It's something extremely important, along with "underlying theory of government" which you missed to address. If you think boundless inconsistency and shapeshifting are OK, you better say it straight - if you don't, you need a theory of bounds and it better be consistent.

> it's impossible for two or even three or four political parties to represent the diverse political views of over 300 million Americans.

That's upside down, in fact, 99% of Americans adopt a selection from the views offered by politicians and parties as reflected by the media. The "diverse political views" don't fall from the sky, they are products of the political system.

> Each of the two major US parties have always consisted of shifting coalitions of interests... [ consistent, stable views are just pretense ] when in fact the parties are demonstrably shifting coalitions of interests.

You are conflating "coalitions of interests" with "political views", they are quite different. In order to start a discussion we must separately and clearly define the coalitions, their interests and their political views: if they aren't consistently defined, neither accountability nor even basic security can be achieved.

If interests are a sufficient reason for dishing out pretense pseudo-rationality, then the coalition that is best at pretending and manages to accumulate a critical mass of power will simply enslave those who were gullible to believe them. I shouldn't have to explain this in America but here I am.

I think this text is touching the basis of what became known of as the story of "the end of history" which we did cover in schools history lessons although not very detailed.

The article describes a trend of both the political right and left to the center, i.e. modern liberalism, which means that these distinction became less extreme. However this trend has now reversed. On the right that trend led to a rising of a new political party (AfD) that poses as the old conservatists to frustrated voters, but are actually more fascistic. On the left the party previously called communistic now calls for more aggressive "actions", accelerated by the split of of the not more conservative, but more aligned with more "bourgeois interests" flavored wing of the former. This also explains while the latter now is also seen favorable by voters who would previously would have been more aligned with the political right.

Thus, the text is neither outdated nor topical. It does not describe the current political landscape, but the origin and causes for it that lay in the previous one. As such it is very topical again.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027161452.h...

Expansions in federal spending against growing budget deficits.

Government pursuing ownership or de facto control of private industry.

Aggressive use of executive fiat to pursue novel policies without clear legislative basis.

Federal interventions that try to direct or challenge state sovereignty on numerous issues traditionally outside the scope of federal authority.

Hesitant foreign policy that seems overly deferential to traditional US adversaries, especially Russia.

I disagree, at least a bit. I think "liberal" here is just used as "the bad tribe". It's not saying that they're not living up to their values, it's just saying that they're "them".

It's people seeing us as, at best, irrelevant; and at worst, a joke.

I've been voting since the late eighties, and have come to realize it is our lack of organization and, at times, our policies. Which in all honesty can be at once, foolish and bizarre.

It's difficult to bring the platforms of any new party in hand precisely because they are attracting people whose ideas are maybe not very popular in the mainstream parties. The mainstream parties have bizarre and foolish policies as well, but they've had 40 years to brainwash their voters. It's hard to have the same effect in, say, 2 or 4 years.

So you have to have a pristine platform and stick to it.

This is where as independents and third party supporters, we've repeatedly failed.

I think maybe the term changed meaning in the US because for decades pretty much everyone agreed with it (no social democrats in sight, barring the occasional Bernie). A movement that ~everyone agrees with isn't much of a movement, is it?

Left wing issues: socialized healthcare, tax the wealthy, unionize workers, equity before the law, social progress.

Left wing issues: Equity and fairness, individual identity but mandatory collectivism and the belief that government is likely to be more fair than a charity or company (I am on this end of things, but I can sympathise with the other).

Its sort of ignorant to throw up your hands here, at least in the US the stances are pretty well defined. The abortion debate is a good example where one side believes fully that its murder, and the other side believes fully that forcing people to care for children they don’t want will lead to misery (I am personally on this end of the spectrum so forgive any bias in my wording).

All issues are human issues, thats like talking about COVID and then bringing up Aids because they are both “human conditions”: these points are disperse, and everyone thinks they know whats best for society.

Tariffs. Deficit spending. Federalization of law enforcement. Hyperpoliticization of social questions. Government ownership/direction of private industry.

> “Cultural wedge issues” are about actual policy domains, and have a real left-right valence.

They've not been about actual policy domains until relatively recently. These issues have been marginal with respect to actual policy considerations for decades.

> 30 years ago? The height of the neoliberal consensus when the Right leaned heavily on the cultural wedge issues of opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and affirmative action?

GOP candidates in certain regions invoked various wedge issues on the campaign trail in order to put them over the top in elections for contested seats. Upon election, they then did nothing whatsoever to shift the actual policy needle in relation to these issue, and focused precisely on "neoliberal consensus" economic issues of the exact sort that the current administration is diametrically opposed to.

> but that was pretty obviously a tactical adaptation to the immediate circumstances, not the essence of conservatism.

But no, it actually is the "essence of conservatism" where conservatism is an actual political philosophy, and not an empty term that refers to the haphazard policy preferences of whatever faction a particular political party happens to be pandering to at any given moment.

I'd argue that such a definition of socialism is so expansive as to be worthless.

No, that's altruism: putting the group ahead of the individual.

Socialism is when the means of production are socially owned, instead of privately owned. It implicitly is altruistic by nature, but that's of course not guaranteed.

I think you have switched the terms here. Communism is what the mythical state is called. The political agenda leading to, during and after the revolution until that mythical state, is called socialism.

It's true, that socialism used to describe also a liberal way to curing poverty, but that split occurred over 150 years ago. Since then the parties that intend to keep democracy call themselves socialdemocratic and socialism is used exclusively for those calling for councils and revolution.

I'm a bit tired of hearing times and times again, that actually maybe socialdemocrats are also socialists. Socialdemocrats are not against private ownership, they just want it distributed differently. That's not socialist.

I'm construing left-wing as (a) seeing an expansive role for the state -- and in the US especially the federal government -- as being a prime mover in social and especially economic matters, (b) willingness to use political power in novel and unprecedented ways to address perceived social and economic problems without being constrained by established legal and constitutional norms.

From EB;

> There has been considerable disagreement among historians and political scientists about the nature of fascism. Some scholars, for example, regard it as a socially radical movement with ideological ties to the Jacobins of the French Revolution, whereas others see it as an extreme form of conservatism inspired by a 19th-century backlash against the ideals of the Enlightenment.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

[1]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism

[2]: https://x.com/esjesjesj/status/1786062622531477707?s=46&t=rr...

If, by "very concrete definition" you mean "party name invented by Mussolini" [1], then yes. Otherwise, absolutely not. I can't tell from your comment which you're trying to imply.

Using the word in reference to a modern political movement is essentially just a lazy, dumb way of flinging a slur that invokes someone bad in history.

[1] Per Britannica: "[Mussolini] took the name of his party from the Latin word "fasces", which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome."

I don't see this to be commonly used as a slur except maybe from people, who also use capitalist as a slur. Most times it is used to describe parties or policies that have national and populist agendas, so I think its not a stretch to compare them to fascistic agendas.

This seams to be disagreement what free speech is. Here an insult is never free speech, it is simply an infraction on "the personal honor" of someone else (although nobody uses this old-fashioned term). It is however free speech, if the claim is actually true (same for defamation). This is why now courts are arguing whether some "insult" is justified.

I think this is a very good thing. Ultimately laws and judiciary exist to be a formalism for personal fights. This is intended to make violence unneeded, so that we can have trust in the society. This is why the police has a monopoly on violence: Not because they are special and to be trusted, but because less people being violent is always better. If someone is calling you a Nazi, you might be tempted to punch back. This will lead to violence on the streets. If how ever you have a way to settle this legally, then you are much more able to walk away proudly and have satisfaction in calling your lawyer.

> invocation of "Nazi" is always useful to quickly illustrate that you're arguing with an idiot

This is a bit more serious here (Germany), since being a Nazi is punishable, so you're accusing someone of a crime.

> we now have

> - birth control,

> - largely safe (for the mother) abortion

What does the fact that we can do something has to do with its morality?

> - Humans will still be driven to have offspring,

Demography in modern countries begs to differ, but that's only tangent to the topic.

> anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

Yes I agree. Everyone can make decisions about anything that is his/her as long as it doesn't affect others. Do you accept DNA to determine boundaries of bodies? Does the body that stops living by the medication have the DNA of the mother?

Would you find it moral, if your mother had killed you?

PS:

> spiritual entities: Jesus, Peter

Yeah I guess the Romans killed some non-physical ghosts.

Sometimes, they attack people for having an abortion or helping someone else to do so, but that is not a real "pro-life". Sometimes, people only care about human birth, not any non-human life or how well the human life is otherwise, and that is not a real "pro-life" either. Sometimes, they will not consider if the life of both the mother and child are at risk if they do not have an abortion, so that is also not a real "pro-life".

Sometimes, people will try to bring someone to abortion clinics to force them to have an abortion even if they do not want to do, and that is not a real "pro-choice". Or, a doctor or government or someone might try to force or coerce an abortion or not abortion, and either way it is also not a real "pro-choice". If the woman wants to take the risk of having problems if it is not an abortion, that is her choice to do or not to do.

(Fortunately, not everyone is that bad at these things. But, these are examples of some of the bad stuff that results from either approach.)

There are also other issues involved when it is involved with legislation, such as: excessive spying, lack of free speech (and protests), etc. But, these can happen whether they are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. There is also the case of encouraging abortion if it is legal, and in my opinion, that would be immoral.

I do consider abortion to generally be immoral, although the alternative might be (and often is) even more immoral; for this and for other significant reasons, it should always be permitted, although should not generally be encouraged. However, people should understand the consequences, and hopefully the doctor might be able to help (if they are unbiased; unfortunately many are biased one way or other way, and I have heard of both situations).

> 6th commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

The ten commandments are not easily divided into ten, so sometimes they are numbered differently. Nevertheless, "thou shalt not kill" is one of them, whether or not it is specifically the sixth (although in my opinion, it should be considered the sixth, since it seems the most reasonable way to me to number them; this is the Orthodox way, and is unlike the Catholic way). Also, it might be better written as "thou shalt not murder".

> I don't believe in any spiritual entities - for morality I have the universe and my fellow men as the elements

I think that the philosophy of the ethics and of abortion does not require belief in spiritual entities, although many people do, I think that it is not necessary to do so. Whether or not you believe in spiritual entities is not the point, but rather, that you should not try to use them to justify things in ways that are not necessary to assert their existence like that in order to do.

> I am unwilling to tell a woman that anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

I agree (until the child is born, it is a part of her body, and she has the right to her own body), although, like any medical decisions, they can be informed by doctors.

> Humans will still be driven to have offspring

Yes, and it should be. However, some people don't want to, which is acceptable, and considering the current situations of the world (with too much human population), I think is good that some humans don't want to.

> it remains safest to avoid unnecessary sex (b/c of disease)

I agree, although not only because of disease (but it is also one possibility). This is better than abortion, if you do not want to have children. (However, situations are not always ideal, for various reasons, and this is one of the significant reasons why I think that abortion should be permitted even if it is not encouraged.)

Of whether or not abortion is murder, in my opinion, abortion can be murder but generally isn't. For example, if someone forcibly kills someone and her unborn child in order to gain an inheritance or something like that, then that would be murder of both the mother and the child, I think. However, something does not necessarily have to be murder to be immoral or unethical.

> Yes, I do consider being too poor for a child or not wanting a child to be selfish.

I think Quran says "do not kill your children for fear of poverty", and I agree with that, too (whether or not it has to do with "selfish" is another question, but I agree with "do not kill your children for fear of poverty" whether it is selfish or not).

That wasn't my intention. :-) I just wanted to point out that it is not "sheer stupidity and obliviousness", but a useful distinction.

> It once was just a mostly fun little word

I think part of that issue is, that the term didn't exist here when it only meant that. Was it a "in black subgroup" thing? Or was this known to a wider audience?

> excellent bit of evidence in favor of my point

Can you explain this to counteract my obliviousness? So you see ziml77 as an example of left and me of right, or what?

But again, it only takes a little poking around outside of ones bubble to see the nebulousness of "Woke". E.g.video clips of literally any right, or perhaps center person confronted with "No, seriously, actually define it" ALWAYS crumble.

No, I did not. I don't believe in "life" - it's a nonscientific concept.

1718627440 sez> There is a fight between a compiler and a memory model.<

There is no "fight": both are present, one completes it's task, neither "wins".

1718627440 sez>"Petrus was a roman citizen..." <

and other stuff he read in some text written by religious fanatics thousands of years ago (and randomly amended by other fanatics since).<*

"Nothing to see here, move on, move on please,..." - Frank Drebin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjK2Oqrgic

I think you are describing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_conservatism

No, those aren't conservatives. They're something else.