework, a structure of control, over the market. A structure that places entities (e.g. a business and a governmental agency) in a hierarchy, which determines how each works with and responds to the other. A structure that liberals value. One they profess to want more of.
But yet, liberals also say "Liberals . . . see no particular value in hierarchies" as a way to differentiate themselves from those awful Republicans. So which is it? Do liberals value and want more structure, or less?
It IS a question of degree and scope of the control. It always has been. The left desires control just as much as the right does. Pot, kettle, that sort of thing.
A clarification
If my inclusion of the list of countries that have tried some form of planned economic actions seemed to imply that I thought the Democrats wanted control a la Chavez, then I wrote badly. My intention by including so many (you'll notice I didn't just say "the USSR") was to indicate that there are a variety of progressive legislative approaches out there whose results can be examined and evaluated; objectively, even, if you've got a mind to.
But I'm not equating the current Democratic party to socialism. I apologize if that was unclear.