[iknowexactly]

I think it's an error for what are called Liberals and Conservatives from the civilized world (basically where we are, at the least, not murdering each other over opinions) to be fighting each other. I don't accept these labels as accurate or well defined at all, but it's how people actually conceptualize things when they are not focused on specific issues so I want to point something out.

Let's argue over SPECIFIC ISSUES, not echo chamber indictments of SJW , "Leftists" etc.
For example, what about immigration? Alimony? Child Custody? Censorship? I for one, probably have very "conservative" opinions on all but censorship (I'm against censorship, whether it's feminists or the government trying it.) .

But I'm pro-gay rights. Someone's sex life is 100% their own business excepting child abuse. Any "conservatives" here OK with ISIL murdering that gay guy by throwing him off the roof?

These issues are still SOMEWHAT vague, but there's some hope of reaching a deal, which is the only realistic goal. Would conservatives OR liberals want to murder the 40% or so of the population on the other side? Then we have NO CHOICE but to make deals.
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Please see the three pictures below--#1- "protests" after Charlie #2 Democratic Convention and # 3-- Republican Convention. i don't feel particularly threatened by anyone in pic 2 or 3.

I would be called "liberal" by most of the Republicans, yet I have no fear of any person that looks like these in the picture ( it's the picture of the civilized people without a black person) invading my office and shooting me-- a totally nonviolent person-- for no good reason. The crazies in the riot below are black, but I'm not judging on race, I'm judging on behavior.

Liberals and Conservatives from civilized countries with rule of law should not be afraid of each other, we should be afraid of the cave-men of the world.

And let me pre-emptively disagree that either Western Liberalism or Conservativism is a "slippery slope" to the frightening picture here. Not if each side monitors the other.

Users of the Slippery Slope argument (from either "side") have to accept that inadvertent movement to chaos might happen in the direction they don't expect if they get their way.

Slippery slope arguments are simply weak-- we have to deal with what reality is now. Your imagination may be useful, but we can't accept blindly that your fears will come true.

The danger to ALL civilized people is the stupid.
The pictures below, #1- "protests" after Charlie #2 Democratic Convention and # 3-- Republican Conventions.

I can't wait to hear someone post they'd feel more comfortable in Picture #1. They are more ALPHA, right? lozlzllzlz. I just noticed there's NO women in the Cave Man picture.

[GoldHawkStar]

I'm having a hard time understanding the point you're trying to get across.

I read your OP twice, and I think what you're trying to say is that those of us who live in more civilized parts of the world should not label different political parties as separate because in the end we are not killing each other over the little differences in our opinions like in the cave man picture. And also that it makes no sense to label someone as "conservative" or "liberal" because it's almost impossible for someone to have every opinion that sides with one party. For example like what you said about having a conservative viewpoint of immigration but being pro-gay rights.

That's what you were saying, right?

Because if so, I 100% agree. This is something I've been thinking of a lot. I've struggled in the past on deciding whether I should label myself as whatever political party. But in the end, should I? Because some of my opinions are more left, others are more right.

I hope I caught your point. If I completely missed it, sorry for being an idiot.

[Snowplow]

Well of course the people in the second and third pictures don't look threatening. But I bet if you take away all their goodies, food, and protection they will eventually turn into barbaric types.

I'm always on edge for this. Just for the sake of preparation. While obviously I'd love to keep my nice apartment and basic civil protection I'm always ready for shit to go down and go savage.

When you live in a kill or be killed environment, you will look like a scary motherfucker to a civilized world.

[Grange]

Political scientists, especially the ones closer to economics, think of this as tribalism. People say they care about specific issues but really don't. What they care about is demonstrating to themselves and the world that they are part of a tribe. Red tribe vs. blue tribe is the fundamental conflict and any story you could ask for comment on is just feeding that conflict.

[Wutang]

There's a reason I use the term "leftist" or "SJW' as opposed to "liberal" when I describe the type of people who use the words "cis-gender" and "manspreading" and think everything wrong with the world can be somehow traced white, heterosexual men. The term 'liberal', at least used in the American sense simply encapsulates too much and paints with too broad of a stroke. It covers everything from people like John Locke and Thomas Jefferson to urban yuppies who are slightly left of center to Marxists and crazy Tumblr activists.

I notice that in European politics there is a difference between "leftist" and "liberal" while with American politics it's all intermixed. I prefer to use the European definitions myself. I'm not fan of Marxism but at the same time I don't see government and government intervention or regulation as an inherent evil which a lot of people on the right seem to think. I think I could be considered to be a "liberal" in the European sense.

[Wutang]

This article Roosh linked to on his twitter today makes the distinction between liberal and leftist even clearer:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...o-say.html

The right wing in the United States is unusually strong compared with other industrialized democracies, and it has spent two generations turning liberal into a feared buzzword with radical connotations. This long propaganda campaign has implanted the misperception — not only among conservatives but even many liberals — that liberals and “the left” stand for the same things.

"It is true that liberals and leftists both want to make society more economically and socially egalitarian. But liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace. (So, for that matter, do most conservatives.)

The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to."

There's plenty of people on these forums would are liberal as defined above and I welcome their contributions. Leftists on the other hand I'm guessing will never ever feel welcome here.

[ChazKGB]

What do you think of Cork Bros trying to increase the amount of money they can donate?

Or how politicians can trade on inside information?

I think people, regardless of political belief, should see that the common enemy to their freedom and prosperity is the corruption of the political system, and the inability or lack of desire to correct those failings.

I don't care about cave people. If some social media attention whore wants to go to Iraq or Syria so they can brag about how fearless they are, then they should accept the likelihood some moron will cut their head off.

[TheWastelander]

All the old liberals have either bought into cultural marxist thinking or are gone. In fact, they are about as politically irrelevant as the paleoconservatives are. The "progressives" rule the roost now and their war on the traditional American culture continues apace.

In the eighties there was real diversity in the Democratic Party. Liberals like Charlie Wilson were as anticommunist as they came and pro-America. Even as late as the nineties there were different factions within the national Democratic Party. You had plenty of Blue Dogs like Jim Webb around, but over time they've been slowly forced out. They now only exist in small pockets in a few "flyover states" like West Virginia that the progressives sneer at with contempt.

What we have in America now is one party that actively hates the majority's culture and wants to destroy it, and another that is solely interested in profiting off screwing over the average man while only paying lip service to the things conservatives want.

Our government is made up of cultural marxists and crooks.

[Flint]

@ TheWastelander

What you guys here often don't seem to get is that the term "cultural Marxism" is generally not used outside of the Anglophone world and in the rare case that it is, people have a totally different conception of it.

When I (and many others born in formerly communist countries) hear that word, I think of writers like Bertolt Brecht or Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky who pursued a classic socialist/Marxist agenda in their literature. My parents read these books in school, and I don't see anything bad about them. Also I associate it with the era of Socialist Realism in art that glorified the working class, Soviet architecture and a distinct kind of paintings and mosaic that you can still see on many public buildings like schools or apartment in Eastern Europe. In East Germany there was a state sponsored "Kunst am Bau" (art on buildings) movement, which produced stuff like this:







The political systems and ideologies were shit but this stuff still reminds me of my childhood.

So what I'm trying to say: If you guys wanna get your point across and leave your Anglophone filter bubble, I'd advise against this "cultural Marxism" nonsense term invented by US neocons, because it will create misunderstanding in many places. Also, note the difference between North American style "cultural Marxism" and communist "cultural Marxism". The former celebrates "diversity" in a quasi-religious frenzy for its own sake; the latter stressed a ideologically charged conception of unity.

[Wutang]

(01-29-2015 03:00 PM)TheWastelander Wrote:  

All the old liberals have either bought into cultural marxist thinking or are gone. In fact, they are about as politically irrelevant as the paleoconservatives are. The "progressives" rule the roost now and their war on the traditional American culture continues apace.

You might be right.

I was reading a response to the article I just posted up and it contained this passage:

http://gawker.com/punch-drunk-jonathan-c...1682078451

"Chait, like many liberal commentators with his background, is used to writing off left-wing critics and reserving his real writerly firepower for (frequently deserving) right-wingers. That was, for years, how things worked at the center-left opinion journalism shops, because it was simply assumed that no one important—no one who really matters—took the opinions of people to the left of the center-left opinion shop seriously. That was a safe and largely correct assumption. But the destruction of the magazine industry and the growth of the open-forum internet have amplified formerly marginal voices. Now, in other words, writers of color can be just as condescending and dismissive of Chait as he always was toward the left. And he hates it."

Just like the recent rebellion within right wing ranks with Tea Partiers displacing establishment Republicans, in the last few years the Marxists have been taking over the left wing. The difference is while the Tea Partiers are mostly irrelevant now after a short time at the top, the leftists are entrenched.