Oh sorry dead0, I assumed it was some random troll. I'll unban you now.

I am in.

I am in.

I am in.

I am in.

FF, he was really friendly with me! I don't have to judge the controversies with other guys!

Calling Duke a rapist doesn't bother you? Okay.

He was depressive and he apologized. All people can make mistakes.

You're more forgiving than I am. I've never suffered from depression but I know plenty of people who do/have and they've never turned into borderline sociopaths who spread disgusting rumours about people for no reason.

Yeah Sanchez, Badger is right - don't give money to people on the street. Living as I do in a city I'm daily approached by crackheads/junkies/etc asking for a yeeeero for a hostel to which the appropriate response depending on the context is either "No, sorry" or "No, sorry. What? No, f--- off". I mean of course there's nothing wrong with spending money on booze & drugs since that's what money is for but more to the point my money is mine and I want it all.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of time for your Randian approach to social problems but then again I also don't have a lot of time for the bleeding heart liberal take on this situation. It sucks that you got robbed but at least it was only six dollars and he didn't take your phone or wallet. I certainly don't blame you for having a low opinion of the guy though, I've been robbed before and my reaction has never been "those poor victims of society ".

Obviously I wouldn't vote for most members of my actual party so I'll just treat this question as if I was a US Democrat instead - any 'blue dog', any 'pro-gun' 'left-winger', and of course True Leftist Nader/Kucnichite types like, er, Kucinich, who get upset at the US dropping bombs on terrorists and so on and so forth.

[/scare quotes]

Proud to say I think I've literally only looked at it once. If that.

Executive Election:
[ 3  ] Clinton1996/Siren
[ 1  ] ZuWo/Cathcon
[ 2  ] Drj101/Write-in: Cathcon

Legislative Election:
[ 3  ] Odysseus
[ 2  ] Inks.LWC
[   ] HoosierPoliticalJunkie
[   ] MilesC56
[   ] a Person
[   ] LumineVonReuental
[   ] Oldiesfreak1854
[ 4  ] Shua
[ 5  ] Gass3268
[   ] TNF
[ 1  ] Write-In: _Oakvale_________
[   ] Write-In: __________

FF, he was really friendly with me! I don't have to judge the controversies with other guys!

Calling Duke a rapist doesn't bother you? Okay.

Sorry to bump this as I'm a little late to the party, but I've reading about this topic a lot lately for whatever reason so I searched to see if we had a thread on it.

I'm inclined to struggle to move past my kneejerk moral intuitions, even just for its own sake. "Kneejerk" is kind of a deragotary term, but I'm lazy and a poor writer and can't phrase it any better - I don't mean to imply there's anything wrong with making decisions based on your moral instincts.  Anyway, I'm not ready to come down on one side of the issue or the other but it fascinates me as a philosophical discussion - the idea of personhood interests me a lot for some reason. Part of this unfortunate development is that I'm a very great admirer of Peter Singer. I can picture Al, Nathan, and Gully simultaneously punching their computer screens at that last sentence, so sorry, guys.

This is all a gross oversimplification for space.

Liberalism has its earliest philosophic roots with thinkers like John Locke and his Enlightenment heirs who believed that mankind had an unlimited set of rights from birth in the state of nature and surrendered certain rights to live in society (the social contact) and that governments only had the legitimate ability to restrict rights that infringed upon others (my "right" to murder you infringes on your right to live).  Philosophers like Rousseau elaborated on Locke's social contract and propounded a doctrine that government should be based on consent of the governed rather than divine right.  This dovetailed nicely with the lessons of England's 1688 "Glorious Revolution," a rejection of Stuart Absolutism, which culminated in the English Bill of Rights.  (This is a very positive view of these events, which were actually far more complicated and ambiguous, but I'm skimming).  Enlightenment projects like Cesare Beccaria's campaign to ban torture dovetailed nicely with this viewpoint.  Radical attempts by thinkers like Mary Woolstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges to lay claim to the liberal intellectual tradition in favor of equality for women met sharp ends (literally in Olympe de Gouges' case).  Against this doctrine, Edmund Burke would lay down his theory that rather than illusory fundamental rights, people should look towards their privileges granted in a murky medieval past and attempt to revive ancient privileges rather than destroy the order of society around them: Burke's reaction to the French Revolution was the founding of intellectual conservatism.

In the late 18th century, the followers of Adam Smith rejected the Mercantilist economic dogma that had dominated the 18th century.  Smith rejected the idea that there was a finite amount of wealth in the world and that economics was a zero-sum game of trying to amass the most gold bullion into your own treasury in favor of the idea that trade and mutual competitive advantage could leave both parties richer.  Smith's free-trade economic dogma, refined by David Ricardo in the early 19th century, merged with the political ideas of the Social Contract Theory to form the Classical Liberalism package: free markets and free men.  Jeremy Bentham and James and John Stuart Mill furthered the intellectual side of Liberalism into a new doctrine called "Philosophic Radicalism" which merged Liberalism's tenets with Bentham's moral philosophy of Utilitarianism, seeking the greatest good for the greatest number.  Philosophic Radicalism, at its worst, embraced a Malthusian disregard and contempt for the poor (Social Darwinism) and the notion that any recreational activity for the poor should be balanced with pain to encourage hard work in that group.  All the same, Mill advocated for religious tolerance and extension of political rights and female emancipation.

In most of Europe, Liberalism aped its British form, arguing for free trade and lassiez faire capitalism and against the privileges of the traditional aristocracy.  It had great appeal among the rising bourgeois orders and its promise of extended political rights appealed somewhat to the masses, but the rise of Social Democratic parties in the late 19th century came mostly at the expense of Liberalism's support among the working classes, and Conservatives also rapidly adapted to mass politics and did not suffer nearly as much from the increasing democratization of politics as Liberalism's (and Socialism's) partisans had assumed.

In the USA, Liberalism originally mostly shared that definition.  The word was associated with abolitionists and free traders alike (movements like the Free Soil Party, with its claims of Free Trade, Free Land, and Free Soil being as Liberal as a platform could get).  In the post-Civil War era, as the GOP embraced Protectionism, the Democratic Party, despite being opposed to many other tenets of Liberalism, fully embraced Free Trade and became associated with Liberalism as a result.  When Woodrow Wilson was elected president, he was a self-proclaimed liberal who was a firm believer in free trade, but was also a believer in massive government reform projects including the foundation of a central banking system.  Franklin Roosevelt took the word liberal with him when he assumed the Presidency, and it's under his administration, that greatly increased the size of the Federal government, that made it what it is today in the USA.  Liberalism became a light form of social democracy in the USA as a result of the "liberal" Roosevelt being a light social democrat and leaving such a huge imprint on American politics.

In Europe, the aftermath of World War I and the subsequent Depression had left lassiez faire economics and the liberal political order both borderline discredited, as solutions relying more on planned economies and dictatorial fiat became more and more attractive.  Even in Britain, the Liberal Party nearly died in the 1920s as its nature of being "Conservatives but anti-tariff" simply wasn't enough to maintain broad popular support outside of a few minor demographics.  Until the 1980s (when it was reborn as neo-liberalism), the lassiez-faire liberal idea in Europe made way in the democratic ideological scene for social democracy on the left and a heavily government-oriented Christian Democratic/Gaullist ideal on the right.

In the USA, the turmoil of the 1960s on race and the war in Vietnam left the traditional liberal political class, with their faith in the government's ability to solve any economic or social problem, seriously discredited.  Many in the liberal government class like Daniel Patrick Moynihan embraced the social ideals of conservatism without losing their faith in government as a major transformative actor and agent for their ideals: they would be the pioneers of "neoconservatism" (a word that's since been majorly trashed...Moynihan wouldn't embrace that label today if he were still alive).

Neoliberalism, arising in both Europe and the USA, was a reaction to the Keynesian consensus and argued that the most deregulated and unfettered global economy would be the most productive one.  Following the collapse of the USSR, neoliberal economists had disastrous spells as advisers in several Eastern Bloc countries, overseeing the firesale divestment of those states' huge public sectors and the creation of bandit billionaires all over the former Communist Bloc.

i didn't read all that but for everyone else i think he's saying that the different kind of liberals are BLUE DOGS AND PROGRESIVES

I've started hating people on my own side of the aisle more than the other side.

As an addendum to my previous post, I've experienced this, too. When it comes down to it I fit in more on the "left" than the "right", whatever my distaste for ideological labels, but I find a lot of the left tedious and depressing - whether it's identity-obsessed new age liberals, unreformed Marxists, awful "moderates", the Naso Democrats strung out on the fantasy of a new age of American manufacturing, etc, etc, etc, I always seem to find myself rolling my eyes. It's worse because I don't really understand the moral principles those on the right start from so they don't feel familiar enough for me to bother being annoyed. With the worst of the left I can still see the root logic behind the tedious bullsh[inks] they end up talking about, and it's all the more upsetting.

It's kind of similar to the religion debates on here - I don't like the smug, condescending anti-rationalist posts from the religious side any more than the smug, condescending posts from the super-rationalist atheist side, but I understand the atheists more - I don't "get" believing in God etc. 'cause my brain's not wired that way, so their arguments are bound to annoy me far more, since I probably more or less agree with them when you get right down to it - the difference is I can't bring myself to care about whether Jesus said "burn the gays" or "go forth and listen to Madonna ironically" etc.

HP. I know he was 12 but I'm pretty sure I wasn't that borderline sociopathic at 12. He also posted on Stormfront apparently, to which LOL.

Should have voted for Progressive Realist.

[TL;DR]

The Atlas has been somewhat important in that it's helped me realise that I don't like or particularly care about politics or even worse "policy". I think political "debate" is a sadistic waste of time, but I don't mean to imply I'm some kind of stoner nihilist or (although it's going to be hard to avoid that impression) but while obviously I care about some, even many 'issues' and like to think I have coherent views on those, I'm never going to formulate a list of 25 distinct political positions or whatever because I'm not and do not plan ever to be a candidate for elected office.

I have to concur with hash's wonderful post - over the years I've talked to him on here it's been clear we tend to be on more or less the same page politically and his post summarises my own views on "ideology" far more articulately than I could. I don't have any ideological affiliation, and that doesn't mean I'm some kind of "ideology is dead blah blah fiscally conservative socially liberal blah blah blah" moderate hero. It means I don't see the point in consciously choosing an identity because I have opinions on a few things I think are important. I'm not part of a movement because of things I believe, I'm just an unimportant and irrelevant person. I don't even bother voting any more because politics is just the art of massaging the public into believing in dehumanising institutions. Something something alienation something.

That said, I still think poor people should get to go to hospital and not starve to death, though, so if someone runs against that I will show up, and vote appropriately. So that's something.

TL;DR What hash said, F[Inks] THE SYSTEM MAAAAAAN 4/20, I don't believe in Beatles or Jesus.

I am running for Mideast Assembly in the election this weekend, as a write-in candidate if necessary.

Atlaschat was pretty awesome late last night. There was about four hours of everyone posting porn.

...what?

...

This thing evidently goes to absolute shi[nks] late at night.

Don't particularly care about the anti-mod crusade but a great guy and one of the best posters on the forum. Is also generally right on any given issue (I'm sure there are exceptions but whatever).

I am in.

Me and Phil share a birthday?! May 12th truly is a great date.

Happy Birthday Phil!

Don't worry, I'm also in.

Jerry Brown is obviously the only worthwhile candidate.

Not sure if I'm allowed move yet but if not just ignore this.

Oakvale
Federalist Party
Wisconsin