Populism, Left and Right

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Populism, Left and Right
Why the establishment hates it

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[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Will we see a genuine grassroots populist movement that puts aside "left" and "right" labels start to rise any time soon? Or will the government and the establishment succeed in dampening all dissent to the ever-expanding centralized welfare-warfare police state?

[Earth]

Populism is ridiculous. Why would we see a movement that puts aside "left", and "right"; as if they could actually work together?

[HappyWarrior]

Anyone who thinks Tea Partiers are Populists have no idea what the word means.  Populists are economic leftists and social rightists.  People like me, Tmth, and Ben.  These idiots are right wingers and libertarians.

[RI]

Anyone who thinks Tea Partiers are Populists have no idea what the word means.  Populists are economic leftists and social rightists.  People like me, Tmth, and Ben.  These idiots are right wingers and libertarians.

I'm pretty sure people like you and, to an extent, I are communitarians, not populists. Populism only means that you juxtapose the elites versus everyone else in your rhetoric; it is not an inherently left-right position.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Anyone who thinks Tea Partiers are Populists have no idea what the word means.  Populists are economic leftists and social rightists.  People like me, Tmth, and Ben.  These idiots are right wingers and libertarians.

I'm pretty sure people like you and, to an extent, I are communitarians, not populists. Populism only means that you juxtapose the elites versus everyone else in your rhetoric; it is not an inherently left-right position.

Precisely. Populism is not an ideology.

Ben definitely is not a populist. He's a Scoop Jackson-loving neoconservative.

[Zarn]

Populism is not very libertarian. There is not much room for the protection of liberty in populism.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Populism is not very libertarian. There is not much room for the protection of liberty in populism.

Populism is more about how you present your ideas than what your ideas actually are.

[Zarn]

Populism is not very libertarian. There is not much room for the protection of liberty in populism.

Populism is more about how you present your ideas than what your ideas actually are.

That's where the problem lies.

[Hash]

Populism isn't an ideology, it's a political style.

[tmthforu94]

Personally, I like to think of populism as a belief of helping others through political power. Don't ask me to explain it tonight; I've recently been sucking at explaining things.

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

Personally, I like to think of populism as a belief of helping others through political power. Don't ask me to explain it tonight; I've recently been sucking at explaining things.

I don't know if that's really an accurate definition, but I would say you are a populist though.

[Beet]

Precisely, populism is a form of politics, it says nothing about the content of one's politics. A libertarian can be a populist as can a socialist, as can a conservative. At least initially.

In the long run, populism as a form of politics is bad for individual freedom, because it is an intense form of politics. Individual freedom best thrives when politics are not very intense, and people's attention is turned towards commerce. The greatest political intensity of human history, i.e. wars, Maoism, and yes, fascism, etc. have also come at the greatest cost to human freedom. In contrast, the great victories for freedom have been relatively conservative [in the universal sense]: the American revolution as opposed to the French revolution, the revolutions of 1989 as opposed to that of 1917, and so on.

The great victories for freedom in human history have been the result of the exhaustion of politics, not the frenzy of it.

Of course, the other problem with most who uphold the banner of populism is that they act as if they speak for the majority when they really don't. Hence William Jennings Bryan's quintessential populist campaign not only lost the 1896 election, but lost it in a spectacular, realigning manner. Hence the tea party today has only 18 percent of the population identifying, even if that identification requires no real activism. The majority is not whipped up in a campaign of political fervor, and that is a good thing for individual freedom as much as it may be for the establishment vilified in this piece.

[Хahar 🤔]

Anyone who thinks Tea Partiers are Populists have no idea what the word means.  Populists are economic leftists and social rightists.  People like me, Tmth, and Ben.  These idiots are right wingers and libertarians.

False. You're not a populist. You're not a public figure, so you can't be. Populism isn't an ideology.