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Author | Topic: Definitions of Liberal and Conservative | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tram law Member (Idle past 4726 days) Posts: 283 From: Weed, California, USA Joined: |
Theodoric writes: Tram law writes: Theodoric writes: I am not asking you to reply with the quote button. I am asking you to reply with the reply button, not the general reply button. But since you have decided to be different and not be courteous to other members of this board I will let it go. Now do you have anything to see that actually addresses the topic? Do you agree or disagree that a simple definition of liberal and conservative is not possible? No, you're not asking, you're demanding and doing everything you can to brow beat me into submission. And you're getting all upset over this and keep on harping on it when I said I don't agree with you. You are the one who's creating this problem and who are continuing it it, not me, and in doing so you are derailing threads. Stop making this an issue. It is not an issue. And I don't have to agree to it. If I absolutely have to agree to it then it it is not a matter of common courtesy and is instead a hard rule. Ok so we agree that it is a common courtesy issue, but you evidently don't feel you want to be courteous to other people on this board. Nice thing to know about you. Now again I ask, do you have anything to say that actually addresses the topic? Do you agree or disagree that a simple definition of liberal and conservative is not possible? I have let the other subject so please do the same. Do you agree or disagree that a simple definition of liberal and conservative is not possible? No, I do not believe it is a simple thing. Because what they say they believe and how they act are two different things. And they both behave in similar ways to each other, so that muddles the water a bit. Because I for one, place importance on how people behave in accordance to their beliefs. If they act completely contrary to their beliefs it becomes very confusing. Such as if people claim to be tolerant of other people's beliefs then start insulting a person to no end because they rationally have a different opinion than the other person. Insulting people to no end is not very tolerant. Such as when non theists start insulting theists just for believing in God, and vice versa. I just can not see how being so insulting in this fashion is tolerant.
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Tram law Member (Idle past 4726 days) Posts: 283 From: Weed, California, USA Joined: |
crashfrog writes: And I would appreciate it if you would please stop calling me kid. I don't believe I've done that in any post to you. I apologize, because I misread something. Sometimes some words look like other similar words to me.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4039 Joined: Member Rating: 8.2 |
Such as when non theists start insulting theists just for believing in God, and vice versa. I just can not see how being so insulting in this fashion is tolerant. Remember that this site is a rather special case - its specific purpose is for debating religious, scientific, and occasionally political issues. Disagreements will obviously abound, and sometimes particularly wrong beliefs (or of course beliefs that are just vehemently opposed) will garner insults, incredulity, and the like. In short, this is not a place where "tolerant language" is to be expected. As a debate site, we begin with the premise that not all beliefs are equally accurate or logically justified, and specifically set out to convince each other of the errors in our thinking. But in normal life, that doesn;t mean we are so intolerant. On a debate forum, I'll call Creationists morons and go off on a long diatribe on Biblical errors and the absurdity of believing in magic men in the sky or worshiping crucified zombie deities, or the occasional political rant when we discuss those topics. In my real life, I don't do that unless someone specifically seeks to engage me in a debate first (Jehovah's Witnesses, for example).
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ringo Member (Idle past 433 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
From a Canadian perspective (though I'm sure many Canadians would disagree with me):
A liberal believes that healthcare should be universally available to eveybody regardless of their ability to pay. A conservative believes that healthcare should be universally available to everybody regardless of their ability to pay but those who do have the ability to pay should be allowed to go to the front of the line. A barking-mad, howl-at-the-moon ultra-conservative believes that healthcare should be in the private sector. If you have nothing to say, you could have done so much more concisely. -- Dr Adequate
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Tram law Member (Idle past 4726 days) Posts: 283 From: Weed, California, USA Joined: |
ringo writes: From a Canadian perspective (though I'm sure many Canadians would disagree with me): A liberal believes that healthcare should be universally available to eveybody regardless of their ability to pay. A conservative believes that healthcare should be universally available to everybody regardless of their ability to pay but those who do have the ability to pay should be allowed to go to the front of the line. A barking-mad, howl-at-the-moon ultra-conservative believes that healthcare should be in the private sector. Why shouldn't healthcare be in the private sector? Why should it be the government's job to provide healthcare?
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9142 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.3 |
Why shouldn't healthcare be in the private sector? Why should it be the government's job to provide healthcare? Lets look at this another way. Why should the government provide schools?Why should the government provide roads? Why should the government provide police protection? Why should the government provide fire protection? I can continue. Why do you think health care is different than the above? Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
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ringo Member (Idle past 433 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Tram law writes:
Simple answer: because the private sector fails to provide it universally. The government does what the private sector can't or won't do.
Why shouldn't healthcare be in the private sector? Why should it be the government's job to provide healthcare?
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4039 Joined: Member Rating: 8.2
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Why shouldn't healthcare be in the private sector? Why should it be the government's job to provide healthcare?
The private sector has failed, utterly. It's a matter of incentives, Tram: A private health care corporation has very little incentive to provide excellent health care, and a very large incentive to deny care regardless of need. Every time the company must pay out for a claim, that money is a direct subtraction from their profit. A private company has no free-market incentive to provide care for a cancer patient, for an HIV patient, for an MS patient, etc - these individuals can never ever pay in premiums what it will cost to treat them. Under a free-market health care system the incentive is to let these people die. Public health care disregards income or the amount of money required to treat an illness. Under public health care, cancer patients and HIV patients and MS patients are treated, according to their need. Rather than being answerable to stockholders, the system is answerable to the people it serves in the form of the voting public. The incentive, rather than to make profit, is to efficiently and effectively disperse the allotted funds to provide the maximum level of care to all citizens. The ethical differences between these two systems are blatantly obvious. Economically, we have examples of private health care costs in the US and public health care costs everywhere else to compare with. In every example, individuals in the US pay more while receiving less in terms of people covered and problems covered. There could be no more clear evidence that the private system is utterly inferior in every way, ethically, economically, and even in terms of achieving the basic goal of providing health care. There is no excuse or reason whatsoever to support private health care given the evidence available. NONE. At all. Afraid of the costs? Public care costs less for everyone in every case everywhere. In teh US it costs something like $800,000 for a heart transplant - in the UK, it's more like $50,000. Afraid of lowering the quality of service? You can;t get much lower quality than the people who have no coverage at all because of a "pre-existing condition." Even excluding them, the US has worse metrics in terms of longevity, infant mortality, and other relevant statistics than nations with public health care. The stories of long wait times are myths, urgent needs receive urgent care, you won;t wait months for an immediately necessary procedure, and waiting exists in the US too! THERE IS NO ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF PRIVATE HEALTH CARE THAT IS CONSISTENT WITH THE SIMPLE FACTS OF REALITY.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 370 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
The problem that I see with defining conservative or liberal is that the resolution can not be high enough and is, therefore, mostly useless. I suppose there is the perception that once you decide which camp you belong to then you don’t have to consider issues on an individual basis.
At the level of a particular issue you may be able to classify someone’s position as either conservative or liberal. As soon as you try to extrapolate that classification to include more than one issue it becomes less and less meaningful. It is a forced dilution of your opinion set. We should be doing away with the labels and dealing with the issues as they arise. The idea of left or right as a position leads directly to group think and corruption. I think a much more productive question would be why do we need anyone in between us and the decisions? What laudable purpose does the party system serve?
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subbie Member (Idle past 1276 days) Posts: 3509 Joined: |
In addition to the problems others here have raised, the terms are constantly changing. 250 years ago, democracy was a liberal idea. Today, nobody would call Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann liberal just because they professed to support democracy.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate ...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist
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Jon Inactive Member |
Why shouldn't healthcare be in the private sector? Because it's a public good. Love your enemies!
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sfs Member (Idle past 2555 days) Posts: 464 From: Cambridge, MA USA Joined: |
CONSERVATIVE, n.
A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. |
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ZenMonkey Member (Idle past 4532 days) Posts: 428 From: Portland, OR USA Joined:
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In this country, the word Liberal has been turned into such a pejorative that it's virtually political suicide for a politician to call himself one. If you doubt me, watch C-SPAN for even a few hours, and count how many times a Republican will refer favorably to Conservative values and policies, and then compare that to how often the Democrats praise Liberal values and policies. Partly this is because Limbaugh et. al. have for years used the word Liberal to describe every perceived evil under the sun, and partly this is because there is no real representation of Liberal values in the US government today. Living in a plutocracy, why would you expect anything else? I think it was jar who said a while back that what we have is a moderate Republican party, and a bat-shit crazy Republican party.
In theory, Conservatives value tradition, respect for authority, rules and stability over innovation, openness, and change. In themselves, these aren't necessarily bad things, but these values can be perverted into prejudice, dogmatism, intolerance, and fear of The Other. Today's conservatives, despite how much they might claim that they're all for individualism and self-reliance, really do love big government as long as it purports to support their values. The plutocracy doesn't really give a damn about outlawing abortion, keeping same-sex couples from getting married, or putting up Christmas or 10 Commandment displays. Politicians in thrall to the ruling class know that as long as they keep saying that they're on the "right side" of these issues, they can keep promoting policies that only benefit the ruling class, even when those policies go directly against the interests of their supporters. A genuine Liberal, as far as I'm concerned, is someone who supports progressive and humanistic policies that value long term good for people and the planet over short-term profits for the few. If we had real Liberal politicians in power today, we'd be seeing more solar panels than strip mines, fewer laws that impose repressive religious values, more money going to universal health care and fewer tax cuts for the already absurdly wealthy. There are certainly a few typically Liberal policies that I think are muddleheaded and wrong, such as hate crime laws. For the most part, however, I can be pretty sure that whatever position a Conservative is going to take on an issue, I'm going to think that they're either wrong or really, really insanely wrong. There's my totally partisan point of view. I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die. -John Lydon Reality has a well-known liberal bias.-Steven Colbert I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.- John Stuart Mill
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 370 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Nice post and I agree with all of what you said except that isn't this
I can be pretty sure that whatever position a Conservative is going to take on an issue, I'm going to think that they're either wrong or really, really insanely wrong. the essence of prejudice? Can the conservative label really cover a persons entire belief spectrum in any meaningful way?
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Tram law Member (Idle past 4726 days) Posts: 283 From: Weed, California, USA Joined: |
ringo writes: Tram law writes:
Simple answer: because the private sector fails to provide it universally. The government does what the private sector can't or won't do. Why shouldn't healthcare be in the private sector? Why should it be the government's job to provide healthcare? Why must it be provided universally? Why can't some health care companies be ebtter at providing it than others? To use a slippery slope, why can't this principle of "things must be universal" be applied to the banks or corporations or other kinds of business and companies?
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