Why liberalism and leftism are increasingly at odds
natesilver.net
natesilver.net
His statistical analysis is a fun way to follow political horse racing (even if his models aren’t perfect) but this post is the chef’s kiss of ham-fisted amateur political science. Appreciate the earnestness, but can’t agree with basically any of his unsourced “theory.”
it's about having engaged with work other people have done on the subject. Like, actually read and understood other people's ideas. You can really tell the difference between someone who just googled things to support whatever they wanted to say vs someone who is straight out the gate with "there are three prevailing schools of thought on this issue; the first, characterized by xyz, posits that abc" and so on
For example, as a voter, I prefer a centrist president so that he/she won't wield too much power and influence and is better attuned to the needs of all the people, a DA and judge that know mercy is more important than justice, traditionalist senator that resists change for obvious reasons, an impassioned house rep that is full of ideas to change things for the better and so on. I expect them to do their jobs in accordance with what is the best interests of their constituents and the country at large, not according their party or ideology.
Political parties are tools of division and control. Politicians with common goals and interesrs should be able to form groups to support their causes but such groupings (caucuses?) must be topic-specific not ideology driven.
Even if you disagree with all that, I hope you agree that a politician's party affiliation should not be listed on a ballot, nor should voters be allowed to check a box and it will auto select every option on party lines or politicians be allowed to advertise their party membership as part of their campaign. They should explain the merits of their views based on correctness not conformity to ideology.
But the whole thing is so messed up I doubt anything remotely close to what I said will come true.
These days it's usually a disguise for some sort of ideology anyhow (e.g. Biden's foreign policy is neoconservative, which reality is being very unkind to) and even if it weren't it's the living incarnation of the argument to moderation fallacy. Move the overton window and what counts as centrism gets dragged around with it.
For example, centrists during slave-owning times called for better treatment of slaves or at the very least providing compensation to owners of freed slaves.
Some of us are concerned that a more polarized country will break itself apart, or crush itself, in a very violent way.
People like me believe that democracy is hard, and that dictatorship is the natural state of human affairs. And I feel that by taking up a banner against half of the country, we're moving more towards that latter eventuality.
And yes, the center does move around. But that's no reason not to aim for it.
That said, the reality is that centrists are very likely going to lose, or arguably have already lost. As a whole, Americans are incapable of understanding, empathizing with, or respecting "the others", a necessary ingredient in a functioning [edit: American] democracy, IMHO. After that, my money is that one of the sides will win and crush the other, and then everybody will lose except the rulers.
On the plus side, maybe after 100 or 200 more years of that we'll restart the experiment. :)
Centrism isn't an antidote to a polarized country. Especially not when the middle ground is making people poorer.
A fundamental reshaping of the media so as to not serve congealed pockets of wealth might help but nobody much has any appetite for that. It gets shouted down as being anti freedom of speech or some other such nonsense.
>That said, the reality is that centrists are very likely going to lose, or arguably have already lost. As a whole, Americans are incapable of understanding, empathizing with, or respecting "the others"
They have started to realize that centrism is making their lives worse so they have been abandoning it for one of the two extremes.
True, but those people don't tend to be centrists. :)
> centrist policies making their lives worse.
Also true to an extent. The middle is compromise, giving up something for the greater good, and not maximizing your take. The extremists promise that as soon as they're in power, they'll give you everything you ever wanted and crush that other side, and people eat that stuff up. Who are you going to vote for--the guy who promises you the world, or the guy who tells you you have to compromise?
> A fundamental reshaping of the media so as to not serve congealed pockets of wealth might help but nobody much has any appetite for that.
In the US anyway, this is a serious First Amendment issue. Judges are still reluctant to cede control of the Press to the government and the cases where it has have been very limited, or even rolled back. But last I checked the polling, a lot of the People were game for it, another sign of dictatorship winning out.
> They have started to realize that centrism is making their lives worse so they have been abandoning it for one of the two extremes.
Yup. The only thing they haven't realized yet is that after their extreme wins, their extreme is going to FUCK THEM UP.
It'll be a hard lesson from forgotten history.
A centrist lincoln may have been able to avoid a civil war and still free slaves or if war is unavoidable, the south will look like unreasonable extremists rebelling against such a moderate leader and have less support. You make it sound like compensating slave owners was a bad thing, if it avoided the civil war by all means, what a tiny price to pay, even today's divisions wouldn't exist thanks to that.
I like centrist presidents because they have the power to start wars, fire nukes, divide a nation badly (see trump),etc... most people these days (both sides of politics) are deeply and disturbingly ungrateful for the prosperity they enjoy and and the peace and amazing tranquility they've had for many decades now. Frankly, that will be the reason (just like how 1860's americans forgot the 1779-1812 war era and became ungrateful for peace) why a second civil war is unavoidable. They say people forget the lessons of war once the war generation fades away (~50 years). If you keep dividing the country over your change, the price will be blood and loss of prosperity.
You are missing my point though, centrism is not an ideology but like liberalism and conservatism you shouldn't worship it like a religion. For each topic you should figure out what is correct not what aligns with your ideology.
But a person that tends to think moderation, balance, unity and peace are more important than change and solving problems might be described as a centrist but you can believe that and still believe the only way to liberate slaves is through war. I would expect the house of reps to support and insist on war first though since they are the most attuned to the people and overcome resistance from the senate who will delay things enough for hot heads to cool and the president's veto powers so that a super majority is needed if millions of citizens are going to die.
Being right doesn't make all the blood and misery any more appealing. Centrists as things stand today force extremists to compromise leading to less division. Extremists will burn down their house to prove their views about fire response is true, centrists delay them long enough for the firetrucks to arrive. Knowledge and passion lead to extremism, wisdom leads to moderate centrism.
I don't know if biden is a centrist or not, I think he's quite liberal and extreme in some cases. He just happens to be compromising on passionate issues so that he can get things that people actually care about done, not because he disagrees with extreme progressives but because he sees the needs of the whole country not just new york and california and even with them included people care about jobs and economy first and foremost which is what he focused on. The thing about extremists is that they tend to not represent the whole country. A lot of the extreme changes they want need to be done at the state level or by congress not with the president's support. Congress should have some unity or consensus before expecting the president to throw in his weight. President's are supposed to execute and get things done, they shouldn't legislate.
This seems like an oxymoron.
People seem to go way out of their way to misunderstand intersectionality for some reason.
Probably makes their entire essay up to that point nonsensical if they allowed themselves to understand the meaning of the word, so instead he needs to make himself look foolish.
Also, the bit that could be paraphrased as "us Jews don't believe in identity politics because we prefer to treat people as individuals" is almost that scene from Life of Brian where one guy denies he's an individual.
In a winner-takes-all system, people don't vote for the person they like most. They vote against the person who's a threat to their way of living, and begrudgingly accept that this means voting for someone they actually quite dislike - but don't actively hate.
Without such a laser focus on "two camps" politics, the author might've been able to realize that it's actually a multi-axis political spectrum. A good start might be "authoritarian vs libertarian" and "capitalism vs collectivism".
I don't quite follow this. It seems kind of like subtracting a number versus adding a negative number. Isn't a threat to my way of life simply a negative like?
In a first-past-the-post system, voting on the 9/10 politician is a complete waste as everyone knows they'll never get a majority. Plenty of people like the 0/10 guy, and the 3/10 guy is quite popular too. So better vote for the 3/10 guy: sure, you don't want him, but having him in office is still better than the 0/10 one winning!
This is a remarkable description of a "free speech" position, from a person who later on says he's only being offered crackdowns on Palestinian speech, which he doesn't want because he's a liberal.
He's totally thrown them under the bus, and it's not even clear why, because they've taken exactly the liberal, you can say whatever you want, stance he claims to advocate for.
The ACLU supported their position, and FIRE ran an op-ed supporting them, so it's pretty unimpeachably a free speech stand to take.
(https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/ronald-kl-collins-first-a...)
So how does this support his "University SJWs support terrorism and Liberals support Israel" division?
If anything it shows Republicans leveraging Jewish identity politics against free speech.
I used to be extremely liberal for years. Then one day I got into an argument with a friend who believed that men and women are 100% mentally identical, insisting that all differences between men and women, including sexual attraction, was 100% social construct and 0% biological. In other words, the reason the majority of men were attracted to women and vice-versa was a social construct. The lie that all differences between groups is social construct is a necessary foundation to attribute oppression as the cause of any and all differences in success between groups.