There was a personality quiz circulating on the internet a few years back based on the five factor OCEAN models, which differs from many other models in that it is subject to a modicum of scientific replication. Anyway, one of the things it purported to tell you was your likely political outlook in a broad sense. So the O factor measures open-mindedness (curiosity, imagination, willingness to revise beliefs), and the A factor measures agreeableness (altruism, trustingness, cooperativeness, modesty). High A high O are generally progressives, High A low O are traditionalists, low A high O tend to be libertarians, and low A low O authoritarians.
So, aside from giving progressives the chance to pat ourselves on the back, it seems that traditional right wing parties in the modern world are a potentially unstable coalition between the three non-progressive personality types: in particular the libertarian and traditionalist wings are more or less entirely at odds. Right wing ideology largely consists of papering over that crack.
I wonder what could be made of equivalent left wing models...
I've also had the impression that theocrats and libertarians (as I call them) tend to make uneasy partners at best. To be fair, libertarians are often political mercs who'll turn to whoever pleases them.
"Not very agreeable but open minded" does amuse me, as in "I don't care about it that much but I'll fight you over it!" Self interest isn't much of a principle.
My impression in the USA is that the theocrats resent the authority of secular government and there they find common cause with the libertarians. This may also work for authoritarians who also hate the government of the USA for its lack of authoritarianism. And I think some authoritarians are very good at manipulating people, and libertarians and theocrats are laughably easy to manipulate if you're unethical.
Sadly, as long as these three have something to hate in common, the coalition will hang together.
Also, authoritarian versus liberty can depend on how you relate to the topic. If I'm running a business, higher taxes that subsidize social welfare are an authoritarian infringement on my liberty. On the other hand, if I'm an employee and recipient of welfare, they're an increase in liberty against the authoritarian power of the business owner over my life.
My impression in the USA is that the theocrats resent the authority of secular government and there they find common cause with the libertarians. This may also work for authoritarians who also hate the government of the USA for its lack of authoritarianism.
The former may be true because they envision themselves apart from or above secular society, and recognize a supernatural authority beyond or above that of the temporal world. The latter is only true if the flavor of authoritarianism on offer isn't the particular one they subscribe to.
My impression in the USA is that the theocrats resent the authority of secular government and there they find common cause with the libertarians. This may also work for authoritarians who also hate the government of the USA for its lack of authoritarianism.
The former may be true because they envision themselves apart from or above secular society, and recognize a supernatural authority beyond or above that of the temporal world. The latter is only true if the flavor of authoritarianism on offer isn't the particular one they subscribe to.
That seems about right. And libertarians will dance with anyone who doesn't get in their way and says they're against "the government." It is kind of bizarre how it all holds together.
Some conservatives have found him rather disappointing, if not disgusting. I think he's even making some of them become more liberal, just by bringing out so much of the absolute worst of his own ideological faction.
The mask has come off, in other words.
From some people, sure. From all people who hold specific conservative views, not at all. I don’t think that all people who hold conservative views of various kinds are really holding something evil/fascist. I may not agree with many of those views, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to hold those views other than some sort of terrible inward malevolence.
If by theocrats you mean Christian Nationalists, the CNs have a very strong presence in the US government. Just the other day one of the most prominent CN leaders, Doug Wilson, let a prayer service at the Pentagon. Trump heavily relies on CNs for his support. Speaker Mike Johnson has a CN background as well.
I am actually seeing Libertarians pulling away from the CN crowd here. Rand Paul is voting more with the Democrats than the Republicans now.
If by theocrats you mean Christian Nationalists, the CNs have a very strong presence in the US government. Just the other day one of the most prominent CN leaders, Doug Wilson, let a prayer service at the Pentagon. Trump heavily relies on CNs for his support. Speaker Mike Johnson has a CN background as well.
I am actually seeing Libertarians pulling away from the CN crowd here. Rand Paul is voting more with the Democrats than the Republicans now.
Yes, and that'll happen for sure. Rand Paul has been rather a wild card, IMO. The libertarians are always unreliable. They go back and forth with the breeze.
My impression in the USA is that the theocrats resent the authority of secular government and there they find common cause with the libertarians. This may also work for authoritarians who also hate the government of the USA for its lack of authoritarianism.
The former may be true because they envision themselves apart from or above secular society, and recognize a supernatural authority beyond or above that of the temporal world. The latter is only true if the flavor of authoritarianism on offer isn't the particular one they subscribe to.
That seems about right. And libertarians will dance with anyone who doesn't get in their way and says they're against "the government." It is kind of bizarre how it all holds together.
Ultimately, the "authority" in the USA is always the People. Our civil life is a system of shared compromises. All of us are threads in the American fabric. Trouble is, right now CNs and MAGA want to be the collective weaver and shred huge aspects of the entire thing.
Some conservatives have found him rather disappointing, if not disgusting. I think he's even making some of them become more liberal, just by bringing out so much of the absolute worst of his own ideological faction.
The mask has come off, in other words.
From some people, sure. From all people who hold specific conservative views, not at all. I don’t think that all people who hold conservative views of various kinds are really holding something evil/fascist. I may not agree with many of those views, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to hold those views other than some sort of terrible inward malevolence.
I meant from the ideology as a whole. The folksiness of Reagan or Bush was a smoke screen for the same ideology that's now in the open. Sure, some people got taken in by the folksiness or the sophistry, but the ideology isnt new.
Some conservatives have found him rather disappointing, if not disgusting. I think he's even making some of them become more liberal, just by bringing out so much of the absolute worst of his own ideological faction.
The mask has come off, in other words.
From some people, sure. From all people who hold specific conservative views, not at all. I don’t think that all people who hold conservative views of various kinds are really holding something evil/fascist. I may not agree with many of those views, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to hold those views other than some sort of terrible inward malevolence.
I meant from the ideology as a whole. The folksiness of Reagan or Bush was a smoke screen for the same ideology that's now in the open. Sure, some people got taken in by the folksiness or the sophistry, but the ideology isnt new.
That’s what I thought you meant. I still do not agree about all conservative notions being secretly evil or fascist, even when I don’t agree with them. I don’t think that it’s a simple equation of liberal idea always equals good and conservative idea always equals evil.
Some conservatives have found him rather disappointing, if not disgusting. I think he's even making some of them become more liberal, just by bringing out so much of the absolute worst of his own ideological faction.
The mask has come off, in other words.
From some people, sure. From all people who hold specific conservative views, not at all. I don’t think that all people who hold conservative views of various kinds are really holding something evil/fascist. I may not agree with many of those views, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to hold those views other than some sort of terrible inward malevolence.
I meant from the ideology as a whole. The folksiness of Reagan or Bush was a smoke screen for the same ideology that's now in the open. Sure, some people got taken in by the folksiness or the sophistry, but the ideology isnt new.
That’s what I thought you meant. I still do not agree about all conservative notions being secretly evil or fascist, even when I don’t agree with them. I don’t think that it’s a simple equation of liberal idea always equals good and conservative idea always equals evil.
Not all conservative notions, just the conservative movement. I have a lot of time for conservative-coded ideas like duty, honour, loyalty, I just don't think there's much sign of them among conservative movements. I don't have much time for institutional liberalism either. Give me a radical any day of the week.
I've always had a lot of respect for people who have conservative values they hold for themselves.
To me the problem is when these become weaponised to impose things on other people.
There's a very difficult line where the public good interferes with the individual freedom (in this instance to act conservatively) which is not easy to resolve.
I have zero respect for anyone who says they hold conservative values but then don't live it.
@Arethosemyfeet and @WhimsicalChristian, I think some people do act 'differently' in order to attract attention or because they feel threatened in some way.
I can think of a couple who turn up at poetry open-mics wearing bondage gear and declaiming ranty poems about how people in small towns can't accept their sexuality.
That's as may be, but ... steady on. I'm not in the least bit interested in what they get up to in their bedroom. And hearing their boring, sweary poems isn't going to influence me one way or the other as to the licitness or otherwise of their S&M practices.
I'd say the same if it were someone dressed more conventionally who thought it was cool to regale us with details of their sex life.
I think this is a different issue to Muslims wanting to practice their faith or the kind of issues discussed on the Epiphanies board.
I cited my brother's tendency to exaggerate his South Walian accent when dealing with people he considers 'posh'. I've done that myself before now.
There can be forms of posturing from various directions.
It can take the form of 'virtue signalling' or John Peel cultivating a Liverpool-sounding accent when he came from a private school background, or 'Mockney' or 'Mummerset' accents affected by people who don't have the actual accents they are attempting to replicate.
There are examples right across the board.
Yup.
For example the example in the OP appears to be primarily shock value and attention seeking.
He would have known he would have created a scene.
This has the makings of a good thread, but as often in serious discussion it comes down to definitions of "liberal or progressive" and "conservative" and concrete examples matter.
What's confusing about the above terms is that in Australia, "liberal" means "conservative", the idea being less government involvement is considered "liberal" and therefore "conservative".
In general, it might be possible to say the "left" actions more government involvement while the "right" thinks less government involvement is better.
It used to be that western culture accepted that there were "two sides to every story".
As I said on another thread, both left and right are against government intervention. The question is just which interventions they're against.
The left is generally against giving too much power to the bits of the government that forcibly interfere with individual liberty. The left is against letting armed immigration officers arrest people on the streets without due process, for instance. The left is against laws that restrict what consenting adults can do in the privacy of their own homes.
The difference between the left and the right is generally:
that the left think that the government is not the only threat to individual liberty, so one is justified in using the government to restrict the ability of other actors to restrict liberties;
and that personal liberty without the means of living is meaningless, so one is justified in using the government to provide people with the means of living.
This has the makings of a good thread, but as often in serious discussion it comes down to definitions of "liberal or progressive" and "conservative" and concrete examples matter.
What's confusing about the above terms is that in Australia, "liberal" means "conservative", the idea being less government involvement is considered "liberal" and therefore "conservative".
In general, it might be possible to say the "left" actions more government involvement while the "right" thinks less government involvement is better.
It used to be that western culture accepted that there were "two sides to every story".
These days? Not so much.
There have always been many more than two. It takes a lot of pressure to get vast bands of disparate people to conform to two factions.
That said, when one side begins engaging in open fascism, that's a side I'm not gonna cooperate with. I won't deny their humanity. But some things are just plain wrong. And I've seen too much and read too much history to pretend this is just "a side" anymore.
It used to be that western culture accepted that there were "two sides to every story".
These days? Not so much.
We still hear that from the Right a lot in the US. The Republican/MAGA caveat being that at a minimum, both sides are equally valid regardless of what they are, how they're framed, or how they're buttressed. Alternative facts. Can't compete in the arena of ideas? Not so much. Simply label the opposition 'fake,' and triumphantly move on.
@Arethosemyfeet and @WhimsicalChristian, I think some people do act 'differently' in order to attract attention or because they feel threatened in some way.
I can think of a couple who turn up at poetry open-mics wearing bondage gear and declaiming ranty poems about how people in small towns can't accept their sexuality.
That's as may be, but ... steady on. I'm not in the least bit interested in what they get up to in their bedroom. And hearing their boring, sweary poems isn't going to influence me one way or the other as to the licitness or otherwise of their S&M practices.
I'd say the same if it were someone dressed more conventionally who thought it was cool to regale us with details of their sex life.
I think this is a different issue to Muslims wanting to practice their faith or the kind of issues discussed on the Epiphanies board.
I cited my brother's tendency to exaggerate his South Walian accent when dealing with people he considers 'posh'. I've done that myself before now.
There can be forms of posturing from various directions.
It can take the form of 'virtue signalling' or John Peel cultivating a Liverpool-sounding accent when he came from a private school background, or 'Mockney' or 'Mummerset' accents affected by people who don't have the actual accents they are attempting to replicate.
There are examples right across the board.
Yup.
For example the example in the OP appears to be primarily shock value and attention seeking.
He would have known he would have created a scene.
You are assuming motive there.
I suspect he knew it would attract attention but that doesn't mean that was his motive - he might be quite indifferent to whether it did or didn't.
He said he did it because that's what he was most comfortable doing and I don't call complete strangers liars without good evidence. Assuming we know what is going on in other people's heads is IMV a bad thing.
I also note that such assumptions are almost always negative and used as a criticism.
Since we are talking about Theocrats like Christian Nationalists, I just came across this article that gives a good summary of what they are all about: Christian Nationalism is a Replacement Religion.
What's confusing about the above terms is that in Australia, "liberal" means "conservative", the idea being less government involvement is considered "liberal" and therefore "conservative".
In general, it might be possible to say the "left" actions more government involvement while the "right" thinks less government involvement is better.
It's not that confusing. Most big-L Liberal parties are on the right of their respective national spectrums, because they're using the 19th Century definition of "liberalism", which emphasised economic individualism, in those days the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie. With the emergence of socialism as a viable ideology championing the working class against the propertied class, classical liberalism became the conservative ideology in the sense of wanting to preserve the old dominance of the bourgeoisie. In other places, this role is played by parties labelled "Conservative".
And as Stetson knows, here in Canada the Liberal party swings between right and left wings depending on the political atmosphere. At the moment, it leans to the right. This is helped by the current weakness of Canada's socialist party at the national level, the New Democratic party.
And as Stetson knows, here in Canada the Liberal party swings between right and left wings depending on the political atmosphere. At the moment, it leans to the right. This is helped by the current weakness of Canada's socialist party at the national level, the New Democratic party.
Yeah. The LPC are kind of the succesful version of what David Lloyd George tried to make the British Liberals into(the current Liberal Democrats being, of course, the unsuccessful version of the same)...
...moderately interventionist on economics, socially tolerant, while trying to sell themselves to the ruling class as the only party capable of appeasing the unwashed with sufficient expertise to avert a radical takeover(*).
I will observe, though, that in the public conceptualization, insofar as the LPC is viewed as primarily opposing the Conservatives, most ideologicalky aware people view it as left-wing, or at least matching the images that attach to that label.
But, of course, historically, in places where socialism developed as a major electoral force but nomenclaturally Conservative parties did not, the Liberals were widely regarded as the protectors of capitalism. See Saskatchewan during the whole Douglas to Thatcher thingamabob for just the last(I think) of the prairie examples.
(*) If citation is needed for this characterization of the LPC agenda, Keith Davey says as much in his autobiography.
I think the modern liberals - at least in the USA - jettisoned classical liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s with FDR. And they really dumped it in the 1970s with environmentalism, deciding that impending climactic catastrophe warranted emergency measures that were more pressing than maximizing return on investment.
This does create a semantic issue for some folks.
And that's not getting into the frequently incendiary "leftists versus liberal" spats that I still encounter on the internet on a pretty regular basis. Another way of phrasing that is "center-left versus far-left."
I expect the right wing in the USA is similar fractious, but not being as welcome in those rooms, I don't have as much insider knowledge.
Some conservatives have found him rather disappointing, if not disgusting. I think he's even making some of them become more liberal, just by bringing out so much of the absolute worst of his own ideological faction.
The mask has come off, in other words.
From some people, sure. From all people who hold specific conservative views, not at all. I don’t think that all people who hold conservative views of various kinds are really holding something evil/fascist. I may not agree with many of those views, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to hold those views other than some sort of terrible inward malevolence.
I meant from the ideology as a whole. The folksiness of Reagan or Bush was a smoke screen for the same ideology that's now in the open. Sure, some people got taken in by the folksiness or the sophistry, but the ideology isnt new.
That’s what I thought you meant. I still do not agree about all conservative notions being secretly evil or fascist, even when I don’t agree with them. I don’t think that it’s a simple equation of liberal idea always equals good and conservative idea always equals evil.
Not all conservative notions, just the conservative movement. I have a lot of time for conservative-coded ideas like duty, honour, loyalty, I just don't think there's much sign of them among conservative movements. I don't have much time for institutional liberalism either. Give me a radical any day of the week.
I wasn't thinking of notions like duty, honour, or loyalty as politically conservative, myself, just various things--which again I may not agree with to one degree or another--like conservative political views of all manner of things. Notions can be mistaken, or taken too far or not far enough, without being evil, or showing that the person holding those beliefs is doing so in bad faith, or as a blind for some internal moral corruption.
I'm much more "liberal" than "radical" myself, personally. But even if I disagree with some things that might be considered politically "liberal" or even "radical," in the same way I don't think that the person holding them is therefore evil for believing so.
This has the makings of a good thread, but as often in serious discussion it comes down to definitions of "liberal or progressive" and "conservative" and concrete examples matter.
What's confusing about the above terms is that in Australia, "liberal" means "conservative", the idea being less government involvement is considered "liberal" and therefore "conservative".
In general, it might be possible to say the "left" actions more government involvement while the "right" thinks less government involvement is better.
It used to be that western culture accepted that there were "two sides to every story".
These days? Not so much.
There have always been many more than two. It takes a lot of pressure to get vast bands of disparate people to conform to two factions.
That said, when one side begins engaging in open fascism, that's a side I'm not gonna cooperate with. I won't deny their humanity. But some things are just plain wrong. And I've seen too much and read too much history to pretend this is just "a side" anymore.
This has the makings of a good thread, but as often in serious discussion it comes down to definitions of "liberal or progressive" and "conservative" and concrete examples matter.
What's confusing about the above terms is that in Australia, "liberal" means "conservative", the idea being less government involvement is considered "liberal" and therefore "conservative".
In general, it might be possible to say the "left" actions more government involvement while the "right" thinks less government involvement is better.
It used to be that western culture accepted that there were "two sides to every story".
These days? Not so much.
There have always been many more than two. It takes a lot of pressure to get vast bands of disparate people to conform to two factions.
That said, when one side begins engaging in open fascism, that's a side I'm not gonna cooperate with. I won't deny their humanity. But some things are just plain wrong. And I've seen too much and read too much history to pretend this is just "a side" anymore.
Agreed. Though I would also say that I think that Trump/MAGA is not really conservative in ways that most traditional political conservatives would recognize. William F. Buckley would have had an aneurysm. I thank God for old-school conservative voices (the Dispatch, the Bulwark, the Lincoln Project, David French, etc.) who are anti-Trump and anti-MAGA.
It used to be that western culture accepted that there were "two sides to every story".
These days? Not so much.
We still hear that from the Right a lot in the US. The Republican/MAGA caveat being that at a minimum, both sides are equally valid regardless of what they are, how they're framed, or how they're buttressed. Alternative facts. Can't compete in the arena of ideas? Not so much. Simply label the opposition 'fake,' and triumphantly move on.
It's jarringly weird to me -- or maybe this is part of what I'm thinking of re: MAGA not being traditionally conservative at all -- to hear that stuff, over the last decade, from the political party (the GOP) who for decades before was railing against the perceived "situation ethics" and the perceived notion that there's no such thing as truth from the left.
Speaking of which, here's the excellent Randy Rainbow on that whole "alternative facts" thing from almost a decade ago:
I think the modern liberals - at least in the USA - jettisoned classical liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s with FDR.
Yep. And I've actually seen anthologized essays by then-ex POTUS Hoover, lamenting that the New Deal will be the end of American liberalism, obviously by his classical understanding of the concept.
Basically, New Deal Democrats in the USA and postwar-era Mackenzie King Liberals in Canada are subsets of what I earlier called "Lloyd George Liberalism".
And that's not getting into the frequently incendiary "leftists versus liberal" spats that I still encounter on the internet on a pretty regular basis. Another way of phrasing that is "center-left versus far-left."
Commited Canadian leftists used to like to chant "Liberal, Tory, same old story" at anti-Liberal rallies, but I don't know how widely that equivalency was perceived by the general public.
Commited Canadian leftists used to like to chant "Liberal, Tory, same old story" at anti-Liberal rallies, but I don't know how widely that equivalency was perceived by the general public.
During the 2010-2015 coalition a similar sentiment was expressed as "Nick Clegg, we know you, you're a fucking tory too". The coalition government confirmed for many of us that "liberal" means right wing, at least economically.
I think it's more complicated than that... but then I would of course. That said I agree that the Coalition did the Lib Dems no favours.
Nor anyone else, for that matter.
Dangerfield's The Strange Death Of Liberal England is very much of its time but prescient also in some respects.
Is it just me, though, but is this thread developing into an 'I'm a radical because ....' or 'I'm a liberal because ...' or 'I'd rather label myself progressive because ...' thread rather than a pegs and holes one?
If we are looking at the axes posted in the OP then I think any of us who've been involved in politics at any level, local, regional or national, will have found ourselves feeling like a square peg in a round hole at times.
For all their faults the Lib Dems had far less of a whip than the other parties in my experience.
A local Conservative counsellor once tried to convince me they didn't have one.
'No, you don't have a whip,' I replied. 'You've got a dirty great big cat-o'nine tails behind your back.'
The Conservatives shoot their wounded. But it tends to be with a bullet to the back of the head.
Labour seem to nibble one another to death.
On the pegs and holes thing more generally, I think we are going to find ourselves feeling 'in the wrong place' at times whatever 'tribe' we belong to, whether political, ideological, theological, ecclesiological, in the workplace, in relationships or whatever else.
We all make adjustments and compromises to 'fit in' but there comes a point where that becomes intolerable and where we need to swap holes, as it were or find somewhere else.
That will vary according to a whole range of factors and circumstances.
And some people are trapped in the wrong settings with little or no agency to do otherwise. That's the tragic part.
My next preaching assignment will be dealing with John 9, the story of the man born blind. Looking at the dynamics of the story, I can see how the Pharisees manufactured outrage over the miracle. The man was healed on a sabbath. Who was this Jesus? He must be a sinner, etc. What happened did not conform to their world view. The tried to pressure the man to get him to declare Jesus a sinner, the man refused. Consequently, they threw him out.
What I am seeing is what the Johannine community was experiencing at the time. The followers of Jesus no longer fit in to the expectation of the synagogues. They were like pegs that could not fit into a round hole so they were being thrown out.
I understand that the contemporary thinking in Jesus' time was that only God could cure the blindness of a person born blind. So the Pharisees tried to bad-mouth Jesus, then the man born-blind; and so his parents dissociated themselves from the arguments by just stating the facts as they knew them.
We had a Roman Catholic community of St Marys in Brisbane, being open and doing good works as the Micah Foundation. They outraged the religious authorities by allowing non-RCs to participate in communion and were thrown out of the church building. They continued their work and met in the Local Trades and Labour Building as St Marys In Exile. ISTM they were very much treated by their religious authorities as Jesus was by his!
Commited Canadian leftists used to like to chant "Liberal, Tory, same old story" at anti-Liberal rallies, but I don't know how widely that equivalency was perceived by the general public.
During the 2010-2015 coalition a similar sentiment was expressed as "Nick Clegg, we know you, you're a fucking tory too". The coalition government confirmed for many of us that "liberal" means right wing, at least economically.
The fact that he was joint author of The Orange Book should have been forewarning enough - but the press tended not to quote from it.
Classically liberalism was based on individual liberty, equality under the law and property rights. So there was always an element of defending inherited privilege.
My next preaching assignment will be dealing with John 9, the story of the man born blind. Looking at the dynamics of the story, I can see how the Pharisees manufactured outrage over the miracle. The man was healed on a sabbath. Who was this Jesus? He must be a sinner, etc. What happened did not conform to their world view. The tried to pressure the man to get him to declare Jesus a sinner, the man refused. Consequently, they threw him out.
What I am seeing is what the Johannine community was experiencing at the time. The followers of Jesus no longer fit in to the expectation of the synagogues. They were like pegs that could not fit into a round hole so they were being thrown out.
I understand that the contemporary thinking in Jesus' time was that only God could cure the blindness of a person born blind. So the Pharisees tried to bad-mouth Jesus, then the man born-blind; and so his parents dissociated themselves from the arguments by just stating the facts as they knew them.
We had a Roman Catholic community of St Marys in Brisbane, being open and doing good works as the Micah Foundation. They outraged the religious authorities by allowing non-RCs to participate in communion and were thrown out of the church building. They continued their work and met in the Local Trades and Labour Building as St Marys In Exile. ISTM they were very much treated by their religious authorities as Jesus was by his!
.
Re St Mary’s South Brisbane: it was not the religious authorities who were outraged but the “ Temple Police” ( self-appointed traditionalist tattle tales who attended Mass, took notes and badgered the hierarchy into closing down that parish. The same Temple Police succeeded in getting rid of + Bill Morris of Toowoomba (SE Queensland) by reporting back to Rome.
They seemed to have taken a back seat recently thank God
As I said on another thread, both left and right are against government intervention. The question is just which interventions they're against.
The left is generally against giving too much power to the bits of the government that forcibly interfere with individual liberty. The left is against letting armed immigration officers arrest people on the streets without due process, for instance. The left is against laws that restrict what consenting adults can do in the privacy of their own homes.
The difference between the left and the right is generally:
that the left think that the government is not the only threat to individual liberty, so one is justified in using the government to restrict the ability of other actors to restrict liberties;
and that personal liberty without the means of living is meaningless, so one is justified in using the government to provide people with the means of living.
Sounds like you could be describing the right above.
Based on your comments above, how would you describe the right in general terms for the global current order? Not just America?
Based on the OP, you could say the lefties are trying to put the trump administration into a hole that doesn't fit and can't tolerate it.
So that would make them conservatives.
The only hole we want the Trump admin in is a maximum security prison. Which they're a perfect fit for.
EDIT: a hole in the ground would also work, but that's not something we can work for directly.
My next preaching assignment will be dealing with John 9, the story of the man born blind. Looking at the dynamics of the story, I can see how the Pharisees manufactured outrage over the miracle. The man was healed on a sabbath. Who was this Jesus? He must be a sinner, etc. What happened did not conform to their world view. The tried to pressure the man to get him to declare Jesus a sinner, the man refused. Consequently, they threw him out.
What I am seeing is what the Johannine community was experiencing at the time. The followers of Jesus no longer fit in to the expectation of the synagogues. They were like pegs that could not fit into a round hole so they were being thrown out.
I understand that the contemporary thinking in Jesus' time was that only God could cure the blindness of a person born blind. So the Pharisees tried to bad-mouth Jesus, then the man born-blind; and so his parents dissociated themselves from the arguments by just stating the facts as they knew them.
We had a Roman Catholic community of St Marys in Brisbane, being open and doing good works as the Micah Foundation. They outraged the religious authorities by allowing non-RCs to participate in communion and were thrown out of the church building. They continued their work and met in the Local Trades and Labour Building as St Marys In Exile. ISTM they were very much treated by their religious authorities as Jesus was by his!
.
Re St Mary’s South Brisbane: it was not the religious authorities who were outraged but the “ Temple Police” ( self-appointed traditionalist tattle tales who attended Mass, took notes and badgered the hierarchy into closing down that parish. The same Temple Police succeeded in getting rid of + Bill Morris of Toowoomba (SE Queensland) by reporting back to Rome.
They seemed to have taken a back seat recently thank God
I'm sure said groups did good work, but it's not like the RCC don't make their rules extremely clear. Following the rules is a pretty big part of being a Roman Catholic, otherwise why bother to sign up for a group with such an emphasis on the rules?
I think it's pretty normal and reasonable for members of a denomination to want their churches to follow canon law. Lots of RC churches do good works while not disobeying said rules - and everyone should be equal under said canon law.
The RCC is not a clergy-run monolith; it’s too bloody big for that.
Not just about “good works” but also about individual faith communities. Believe it or not the hierarchy are too busy trying to keep the show on the road without bothering about minor liturgical infractions.
Even the unspeakable ( and now deceased) George Pell reproved the (now thankfully deceased) chief Temple Policeman for his tale-bearing on the grounds that such behaviour was “un-Australian”. It could be that the late ++ George took exception to take-bearing from a mere layman, of course….
I Dangerfield's The Strange Death Of Liberal England is very much of its time but prescient also in some respects.
I read about half of that, and then lost my copy. Interesting to read descriptions and analyses of Churchill written PRIOR to the Munich Agreement, ie. prior to him doing the things he's now almost entirely known for.
My next preaching assignment will be dealing with John 9, the story of the man born blind. Looking at the dynamics of the story, I can see how the Pharisees manufactured outrage over the miracle. The man was healed on a sabbath. Who was this Jesus? He must be a sinner, etc. What happened did not conform to their world view. The tried to pressure the man to get him to declare Jesus a sinner, the man refused. Consequently, they threw him out.
What I am seeing is what the Johannine community was experiencing at the time. The followers of Jesus no longer fit in to the expectation of the synagogues. They were like pegs that could not fit into a round hole so they were being thrown out.
I understand that the contemporary thinking in Jesus' time was that only God could cure the blindness of a person born blind. So the Pharisees tried to bad-mouth Jesus, then the man born-blind; and so his parents dissociated themselves from the arguments by just stating the facts as they knew them.
We had a Roman Catholic community of St Marys in Brisbane, being open and doing good works as the Micah Foundation. They outraged the religious authorities by allowing non-RCs to participate in communion and were thrown out of the church building. They continued their work and met in the Local Trades and Labour Building as St Marys In Exile. ISTM they were very much treated by their religious authorities as Jesus was by his!
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Re St Mary’s South Brisbane: it was not the religious authorities who were outraged but the “ Temple Police” ( self-appointed traditionalist tattle tales who attended Mass, took notes and badgered the hierarchy into closing down that parish. The same Temple Police succeeded in getting rid of + Bill Morris of Toowoomba (SE Queensland) by reporting back to Rome.
They seemed to have taken a back seat recently thank God
I'm sure said groups did good work, but it's not like the RCC don't make their rules extremely clear. Following the rules is a pretty big part of being a Roman Catholic, otherwise why bother to sign up for a group with such an emphasis on the rules?
I think it's pretty normal and reasonable for members of a denomination to want their churches to follow canon law. Lots of RC churches do good works while not disobeying said rules - and everyone should be equal under said canon law.
I'm sure the Pharisees also made their rules extremely clear. But, like Peter and the Apostles, they chose to obey God rather than men. Unfortunately, the RC did not have a person with the wisdom of Gamaliel. The Catholics who ran the Chaplaincy Academy I trained in were frustrated with the hard view that some pushed upwards in the hierarchy.
I Dangerfield's The Strange Death Of Liberal England is very much of its time but prescient also in some respects.
I read about half of that, and then lost my copy. Interesting to read descriptions and analyses of Churchill written PRIOR to the Munich Agreement, ie. prior to him doing the things he's now almost entirely known for.
In what way would you say the book was prescient?
The death of traditional liberalism?
Perhaps 'prescient' wasn't the right word. He was charting something that had already taken place or which was in the process of doing so.
Although liberals would shout put like the character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 'But I'm not dead yet!'
I don't believe it is dead. 'Liberal values' aren't confined to political parties with the word 'liberal' in their titles, any more than 'conservative values' are only found in political parties with 'conservative' in the title.
And heck, I've met a lot of 'conservative' Labour voters for instance.
I Dangerfield's The Strange Death Of Liberal England is very much of its time but prescient also in some respects.
I read about half of that, and then lost my copy. Interesting to read descriptions and analyses of Churchill written PRIOR to the Munich Agreement, ie. prior to him doing the things he's now almost entirely known for.
In what way would you say the book was prescient?
The death of traditional liberalism?
Perhaps 'prescient' wasn't the right word. He was charting something that had already taken place or which was in the process of doing so.
The reason I asked, was because I didn't get far enough into the book to know what his ultimate theory was about why things had turned out they way they had, beyond(going by the title of a chapter I never read) that the Pankhursts had played a pivotal role in it.
On that note, the snobbishness of one of the Pankhursts is a clear memory from the book, as is Dangerfield's disdain for Ulster Protestants, "a people who had never known order or discpilne", or something like that.
I grant that nearly all the responders on these boards are liberal. And, I would also grant many of Jesus principles and liberalism as we often think of it overlap. But I would also argue there are many areas where the principles of Jesus and liberalism diverge. Liberalism centers on the autonomous individual. Jesus calls for a self-giving person. Liberalism assumes moral neutrality; Jesus does not. See the Sermon on the Mount. Liberalism prioritizes consent. Jesus prioritizes covenant--there are obligations to God and neighbor. Liberalism treats harm as primarily material. Jesus treats harm as relational and spiritual. Liberalism is procedural; Jesus is transformational--restored relationships, healed communities, liberation for the oppressed.
I would argue instead of defining liberalism we should look at the self giving love of Jesus. I think this would impact how we understand rights, how we understand freedom, how we understand justice, and how we understand the good life
I grant that nearly all the responders on these boards are liberal. And, I would also grant many of Jesus principles and liberalism as we often think of it overlap. But I would also argue there are many areas where the principles of Jesus and liberalism diverge. Liberalism centers on the autonomous individual. Jesus calls for a self-giving person. Liberalism assumes moral neutrality; Jesus does not. See the Sermon on the Mount. Liberalism prioritizes consent. Jesus prioritizes covenant--there are obligations to God and neighbor. Liberalism treats harm as primarily material. Jesus treats harm as relational and spiritual. Liberalism is procedural; Jesus is transformational--restored relationships, healed communities, liberation for the oppressed.
I would argue instead of defining liberalism we should look at the self giving love of Jesus. I think this would impact how we understand rights, how we understand freedom, how we understand justice, and how we understand the good life
A lot of this is not how I understand at least a lot of liberal (US sense) political notions at all. Moral neutrality? No obligations to our neighbor? No relational harm? None of this sounds like the kind of liberalism I have encountered, though some versions of this can be liberal (particularly what I encountered in college in some contexts, decades ago). I would say that (for example) Martin Luther King would not see it all that way.
(I think there are many versions of liberalism and conservatism, of course, some more or less compatible with my understanding of Christianity, or a mix depending on the issue.)
Unfortunately, the RC did not have a person with the wisdom of Gamaliel.
The whole denomination? Seriously?
I accept that RC is a broad church and there have been cases such as our Mary McKillop, and Francis of Assisi where there has been a reversal of thinking, but in the microcosm of the hierarchy of the people involved in causing the exile, none emerged.
Unfortunately, the RC did not have a person with the wisdom of Gamaliel.
The whole denomination? Seriously?
I accept that RC is a broad church and there have been cases such as our Mary McKillop, and Francis of Assisi where there has been a reversal of thinking, but in the microcosm of the hierarchy of the people involved in causing the exile, none emerged.
I think you’re also taking for granted here that there can be no good reason to limit receiving a Roman Catholic Eucharist to Roman Catholics. I would like it if they would open it to all baptized Christians, as my own Episcopal church does (technically, I started out RC myself (if I had to leave the Episcopal church, I’d likely return to Rome)), but again, it does not have to be due to a lack of wisdom that they have that rule. From some people’s point of view (which I do not share), they’re protecting people from receiving it inappropriately and from whatever harm they might be subject to as a result.
Comments
So, aside from giving progressives the chance to pat ourselves on the back, it seems that traditional right wing parties in the modern world are a potentially unstable coalition between the three non-progressive personality types: in particular the libertarian and traditionalist wings are more or less entirely at odds. Right wing ideology largely consists of papering over that crack.
I've also had the impression that theocrats and libertarians (as I call them) tend to make uneasy partners at best. To be fair, libertarians are often political mercs who'll turn to whoever pleases them.
"Not very agreeable but open minded" does amuse me, as in "I don't care about it that much but I'll fight you over it!" Self interest isn't much of a principle.
My impression in the USA is that the theocrats resent the authority of secular government and there they find common cause with the libertarians. This may also work for authoritarians who also hate the government of the USA for its lack of authoritarianism. And I think some authoritarians are very good at manipulating people, and libertarians and theocrats are laughably easy to manipulate if you're unethical.
Sadly, as long as these three have something to hate in common, the coalition will hang together.
Also, authoritarian versus liberty can depend on how you relate to the topic. If I'm running a business, higher taxes that subsidize social welfare are an authoritarian infringement on my liberty. On the other hand, if I'm an employee and recipient of welfare, they're an increase in liberty against the authoritarian power of the business owner over my life.
The former may be true because they envision themselves apart from or above secular society, and recognize a supernatural authority beyond or above that of the temporal world. The latter is only true if the flavor of authoritarianism on offer isn't the particular one they subscribe to.
That seems about right. And libertarians will dance with anyone who doesn't get in their way and says they're against "the government." It is kind of bizarre how it all holds together.
From some people, sure. From all people who hold specific conservative views, not at all. I don’t think that all people who hold conservative views of various kinds are really holding something evil/fascist. I may not agree with many of those views, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to hold those views other than some sort of terrible inward malevolence.
I am actually seeing Libertarians pulling away from the CN crowd here. Rand Paul is voting more with the Democrats than the Republicans now.
Yes, and that'll happen for sure. Rand Paul has been rather a wild card, IMO. The libertarians are always unreliable. They go back and forth with the breeze.
Ultimately, the "authority" in the USA is always the People. Our civil life is a system of shared compromises. All of us are threads in the American fabric. Trouble is, right now CNs and MAGA want to be the collective weaver and shred huge aspects of the entire thing.
Erm, NO.
I meant from the ideology as a whole. The folksiness of Reagan or Bush was a smoke screen for the same ideology that's now in the open. Sure, some people got taken in by the folksiness or the sophistry, but the ideology isnt new.
That’s what I thought you meant. I still do not agree about all conservative notions being secretly evil or fascist, even when I don’t agree with them. I don’t think that it’s a simple equation of liberal idea always equals good and conservative idea always equals evil.
Not all conservative notions, just the conservative movement. I have a lot of time for conservative-coded ideas like duty, honour, loyalty, I just don't think there's much sign of them among conservative movements. I don't have much time for institutional liberalism either. Give me a radical any day of the week.
To me the problem is when these become weaponised to impose things on other people.
There's a very difficult line where the public good interferes with the individual freedom (in this instance to act conservatively) which is not easy to resolve.
I have zero respect for anyone who says they hold conservative values but then don't live it.
Yup.
For example the example in the OP appears to be primarily shock value and attention seeking.
He would have known he would have created a scene.
What's confusing about the above terms is that in Australia, "liberal" means "conservative", the idea being less government involvement is considered "liberal" and therefore "conservative".
In general, it might be possible to say the "left" actions more government involvement while the "right" thinks less government involvement is better.
It used to be that western culture accepted that there were "two sides to every story".
These days? Not so much.
The left is generally against giving too much power to the bits of the government that forcibly interfere with individual liberty. The left is against letting armed immigration officers arrest people on the streets without due process, for instance. The left is against laws that restrict what consenting adults can do in the privacy of their own homes.
The difference between the left and the right is generally:
that the left think that the government is not the only threat to individual liberty, so one is justified in using the government to restrict the ability of other actors to restrict liberties;
and that personal liberty without the means of living is meaningless, so one is justified in using the government to provide people with the means of living.
There have always been many more than two. It takes a lot of pressure to get vast bands of disparate people to conform to two factions.
That said, when one side begins engaging in open fascism, that's a side I'm not gonna cooperate with. I won't deny their humanity. But some things are just plain wrong. And I've seen too much and read too much history to pretend this is just "a side" anymore.
We still hear that from the Right a lot in the US. The Republican/MAGA caveat being that at a minimum, both sides are equally valid regardless of what they are, how they're framed, or how they're buttressed. Alternative facts. Can't compete in the arena of ideas? Not so much. Simply label the opposition 'fake,' and triumphantly move on.
You are assuming motive there.
I suspect he knew it would attract attention but that doesn't mean that was his motive - he might be quite indifferent to whether it did or didn't.
He said he did it because that's what he was most comfortable doing and I don't call complete strangers liars without good evidence. Assuming we know what is going on in other people's heads is IMV a bad thing.
I also note that such assumptions are almost always negative and used as a criticism.
It's not that confusing. Most big-L Liberal parties are on the right of their respective national spectrums, because they're using the 19th Century definition of "liberalism", which emphasised economic individualism, in those days the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie. With the emergence of socialism as a viable ideology championing the working class against the propertied class, classical liberalism became the conservative ideology in the sense of wanting to preserve the old dominance of the bourgeoisie. In other places, this role is played by parties labelled "Conservative".
Yeah. The LPC are kind of the succesful version of what David Lloyd George tried to make the British Liberals into(the current Liberal Democrats being, of course, the unsuccessful version of the same)...
...moderately interventionist on economics, socially tolerant, while trying to sell themselves to the ruling class as the only party capable of appeasing the unwashed with sufficient expertise to avert a radical takeover(*).
I will observe, though, that in the public conceptualization, insofar as the LPC is viewed as primarily opposing the Conservatives, most ideologicalky aware people view it as left-wing, or at least matching the images that attach to that label.
But, of course, historically, in places where socialism developed as a major electoral force but nomenclaturally Conservative parties did not, the Liberals were widely regarded as the protectors of capitalism. See Saskatchewan during the whole Douglas to Thatcher thingamabob for just the last(I think) of the prairie examples.
(*) If citation is needed for this characterization of the LPC agenda, Keith Davey says as much in his autobiography.
This does create a semantic issue for some folks.
And that's not getting into the frequently incendiary "leftists versus liberal" spats that I still encounter on the internet on a pretty regular basis. Another way of phrasing that is "center-left versus far-left."
I expect the right wing in the USA is similar fractious, but not being as welcome in those rooms, I don't have as much insider knowledge.
I wasn't thinking of notions like duty, honour, or loyalty as politically conservative, myself, just various things--which again I may not agree with to one degree or another--like conservative political views of all manner of things. Notions can be mistaken, or taken too far or not far enough, without being evil, or showing that the person holding those beliefs is doing so in bad faith, or as a blind for some internal moral corruption.
I'm much more "liberal" than "radical" myself, personally. But even if I disagree with some things that might be considered politically "liberal" or even "radical," in the same way I don't think that the person holding them is therefore evil for believing so.
Agreed. Though I would also say that I think that Trump/MAGA is not really conservative in ways that most traditional political conservatives would recognize. William F. Buckley would have had an aneurysm. I thank God for old-school conservative voices (the Dispatch, the Bulwark, the Lincoln Project, David French, etc.) who are anti-Trump and anti-MAGA.
It's jarringly weird to me -- or maybe this is part of what I'm thinking of re: MAGA not being traditionally conservative at all -- to hear that stuff, over the last decade, from the political party (the GOP) who for decades before was railing against the perceived "situation ethics" and the perceived notion that there's no such thing as truth from the left.
Speaking of which, here's the excellent Randy Rainbow on that whole "alternative facts" thing from almost a decade ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdV_8TGswRA
Yep. And I've actually seen anthologized essays by then-ex POTUS Hoover, lamenting that the New Deal will be the end of American liberalism, obviously by his classical understanding of the concept.
Basically, New Deal Democrats in the USA and postwar-era Mackenzie King Liberals in Canada are subsets of what I earlier called "Lloyd George Liberalism".
Commited Canadian leftists used to like to chant "Liberal, Tory, same old story" at anti-Liberal rallies, but I don't know how widely that equivalency was perceived by the general public.
During the 2010-2015 coalition a similar sentiment was expressed as "Nick Clegg, we know you, you're a fucking tory too". The coalition government confirmed for many of us that "liberal" means right wing, at least economically.
Nor anyone else, for that matter.
Dangerfield's The Strange Death Of Liberal England is very much of its time but prescient also in some respects.
Is it just me, though, but is this thread developing into an 'I'm a radical because ....' or 'I'm a liberal because ...' or 'I'd rather label myself progressive because ...' thread rather than a pegs and holes one?
If we are looking at the axes posted in the OP then I think any of us who've been involved in politics at any level, local, regional or national, will have found ourselves feeling like a square peg in a round hole at times.
For all their faults the Lib Dems had far less of a whip than the other parties in my experience.
A local Conservative counsellor once tried to convince me they didn't have one.
'No, you don't have a whip,' I replied. 'You've got a dirty great big cat-o'nine tails behind your back.'
The Conservatives shoot their wounded. But it tends to be with a bullet to the back of the head.
Labour seem to nibble one another to death.
On the pegs and holes thing more generally, I think we are going to find ourselves feeling 'in the wrong place' at times whatever 'tribe' we belong to, whether political, ideological, theological, ecclesiological, in the workplace, in relationships or whatever else.
We all make adjustments and compromises to 'fit in' but there comes a point where that becomes intolerable and where we need to swap holes, as it were or find somewhere else.
That will vary according to a whole range of factors and circumstances.
And some people are trapped in the wrong settings with little or no agency to do otherwise. That's the tragic part.
I understand that the contemporary thinking in Jesus' time was that only God could cure the blindness of a person born blind. So the Pharisees tried to bad-mouth Jesus, then the man born-blind; and so his parents dissociated themselves from the arguments by just stating the facts as they knew them.
We had a Roman Catholic community of St Marys in Brisbane, being open and doing good works as the Micah Foundation. They outraged the religious authorities by allowing non-RCs to participate in communion and were thrown out of the church building. They continued their work and met in the Local Trades and Labour Building as St Marys In Exile. ISTM they were very much treated by their religious authorities as Jesus was by his!
The fact that he was joint author of The Orange Book should have been forewarning enough - but the press tended not to quote from it.
Classically liberalism was based on individual liberty, equality under the law and property rights. So there was always an element of defending inherited privilege.
Re St Mary’s South Brisbane: it was not the religious authorities who were outraged but the “ Temple Police” ( self-appointed traditionalist tattle tales who attended Mass, took notes and badgered the hierarchy into closing down that parish. The same Temple Police succeeded in getting rid of + Bill Morris of Toowoomba (SE Queensland) by reporting back to Rome.
They seemed to have taken a back seat recently thank God
Sounds like you could be describing the right above.
Based on your comments above, how would you describe the right in general terms for the global current order? Not just America?
So that would make them conservatives.
The only hole we want the Trump admin in is a maximum security prison. Which they're a perfect fit for.
EDIT: a hole in the ground would also work, but that's not something we can work for directly.
Only if you define opposition to any change at all to be inherently conservative.
I'm sure said groups did good work, but it's not like the RCC don't make their rules extremely clear. Following the rules is a pretty big part of being a Roman Catholic, otherwise why bother to sign up for a group with such an emphasis on the rules?
I think it's pretty normal and reasonable for members of a denomination to want their churches to follow canon law. Lots of RC churches do good works while not disobeying said rules - and everyone should be equal under said canon law.
The RCC is not a clergy-run monolith; it’s too bloody big for that.
Not just about “good works” but also about individual faith communities. Believe it or not the hierarchy are too busy trying to keep the show on the road without bothering about minor liturgical infractions.
Even the unspeakable ( and now deceased) George Pell reproved the (now thankfully deceased) chief Temple Policeman for his tale-bearing on the grounds that such behaviour was “un-Australian”. It could be that the late ++ George took exception to take-bearing from a mere layman, of course….
I read about half of that, and then lost my copy. Interesting to read descriptions and analyses of Churchill written PRIOR to the Munich Agreement, ie. prior to him doing the things he's now almost entirely known for.
In what way would you say the book was prescient?
I'm sure the Pharisees also made their rules extremely clear. But, like Peter and the Apostles, they chose to obey God rather than men. Unfortunately, the RC did not have a person with the wisdom of Gamaliel. The Catholics who ran the Chaplaincy Academy I trained in were frustrated with the hard view that some pushed upwards in the hierarchy.
The death of traditional liberalism?
Perhaps 'prescient' wasn't the right word. He was charting something that had already taken place or which was in the process of doing so.
Although liberals would shout put like the character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 'But I'm not dead yet!'
I don't believe it is dead. 'Liberal values' aren't confined to political parties with the word 'liberal' in their titles, any more than 'conservative values' are only found in political parties with 'conservative' in the title.
And heck, I've met a lot of 'conservative' Labour voters for instance.
The whole denomination? Seriously?
The reason I asked, was because I didn't get far enough into the book to know what his ultimate theory was about why things had turned out they way they had, beyond(going by the title of a chapter I never read) that the Pankhursts had played a pivotal role in it.
On that note, the snobbishness of one of the Pankhursts is a clear memory from the book, as is Dangerfield's disdain for Ulster Protestants, "a people who had never known order or discpilne", or something like that.
I would argue instead of defining liberalism we should look at the self giving love of Jesus. I think this would impact how we understand rights, how we understand freedom, how we understand justice, and how we understand the good life
A lot of this is not how I understand at least a lot of liberal (US sense) political notions at all. Moral neutrality? No obligations to our neighbor? No relational harm? None of this sounds like the kind of liberalism I have encountered, though some versions of this can be liberal (particularly what I encountered in college in some contexts, decades ago). I would say that (for example) Martin Luther King would not see it all that way.
I accept that RC is a broad church and there have been cases such as our Mary McKillop, and Francis of Assisi where there has been a reversal of thinking, but in the microcosm of the hierarchy of the people involved in causing the exile, none emerged.
I think you’re also taking for granted here that there can be no good reason to limit receiving a Roman Catholic Eucharist to Roman Catholics. I would like it if they would open it to all baptized Christians, as my own Episcopal church does (technically, I started out RC myself (if I had to leave the Episcopal church, I’d likely return to Rome)), but again, it does not have to be due to a lack of wisdom that they have that rule. From some people’s point of view (which I do not share), they’re protecting people from receiving it inappropriately and from whatever harm they might be subject to as a result.
I think that is what the OP was saying.