Political Leanings QuizFollow

What Ugly said.

Boy I'm glad I refreshed before I started typing my reply.

Its no wonder you think that liberals are "social authoritarians", you are using a really weird definition of "authoritarian" that nobody else seems to use.

There's a lot of overlap though, and much of that overlap is due to much of our current social agenda being economic in nature. Social liberalism, which is more or less the core ideology modern liberals espouse, is ultimately about equating social equality with economic equality. They believe that people can't be socially equal as long as they are not economically equal. Think about how much of the agenda revolves around economic differences between social groups, the gap between rich and poor, the income gap between men and women, black and white. How many times has Smash (and other liberals) said "you're successful in life because you fell out of a white ******". It's very hard to disentangle those, precisely because the "left" makes them the same. Their social agenda *is* an economic agenda.


As to the list I wrote, the only one directly economic in nature is the progressive taxes. Now if the sole reason for progressive taxes are because you need to generate X income and you want to impact the taxpayers the least possible, then that's purely economic. But let's not kid ourselves. When Obama proposes raising taxes on the richest X% in order to fund <whatever>, he's making a social argument. We all know this. If it was purely economic, he'd propose raising taxes on everyone equally.

Not even close. It's as if you don't understand liberals at all.

Totally. But that's an implementation problem. For example, I support the concept of welfare, but not how its actually implemented. It should be a safety net with support for people to get back on their feet. What it is though, it typically just a wasteland. But that's a result of poor implementation, not with the concept itself.

Hell. I'll toss out the first wiki link found:




Seriously. Do I really need to do this? It's like you guys are insisting that gravity makes things fly up from the earth and out into space or something. It's just that bizarre for you to claim this.

Missing the point, a gbaji trademark.

No he isn't. He's one of the first liberals, yes, but liberal thought has evolved a loooooooong way since then. Locke didn't really grapple with the issue of rights at all, since he was writing in a time when property was barely spread out. That's why he cares so much about economic inequality. He was living and working in a fundamentally different system.



Rousseau didn't talk about government obligations, he offered a theory about why we should have a gov't in the first place. Social contract theory isn't about obligations, it's about the way people organize themselves. It isn't about what a gov't has to do, but what a good gov't does do. That's a significant difference.



No. He didn't.



Again, no he didn't. Did you know Rousseau was one of the most popular thinkers at Versailles before the revolution? Nobles adored him.

Rousseau felt that following the general will, which law should reflect, was the best path to freedom. Why? Because you:

A. Make the choice to join in the social contract. You don't lose any rights unless you choose to forfeit them. But you also don't gain any protection from your fellow humans.
So,
B. Joining the social contract is wise, because the collective is better able to defend the rights of each individual than each individual is able to do on their own.

Understand? Anarchy actually leads to people retaining fewer rights, because you can only keep those you are personally able to defend.

As such, the best path to liberty is to form a gov't reflecting the general will.



HA No. No, really, it's isn't Marxist at all. Both have similar premises (basically a combination of Locke and Aristotle on both ends), but he is definitely not a precursor to communism.

Rousseau was all about capitalism (not that it was known as such at the time). He actually favored the middle class the most. AKA, the merchants and craftsman. He didn't give a crap about the peasants, or minorities. He had many gripes with nobles, yes, but spent most of his life in love with a noblewoman. He wasn't adverse to their existence, but didn't really like their current role in society.

The only class he really hated were the clergy.



I've read both. A lot. The problem isn't that Locke is less in line with modern thought, it's that many of Locke's premises are not accepted by modern peoples, which means his political theories fall apart. The stuff that isn't grounded on those premises was picked up by later thinkers (like Rousseau) to construct political theories without those holes.

Frankly, his idea of the state of nature is all you actually need to turn to. He pictures anarchy as having been all sunshine and butterflies (I used the past tense for a reason--Locke does not believe you can return to the State of Nature).

No one ever said that social and economic equality had no overlap, though they are most definitely not the same thing.

Social inequality demands that everyone have the same economic possibilities. It does not say that everyone needs to make the same income. It does mean that everyone who is willing to work needs to be able to live, survive and flourish in society.

The problem comes when economic inequality is a RESULT OF social inequality. When women can't get jobs simply because they are women, that's a serious issue.

Er? Locke didn't discuss income inequality at all (well, he certainly didn't focus on it). I suspect you misunderstand his use of the term "property". He most certainly grappled with the issue of rights. It was pretty much first and foremost in his most relevant writings.



Yes. And he argued that we should eliminate the existing social systems and replace them with ones in which the current rich and powerful weren't in control of everything. He was effectively advocating for a new government which would, in modern terms, redistribute the wealth and power. To be fair, this isn't that uncommon when speaking about some form of government revolution, but to suggest he advocated no government at all, is a bit of a stretch. He understood the need for governance, he just didn't want one formed by the wealthy and imposed on the poor.



We're still talking about a contract though. Which requires obligation. Calling it a civic duty or whatever doesn't change that.



Um... Yes, he did:



He very very clearly stated that man's only reason for forming into society and giving up his natural state of complete liberty is to ensure the protection of as much liberty as can remain whilst being a part of society. There are three things listed by Locke for which man gains by doing this as well (you can look them up if you want), but Locke very clearly was saying that government should do only the minimum needed to provide those things and nothing more.



I'll comment on your Rousseau posts later.

This thread has been gbajid. Not the good, clean, roofie kind of gbajid, but house broken in to, punched in the nose, panties ripped gbajid.

A bit of the old ultra-gbaji. Codpieces and everything.