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A liberal's take on racism, CRT and the liberal's move to the hard left

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  • #46
    Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post

    It seems a good set of points to me, which is why I laugh when you guys call me liberal.
    Don't laugh, because we call you that for a very good reason: many of the positions you take, and the arguments you use to defend them, are compatible with liberalism. Have you noticed lately how little pushback you get from (other) tWeb liberals, and how frequently you butt heads with the conservatives?
    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
    Than a fool in the eyes of God


    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

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    • #47
      Originally posted by Sparko View Post
      You are a symptom of this disease that he is talking about Star.
      Given I'm not American, no, I'm not what he's talking about.

      You are so far left that you think a liberal is conservative.
      No. By US standards, Sullivan is a bit right of center. He identifies himself, and correctly, as a conservative. It's you guys who are so out of touch with reality, that you insist that someone who self-identifies as conservative in the US is really a liberal.

      In general though the US political spectrum is so far right that people in my country and in Europe typically regard the US as not having a left-wing party. The Democrats match fairly well to my country's main right-wing party, and similarly to the main EU right-wing bloc (EPP). The Republicans match to extremist fringe parties like UKIP (e.g. Trump and the UKIP leader were very friendly, as they were pushing the same policies), but such extremist parties are fringe in the rest of the Western world and tend to get around 1% of the vote. What stuns the rest of the Western world on a weekly basis is that in America, those fringe crazy ideas are getting 40-50% support.

      A simple example of the difference is that the US is the only Western country to have a for-profit healthcare system, which in turn causes masses of medical bankruptcies, people dying because they can't afford treatment, endless disputes with insurance companies. Compare to my country which instituted a government run & paid for healthcare system 70 years ago, which means going to hospital or seeing a specialist costs me $0 and zero paperwork, and which neither the main right nor left wing parties here have ever discussed abolishing.

      What I will agree with you on, is that America, like the rest of the Western world, has gotten more liberal on social issues over recent decades. There has indeed been a liberal drift on issues, such as homosexuality, abortion, prostitution, drugs, race, euthanasia, etc.

      To give you some examples from my own country. In the last 40 years here in NZ, we have:
      - Legalized gay sex
      - Legalized gay marriage
      - Formally fully legalized abortion (previously it was legal due to a loophole that allowed it if the woman claimed her mental health would be affected by having a child and a willing doctor was found to sign off on agreeing)
      - Legalized many drugs (though marijuana failed 51-49 in a recent referendum, but I expect it will be legal soon if current liberal trends continue)
      - Legalized prostitution
      - Legalized euthanasia
      - Paid out vast amounts of money in reparations for historical harms done to the pre-colonial people in NZ.

      also (arguably associated with liberalism, or at least with a nanny state):
      - Banned smoking from most buildings and most public places
      - Put high taxes on cigarettes and alcohol

      And nearly all these things were done with the support of nearly all the political parties (of which we have up to 7). e.g. Gay marriage was legalized while the right-wing party was in government, as it was also in the UK.

      This general trend toward liberalism seems common right across the Western world. I see it very much in the UK, Australia and the US, whose politics I most follow, but it seems to be happening in Europe as well (which I follow a bit less) with the occasional exception (e.g. Hungary, Russia). So if you want to say "OMG, the US is becoming more liberal!!!" fine, that is true. So is the rest of the West.

      People like you are what is driving this widening divide.
      No, because I'm not American, so not part of your widening divide. I just look on in horror at the how off the international charts to the right wing side your country continues to be.

      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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