ericmurphy
Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ July 30 2006,15:16) | | Ok, the software ate a fairly long reply, and I have to leave soon, so I'll make this brief: when theories must interact with the real world, they alter their shape to accomodate the facts. Liberalism holds two basic ideas: 1) Even radically different cultures can coexist peacefully with a little "tolerance" from the practitioners of the formerly dominant culture; and 2) All cultures lead to equal outcomes absent active discrimination. Not only do these ideas conflict, they're flat out wrong. |
No, Bill. What you're talking about is not "liberalism." Yes, it's true, may liberals do believe that different cultures can, and in fact, must coexist if humanity is to have any future. And no doubt some liberals may in fact believe that all cultures lead to equal outcomes, but that hardly makes it a core liberal belief. I do not, for example, believe that women have as good a deal in, say, Saudi Arabia as they do in, say, Sweden. Nor do I believe that all cultural and political systems are equally congenial to human happiness.
So you've taken two relatively subsidiary beliefs, which many liberals do not in fact subscribe to, and conflate them with the entire liberal ethos. This is a classic category error.
But in any event, you've failed to address my main point, which is this: one cannot be simultaneously "liberal" and "repressive." A repressive policy is, by definition, an illiberal policy. While it is clearly true that liberals are capable of embracing repressive policies (FDR and Japanese internment camps is an obvious example), the fact that a liberal may embrace a policy does not ipso facto make that policy a liberal one. Hitler, after all, loved dogs.
| Quote | | But liberals cannot admit this, and since prior attempts to raise the bottom have failed, the only recourse is to cripple the top. This leads to heavy-handed government regulation, with another set of regulations needed to silence those who point out the futility of the first efforts. |
Bill, you need to read some recent American history. The period of time in American history which had the lowest income disparities, with the lowest levels of poverty up to that time, with the largest middle class in American history, coincided with that period of time with the highest marginal tax rates, rates which by current standards seem punitive. In 1959, the highest marginal tax rate was 91%, for incomes over one million dollars. And guess whose policies these were, Bill? Conservative policies? No, of course not. I suggest you read Wealth and Democracy, by Kevin Phillips, who as senior economic adviser to the Nixon administration must have been a socialist. You might learn a thing or two about economic reality, because your claim that requiring the wealthy to bear their fair share of the costs of civilized society doesn't work is manifestly untrue.
| Quote | | Freedom and multiculturalism cannot coexist. The historical evidence is so clear, in fact, that the liberals in Europe have been forced to fine or jail those who state the obvious. But this is not enough, since the truth still remains. So the next step is to exterminate the dominant culture, and perhaps, those who embrace it. |
Um, no. You talk about Europe, Bill, as if it's some sort of benighted dungeon for free thinkers. As it happens, I have many friends in Europe, and have a pretty good idea of the kinds of society one finds there. If you think Europe is somehow a less egalitarian, more repressive society than the United States, you haven't been paying attention, especially for the past five years. And again, Bill, policies cannot simultaneously be "liberal" and "repressive." That doesn't make any more sense than a God-fearing atheist.
| Quote | | The fact that individual liberals are moral will not halt this social trend. Heck, most Nazi-era Germans were decent folk who didn't wish to kill their neighbors, but in embracing Hitler, they set a snowball in motion that led to the holocaust. Their inherent decency couldn't halt the consequences of their ideas. |
You keep bringing up Hitler to prove that liberal policies are bad, Bill, but you simply cannot get around the fact that the Third Reich is in the running for the least liberal society of all time. As I said in my last post, it's entirely possible to be conservative and repressive (almost all repressive regimes throughout history could accurately be described as "right wing"), but being liberal and repressive isn't hard; it's impossible.
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2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
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