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Ever heard of the European Parliament?


I do. I like thinking of myself as a citizen of Europe.

As opposed to the Queen in the UK who is elected, I suppose. Just as I would suppose that the Brits have consigned the Plurality voting system on the waste dump of history where it belongs.

For the record: The European commissioners are nominated by the national governments, which are all elected, as all states of the EU are democracies.

I concede that the system is not perfect. I would e.g. welcome more possibilities of direct votes (referendums), like in Switzerland. But leaving the EU?
Just because a good idea was not implemented perfectly at first doesn't mean that the idea in itself was bad. That would be like giving up the idea of a digital piano, just because the first models left a lot to be desired.

I think the prices are about the same, tho.
Piano will be cheaper in the long run... and more
fun. C-class Mercedes... meh...

I know terms like Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, etc. get redefined every so often and sometimes completely flip (we have always been at war with eastasia) but "right wing politics" seems fairly stable. From Wikipedia (insert standard disclaimer here):

In politics, right-wing describes an outlook or specific position that accepts or supports social hierarchy or social inequality. Social hierarchy and social inequality is viewed by those affiliated with the Right as either inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, whether it arises through traditional social differences or from competition in market economies. It typically accepts or justifies this position on the basis of natural law or tradition.

Call me crazy, but the US news media strikes me as quite corporate and fairly well defined by the above - not exactly a loving peace circle of gentle hippies. Pushing the status quo isn't a politically neutral thing to do when the man is on top and most of the world lives in squalor.

Dewdrop:
I guess with Chris Christie going "left",
so goes the whole state.

Really - if you think the US media is
"mostly right-wing" you are either a
DIED IN THE WOOL LIBERAL or have NO IDEA what
you are talking about.

News media is mostly owned by corporations of one sort or another but it does anything but portray social inequality and social conventions as desirable or natural. On the contrary, from what I see it's constantly throwing a TheJourney and trying to make us feel bad about how things are and incite us to change...in almost every respect. Our news is hard-core pushy and preachy. Every story practically is crafted to push us to change or at least feel bad. Someone is poor somewhere? Must be time to institute widespread wealth transfers. Someone got shot somewhere? Let's redo our whole system of gun control. Someone got injured somewhere? Must be time to institute regulations that will make sure no one ever runs that risk again. Someone is sick? They should be entitled to the best health care that can be had at any price and the government should be in charge of it. Someone has been made to feel bad about their sexual preferences? There should be a law against that! You never see or read just a plain story...giving you the facts of what happened. I don't particularly blame them...stories with a message are more interesting. But in our news liberal guilt is the norm.

As far as the stability of the terms liberal and conservative, the best I find is that liberals want to change society in the direction that it's currently heading and conservatives want to protect society as it is now or go back to the way it used to be. That's one reason so many teens and college kids are liberal and so many old folks are conservative. Some day those teens will be old too and they will vote conservative.

But since "the way things are heading" is always changing, so do the actual things liberals and conservatives want. At the moment the US is slouching toward a more European way of doing things. Eventually we will get there and then liberalism and conservatism will have to mean something different.

Don't quote me on this but IIRC my friend from India tells me that the words mean the opposite thing there. Their history is more socialist so liberal there means in favor of deregulation and the loosening up of government control of commerce. I know very little about India...just repeating what he told me, but I thought it was interesting. I guess in America we'd call that libertarian.

I don't think people realize that
the corps are no longer exclusivly run by
the "Mr. Burns" archtype...

The libs are everywhere.


There is only one place I WANT liberalism and only
get conservatism:

Wow. I've not heard so much misinformation in a long time.

Nixon liberal? Obama conservative? Astoundingly absurd, and beyond belief.

Nixon is no longer around to disagree. But Obama is. He's an extreme liberal, and he admits it (proudly).

Shall I wait for more historical revisionism? Perhaps someone will hold forth FDR as a conservative? Or Bush as a liberal?

If you folks want to support one side or another, that's a matter of opinion. But the left/right ratings assigned to these guys is not opinion. It's just wrong. Utterly wrong.

yes, yes and YES.
I can understand confusion from
someone from outside the country,
but for an American to get
confused over this....

Mac - what part of Florida are you from?

I am (was) from South Florida. Been there 31 years.
But I'm moving to North Carolina this weekend.
So I'll have to change my profile.

Sounds like a good move - get a little bit
of seasons instead of either hot, rain or
hot and rain.

Exactly. I'm tired of having 8 months of summer. (This year ... 11 months. It was hot through Jan and Feb.)

Can you provide some examples, please? Or perhaps a quote or two of Obama proudly admitting his 'extreme liberal' beliefs?

If not, I'm afraid I may have to disagree with you.

If Obama was an 'extreme liberal', he would have:

- Increased taxes and spending
- Ended the drug war
- Broken up the 'too big to fail' banks
- Pulled troops out of Afghanistan
- Provided Medicare for all
- Halved the defence budget

Instead, he has:

- Extended Bush's warrantless wire-tapping programme
- Expanded the drone programme (both abroad and now domestically)
- Given up on domestic environmental and climate-change legislation
- Expanded off-shore drilling, while tripling loan guarantees to build nuclear power stations

If you do not believe that Obama is conservative, I urge you to read http://www.obamatheconservative.com , which provides an excellent summary of his administration's conservative policies.

Cheers,
James
x

[Edited]

He's done plenty of increasing taxes and spending. Well, spending, mostly. He probably would do the other things if he could, but he can't. He has nowhere near that kind of political muscle. He's just the president, and not one with a congress that particularly supports him.



Most of those those things have broad support (in some cases crossing party lines) that he can't possibly fight, especially as he was preparing for an election he just barely won. Most of them aren't particularly conservative or liberal.

Just because a president is liberal doesn't mean he can implement any hairbrained idea that might qualify as liberal in someone's mind.

It is interesting to observe first hand here (with one notable exception) that those Americans that stayed in America and are "arguing" from the right on this thread only use three techniques:

1. ad hominem, personally attacking their interlocutor;
2. expression of personal opinion "it is because I say it is";
3. passive-aggressive use of adolescent humor;

with no logical arguments or reference to facts to support their position.

That is of course one of the main reasons why dysfunctional politics has been bringing America to her knees during the past years: for vast swaths of the population rational discourse and critical thinking is not even on the radar screen. Historical fact and observable reality is not relevant: only personal opinion "I am free to believe what I want!" (which itself is often formed by the echo chambers of a failed educational system, highly concentrated, inward-looking and appallingly bad media focused on sound bites, entertainment and advertising rather than journalism, facebook and vapid internet bulletin boards of the like-minded).

Thank God only a tiny percentage of Americans actually bother to exercise their democratic right and duty to vote.

Well, what action is appropriate certainly depends on your view of the EU and your position in it. If you believe that the EU has robbed you of objective personal freedoms and is depriving you of your human rights, then depending on which freedoms have been stolen from you, you could have a very specific course of action.

I would first like to understand excatly what EssBrace means so I can give a concrete example rather than only generalities.



EssBrace, certainly something as important as "the huge withdrawal of personal freedom" which seems to form your opinion of the EU and your strongly worded posts, deserves to be explained?

You are not crazy. You also understand that to have a discussion you have to use words that have been defined and that the definition is agreed to as opposed to the moving targets and personal definitions that are being used on this thread as if men on the streeet were being interviewed for a New Zealand television show.

One of the problems with US politics is that, due to faults in the electoral system, it can only be a winner takes all two party system -- that is just one political party shy of being a one party system such as the old USSR or Communist China -- rather than a country with many political parties that give true freedom of choice and stimulate working together and actually offer nuanced and differentiated positions to more than 300 million people. This results in artificial polarization and a characterization of the two parties as a caricature of "left" and "right" while they basically do the same thing, beholden to the same monied interests that "bought their government fair and square". At the end of the day, not a democracy and not so much different at all from the one party rule of the forementioned countries. Just a lot more money being spent (billions!) on years long lasting sham elections to give everyone the impression that there is a choice while the distracted masses scream at each other: " Socialist!" and " Right-wing Nut!"...

I'm surprised to see how informative, and civilized, this discussion has developed in many posts. Thanks TheJourney, KawaiJames and dewster for your well-informed input.

theJourney, EssBrace, you may be interested in this episode of 'Intelligence Squared Debate'

Intelligence Squared Debate: Britain and the EU

(I'm watching it now on BBC World News).

James
x

Thx. Very true + all our nations seem more civilized, even with the more publicly debated conflicts. At least no real war within the EU in its history. Recent wars just in the neighboring abroad (Balkan) should remind us how peace a real important acheivement is, not only an empty phrase!

Yes, I know that even individuals can bring their case to the EU instances. In todays development especially in Hungary we can see, how strong the role of the EU is to discipline some erratic politic ambitions. (On the other side the quality of some reactions and feedback of the EU are often inadequate, inappropriate, uninformed, week and erratic too.)

EU is far from being perfect and it needs some more crisis to enforce development of the system, I am afraid.