Well yeah but the entire point is that conservatives are using the terms wrong.

Oh I don't doubt that they are. I've just long since come to terms with the reality that they've made this kind of willful ignorance our problem. I applaud the rest of you for having more endurance than me in your perseverance in trying to penetrate their thick outer shell of convenient naivete and ignorance.

I mean in theory if they think the terminology lends itself to unfavorable connotations of their views, they could understand the terms and then qualify their use of them in an explicit rebuttal. But I imagine that requires having the outlook of an educated person, and as Wookie has expressed before, that would entail putting more effort arguing something that he probably knows on a gut level he has a better chance of succeeding in if he just "begs the question" by borrowing convenient terms that conservatives have learned to parrot, which conflate terminology and opinion in the most concise possible way. (See also: alternative "facts", or as they used to be known, factoids)

Still, I sympathize with Wookie, in the sense that I too don't really have the patience to learn all about political events of the 19th and 18th century just to get my terms straight. And I sure as hell wouldn't let my partisan opponent (like Reid) define them for me. Of course I would at least try to understand what they were saying to mount a rebuttal, but then again who has the time to argue with Reid.

That said, Wookie sure cares a lot about 18th century politics (all this talk about the constitution) for somebody who pretends not to care about history.

The French Revolution was in the 1700s so stated more concisely, Wookie06 sure pretends to care a lot about 18th century politics for someone who doesn’t care about 18th century politics.

18th & 19th century politics were far more interesting than 20th, unfortunately.

10/10 post

Trump is really trying his best to make Mexicans living in America second class untermenschen, isn't he?

News flash, words aren't ontic. If we don't use those words to mean that anymore, than they don't mean that unless we are using them in that specific historical context. A society literally cannot be wrong about which words they use to describe their own political paradigms. There's nothing clever about insisting on the use of anachronisms.

News flash, I’m Canadian. We do.

News flash!

Hehe love that

Interesting how people become postmodernists once you challenge the words they're using.

Of course no word has to mean anything, but the American politic discourse would be vastly improved if Americans knew history and used words in ways which correspond to their historical and worldwide usage.

Also tbh what American conservatives think about politics is a pretty self-contained phenomenon. Nobody but Americans like Wookie read those conservative historical fiction novels about American history.

Funny, I thought you people didn't like originalism.

Nobody has a problem with interpreting laws based on the original intent of their authors. What people don’t like is when functionally illiterate schizos attribute motivations to people they know nothing about.

I've actually been wondering about this: Can you tell me the difference between originalism and textualism?

Then you just have to go by the context of the conversation. It's not that hard, and being needlessly pedantic isn't the same as making a real point.

I’m making the same point I’ve been making for the last 300 pages: Americans have a socialism shaped hole in their heads.

That's not postmodernism. Just, ugh. Seriously?

I'm quite sure than the American political discourse would not be vastly improved by using terms to describe political ideas from 18th century France instead of the modern day US. The rest of the world doesn't use them that way either. It means a different thing in just about every country, because that's overwhelmingly the most useful way to use those terms. There's no point in using a dichotomizing term that doesn't match any current dichotomy.

In the US, like many other countries, both the left and the right use the terms to refer to the "other side". "The sides" change over time, which causes the meaning of the words to change. Insinuating on irrelevant, anachronistic definitions is asinine. (Though arguing about what undesirable group should be lumped in with the left or the right is also asinine. Usually extremists differ from mainstream politics on too many points to be usefully mapped onto a one dimensional political spectrum.)

No, you really aren't. You're just being pretentious about your own personal generalization of the original meaning of a term. I honestly don't have any problem with using those words in that way, but you can't pretend that's uniquely the correct way to do it, or even that it's the mainstream reading, even in Canada. At best you can try to argue that it effectively works out that way due to how you think party policy will work out, but that's just a retcon.

It's a joke mate. It's often an Ayn Rand supporter thing to have really fixed understanding of what words mean, and postmodernists tend to reject the fixed meaning of language.



My definitions go far beyond just 18th century France, that's just where they originated.

The also do match the current dichotomy, except for people who think small government and economic freedom = conservative beliefs, which they are not. No other Western country uses that term that way. Everyone else universally uses liberal. Because if you know any of the history behind the belief in small government and economic freedom, then you know it has origins in the left.

You see, it was left wing when people had economic privileges: the nobility could avoid taxes and tariffs choked trade and proliferation of goods. After economic liberalization, some people still found ways to seek rents. Those people are strongly conservative towards the system benefiting them currently. So those people have strong right-wing impulses and dominated the right-wing in America until it decided fascism was better to win votes.

So you see, free trade or not isn't left or right intrinsically, which is maybe the confusion: particular beliefs aren't left or right, political impulses are. I'm not kidding when I say you can divide people today easily based on how they think about billionaires. Ask someone if we should take wealth from billionaires. Right-leaning people almost always say no, and give some form of "they earned it" justification. They see this wealth hierarchy as good and inevitable. I can't think of a single belief which doesn't come down to this core reflex.

In any case American words are bad, stupid, and harmful to discourse as they are now, so really any change at all would be good.

The left/right divide has always been liberalism vs authoritarianism. It has been since the French Revolution and it has always been in every country that uses the terms, including the United States in a strictly relative sense. This isn’t about specific policy positions of specific parties, it is about a general bearing. It is difficult to take seriously any argument that the Democratic Party is anti-authoritarian, and by the standards of every other liberal democracy the Democratic Party is so far to the right wing that it’s not actually meaningful to the rest of us to describe them as left.

The person who is being pedantic here is you, the person insisting on a rigid and nationalistic definition of common historical terms despite detailed explanation of why a different definition has been used.

Guy-from-another-continent doing my usual dozenth page chime in to say I actually agree with Joncy on this particular stupid argument.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/former-goldman-sachs-bankers-charged-multibillion-dollar-money-laundering-scandal-n929916?cid=public-rss_20181104

So if stealing $100 worth of **** is like 5 years in jail, this should be like the death penalty, right?

I was sure I was on the Onion once I read that they had used the money to invest in Wolf of Walstreet. ****ing lmao

What's next, will we soon find out that Donald Trump laundered mob money to finance Goodfellas?

lol. Donald Trump doesn’t invest his laundered money.

I just watched the Kanye Trump Summit

Kanye is quoting Nietscheee isnt he? lmao

who saw this coming?

Apparently some folks at Fox News are pissed at Hannity for going full Goebbels on them and attending a Trump rally. LOL



https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/06/media/fox-news-sean-hannity-jeanine-pirro-trump-rally/

Probably a bit harder to maintain their objectivity now, poor souls

I am sure some of the more conservative Nazi enablers probably felt the same kind of betrayal when Hitler went full Hitler on them and swept away the last remnants of the Weimar Republic.

After moments of research I can summarize the difference as one has respect for the intent of the law and the meaning of the words when and as they are written and the other enables scumbag lawyers to twist the meaning of the words into whatever they want. We'll have to agree to disagree on which one is which.

Damn socrates, the sophists aren't all that bad.

Maybe I'm dumb but what's the big deal?

Indeed. Apparently some people at Fox News were still under the impression Hannity was a "journalist".

I don't know why. He's never been employed as a journalist.

Edit - Oh, never mind. Just noticed the fake news citation.

It's really dumb to call something fake because you disagree with it.

Sure CNN is partisan and sensational, but I don't think you (or Donald Trump, who taught you to use the phrase that way) know what 'fake news' means, unless you really think CNN fabricated the quotes it cites made by Fox News staffers.

At any rate, I can't imagine those staffers would remain employed at Fox News for very long if they were found out not to be conservative partisans themselves. If it "disturbs [you] to [your] core" that a Fox News contributor is a conservative partisan, then maybe you shouldn't be at Fox News.

Really I just thought the story was dumb. First, Hannity has had a public love affair with Trump for at least three years now and excoriated any Republican that wouldn't back him. Republicans like me. If Sean Hannity fellated Trump on live TV it should hardly shock anyone, let alone "anonymous" Fox staffers. And I noticed the irony of news agencies using the term "fake news" long before Trump started bellowing it.

Sure. I agree that most of what CNN publishes when it comes to politics is trivial non-sense. Although not deserving of the not "fake news" moniker, as Trump would have it.



At least they were using the term correctly before he hijacked it like an elementary school child retorting, "I know you are, but what am I?".