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What's liberalism? What's conservatism?

Mithrae said:
More stuff to buy with for folk who work means more stuff for folk who sell.
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You're merely taking one man's property to give to the other.

Wealth (and by "wealth" I mean new "stuff" that wasn't there before) is only created by digging in the ground and converting dirt to useful product. Work on increasing production, productivity or efficiency to better man's plight. Stealing from one to give to the other (government sanctioned or not), will not improve man's condition. The injustice can only harm mankind.
 
Respecthelect said:
You merely argue the laws of economics are more complicated than the laws of physics. Hardly a compelling case.
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No, I'm saying that there are no "laws of economics". economics is dependent upon human nature, and human nature is not rational or consistant.
 
I tire of people who claim things can't be understood, because they are "not rational or consistent." One can't predict or measure which of two slits a particle passes through, yet an entire branch of science is dedicated to understanding those random events. There's a Nobel prize dedicated to understanding the laws of economics, equal to the Nobel Prize in physics.

Why don't you stay home and watch Sesame Street, while the grown-ups try to make sense of the laws of nature?
 

Actually, there's not.

The Nobel Prize in Physics is one of the prizes specified in Alfred Nobel's will. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was added in 1968 and has gone through multiple changes regarding eligibility. They're also selected by separate committees of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The apparent claim that the prizes are "equal" somehow, thereby rendering the science of physics and the science of economics equally as inexact, is an extremely specious one.

There's no such thing as "laws of economics." It's not a natural science. Physics is.
 
Kobie said:
There's no such thing as "laws of economics." It's not a natural science. Physics is.
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Economic Laws, according to Wikipedia. Thirty laws sounds substantial. Mostly though, it proves "existence." That those laws do indeed, exist.

Nobel prizes were also originally awarded in literature and the most famous of all, the Peace Prize. Neither are "natural sciences." Being a "natural science" is not now, nor has it ever been, a requirement of Nobel.

Lastly, the prize money is equal for economics and physics, so they are equal in that regard.
 

Economic "laws" can be broken. Physical laws cannot.
 
As I previously described, one can throw a glass up against gravity, but eventually the glass comes crashing down. So it is with economics.
 
Kobie said:
There's no such thing as "laws of economics."
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Everyone's heard of the "law of supply and demand." How can you claim there's "no such thing?" Because the laws are more complicated? Because they take longer? Because they involve large numbers and the individual interactions aren't immediately obvious?

These aren't reasons to deny forces are at work. Forces that can be understood at some level.
 

Guess what? The "law" of supply and demand is not an immutable law. It can be manipulated, it can be broken.
 
In America ..

Liberalism is where losers are more important and are the special preferred personalities over winners, where a focus on traditional underdogs is more important and these are the special preferred personalities over a focus on traditional champions, where women in prominence are favored over men in prominence, where LGBTs are accorded special treatment over straights, where minorities are favored over the majority, where excess of freedom is more important than security in social matters, where excess of liberty is more important than justice in social matters, where excess of security is more important than freedom in economic matters, where excess of justice is more important than liberty in economic matters, where acting out one's unresolved family-of-origin dysfunction in the public political arena, especially regarding contempt for authority, is more important than either liberty or justice for all, where American citizens are disrespected by liberalism's attendant Multi-Cultural Internationalists ...

Conservatism is where winners are more important and are the special preferred personalities over losers, where a focus on traditional champions is more important and these are the special preferred personalities over a focus on traditional underdogs, where men in prominence are favored over women in prominence, where straights are accorded special treatment over LGBTs, where the majority is favored over minorities, where excess of security is more important than freedom in social matters, where excess of justice is more important than liberty in social matters, where excess of freedom is more important than security in economic matters, where excess of liberty is more important than justice in economic matters, where acting out one's unresolved family-of-origin dysfunction in the public political arena, especially regarding idealization for authority, is more important than either liberty or justice for all, where American citizens are disrespected by conservatism's attendant Corporate Global Expansionists ...

Which is why I prefer centrism, where everyone is important and no one personality type is special or preferred -- principles before personalities --, where gender, orientation, racial or cultural bias of any kind is not favored, where creating a dynamic balance between freedom and security, between liberty and justice respectively, is the lauded goal, where liberty and justice applies to all, where one takes one's unresolved family-of-origin dysfunction to a competent mental health practitioner or support group and not to act out in the public political arena, where American citizens are respected in all matters ...
 
Ontologuy said:
In America ..

Liberalism is where losers are more important and are the special preferred personalities over winners
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OK, liberals axalt and encourage losing and losers... No disagreement.


Almost none of this is true. Conservative's champion equal treatment, under the law. Democrats divide by race and gender, not Republicans. Not sure what an "excess of freedom" is? Conservatives expect government to protect against force and fraud and then stop, because that's the end of their charter. There is no such thing as an "excess of freedom." Every man is and must be as free as the limits of other men's equal freedom allow.

Ontologuy said:
Which is why I prefer centrism
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Conservatism is centrism. Just because the country rebelled against Bush's leftist policies and had no other choice than to vote for an even more extreme leftist like Obama, doesn't mean the country isn't conservative. When we elect another (Reagan) conservative like Ted Cruz, the country will once again prosper. The country will once again love their Republican leader and the people will be happy, because he (we) will restrict government to its limited role.
 
Andalublue said:
Liberals and Conservatives are just two sides of the same capitalist coin. There are no fundamental ideological differences between them. The placing of emphasis on slightly different illusory freedoms is a matter of hue, not a different colour.
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The words mean little.

From a governance point of view, the notion of large, intrusive government vs. the notion of wide and far reaching personal freedom is the actual question.

Liberalism combined with conservatism as guiding philosophies seem necessary to achieve either.

In America, the expansion of government power is tool of both parties, but creates the effect of more government control and less personal freedom. In this way, both major political parties oppose personal freedom and favor expanded government control.

The other edge of the sword is that limiting the power of government too severely allows for the expansion of street justice so the existence of de facto personal freedom vanishes.

The gift of civilization to the individual is the balance of government power and personal freedom. It is still true that the price of freedom is vigilance.

"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither."- Franklin
 
I couldn't help but notice how you agreed with the liberal description, but disagreed with the obviously polemic and thus accurate conservative description.

If the liberal description is accurate, the conservative one must be also, by definition in the American traditional political spectrum, and disagreeing with its definition is not rational.

Wishing that the centrist description described conservatism, when it obviously doesn't, is thus simply an emotional reaction, nothing more.

Clearly you're a conservative, not just from your chosen designation that appears to the left of all your posts, but because of your reaction to my post.

If it's any consolation, liberals have the same reaction as you when reading the accurate statement of their ideology: oh, they agree that conservatism is just as I described it here (http://www.debatepolitics.com/general-political-discussion/202263-whats-liberalism-whats-conservatism-11.html#post1063674580), but they deny that liberalism is as accurately described, just as you deny the reality of what conservatism is.

Clearly, liberalism and conservatism are indeed polemic opposites in substantive political position, as reflected on their wing-position on the traditional political spectrum, equidistant from the center.

Like you, many liberals imagine that the centrist description describes them.

But, it doesn't.

Some liberals think that their position as described is a "necessary transition" to get to centrism.

But, it's not.

To both liberals and conservatives alike who think that the centrist description is their ideology, no, it clearly isn't.

But, if you like that description, the centrist description, then maybe that's good information for you.

No transition is necessary to get there.

You just make up your mind to make a choice to be there.

It really is that easy.

And when you are there, you simply call it what it is, by definition: centrism.
 
Ontologuy said:
centrism.
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You fail to describe "too much freedom?" What is "centrist" about taking away freedom? How much enslavement (the opposite of freedom is enslavement) is "centrist?"
 
I think you got the liberal definition right but not the conservative definition
 

I've heard the difference between Democrats & Republicans explained this way:

A Democrat loses sleep at night worried that someone somewhere is not getting what he should.
A Republican loses sleep at night worried that someone somewhere is getting something he shouldn't.

Beyond that, I think:

The liberals generally base their beliefs on fact and science, as well as compassion and what some may consider universal truths and universal human rights.

The conservatives generally follow a set of beliefs that their party holds, regardless of the science or facts behind it or not behind it, and generally are not concerned about compassion or universal human rights, considering those things to be in the realm of non-profit organizations.

Liberals are more concerned about the individual than the company.

Conservatives are more concerned about the company than the individual.

Conservatives are more concerned about their own individual rights, rather than with the rights of all. That is, they don't often ackowledge knowing that their rights end where another's rights begin. Case in point: A recent thread about a diner's owner's rights to give a discount to patrons if they prayed openly to display their belief in a god and/or religion; the conservatives just couldn't grasp, or didn't want to grasp, the idea that the owner has a right to do with his business what he wants...up to the point where it interfered with another person's rights.

Liberals are also concerned about individual rights, but tend to concentrate on the rights of the collective society of people, I'd say. Case in point: Some liberals won't acknowledge that the law recognizes a person's right to own a gun, concentrating instead on society's right to be free of mass shootings and terrorism by those with guns.

To say that liberals believe in environmental laws and such because of feelings instead of science is ludicrous. There's a reason that the more educated people in a society tend to be more liberal. In fact, if you wanted to all liberals en masse, you'd be on shaky ground. They tend not to automatically believe everything they're told. They are more apt to be fact seekers and think independently. Liberals are not a cohesive group.

Conservatives tend to believe what their leaders tell them, as long as it still reasonably fits in with the party line.

Liberals tend to have a much wider range of opinions on things. I don't think there can be a liberal "group-think." They are too diverse a group.

Conservatives can be moderate or extreme, but generally the range on their positions isn't nearly as wide as for liberals.

Liberals vote for the person. More liberals will vote Republican than conservatives would vote Democratic.

Conservatives vote for the party. More liberals will vote Republican than conservatives would vote Democratic.

Liberals fall in love with a candidate. Conservatives fall in line.
 
JumpinJack said:
The liberals generally base their beliefs on fact and science
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I think it would be more accurate to say that 'conservatives' are a little more likely to trust in the authority of religions and traditions, while 'liberals' are a little more likely to trust in the authority of academics and scientists. There are probably just as many folk who are clueless about evolution or climate science or international affairs or the like on each 'side' - they're just looking to different people to tell them what to think.
 
Let's see if even one word of this is true?

JumpinJack said:
A Democrat loses sleep at night worried that someone somewhere is not getting what he should.
A Republican loses sleep at night worried that someone somewhere is getting something he shouldn't.
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A Democrat loses sleep at night worried that a bureaucrat somewhere is not taking what he should.
A Republican loses sleep at night worried that someone somewhere is taking something he shouldn't.

Because it isn't the giving that's the problem, it's the taking. Government can not give without first taking.


JumpinJack said:
liberals generally base their beliefs on fact and science, as well as compassion and what some may consider universal truths and universal human rights.
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In America, universal truth is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." All rights stem from these three individual rights and group-rights are virtually non-existent. Only the equal rights to liberty of other individuals limit each person's freedom. So called "human-rights" are code for greater-good and "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." These philosophies are opposite America's founding philosophy. Individual-rights vs greater-good. The principles are opposite. The poster attempts to claim individual-rights, then immediately contradicts himself whenever choices must be made - group vs individual.

Based on facts and science? One hardly thinks so. Let's look at the liberal "green" movement? They claim to want clean air and water, then they outlaw CO2 as a poison gas. We breathe in 400 ppm and exhale at 4%. Humans exhale CO2 at ten-thousand times background. How is that science, to say humans are exhaling poison? And doesn't that lead to the natural conclusion that there be fewer humans? So called facts and science that lead toward fewer humans. Does that sound correct?

What about "Zero-Population-Growth" liberals? Is that based on facts and science? ZPG'ers were so successful, America doesn't produce enough children to maintain the population. We now must immigrate people in, just to break even. Is that sound policy, based on facts and science? Another case of fewer humans.

What about global-warming? Is that based on facts and science? Despite ever increasing CO2 and liberal claims of impending weather catastrophes, especially hurricanes, their number has decreased.



Water vapor is a hundred-times more solar absorptive than CO2 and we intentionally throw thirty-thousand times more water vapor absorption into the air. (U.S. alone irrigates 128 million gallons per day, or 1,500 billion tons per year. At a hundred times CO2 solar absorption, that equates to 150,000 billion tons. Compare to CO2's meager 5 billion tons and one quickly sees how insignificant CO2 is to greenhouse.)



So how is this CO2 mania in any way shape or form based on facts or science? And what about man's detrimental effect on global temperature stability? Below is ice-record data showing that when man's written record begins, global temperatures stabilize at today's cozy temperature.



What were intolerable thirty-degree global temperature swings, have become a few-degree gentle drifts. This is global temperature stability and I call liberals, "global temperature stability deniers." This is fact and this is science, not the nonsense liberals spew. Chicken-little's who fail their every prediction.

JumpinJack said:
The conservatives generally follow a set of beliefs that their party holds, ...and generally are not concerned about compassion or universal human rights, considering those things to be in the realm of non-profit organizations.
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Conservatives follow principle, not party. Three simple principles; you should learn them: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Yes, conservatives think with our heads and try not to let emotions trump rationality. After all, was the war on poverty rational? Building giant low-income housing projects rational? Conservatives warned you liberals not to build those crime-nests, but you led with your hearts and destroyed lives. Same as every liberal in history. "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few." Ten-years later and Stalin had killed twenty-million innocents. Facts and science, lol - good job liberals.
 
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JumpinJack said:
Liberals are more concerned about the individual than the company.

Conservatives are more concerned about the company than the individual.
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Corporations are voluntary organizations and collections of men. So are unions. Both formed by a piece of paper, setting out their charters. Liberals like their unions as much as conservatives like companies. Corporations brought you virtually every modern convenience you could want. Corporations feed you, clothe you, tuck you in at night and gently wake you in the morning. All at your complete leisure and free-choice. Unlike government, corporations never force, never coerce. Corporations serve man.

But, who really serves the corporation? Who gave Kelo's land to Wall Mart in New London? Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. So it's the liberals who serve the corporation, while conservative's insist the corporation serve man.



First of all, the owners were giving a discount to those who prayed. Many soup kitchens likewise, pray before meals. It's the restaurant's food, they have a right to give it away for free, if they want. Nevertheless, this case could be considered a close-call. If this is the best you can do to criticize conservatives, that they give to fellow Christian's, I'll take it.



You can't have it both ways. Either individual-rights trump collective good or they don't. Both can't be guiding principle.



That's why Obamacare passed with 100% Democrat vote, because they are not a cohesive group? That's why every single Democrat has supported and backed Obama's play on every lawless decision? Not a single one of them lifting a finger to stop this imperial president?





Typical liberal voters rationally and intelligently developing a wide variety of well-reasoned opinions? Or a herd of dummies trying to be with the "cool" kids?


JumpinJack said:
Conservatives vote for the party. More liberals will vote Republican than conservatives would vote Democratic.

Liberals fall in love with a candidate. Conservatives fall in line.
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There are only two choices, Democrat or Republican. Unfortunately, this generally means a liberal or an even bigger-liberal. Bush 1 = liberal, Bush 2 = liberal, McCain = big liberal, Romney = Romneycare liberal. America hasn't even seen a conservative candidate since Reagan, thirty years ago. There's no such thing as "falling in line" for conservatives. The only choice is lib or bigger-lib.
 
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Reagan would be considered liberal by todays standardards. He was a big spender, expanded government, signed an illegal immigrant amnesty bill, did nothing to reduce means tested welfare, etc.

About the only thing that he wasn't liberal about was civil rights.

But I do agree with you that in many ways, both bushes, McCain and Romney are somewhat liberal. We aren't a radical right extremist country, hopefully we never will be.
 

Only to the scientifically illiterate. The 7 billion humans on the planet exhale somewhere in the order of 3 billion tons (gigatons) of CO2 per year, compared to over 30 gigatons from burning fossil fuels. More to the point, the CO2 we breathe out comes from the carbohydrates which we've eaten from plants an animals - carbon already present in the ecosystem which our consumption temporarily removed. The brilliant scientific minds in the conservative camp must believe that we are magical carbon producers :lol: By contrast, most high school graduates have heard of the carbon cycle. Buried millions of years ago, fossil fuels are not part of the natural cycle and thus actually are adding CO2.


Even more brilliance here. Do you know what irrigation is? Here's a hint: If that 128 million gallons of water is ending up in the atmosphere rather than on your crops, you're not doing it right. I would advise you never to try and run a farm. But even aside from your tenuous grasp on such basic agricultural concepts, the premise is once again flawed on more fundamental scientific grounds. Even if it were a bunch of water vapour being pumped into the atmosphere, under normal circumstances it wouldn't be there too long before it comes back down as precipitation. By contrast CO2 is the most common of the long-lived greenhouse gases, whose effects accumulate and persist over decades.

For more information on the relationship between atmospheric H2O and CO2 (saturation of absorption bands, effect in various atmospheric layers etc.) see this excellent article by physicist and science historian Dr. Spencer Weart.


Once again this may come as a shock to you, but thirty degree temperature changes in Greenland are not the same thing as thirty degree global temperature swings. Few proxy records go back so far besides ice cores, but the comparison between Antarctica (Vostok) and Greenland (GISP2) is enough to illustrate the remarkable ignorance which you're displaying here:
Ice Cores

Likewise the current interglacial period is not particularly remarkable, as they occur every 100,000 years or so, primarily due to the climatic effect of orbital variations (Milankovitch cycles). Whether it is your own ignorance at fault, or simply the cherry-picking and deceptiveness of your source makes little difference; this too is a fairly well-known fact from even a rudimentary glance into climate science.
Paleoclimatology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vostok ice core

For more detailed and representative studies (80+ proxies with a more global distribution) of the transition into the present interglacial and over the last 10 thousand years see Shakun et al 2012 (Nature) and Marcott et al 2013 (Science).

Respecthelect said:
This is global temperature stability and I call liberals, "global temperature stability deniers." This is fact and this is science, not the nonsense liberals spew. Chicken-little's who fail their every prediction.
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Your naked propagandizing has accomplished nothing more than proving JumpinJack's point: You are scientifically illiterate (and judging by your comment on irrigation, apparently a little short on common sense too!) but you're determined to wave your flag for your team and attack those nasty ol' "liberals" regardless.
 
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Mithrae said:
Shakun et al 2012 (Nature)
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Eschenbach refutes Shakun. Normally Nature authors aren't shown to be so blatantly fraudulent, but that's the norm in the global-warming community, isn't it?


Mithrae said:
Marcott et al 2013 (Science).
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Marcott's fraud is even more blatant and is widely criticized. Science magazine takes a giant hit to their credibility over this article.



I'll accept both an apology for the name-calling and for your use of fraudulent and discredited articles. Whenever you're ready.
 
Respecthelect said:
Eschenbach refutes Shakun. Normally Nature authors aren't shown to be so blatantly fraudulent, but that's the norm in the global-warming community, isn't it?
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An unsuccessful psychology bachelor who has attracted the criticism even of other sceptics for his dubious ethics and misrepresentation as a scientist. Even if the information posted there happens to be honest and accurate, the fact remains that the first graph is merely an obfuscationary tactic and the second an irrelevant tangent. You'd see a similar spread of anomalies from modern globally distributed measurement stations, but that doesn't make the mean temperatures any more difficult to calculate, and moreover Shakun et al more usefully delineated the temperature's lead and lag ranges against CO2 by hemisphere - with the southern hemisphere probably leading CO2 on average and the north lagging - and considered the possible mechanisms behind that fact. Obviously you didn't bother to read that far, if anything at all :lol:

Respecthelect said:
Marcott's fraud is even more blatant and is widely criticized. Science magazine takes a giant hit to their credibility over this article.
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Steve McIntyre again is not a climate scientist; he did at least study bachelor-level mathematics and science in the late 1960s-71, but since then his career was devoted to mining consultancy and minerals prospecting. His criticism, even if accurate, is that for less than 1/30th of the period covered (ie, the last 300 years) less than half of the proxies used (31 of 73), when averaged out, allegedly showed cooling in their original publication data rather than warming of Marcott et al's reconstructions.

Roger Pielke Jr. is a climate scientist, but his criticism is not of the study itself or its results, and even the criticism of its attendant press release seems potentially misguided: We know from the instrumental record that global temperatures have increased by up to 1.4F in the past century, yet Pielke's whole criticism depends on the assumption that the (admittedly ambiguous) press release must refer solely to the study's proxy temperatures:
"What that history shows, the researchers say, is that during the last 5,000 years, the Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit--until the last 100 years, when it warmed about 1.3 degrees F."

In short both criticisms refer only to the last few centuries of the reconstruction, a period for which there are many other, higher resolution proxy studies available to confirm the general cooling trend of the last 1000 years followed by warming coming out of the sun's Maunder minimum (c. 1650-1700) and much more rapid warming in the last hundred years: Many can be found in IPCC AR5 WG1 Figure 5.7.

Respecthelect said:
I'll accept both an apology for the name-calling and for your use of fraudulent and discredited articles. Whenever you're ready.
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I was going to tone that back down to "You show no real understanding of science," but figured since you were already reading the page there was little point. And you still have not done so: You've merely posted links to some non-scientists' blog posts - from which you seem to have absorbed the overblown rhetoric but not understood the virtually insignificant implications even if their claims were true - and one scientist's possibly misguided criticism of a press release and media response to it. Meanwhile you've utterly failed to respond to the major and obvious shortcomings and, at least in the case of "thirty-degree global temperature swings," blatant falsehoods in your own earlier post.

You objected to JumpinJack's suggestion that "liberals generally base their beliefs on fact and science," and while I too think that's an unwarranted assumption, your zealous attempt to paint climate science as a 'liberal' thing and insist that it's wrong have accomplished little but to show the scientific ignorance (or worse, deliberate deceptiveness) of yourself or whatever sources you're getting your script from.
 
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Mithrae said:
during the last 5,000 years, the Earth on average cooled about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit--until the last 100 years, when it warmed about 1.3 degrees F.
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Again, the ice record demonstrates thirty-plus degrees of decade to decade variation for hundreds of thousands of years before man appears, yet global warming kooks get everyone riled-up over tiny one-degree changes over five-thousand years? Greenland experiences the same average temperature swings - a degree or so, so there's simply no justification to discount Greenland ice-data as anomalous. Face it, world temperatures are vastly more stable since man's written record appeared ten-thousand or so years ago. You and your liberal friends are nothing more than "stability deniers."

These so-called global-warming scientists are faking the data and have been caught many times. When will you liberals learn? Stop cheating and lying. People aren't stupid. One doesn't need to be a scientist to see Gore's predicted twenty-foot sea-level rise by 2008, hasn't come true. Everyone knows you liberals lied to the public on this issue. You're like cat's scratching scientific sand on top of your mess. Cover your pile with all the falsified pseudo-science you can muster, the public is wise to you.
 



Not to pick nits here, but the warming over the last 5000 years has been very close to nil.

Over the last 8000 years, we have experienced cooling.
 
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