patrick.net

"In Gandhi’s teaching, no human should be regarded or treated as being an 'enemy', in the sense of someone you have a right to destroy, or to hate, or to regard as alien, from whom you cannot learn, for whom you can feel no understanding or concern.

"These are simply not appropriate attitudes toward another human being. No one should be regarded as being -- in his or her essence or permanently -- evil or as utterly antagonistic. No people should be seen as being evil persons, as if they were without good in them, a different, less human order of being, as if one could learn nothing from them or as if they were unchangeable, even if what there were doing in the moment was harmful and terrible, indeed evil and needed to be opposed. Thus the whole notion of enemy was both unneeded and dangerously misleading."

-- Daniel Ellsberg, from his memoir _Secrets_, relating his initial encounter with Janaki Natarajan Tschannerl, and her description of the Gandhi philosophy of non-violence.

This country was founded on resisting people like you, and we, the right will not give up.

Actually this country was founded as a Novus ordo seclorum, a place that rejected the old order of noble privilege, dynastic wealth, and inequality.

The Progressive Era of 100 years ago had the same conservative vs. liberal battles we see now.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=607

No, this war of ideologies, is not over. But you are not my enemy, nor am I yours.

I can learn from you and you can learn from me.

The liberals won the battles of 230 years ago, 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and we'll win the current ones.

If we're still right.

I am reminded of the very great American, Senator Carl Schurz:

“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

stated in a speech in the Senate, February 29, 1872.

The fight between liberals and conservatives is, as you state, a long, rich one, one that the conservatives have been generally losing from the start. But stick to your guns, we need you to keep us honest and our arguments correct.

Troy says

“In Gandhi’s teaching, no human should be regarded or treated as being an ‘enemy’, in the sense of someone you have a right to destroy, or to hate, or to regard as alien, from whom you cannot learn, for whom you can feel no understanding or concern.
“These are simply not appropriate attitudes toward another human being. No one should be regarded as being — in his or her essence or permanently — evil or as utterly antagonistic. No people should be seen as being evil persons, as if they were without good in them, a different, less human order of being, as if one could learn nothing from them or as if they were unchangeable, even if what there were doing in the moment was harmful and terrible, indeed evil and needed to be opposed. Thus the whole notion of enemy was both unneeded and dangerously misleading.”
— Daniel Ellsberg, from his memoir _Secrets_, relating his initial encounter with Janaki Natarajan Tschannerl, and her description of the Gandhi philosophy of non-violence.
This country was founded on resisting people like you, and we, the right will not give up.
Actually this country was founded as a Novus ordo seclorum, a place that rejected the old order of noble privilege, dynastic wealth, and inequality.
The Progressive Era of 100 years ago had the same conservative vs. liberal battles we see now.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=607
No, this war of ideologies, is not over. But you are not my enemy, nor am I yours.
I can learn from you and you can learn from me.
The liberals won the battles of 230 years ago, 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, and we’ll win the current ones.
If we’re still right.
I am reminded of the very great American, Senator Carl Schurz:
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
stated in a speech in the Senate, February 29, 1872.
The fight between liberals and conservatives is, as you state, a long, rich one, one that the conservatives have been generally losing from the start. But stick to your guns, we need you to keep us honest and our arguments correct.

Troy,

Making a gratuitous assertion, doesn't make it true.

The liberals of 250 years ago, are NOT the Liberals of today.

Liberals 250 years ago, were all about freewill, free speech, self reliance, self determination.

The Liberals (or more aptly) the Progressives of today, want only to steal the wealth of the Tax paying class (people like me), and maintain themselves in the ruling class.

The sad truth is, that intellectually honest progressives, have MUCH more in common with awakened, and informed Tea Party/ Right / Patriots like myself.

The political left, manipulate people to vote Democrat to "get the evil rich", when it's really the super rich, that back the left, and democrats to steal money from me (the tax paying class) to keep us from rising up and competing with the rich.

I wish you would all read Hayek.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

There is no place on Earth -- worth living in at least -- that operates according to Hayek.

There is, however, real-world socialist paradises of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany to learn from.

They have their share of problems but Austrian libertarianism is a pipe dream wrapped in delusion.

I am actually a left-libertarian by leaning. I'd like the world to be structured such that we have infinite economic freedom. However, this is not an infinite world, and what I see with the "Honest Abe" version of libertarianism is nothing more than a vicious circle of the rich getting richer and the poor getting increasingly disempowered as wealth -- land, natural resources, capital -- become increasingly owned by the hereditary wealthy.

This is exactly what the Founders were fighting against. Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson especially.

Thomas Paine wrote _Agrarian Justice_:

"Thus Paine views private property as necessary, but that the basic needs of all humanity must be provided for by those with property, who have originally taken it from the general public. This in some sense is their "payment" to non-property holders for the right to hold private property."

Speaking with my Georgist hat on, it's a beautiful idea!

As for your babble above, I don't know how to respond to it. The Tea Party is largely captured by Christianists like DeMint and Palin, and their shadowy billionaire backers like the Kochs, Murdoch, Dick Armey's FreedomWorks.

The Tea Party is just retreaded and rebranded Republicanism of the sort that catastrophically failed in 2006-2008 after its good long run of 1995-2005. It's all bullshit.

Republicanism and movement conservatism as exercised under Gingrich and Hastert, created many more problems than they solved. Pelosi only got 4 years to address these massive disasters, Obama only 2.

Oh well.

What's funny is that Obama was a lecturer at the University of Chicago, and by accounts got along great with the general Misean nature of the place. Leftists certainly have more to fear from Obama than conservatives, LOL.

Progressives: Hand-holding conservatives through change since 1775.

Troy says

This is exactly what the Founders were fighting against. Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson especially.

Funny that you would reference Jefferson when responding to the assertion that the "liberals" of 250 years ago are not the "liberals" of today.

Agree with Hayek's major economic positions or not, a reading of his major work makes clear that the term "liberal" has changed meaning in only the last 60-70 years or so. Today's "liberal" is generally what Hayek referred to as a "collectivist" and seeks more central government control over how the economy is run. The arguments between today's "conservatives" and "liberals" as to the merits and pitfalls of central goverment control aside, there should be little argument that when coming up with a very basic description of the difference between the two, degree of central government control is the issue.

Yesterday's "liberal," such as Jefferson, was for decentralizing government down to the most local level that could be implemented. Jefferson himself stated this explicitely in his writings. Given how you refer to Palin, DeMint, etc., who are probably, generally speaking, to the left of the so-called "liberals" of 250 years ago that you claim are your ideological cohorts, vs. today's conservatives, perhaps you should re-examine whether you are in fact a "liberal," "left-leaning libertarian," etc.: You would absolutely hate Jefferson if he were a political figure today.

BTW, there have been plenty of places on earth that have operated according to Hayek, where (generally speaking, and to pre-empt the typical strawman, not in EVERY single case) government has interjected itself into an economic activity, made the situation worse, and in an effort to fix it, interjected itself even more, to the point of eventually taking nearly full control, while of couse, blaming the non-government sector for the problem and denying any responsibility for any contribution to the problem at all. Hayek's most common work, the Road to Serfdom, was mainly an observation of the socialist movement and control of Germany during the Nazi years, where the central government took more and more control over both economic and social activity... Which leads to another Hayek observation that is generally true and can be seen all around the world: Economic and social policy are inextricably linked...

Troy says

Progressives: Hand-holding conservatives through change since 1775.

Progressives are for a clearly defined, very limited role for the central government?

Paralithodes says

Jefferson himself stated this explicitely in his writings

Jefferson was also elected to office in 1800 with 41,330 votes in total.

What I like about Jefferson was that he was on the same page as Thomas Paine about the evils of concentration of wealth and private ownership of nature.

While as a left-libertarian I think decentralization is good, I also think central coordination about establishing minimums to avoid races to the bottom is better.

The health care reform is very conservative and as such is really no big deal.

As for my left-libertarianism, I'd like to think that if we all had a citizen's dividend like those socialists up in Alaska enjoy, we'd have a much more egalitarian economy. The core problem I see with the existing economic regime is that 20% of the population is engaged in rampant rentierism on the remaining 80% -- in FIRE, landholding, medical services, energy production and distribution, etc.

It's these rents and the rent-seeking that are the corruption of our current economy. Without them we wouldn't need so much socialism in response, nor would we have the intergenerational dependencies on welfare etc we have now.

there have been plenty of places on earth that have operated according to Hayek

generally when somebody like you then proceeds to omit a list of actual examples I get the impression that you're just bullshitting me on this.

Progressives are for a clearly defined, very limited role for the central government?

No, we're for implementing intelligent change when & where necessary. Even Hayek didn't have much truck with conservatives harking back on a past that wasn't worth conserving in the first place.

The idea that this nation is an agglomeration of independent states starting sailing away with Hamilton 200+ years ago, took a body blow 150 years ago with the Civil War, and really went away 75 years ago with the 'Switch in Time that Saved Nine'. The ACA reform is actually pretty decentralized, with states given missions and minimums to meet.

This is probably less efficient than a fully centralized approach like "HillaryCare" but it is also conservative and does pay lip service to allowing state-level innovation.

One advantage the Swedes and Norwegians have over us is that they are nations of 5-10 million people. Perhaps that's the largest agglomeration where socialism can work, though the German "Central-Socialism" is a counter example that success can come with population in the tens of millions.