As far as I know, and I may be wrong, but the parties switched ideologies later on. At the time when slavery was still an issue the Republicans were supposedly more liberal while the Democrats were conservatives. Besides, I don’t think it makes sense to say that people who wanted to conserve the current status of the society and its hierarchy (those who advocated slavery) are to be called liberals while those supporting the liberty of black people at the expense of conserving the privileged status are to be called conservatives.
This contrast between liberals and conservatives is more apparent when observing the relation between the north and south. North (anti-slavery) symbolizes modernism, industrialism and liberal and progressive thinking while the south (pro-slavery) was more agricultural, traditional and conservative.
Extreme capitalism hasn’t had much better results than communism. In fact, countries that have the best living standards and successful economies usually incorporate components of both ideologies and balance them out. Example is most of Western Europe and Scandinavia. And I’ve already expressed my thoughts on why calling any totalitarian regime progressive is ignorant and just plain wrong.
You misunderstood me. I am still examining the arguments for and against vegetarianism, I didn’t decide against it yet. Some people, like Peter Singer, give decent arguments on why we shouldn’t treat animals the way we do and eat them, and most of his arguments rely on the general sense of morality every human has - not to hurt others, and Singer is trying to extend that to animals and it’s not entirely unreasonable as some may think. I let facts lead my morality and if enough facts mount up in favor of vegetarians argument then I am willing to abandon meat eating despite the fact that I love meat. The path of truth is a hard one to walk indeed.
Also, you should at least try to see the issue from the opposite side too. The way vegetarians see it, humans can survive without meat yet we choose to breed other living beings (sometimes in poor conditions) for the sole purpose of mercilessly slaughtering them for food later on, even though we can survive without eating their meat. IF they are right about it and killing animals IS immoral (again, a big IF), THEN it would be perfectly sensible and consistent to try and ban eating meat because it would be immoral.
Personally I am still leaning to meat eating but I can understand where the arguments from the opposite side are coming from too.
Conservatives try to control society such that they can’t be disagreed with just as much as progressives. The struggle for power and control is innate to humans regardless of political orientation.
That’s a good point. Many people who call themselves progressives had/have such radical ideas that would very probably do more damage than good to society, such as anarchists or 3rd wave feminists, yet most progressives tend to ignore the faulty ones ascribing to their own ideology. It’s also true that it’s much easier to notice change (progress) than preservation/conservation, which is one of the possible reasons why people overlook or are unaware of conservatives being right in the past.
And by the way PK and others, the terms right and wrong IMPLY objectivity, so if you’re using those terms when talking about morality you’re implicitly talking about objective morality. An opinion is subjective - there is no way to determine it right or wrong.
I'm not talking about parties, though. Racism, eugenics, and the belief that the inferior races need to be stamped out to make way for a glorious white (and maybe asian) future were progressive, leftist ideas, irrespective of party.
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense if all you know about the movements is what the words sound like. Progressives believed in the betterment of mankind through making sure the undesirable elements shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce, and conservatives believed in a natural order that shouldn’t be meddled with in such a way, largely because of their religious convictions. Do some reading on eugenics and the progressive movement. Croly, Margaret Sanger… look up the book Eugenics and other Evils, by conservative G.K. Chesterton, and you’ll see him responding to the progressive arguments of his day.
Actually it’s had vastly superior results if you consider the communist nations to be the USSR, Cuba, Maoist China, and so on.
When Mao was in power, when Stalin was in power, and when Castro was in power, progressive leftists in free countries like the USA and Western Europe were [i]cheering them on[/i] and declaring that their home nations needed to adopt more of their policies. Leftist reporter of the New York Times Walter Duranty knew about Stalin's starvation campaigns and [i]covered them up[/i] because he didn't want to make a Communist nation look bad. Sure, NOW that hatred of those regimes is so widespread that the left has to disavow them in order to still be taken seriously, they say what you said- 'oh, those weren't really progressive'. But at the time, when these people were in power and it was not a forgone conclusion that their states would collapse, [i]the left endorsed them.[/i] You really need a context for history here- it was easy for the progressive left to endorse Stalin in the United States when people like Margaret Sanger were advocating the use of abortion to reduce black and latino populations because of their genetic inferiority.
It seems like you're trying to take what you think you know about a 21st century college age liberal and project them back into centuries past and speculate on what they would have done and believed there. But there was no such animal in those times, and there's no need to speculate, this is all easily accessible information.
Jesus Christ it' a thought experiment. Let me take it to the abstract so you won't get caught up in pointless details. You can imagine a future in which moral issue X is championed by liberals, and they are wrong. Because of the way liberals do things, in that future it would be very very difficult to speak out against X, and they would teach everybody's children that X is correct, thus making it the 'progressive' view that is on the 'right side of history'. That doesn't make them right. If you do decide that vegetarianism isn't a moral obligation, and the left does decide to make it one anyway, you will be at odds with them - and so we can see that just because a moral ideal sweeps the nation doesn't mean it's correct or that the people who opposed it are wrong, for you may yourself one day be in the position to disagree with a liberal. Feminism would be another example. Attitudes about women may change, thanks to the left, in such a way that you are considered a barbarian. That doesn't make you wrong, or conservatives that agree with you wrong.
I have a degree in political philosophy from a hard left university. I know more about the opposite side than most of it's advocates do. I've given public presentations on Peter Singer. You aren't going to say anything about vegetarianism that I haven't read and thought and written and debated about for years. So where doe the above comment come from?
That’s a story people tell in order to sound egalitarian, because they have been taught that egalitarianism is wise. The historical record disagrees.
Well, this year's progressives are arguing for veganism, an end to capitalism, transgendered rights, otherkin rights, recognition that being overweight isn't unhealthy, vastly lowering the age of consent, acceptance of incest, global government subsidizes healthcare, an end to private gun ownership rights, and many other things. Some of this may be good, some of this may be bad, and not every progressive is going to agree with all of it. So if the question is whether or not progressives are always right or right more often than conservatives, of course we have to examine the fronts on which they have not succeeded (yet).
Was Hitler a leftist progressive? Were KKK leftist progressives?
As far as I know, leftist ideologies like Marxism and socialism opposed and condemned racism as it divided the workers, the proletariat.
Also, as I said, the best example of the liberal-conservative relation is the American North-South contrast, I think you’d find that a little harder to deny.
Aren’t the words usually meant as symbols that represent what the movement stand for? And don’t we (or shouldn’t we) name movements by what they stand for? So f.e. the movement advocating female rights should adequately be named something like “feminism” and its advocates “feminists” so that if we hear the word “feminism” we know at least approximately what they stand for. Equivalent to that, a person advocating the conservation of the present status regarding an issue should be called a conservative, while a person advocating more liberty should be called a liberal, but I do concede it’s open for debate and that it doesn’t ALWAYS work that way in real world.
As for religious convictions, again, KKK are a counter-example (radical protestants). Bible supports slavery as is demonstrated in the following passages on this list: evilbible.com/Slavery.htm
I recall Churchill supporting eugenics and he was a conservative. Jurgen Habermas on the other hand is a leftist opposing eugenics. I’m not saying all leftists necessarily oppose eugenics or all rightists necessarily advocate it, I didn’t even bring it up - you did. But I think you intentionally ignore the counter-examples you know are there (if you’re as well educated as you claim).
First off, that’s one big “if” you got there. Marx himself probably turns over in his grave when he hears the kind of manipulative dictators who never cared about the people are called communists.
Secondly, pure capitalism, before the socialist movement intervened, utterly exploited people and even children - low salaries to the point of people not being able to provide even for themselves, dangerous, filthy jobs, short life spans, working half a day, no annual leave/vacation. I don’t see how that’s so much better than most countries CALLED communist.
Perhaps you’re right. I’m sorry, but I don’t intend to spend days researching what Western leftists of the time thought of Stalin. I’m not saying leftists are all saints, I know that some of them, like Stalin, did horrible things. Can you acknowledge the same thing about some rightists though?
I didn’t realize at first you meant it as a thought experiment but yes, I agree with your point, except that I would point out that it’s how most humans regardless of political orientation do things, not only liberals. Remember the oh so conservative Catholic Church during middle ages?
And I am supposed to verify that how? I can be anybody over internet too. But let’s say you did because I believe you. As for my comment, I just want to make sure people at least consider the ideas on the opposite side before rejecting them and I think vegetarianism has some merits and is worth considering.
I’m not an egalitarian nor do I want to sound like that. I merely recognize the fact of nature that humans as all other species are prone to will to control/exercise power over others. Besides, that’s not really a left-right issue, more of an authoritarian vs libertarian government.
I fully agree with that. The most important thing I overlooked in making of this thread as has been said before is that there have been progressive ideas which have been rejected and deemed undesirable by the majority yet the progressives of today will often ignore or even deny that and that there are issues that even progressives would agree conservatives are right about, but since there is no change those issues stand out less than when change happens.
Hitler was a National Socialist, combining leftist economic theory with fascism, which is neither right nor left. The KKK is a southern Democrat conservative thing, but ALL their race theory about eugenics and white supremacy came from the pseudoscience of the left.
Look, I've given you the information to the contrary, and you have Google. There's no reason to rely on 'as far as you knew' before we starting talking. Look up progressivism, leftism, and eugenics/racial hygiene.
I'm not denying anything, I'm explaining to you the way history has gon. The only thing conservative about the South in the Civil War is that they were the group that didn't want to change something. If that's the narrow understanding of conservative you are using, then fine. But as far as actual ideologies were concerned, there were religious ideologues on both sides, hawks and doves on both sides, and so on. Marxism wasn't an influence in the United States at the time of the Civil War, so it's very difficult to draw comparisons between attitudes then and the left/right ideologies now. The pro-slavery side was Southern, the democrat party, and advocating for agricultural concerns. The anti-slavery side was Northern, the Republican Party, and defending the concerns of manufacturing industries. Both sides claimed religious tradition in their camp.
What do you want me to say? In the past 100 years, the left in this country have gone from calling themselves progressives, to Marxists, to Communists, to liberals, and back to progressives again. You can complain all you want about what groups SHOULD be called, but that simply isn't how it played out.
It rarely does. Hell, 'conservation of the present status' and 'advocating more liberty' aren't even at odds if there is a movement to change society in a way that would curb our liberties, as rarely happens. What, do you want to start calling people who are against gun control legislation liberals now? If you created this thread to criticize/example two groups that have actually existed in history, then you have to deal with who they actually are, not who you wish they were or how you want them to be classified.
But the abolitionists made strong religious arguments as well, and so did Rev Martin Luther King. Prior to the 1950's or so, basically anybody on any side of any issue in the United States tried to shore their case up through Christian ethics.
Churchill was a conservative like Olympia Snowe was a Republican, which I will leave for you to figure out on your own. And why are you talking about present-day leftists like opposing eugenics is some big triumph of virtue in the 21st century? Conservatives and Liberals both oppose it NOW, but back when it was a big thing, when it was taken seriously as the way forward for western civilization, it was a progressive ideal. They got it wrong.
It's not a big if. Cuba, China, and the USSR were communist states that leftists in their hey-day championed as being utopias we should all follow in the footsteps of, including Stalinist Russia. That is a hugely shameful fact about the American left, and they control the schools, so now you are taught those countries don't count as 'really communist' because progressives believe it's ok to distort history to push an agenda.
Then you simply haven’t examined the statistics.
Then stop telling me those nations didn’t count as ‘real communism’ if you aren’t willing to look into it. Such things are the precise answer to the question you asked in this thread.
Of course. Off the top of my head, the Devauliers in Haiti were conservatives.
Bare in mind that during the Middle Ages, it’s not as though there was some minority liberal voice opposing whatever it is you are objecting to in the above. This is another historical mistake/lie that liberals commit- they take some thing that happened a thousand years ago when neither the conservative or progressive movements existed, and say “Conservatives did that”, because white people or religious sentiment was involved. The progressive left has it’s roots in Catholicism as much as the modern right does.
Well, the problem there goes back to the change vs stasis thing. With few exceptions (eugenics being the only one I can think of) the left isn’t going to say “Ah shit, we were wrong, the people rejected that kind of change and we’ve learned from it”, because that mean they can’t try again for that change later.
If we were going to pick the most salient political events in history we surely must include Communism and the Right’s steadfast resistance to follow the Left down that path to Utopia.
[size=120]The distinction of “conservative” and “progressive” is moronic.[/size]
Evolution and history do not “proceed”, do not “run” in one “linear”, in one so-called “progressive” direction. Evolution and history move cyclically, spirally - like this:
It’s like the circulation of our planet Earth and our Moon, of the other planets and their moons, of asteroids and comets, of our Sun, thus of the whole Sun System, and of all other solar systems in our Milky Way:
