The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(11-17-2017, 05:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: [quote pid='31961' dateline='1510901855']
(snip)

Hello Classic/KIA

From one worthless person to another

First off, Kiff was a wonderful poster and I like her. She is a Christian, and no it doesn't matter unless the subject of religion is being discussed. Her posts on that topic were quite intelligent and I agreed with them. Her notion of what a Christian is, is far superior in my opinion to the notion that many evangelicals and fundamentalists profess. Things have gotten heated in this forum from time to time, and disagreements happen.
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Yes, I miss her, too.

I see religion as worthy of the limitations that it puts on individual lives (it is more restrictive than liberating!) when it does one of these things:

(1) it improves personal character. behavior, and morality
(2) it leads people to do good that they otherwise would not do, or restrains them from doing evil
(3) it comforts people when nothing else can work to that effect
(4) it offers a shortcut to profound knowledge available in no other way to that person

If you winder what the limitations are, then consider that if Donald Trump lived up to the Christian morality that he affects, then he would not cheat lenders, subcontractors, or taxing authorities; and he would never grab women by their 'kitty-cats'. None of that is Christian -- but it isn't  Islamic, Jewish, Baha'i, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Buddhist, or Shinto, either. It's probably inconsistent with Wicca and other neo-pagan ways, too.

Valid religion obviously eschews cruelty, corruption, and superstition.

Quote:I don't know why brower comes across as worthless to you. I don't find him so, but that may just be because brower and I are both of the "blue"persuasion, at least these days, and you are of the "red" persuasion these days. These days, red and blue people have little in common as far as notions of what is valuable and what is worthless are concerned, at least in culture and politics. On more personal levels, I suggest that people of both persuasions and all persuasions have much that is worthwhile in their personal lives, morals and talents.

But even I can recognize some validity in some conservatism that I used to know. It offered opportunity at the expense of entitlement; it promoted virtue and responsibility across lines of class; it offered accessible tradition as a back-up when things went wrong; it rejected dishonesty and corruption; it recognized the validity of learning and knowledge; it eschewed demagoguery.  The fault with movement conservatives. None of that fits what I see as contemporary conservatism.

In a way I feel sorry for them: they have gotten the shaft in American politics for several years. Some make an uneasy alliance with liberals who might show most of the old conservative virtues (Obama) or in an attempt to redirect the Right in the direction of the old virtuous conservatism, which is even more of a failure.  

Quote:Brower may be too loose in his current use of the word fascist. But on the other hand, one does not need to be Hitler or an instrument of his rule to be a fascist. Fascist is a much looser term and may refer to tendencies toward authoritarianism and prejudice, and the career of such as Trump and Bannon and those who are their instruments and many of their supporters certainly display much authoritarianism and prejudice. 

Fascism and its derivatives are smear words. But so are murderer, thief, rapist, traitor, and fraud. I look at Laurence Britt's
fourteen warning signs of fascism and I see nothing other than pathology, and as I look at Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Fascist by the late Umberto Eco and see much the same, if with different expressions -- and more literary merit.

But most of those traits that either Britt or Eco ascribe to fascist pathology also apply to some Marxist-Leninist regimes -- Stalin's Soviet Union, Hungary under Rakosi, Castro's Cuba, Romania under Ceausescu, and contemporary North Korea. Such also apply to Ba'athist Iraq and Syria, to the madhouse of Uganda under Idi Amurderin', and the repressive world of Iran under the ayatollahs. They may apply much less to Schuschnigg in Austria, Salazar in Portugal, or Metaxas in Greece than to Mussolini, Hitler, Pavelic, and Tojo. They apply better to two Presidents (Dubya and Trump) than to any others.
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Quote:On the other hand, red and blue disagree about what freedom and authoritarian mean, and even what prejudice means. This leads into the issue of the views of such red icons as Ayn Rand, whom Brower mentioned above. This issue of trickle-down economics and dog-whistle politics has been gone over and over again here, so no need to rehash it. But it seems a fundamental difference between blue and red, and given the evident failure of trickle-down economics over the years, the Republicans' stubborn adherence to it and their current drive to put it into overdrive again strikes me as religion rather than any interest in facts.

Ayn Rand's sort of libertarianism is itself utopian -- which should be scary in itself.