4191

That was the whole idea of getting a citizenship question on there in the first place, as I recall.

edit - what lego said

4192

I believe y’all missed my point

4193

I’m sure she will face harsh consequences.

4194
4195

So apparently the Oregon GOP does not want to let Trump or the Senate GOP take all the credit for pissing on democracy.

Short version: the Oregon GOP, which has minorities barely above 1/3 in each of the Oregon state houses, is exploiting the Oregon quorum rule, which requires 2/3 of the state house delegates to attend to conduct business, to stop Oregon from passing a whole bunch of laws including (very modest) gun control, and (heavily compromised, twice) cap and trade bills. Now, this month, they are even using the quorum rules to slow down the “pacing” of the Oregon legislature. It’s tyranny of the minority, full stop, and also a complete abdication of their responsibilities as legislators.

I’m surprised we have not heard more of this.

4196

Welcome to the Caliphate, brother.

None of us will be safe while a single Republican remains in power, while a single conservative voter remains unjailed.

4197

Enjoy watching Roger Stone edge closer to a breakdown.

4198

Survivors or those who died in Mao’s Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot’s Death Camps would probably take issue with how much fun they were. Extremist movements on both the right and the left both lead to pretty vile results.

4199

I don’t think there’s any definition or understanding of the word “liberal” that includes Pol Pot and Mao.

4200

“If liberal why Mao?” is the dumbest variety of political discourse.

4201

I don’t know, those Dirtbag Left folks @Timex linked to in the other thread seem like exactly the sort of troops Mao would have used to harass intellectuals and the middle class during the Cultural Revolution. Quoting from the Wikipedia page on The Cultural Revolution:

Does that really sound that different than what the Dirtbag Left publicly say they want to do to those who they don’t approve of?

4202

The issue I think that Matt is taking is your usage of the word ‘liberal,’ which has a mostly, but not entirely, different meaning outside the US. Certainly, Maoism is an example of a leftwing movement that had dire consequences, but it was not a liberal one. Liberal basically refers to a capitalist system that nominally respects individual rights and freedoms with its origins in the European Enlightenment. Marxism, the primary base (ha ha, joke for my Marxist peeps) for modern leftist politics, was very much a reaction to and critique of liberalism. For instance, it would not be necessarily wrong to refer to both the Democratic and Republican parties as liberal to varying ends: they are both oriented around capitalist systems (modified by Keynesianism to, again, varying degrees) and have a respect for individual rights, but interpret and apply the latter to different ends (yay guns on one side, yay minority rights on the other, for example).

Tldr: liberal does not mean ‘leftwing’ and has a different meaning outside the US and thus it does not make sense to use it in the same way to refer to non-US people and movements.

4203

Just to clarify, by my comment I was poking fun at the earlier Republican fearmongering about liberals putting people into camps. I feel like the worst thing that would happen to you at liberal camp is that you would be forced to listen to re-runs of A Prairie Home Companion.

Ok, hopefully I’ve cleared up the difference between the NPR listeners and Cambodian death squads.

4204

Yeah, i wouldn’t consider socialists who actually want to oppress people they disagree with, like Maoists or stalinists, to be liberal in the classical sense of the word.

Left-wing in some ways, but i think it is a case that breaks the single axis political spectrum, as they are left wing in some ways, but also authoritarian. They just want a left wing authority.

4205

Also this. There are different spheres to consider that are not captured on a binary left/right system: economic freedom, social freedom, political freedom, etc. to say nothing of foreign policy.

4206

I reject this entirely.

Mao was a fucking monster. Like Stalin, he decided that grinding his people into paste to industrialize was worth the cost. Fuck him.

The dumbest shit in modern politics is the idea that anything “left” (hurr) of the completely insane top-down command economies of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China is (omg) socialism and must be stopped.

Yo.

There are any number of levers to make a market economy work for the greater good. Just because you can’t build a factory that shits up an entire watershed doesn’t mean that the mean ol’ Bernie Bros are coming for your doctor, or whatever.

But sure, let’s worry about if Bernie is too “leftist” as if that has any actual meaning other than the syphilitic corpse of Ronald Reagan jumping out of your closet going “boogly boogly SERSHALLIZM.”

4207

Calling a social Democrat a socialist is different from calling a socialist a socialist.

4208

k

2345

4209

Yes, fuck Mao. But also, he was definitely leftwing, at least in economic orientation. Ignoring problematic figures who share some, but not all, aspects of one’s political ideology (skepticism of capitalism in this case) is not the best course. However, nor does having Mao and Stalin being communist invalidate the entire ideology. Also, there are variances within political ideologies. Two people can both be leftist, but one be a monster and the other a noble figure (e.g., Mao and MLK, Jr.), varying in degrees on different scales and such.

(psst, I think we’re on the same side. I am a skeptic of capitalism, but still acknowledge that Mao sucked and that he also shared my unease with market economies.)

4210

I feel like you are on the wrong forum Dissensus. You are waaaay too calm and rational. :D