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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

> Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps

Doesn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

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Last I checked, none of those things were due to conservatives alone, nor have they been any better, on balance, when liberals control the government than when conservatives do. (Israel's methods of dealing with Gaza probably come closest to being "run by conservatives", but even there the same things tend to happen when more moderate Israeli governments are in power.)

There are liberals in the government? The last one was killed immediately, when he tried to stop the upcoming Vietnam theatre

Democrat != Liberal. Liberals have not controlled the government in the U.S. (or Israel) for a very long time.

Well, everybody calls them liberals; they even call themselves liberals (when they're not calling themselves progressives, which is an even stronger code word for "left-wing"). If your argument is that they aren't "true" liberals, then who are the "true" liberals?

George McGovern. Walter Mondale. Lyndon Johnson. Franklin Roosevelt. William O. Douglas. Thurgood Marshall.

There are liberals in the government today, but they are a minority and wield very little power.

Here's an interesting historical perspective of the Supreme Court:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_U.S._Su...

And a contemporary analysis of Congress:

http://thatsmycongress.com/house/ http://thatsmycongress.com/senate/

The extreme skewing towards conservatism is most evident at the extreme ends of the spectrum in the House: there are only 22 strong liberals vs 74 strong conservatives. There are two Congressmen with perfect 100 conservative scores and not a single one with a perfect liberal score.

I'm skeptical of anyone's "analysis" of the positions of political figures because the analyst's biases always color the analysis. That's obvious from both of the links you give: the "That's My Congress" link is obviously biased liberal just from their naming of the categories, and both of your links only analyze positions on a one-dimensional scale, which assumes that no other dimensions are relevant. That just increases the skepticism of someone (like me) who thinks both major parties in the US are seriously off the rails on some issues (for example, the war on drugs).

As for your list of "true" liberals, McGovern is the only one who strikes me as consistently furthering "liberal" positions (by which I mean "liberal" by the definition you appear to be using--see below). Mondale didn't strike me as consistently furthering much of anything. Johnson got us deep into Vietnam. FDR got us into World War II (by which I don't just mean he was President when it started, I mean he consistently took actions, often covert ones, that were calculated to get us into the war). Douglas voted with the majority in Korematsu v. United States (his positions did change over time, so, for example, he wrote the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut; but that just points up the fact that he wasn't always consistent). Marshall did win Brown v. Board of Education, but while education in the US is more integrated today than it was then, I question whether it is any more equal, unless it's in the sense that it's more equally bad. (To be fair, Marshall was pretty consistently liberal in his opinions as a Supreme Court Justice.)

Of course, from your point of view, this just makes the case stronger that "true" liberals have very little power in the US. But from my point of view, it makes the case stronger that your definition of the word "liberal" is not a useful or historically accurate one.

I'm certainly not an American, but from where I've been standing I haven't seen a liberal in your administration since I've been alive?

See my response to lisper.

Last I checked Gaza were nothing like a concentration camp, and calling it that is an offense to anyone who experienced any real one.

When did foreign journalists have access to ccs? When did ccs have markets in broad daylight? Where is forced labour? (I didn't mention starvation etc because those ones are contested but still.)

I literally don't like to bring this up as it isually brings downvotes but letting people frame something this important, -no.

You're right, Gaza is more like the Warsaw ghetto than a concentration camp. History never repeats itself exactly.

But I should say that I didn't really want to emphasize the "conservative" aspect of what Orwell wrote about Hitler so much as that he was able to get away with a lot of what he did in the early days because the "property-owning classes" allowed him to. That is the part I found chilling.

Gaza is a bit like a concentration camp - an area where a group of people are contained and kept from moving freely. Generally concentration camps aren't big enough to support markets, but other concentration camps have allowed journalists, and forced labour is not a prerequisite for one either.

It is better associated with the Warsaw ghetto, but your requirements for a concentration camp are not actually definitive of one.

Let me add a couple of points re calling Gaza a concentration camp:

1. Gaza has among the highest population growths on the planet. Anyone implying organized murder is ... well, to not be impolite I also have to say: "is an offense to anyone who experienced any real [concentration camp]".

2. The borders were quite open to Israel, until the murders of Israeli civilians really started. It was common that people commuted to work in Israel and Israelis drove the car over to Gaza to have it fixed. Some problems are self generated.

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