12-29-2018, 02:00 PM
(12-28-2018, 08:26 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(12-22-2018, 11:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: We "Blues" as a rule admire Abraham Lincoln. To be sure, FDR was not as merciful to Nazis as Lincoln was to the slave-owning planters who lost the American Civil War. Maybe people must show more tolerance of old evils that have long been tolerated out of political necessity than to those who bring evil to the world as did Hitler and Tojo. The worst that the Confederacy did was Andersonville, and for that its commandant would die with a rope around his neck. By the way -- Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump are two of the most dissimilar Presidents that we have ever had. I look at the deeds of Donald Trump and ask whether Lincoln would have done the same.
Liberalism includes everything from the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment (free enterprise instead of the feudal rights of an elite to a sure profit predicated upon duties of the masses to the feudal elites in return for the privilege of survival, denial of any divine right of kings, and basic rights as enumerated in the American Bill of Rights and the French Declarations of the Rights of Man) to social democracy that extends liberalism to the ideal of equal opportunity to its fullest. "Liberalism" excludes anything still feudal (like Saudi Arabia), fascist, or Communist, all fair exclusions from liberalism. Ba'athism under Saddam Hussein or either Assad and the theocratic rule of either Iran or ISIS count as fascist in my set of definitions as does the KKK or Nazism.
Liberalism is not particularly American. I have more in common with a Japanese or Indian liberal than I have in common with an American fascist. Indeed I would sell out the American fascist war criminals to liberal Japanese or liberal Indian occupiers with no hesitation. I'm as anti-crime as I can be, and I cannot imagine worse crimes than war crimes... and I would expect American fascists to become war criminals. If I could say that there is nothing wrong with Saddam Hussein that a well-tied rope and a seven-foot drop couldn't solve, I would say the same of any American who commits such crimes. Liberalism asserts the core values of freedom of thought and expression, fair and competitive elections as the means of constituting government, the right to a fair trial to be judged by an independent judiciary, the abolition of whatever remaining feudal rights and duties, gender equity, ethnic equality, rule of law, and the absence of barbarous punishments. Liberalism is the expression of humanism (all in all, the only viable ideology) .
The kind/type of liberalism that you and Eric and some others represent/promote here is not particularly American in origin that's for sure. There is a reason why, I refer to you guys and gals (folks) as so-called liberals instead of liberals and why others refer to you folks as libtards instead of liberals and why others refer to you as loony or crazy liberals instead of liberals and why you guys are the only ones left posting here today.
Liberalism need not be American. Liberalism is truly international to the extent that a Zionist liberal has far more in common with an Iranian liberal than with a Jewish fascist (and it is sickening to know that there are some). Liberalism is the definitive political expression of enlightened humanism. Liberalism allows people cultural and religious identity, which explains how there are so many Islamic liberals in India.
Liberalism presumes some open-mindedness. Maybe a liberal would have no choice but to find religious bigotry, racism, slavery, militarism, homophobia, and such a practice as female genital mutilation appalling. That is not to say that we liberals recognize no rules, for there is physical and mathematical reality and there is formal logic that makes sense of the world. There are also fundamental decencies that people honor if liberalism is to be something other than cant. Consult the ancient Jews, Greeks, Hindus, and Chinese for basic truths beyond denial. Start with the rule of law, without which all social reality is a nightmare of either despotism or anarchy.
Some of us liberals are anarcho-syndicalists; some of us are near-libertarians, depending on whether we think the improvement of Humanity and public institutions adequate for creating freedom and prosperity or believing that the harsh logic of an unfettered vital to economic success that solves all problems. Some of us are religious and some of us are pure atheists. We can look like anything, and as much as we can look like anything we have many places in the continuum.
In case you ask 'What about conservatism?' -- I have used conservative arguments for racial equity and gay rights. 'Law and order' is a conservative bromide, but I can say that without law and order, liberty is moot. Tyranny and disorder are criminal brothers. Oppression is not so much an excess of law and order but instead its denial. I have no use for lynchings, evidence of the breakdown of social order. I formulated a conservative defense of gay rights by stating that gay-bashing is so horrible that the promotion of homosexuality as normal protects us all just as does anti-racist law. Having been a victim of antisemitic rhetoric and having been scared of a homophobic beating, I must take the side of Jews and of gays when their right to human dignity are under attack. (Modern antisemitism is mostly racist, so an attack on racism is the defense of Humanity as a whole, which may explain why Jews sponsored the founding of the NAACP. Much of the basis of our morality is ancient knowledge. Murder, rape, theft, torture, enslavement, exploitation, adultery, perjury, and fraudulent oaths remain abominations because human nature is much the same as it was in antiquity.
I suggest that you think it through. Your pattern of thought shows extreme superficiality. You are missing something in life, and it shows.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.