To all the "Good Liberals": A Rant for our Times.

[untermensche]

Hitler was not in favor of democracy.

Neither was Mao. One wanted a master race to rule over all. The other wanted to level the playing field, destroy the elites and keep more from rising up. Both were horrible dictators who did horrible things.

If some are killing others then the playing field is not level.

People can say anything. It is what they do that tells us what they are.

Fighting for a level playing field is not taking place on college campuses.

That is not the real world.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

If some are killing others then the playing field is not level.

That does not compute. People will murder each other and wars will happen despite the evenness of the playing field.

Fighting for a level playing field is not taking place on college campuses.

Yes it is, to some extent, and always has been. Problem is that people are trying to upend the board and so there are fewer fighting for actual fair treatment for all. We now have to push against both the right (as we long have) and now also the left. And this isn't happening just on college campuses. We've kind of elected our prime minister based around it.

That is not the real world.

Colleges are not imaginary. They are the real world

 

[untermensche]

That does not compute. People will murder each other and wars will happen despite the evenness of the playing field.

Wars usually happen because a tiny few want them and convince all the rest to go along.

We saw that clearly in 2003 with the US terrorist attack of the Iraqi people and then decade long military occupation.

The criminals that wanted that war were a tiny few with a lot of power.

The lack of a level playing field is what made GW Bush president.

Yes it is, to some extent, and always has been.

No it is not.

They are petty meaningless squabbles that don't make law.

The Universities have become more and more expensive. Costs rising at an insane rate.

This is detrimental to a level playing field.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Translation: She wants to be prejudiced and play identity politics without being called out on it. She wants to be able to say X people are Y without individual people who are X but not Y speaking up against being prejudged.

I come from the other side of liberalism, where all individuals are to be treated fairly and not prejudged by race, gender, etc. So yes, NOT ALL X are Y, no matter how bad you feel the need to generalize. This used to be the liberal position, against all manner of racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. But now we are having to push it back on the left as well.

1000x this.

All too often these days liberalism is becoming as bad as conservatism.

 

[untermensche]

Translation: She wants to be prejudiced and play identity politics without being called out on it. She wants to be able to say X people are Y without individual people who are X but not Y speaking up against being prejudged.

I come from the other side of liberalism, where all individuals are to be treated fairly and not prejudged by race, gender, etc. So yes, NOT ALL X are Y, no matter how bad you feel the need to generalize. This used to be the liberal position, against all manner of racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. But now we are having to push it back on the left as well.

1000x this.

All too often these days liberalism is becoming as bad as conservatism.

Give the worst example.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hitler was not in favor of democracy.

Neither was Mao. One wanted a master race to rule over all. The other wanted to level the playing field, destroy the elites and keep more from rising up. Both were horrible dictators who did horrible things.

A healthy functioning democracy and a level playing field and staying out of wars is how you prevent Hitlers.

Depends on what you mean by levelling the playing field. Equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? At a group or individual level? Fair treatment to all, or equal numbers for everything? Also depends on what wars. Not fighting wars is also how Hitlers win them.

(Emphasis added)

I think this is the heart of the issue. So many on the left use outcome as a measure of justice, when the proper yardstick is opportunity. They assume any difference in outcome is due to a difference in opportunity--which is only true if you count their own family/cultural situation as part of opportunity.

Sorry, but family/cultural situation is not something that can be fixed by any government that isn't horribly intrusive into personal matters. We should do what we reasonably can but you can't make the horse drink.

 

[untermensche]

Spiraling costs of higher education are making opportunity less and less equal.

A person who comes out of school with huge debt is a burdened animal and desperately needs to maximize income as opposed to do what they want.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Translation: She wants to be prejudiced and play identity politics without being called out on it. She wants to be able to say X people are Y without individual people who are X but not Y speaking up against being prejudged.

I come from the other side of liberalism, where all individuals are to be treated fairly and not prejudged by race, gender, etc. So yes, NOT ALL X are Y, no matter how bad you feel the need to generalize. This used to be the liberal position, against all manner of racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. But now we are having to push it back on the left as well.

1000x this.

All too often these days liberalism is becoming as bad as conservatism.

Jebus! Talk about Moore-Coulter!

 

[laughing dog]

Neither was Mao. One wanted a master race to rule over all. The other wanted to level the playing field, destroy the elites and keep more from rising up. Both were horrible dictators who did horrible things.



Depends on what you mean by levelling the playing field. Equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? At a group or individual level? Fair treatment to all, or equal numbers for everything? Also depends on what wars. Not fighting wars is also how Hitlers win them.

(Emphasis added)

I think this is the heart of the issue. So many on the left use outcome as a measure of justice, when the proper yardstick is opportunity. They assume any difference in outcome is due to a difference in opportunity--which is only true if you count their own family/cultural situation as part of opportunity.

Bullshit. Inequality of outcome is a possible indicator of an inequality of opportunity.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Spiraling costs of higher education are making opportunity less and less equal.

A person who comes out of school with huge debt is a burdened animal and desperately needs to maximize income as opposed to do what they want.

This I agree with. We need more public funding for post secondary education. We have it better than those of you down in the USA, but our costs of education are also skyrocketing. Its over 5 times more expensive to get a law degree today than when I got mine in 2003. Yes, inflation should make it more expensive, but 5 times more??? We should invest in the future of the country by investing in the people, and we should stop schools from being profit centres when they should be education centres. There is absolutely no reason why a law school should be anywhere near that expensive. Medical school at least has a bunch of practical expenses. Law school just has classrooms really. And its not hard to get people to volunteer for moots and teach a few classes (you can get CPD credits for it).

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Jebus! Talk about Moore-Coulter!

When you want to read a book and you've got a dark side of a room and a side of a room with a faltering flickering light, its not wrong to worry about that light going out, and its not good to unscrew the bulb.

 

[repoman]

It is believable you have no idea what is going on. The site is Rense.com, and you were "alerted" to it the idiotic Defense of Hitler thread you started where you wrote

I won't shy away from reading any websites though, and I will make an effort to understand people I disagree with, unless they are just trolling as he apparently always is.

BS squared by the irony impaired. From your posting history, you understand anti-semites pretty well. And it pretty clear you make no idea to understand where AA or many others on this board. Mixing condescension with "but I am a liberal" and is neither an argument nor a recipe for actual discussion. Nor is calling people "trolls" who expose your shallow thinking indicative of trying to understand people.

The meta-ironic aspect to the irony is that most of the slaughtering that the Jewish people did in the Old Testament is total bullshit. Because of there geographic location had a series of empires use their land as a route for expansion. The stories are revisionist dick wagging.

Read "The Bible Unearthed", lots of good info in it. https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869136

However, a sense of justice could only be had by sending the fuckhead inventors (scribes, priests and kings) of these lies of genocidal wars in the Old Testament in a time machine to a gas chamber and leaving the accidental adherents alone. That won't happen, same as we can't be sent to the future when our descendants will be living in a resource depleted wasteland (let alone global warming).

 

[untermensche]

Jebus! Talk about Moore-Coulter!

When you want to read a book and you've got a dark side of a room and a side of a room with a faltering flickering light, its not wrong to worry about that light going out, and its not good to unscrew the bulb.

You call a strawman a flickering light.

Noam Chomsky is in his eighties going strong fighting the good fight.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It is believable you have no idea what is going on. The site is Rense.com, and you were "alerted" to it the idiotic Defense of Hitler thread you started where you wrote

I won't shy away from reading any websites though, and I will make an effort to understand people I disagree with, unless they are just trolling as he apparently always is.

BS squared by the irony impaired. From your posting history, you understand anti-semites pretty well. And it pretty clear you make no idea to understand where AA or many others on this board. Mixing condescension with "but I am a liberal" and is neither an argument nor a recipe for actual discussion. Nor is calling people "trolls" who expose your shallow thinking indicative of trying to understand people.

The meta-ironic aspect to the irony is that most of the slaughtering that the Jewish people did in the Old Testament is total bullshit. Because of there geographic location had a series of empires use their land as a route for expansion. The stories are revisionist dick wagging.

Read "The Bible Unearthed", lots of good info in it. https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869136

However, a sense of justice could only be had by sending the fuckhead inventors (scribes, priests and kings) of these lies of genocidal wars in the Old Testament in a time machine to a gas chamber and leaving the accidental adherents alone. That won't happen, same as we can't be sent to the future when our descendants will be living in a resource depleted wasteland (let alone global warming).

How in the heck did Athena's OP get to this by only post #32?!

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Jebus! Talk about Moore-Coulter!

When you want to read a book and you've got a dark side of a room and a side of a room with a faltering flickering light, its not wrong to worry about that light going out, and its not good to unscrew the bulb.

You call a strawman a flickering light.

Noam Chomsky is in his eighties going strong fighting the good fight.

What strawman? And I actually like a lot of what Chomsky has written.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

How in the heck did Athena's OP get to this by only post #32?!

By me calling Athena out for what she wrote and dog rushing to her defence by trying to troll and personally attack me based on something entirely different he made up. Let's move on, shall we? Lol

 

[untermensche]

You call a strawman a flickering light.

Noam Chomsky is in his eighties going strong fighting the good fight.

What strawman? And I actually like a lot of what Chomsky has written.

His light is not flickering and the people who understand and buy into his ideas are increasing in number.

Liberalism is not a flickering light.

You just don't know where to find it.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

His light is not flickering and the people who understand and buy into his ideas are increasing in number.

Fighting for a level playing field is not taking place on college campuses.

You are making it hard to express agreement with you. As I said above there IS fighting for a level playing field taking place on college campuses. Much of what Chomsky says is an example of that. Much of what we see from the regressives is an example of the opposite.

Liberalism is not a flickering light.

You just don't know where to find it.

I made reference to a flickering light because Jimmy did the "moore-coulter" thing. My point was that crying "moore-coulter" doesn't make Michael Moore any better than he is, and that A being worse than B doesn't make B any less bad. And that we should address and fix B especially if it is supposed to be the counter to A and is becoming more and more like A.

 

[laughing dog]

How in the heck did Athena's OP get to this by only post #32?!

By me calling Athena out for what she wrote and dog rushing to her defence by trying to troll and personally attack me based on something entirely different he made up. Let's move on, shall we? Lol

The irony and hypocrisy of your response is overwhelming. The only person in this thread making stuff up is you. But I can understand why you would want to deflect from your personal attack and falsehoods.

 

[untermensche]

You are making it hard to express agreement with you. As I said above there IS fighting for a level playing field taking place on college campuses. Much of what Chomsky says is an example of that. Much of what we see from the regressives is an example of the opposite.

If you live in a fantasy world you will not find agreement with me.

There are children screaming about this and that on the campuses. They have no power. None.

The real fights to level the playing field take place in the real world.

The fight to reduce college costs takes place in the real world.

The right in this nation wants us to focus on the meaningless nonsense taking place on campuses and ignore what is happening in the real world with the president and congress they elected.