Official political correctness thread

Norway is about as socialist as the USA is fascist. The most socialist country anybody here knows is Israel. And they wouldn't have you.

Erica Ambler wrote:

The origins of liberal fascism are neither as innocent nor as benign as you suggest, Tiff. After all, this has gone far beyond utopian or wishful thinking: giant schemes of social engineering and wealth redistribution are underway and, given the vast sums required to finance it all, we are witnessing what appears to be legalised robbery by the state. Despite this, social mobility is lower than it has been for years.

Today's Western societies employ vast armies of highly paid government regulators and enforcers whose commanders just happen to be our self-styled liberal advocates. Most of them are unelected and unanswerable, and on lucrative final salary pension schemes paid for by people who cannot afford to fund their own retirement. The liberal elite have become the new establishment, the new ruling class if you will.

For all the talk of helping the disadvantaged and needy, it is this new privileged class that is the main beneficiary of the new system. The only good thing about the ongoing recession is that it may help people see that today's dominant politics is morally bankrupt and financially unsustainable.

Well put Ambler. Liberal social engineering and wealth redistribution schemes, are neither innocent nor benign. On the contrary, they are genuinely sinister. The liberal elite are entrenched. I think only the inevitable collapse of our western economies under the burden of oppressive government, will bring them down. Their public-sector power bases are like fortresses.

No, I am ascribing the naive and utopian world view to those many well intentioned innocents that vote Liberal or Democrat, because they feel its the reasonable thing to do. These honest souls do genuinely care about the poor and less fortunate. They do want a fair and just society, and the liberal elites play up to this sentiment. They position themselves as champions of the less fortunate, of every interest group you can think of. They would have you believe they championed the civil rights movement? But where were these liberals in the 1950's. Nowhere to be found. The Jim Crow laws were just fine, until the blacks woke-up and suddenly decided they would actually vote. Democrats didn't start making civil rights noises until they realized their were black votes to be had. Even a cursory examination of the civil rights movement will bear that basic truism out. The liberal elites power bases are the trappings of government and forced wealth re-distribution. They pander to votes, and if there is an interest group to be served, there's a government program designed just for them. Vote for us. We will take care of you. Those nasty conservatives only care about big business. Yawn. But snake-oil does sell and always has.

But as David Mamet wonders so eloquently, in his superb new book; how much evidence is needed to show that big liberal social-programs and economic schemes, only make things worse, and cause still greater societal problems? How much snake-oil can otherwise intelligent people buy? At some point, the results need to be objectively assessed, even if one believes the intentions are altruistic (which is debatable). But unfortunately people do indeed buy snake-oil. You can always fool a lot of the people, a lot of the time. On the plus side, many persons do experience an epiphany at some point in their life and stop buying the snake oil, and reluctantly brand themselves as conservative ( not exactly a sexy moniker, if you are a former liberal), in a bid to at least put the brakes on the insanity. I can relate, being a reformed liberal myself. That's why Mamet's book rings so true. It's almost cathartic.

As much as one might wish to find the sane sensible middle ground on most issues , I see no such animal on our contemporary poltical landscape. Modern liberalism is truly a menace to our free societies. I see no comparable threat on the so-called "extreme-right." Extreme-right would be some manifestation of libertarianism moving towards anarchy, but considering how entrenched the government monster is, even the most free-market and libertarian of conservative polticians, would need several lifetimes to tame the beast. I think it should be fairly obvious by now, that there is no bigger burden on our economies and general societal well being than government spending, and the relentless siphoning of resources from the productive sector to keep the beast fed and flush with borrowed cash. Is such a system any way to equip ourselves to help those less fortunate? On the contrary their misery is compounded, entrenched even.

Our societies are doomed. Now we are hearing talk of a lost-decade looming. The beast is ready to swallow us whole. It appears there might have to be a complete crash before sanity might be restored.

well I don't pretend to be an expert on how the countries you live in operate, but I suspect you are grossly exagerating

all I can say is that while my country can still be characterised as "socialist" by American standards
we have moved significantly to the right since the halcion days of socialism in the 70s

the gap between the richest and the poorest is growing wider every year and the percentage of wealth held by the top few percent of citizens is getting higher every year
which hardly supports your arguments about wealth redistribution

since the late 80s all central economic policy, currency and trade, has been oriented toward more open markets, whether the party of the right or left has been in power
the point of difference now relates to the amount of public spending of welfare and the degree of legislation necessary in order to provide a level playing field without becoming detrimentaly onerous

we currently have the party of the right in government and my only gripe with them is that they continue to persue the dogma of asset sales when they know that the public doesn't really want to go any further down that road with regard to utilities and other infrastructural assets

Seve wrote:

the gap between the richest and the poorest is growing wider every year and the percentage of wealth held by the top few percent of citizens is getting higher every year
which hardly supports your arguments about wealth redistribution

It doesn't support or negate. You are making the assumption that the closer one gets to an "equal' distribution of wealth, the more desirable one's society might be. Which may be so for the socialist (not to accuse you of such a thing). The free society strives towards equality of opportunity, as opposed to equality of results.

Tubes wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

The only good thing about the ongoing recession is that it may help people see that today's dominant politics is morally bankrupt and financially unsustainable.

Hopefully, people can see that the dominant forces for both sides of the political table are self serving. In the US, we've needed a moderate president for a while.

Centrism is a dead end. An understandable, but ultimately cowardly and muddleheaded position.

Seve wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

The conservative, on the other hand understands that the most equal and prosperous society is achieved through limited government, individual rights and freedoms (what classic liberalism used to mean) and a vibrant market-economy.

most of the advances in our social system have come from liberals

As have most problems.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Seve wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

The conservative, on the other hand understands that the most equal and prosperous society is achieved through limited government, individual rights and freedoms (what classic liberalism used to mean) and a vibrant market-economy.

most of the advances in our social system have come from liberals

As have most problems.

Name a few problems please?

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

the gap between the richest and the poorest is growing wider every year and the percentage of wealth held by the top few percent of citizens is getting higher every year
which hardly supports your arguments about wealth redistribution

It doesn't support or negate. You are making the assumption that the closer one gets to an "equal' distribution of wealth, the more desirable one's society might be. Which may be so for the socialist (not to accuse you of such a thing). The free society strives towards equality of opportunity, as opposed to equality of results.

as you say, the socialist assumption is that a more equal distribution of wealth is desirable

therefore if I point out that income has in fact become less equaly distributed in recent decades I am demonstrating that your assertion that liberalism is growing more excessive in recent years at the expense of "freedom" is not supported by that evidence

it rather supports my assertion that in general government policy in the western countries I receive news of has generally moved to the right in the decades since the 80s

in the 70s my country had a dollar value set by the government, high tarrifs on imports, compulsory unionism with unions that were always on strike, wage and price freezes and even, in the early 80s, industry being planned by by central government... and that was by a government of our supposed conservative party of the right!

we have come a long way since then, mainly in the direction generaly referred to as "the right"
I've agreed with much of it, although far from all
by the same token some people still complain about the "nanny state" but I guess some people always will

saint mark wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Seve wrote:

most of the advances in our social system have come from liberals

As have most problems.

Name a few problems please?

Self-righteousness.

Humourlessness.

Counter-intuitive thinking.

Glorification of ugliness.

The celebration of mediocrity and the talentless.

The honouring of victimhood.

Relativism.

And that's just for starters.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Seve wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

The conservative, on the other hand understands that the most equal and prosperous society is achieved through limited government, individual rights and freedoms (what classic liberalism used to mean) and a vibrant market-economy.

most of the advances in our social system have come from liberals

As have most problems.

I think we can share the problems around about evenly

for instance the current world problem has come partly from goverments not being prudent with their spending, it's also come from greedy finance people who have manufactured unsound theory to support bad business decisions and financial instruments that are pure gambling

I've always likened capitalism to a chemical reaction, too much control and the reaction fizzles out, not enough and you blow up the lab...

Erica Ambler wrote:

saint mark wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Seve wrote:

most of the advances in our social system have come from liberals

As have most problems.

Name a few problems please?

Self-righteousness.

Humourlessness..

those traites are not exclusive to liberalism, all fanatics, left ot right have those characteristics

Erica Ambler wrote:

Counter-intuitive thinking. (? example)

Glorification of ugliness. (? example)

The celebration of mediocrity and the talentless. (celebration of greed and selfishness)

The honouring of victimhood. (ignoring victimhood)

Relativism. (absolutism?)

And that's just for starters.

Self-righteousness. I see this happen over the whole scala of politics. Right blaming left and vice versa. Not something you can attach to one specific group of people.

Humourlessness. Looking at the folks called the Tea-party, they are not liberals, they have shedloads of this to burn. same attribution to most politics.

Counter-intuitive thinking. Would be "I have to think about it, what can be done with it " instead of "It is mine and mine alone". In that case not a very negative something.

Glorification of ugliness. Not sure what you mean by this.

The celebration of mediocrity and the talentless. Not sure what you mean by this. Unless you mean that here is no reason for a director to earn 400x the wage of his employees, and if they mention union they sart the factory in China because of the profitmargin due to lesser wages.

The honouring of victimhood. That would be the system of sueing people/companies into ridicolous amounts of money. Liberals call for reasonable and fair compensation of damages.

Relativism the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration. The term is often used to refer to the context of moral principle, where in a relativistic mode of thought, principles and ethics are regarded as applicable in only limited context. There are many forms of relativism which vary in their degree of controversy. The term often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture. What exactly do you want with it.

Seve wrote:

[The celebration of mediocrity and the talentless. (celebration of greed and selfishness)

I believe the correct antonym here is the celebration of quality and talent. A textbook meritocracy, in other words.

Seve wrote:

If Ambler said: "the celebration of altruism and selflessness" (unlike Randroids I find these honourable traits) - your counter-statement would be right.

The honouring of victimhood. (ignoring victimhood).

There's a difference between tending to victims and the cult of victimhood. The opposite would be an emphasis on self-reliance, and finding one's own self-worth, without having to surrender oneself to the state.

Seve wrote:

Relativism. (absolutism?)

Absolutely. At least there's some sort of foothold.

I'll let Eazy A defend the others.

Re: saintmark, your post is a load of ill-informed codswallop.

Sharky wrote:

Re: saintmark, your post is a load of ill-informed codswallop.

Thank you I aim to please.

There is a difference between liberalism in Europe and the US I found. So discussing it gives me another outlook. Perhaps I should not enter the discussion when applied to the US.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a modern liberal, as was John F. Kennedy, a self-described liberal who defined a liberal as "someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions...someone who cares about the welfare of the people". I am not sure what was wrong with these folks and how you apply the terms earlier mentioned to these two presidents.

saint mark wrote:

Currently the world is in a deep financial crisis due to simple greed.different parties.

We got into it thanks to government over-regulation by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England regulating the major banks. In the US, prescriptive land use regulation created an artificial housing supply shortage, resulting in the market debt crisis of 2007.

If you want to blame someone, blame John Maynard Keynes.

Sharky wrote:

saint mark wrote:

Currently the world is in a deep financial crisis due to simple greed.different parties.

We got into it thanks to government over-regulation by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England regulating the major banks. In the US, prescriptive land use regulation created an artificial housing supply shortage, resulting in the market debt crisis of 2007.

junk bonds caused the crisis in the 80s, it was junk mortgages in 2008
that was created by bogus financial practises emenating from greedy financiers who manufactured unsound theory to support bad business decisions and unsound financial instruments, because they only care about where their next bonus is coming from
surely more or better regulation is required to stop things like that repeating every decade or so, as has become the current pattern, rather than less?

that's not to say that the US mortgage system is not a scary public sector owned monster sitting ironically at the heart of the nation who most fervently waves the flag of the free market
a monster that should have been dismantled decades ago

but you can forget the bank of England, they ceaed to be relevant last century some time

Sharky wrote:

[If you want to blame someone, blame John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes did the best he could to offer a theory or hypothesis that best fit the circumstances as he was aware of them at the time
like any theory it's not perfect and I'm sure he would be the first to congratulate the person who comes up with a better one
as Einstein was able to improve on Newton

but that's what makes capitalism different from communism, capitalism is a scientific attempt to define how things work based on observation of what actually goes on

communism was a set of unproven ideas, which eastern europe and asia were forced to pay the price of disproving

saint mark wrote:

Sharky wrote:

Re: saintmark, your post is a load of ill-informed codswallop.

Thank you I aim to please.

There is a difference between liberalism in Europe and the US I found.

yes a "liberal" friend of mine found it hard to accept that Hunter S Thompson was an extreme liberal by US standards and yet also entirely comfortable with the concept of vigilante justice

the pioneer spirit of self reliance and individuality is celebrated
while in Britain these days it might more likely be mocked as exentricity?

Sharky wrote:

Seve wrote:

If Ambler said: "the celebration of altruism and selflessness" (unlike Randroids I find these honourable traits) - your counter-statement would be right.

The honouring of victimhood. (ignoring victimhood).

There's a difference between tending to victims and the cult of victimhood. The opposite would be an emphasis on self-reliance, and finding one's own self-worth, without having to surrender oneself to the state.

fair enough, but these terms are all to broad to be entirely right or wrong
every strength becomes a weakness if you take it to an extreme

Basically I think its very easy to make the argument that government intervention in any sector of society is always a huge problem, which leads to bigger problems.

Take the sub-prime mortgage crisis that collapsed the world economy to the tune of 1 trillion dollars in toxic mortgages being bundled and swapped throughout global financial markets, disguised as credit-default swaps, various derivative securities and what have you.

Yes, the wall-street traders are guilty as charged, for falsely representing their product. They sold snake-oil, knowing it was snake-oil, but pretending it was something else. Maybe they should be strung up on fraud charges, if there is any political will to pursue such charges.

However the root source of the problem is government. Not Wall Street. Wall Street is a predictable beast. It exists to facilitate buying and selling of securities, in order to make a profit off trading-commissions. Traders work on volume. The more they move, the more they make. Then there is the speculative component; essentially gambling based on assessments of companies worth, or projected profits and losses. These machinations are all vital to a free-market economy and are perfectly normal.

However, when the Clinton government swaggers into the market in the 1990's and brow beats banks and mortgage-lenders to relax lending standards so that "poor" people can participate in the housing boom, and uses the full force of government, with insane legislation such as the Community Re-investment Act (thank-you Barney Francks, who is still causing problems), to force sub-prime mortgages into play, the global financial system was doomed, thanks to what was a government affirmative-action program, designed so that more persons could enjoy the benefits of home-ownership, conveniently forgetting that banks have lending standards for very good sound financial reasons.

I will allow that crooked elements on Wall Street may very well have conspired with government to make this happen. They may have seen a way to play on liberal politician's desire, to appear to be looking out for the little guy and thus exploited such sentiment, to make a profit at the expense of the rest of us. This is greed;exploiting others to further your own interests. Gordon Gekko was wrong. Greed is not good. Healthy ambition though is good. But there was nothing healthy for society about issuing mortgages to persons that couldn't afford them.

But I put the blame on government. Government represents the people. It's up to government, either not to be drawn into such schemes and certainly not to propose them, in the interest of disastrous social-engineering. Unfortunately when you are talking about liberals, (generally pre-disposed to such schemes, to make society more "equal"), it is more likely such high-brow "thinkers," are dreaming up these hair-brained ideas, than following along, but probably both dynamics were at play.

Anyway, the U.S. government allows for lending standards to be relaxed, in the name of more housing equality, the housing bubble naturally collapses, as all bubbles do, and we all get royally FUCKED. (excuse the language but it fits)

Take any crisis, and I'm sure the interfering fingerprints of government are all over it. The latest crisis facing the free world are liberal carbon-trading/cap-and-trade schemes, in the name of save-the-planet (there's always a noble reason for destroying society). The sub-prime mortgage affair will look like a picnic, if this lunacy ever gains serious traction and again government will be squarely to blame. And again the apologists will blame capitalist greed for interfering in their inability to make it work, and demand still more public resources to make it happen, until every free-market economy is Greece. Eventually the dictators take over to restore order, once the social-engineers have done their worst and destroyed the free-society.

The solution to what ails our free societies is obviously a clampdown on government spending and for the citizenry to get off the fence, wak-up and stand-up to the empty platitudes and snake-oil sales pitches of non-leaders such as Obama, and those that prop him up (entitled Hollywood brats etc). The more the beast borrows and spends, the worse off we all are, especially the poor, because the productive-sector has to underwrite all the crippling spending and debt-servicing.

But there is hope. Namely, the re-building of the free-society with free-markets, vigorously engaged in the exhange of both needed and wanted goods-and-services, complimented by restrained regulation, very limited government (we do need some) and a respect for the rule-of-law. Then we've all got a chance at carving out a decent standard of living, even those that don't want to work very hard or hardly at all. For those that simply can't work, a free-society with a vibrant economy, can easily carry them. A welfare-state on the other hand rife with government programs, creates a culture of dependancy and entitlement and utimately bankruptcy and misery for all.

The sanest way to cast one's ballot is always vote for the guy or girl that's trying to put the brakes on government spending. Anyone pushing more government "programs" to "help," tell them, "get behind me Satan." They are selling snake-oil.

Wise words.

I still believe the blame can be apportioned equally

read up about the bucket shops and other cowboy financial activities of the thirties and tell me that sort of behaviour resulted from "too much government involvement"

tell me that monopoly busting anti trust legislation of Teddy Roosevelt was a bad thing

IMHO you need to open your other eye

if there were no unscrupulous people the free market would work fine without government intervention, unfortunately that is not the case

capitalism is the best model we have, so we should stick with it
but it is far from perfect, at it's heart is the fundamental paradox that it relies on perpetual growth to keep going and we live in a finite world

if one country has an export surplus, someone else must have a deficit

it didn't used to be a problem when there was always a war to periodically set things back to square one, but in a time when domestically the west has been at peace for the longest period on record, stagnation is a constant threat

as soon as things start to stagnate someone finds away to cheat the system, which provides the temporary illusion of growth until the cheating is inevitably discovered and the bubble bursts

I don't see how the 80s crash caused by junk bonds were any governments fault?
the junk mortgages of today were a 50/50 partnership between politicians and financial institutions

an example of a legitimate boost was the stable oil price in the 90s, which I believe was arranged by Bush sr as the price for saving the Saudis from the Sadam bogie man in gulf war part one, unfortunately for old George, Clinton inherrited the benefits of that one

the emergence of China has been another legitimate booster, increasing the size of the potential consumption pie for the forseable future

globalisation has been a two edged sword, because has removed the direct connection between a stockmarket and it's domestic economy, these days a company can be doing well in the market without being of any benefit to the domestic job market, because it's production facilities may be based overseas, the market goes up but unemployment remains high and voters, the majority of whom are not shareholders, become angry

Seve wrote:

read up about the bucket shops and other cowboy financial activities of the thirties and tell me that sort of behaviour resulted from "too much government involvement"

Well that is simply opportunists exploiting the free market. If the system is truly free, then public demand will have its final say. Karma always bits you in the arse.

Sharky wrote:

Seve wrote:

read up about the bucket shops and other cowboy financial activities of the thirties and tell me that sort of behaviour resulted from "too much government involvement"

Well that is simply opportunists exploiting the free market. If the system is truly free, then public demand will have its final say. Karma always bits you in the arse.

they were crooks committing fraud on the public and there was insufficient regulation in place to stop them, hence the eventual collapse and everybody suffered

"free market" theory doesn't mean anything goes, it still assumes good faith
and as in the real world good faith cannot be assumed, some regulation by government is essential to the well being of the system

Seve wrote:

if one country has an export surplus, someone else must have a deficit

But that's OK. It doesn't mean the country that imports more than it exports has to be broke. There can still be a healthy trade dynamic in play even if import re-sellers are driving commerce, moreso than the manufacturing sector and exporters.

Seve wrote:

I still believe the blame can be apportioned equally
if there were no unscrupulous people the free market would work fine without government intervention, unfortunately that is not the case
capitalism is the best model we have, so we should stick with it

I do insist on putting the blame for our current economic trouble on government. The free-market is a predictable beast. It will follow basic principles of supply and demand. And yes it will try to form monopolies in order to control the supply side of the economic equation, so regulation is needed to maintain competition. And there are sovereign trade barriers, tarif debates etc to be figured out. Its not a perfect system and it can't be. It's volatile by nature. Criminality and fraud can also wreak havoc but we do have laws to deal with that. The rule of law is vital. Madoff was a crook. It wasn't insufficient regulation that allowed him to steal like he did, it was a lack of oversight. A lack of enforcement. In the end he was caught. But what no market economy can survive is unsustainable goverment spending; government programs that are continually sucking money out of the economy; government wealth redistribtion schemes in order to promote "fairness"

Sovereign debt is killing Europe and it's also ruining our North American economies as well. There simply is not enough money circulating. I've worked for two companies in the last 4 years, that both went belly up because neither could drive the sales they needed to survive. One was over 40 years old. I'd been working with them off and on since 1994 and finally earlier this year it died. Sales had ground to a halt. The customer base simply had no extra cash to spend, no matter how aggressive the marketing and sales effort. The other company went belly up in 2008. It was driving decent sales, had growth potential, good product, but couldn't attract the financing it needed to carry into a second year. The ownership was working its butt off to attract fresh investment, but the capital wasn't there. In a normal ecomony both these companies continue. The first manages to maintain sales and the other one finds the inventment capital it needs to continue. Maybe they die down the line when the business models are no longer relevant, but in the short term there wasn't enough capital circulating to sustain them. So people lose jobs.

In Ontario, government debt is running at 236 billion dollars. The annual provincial deficit is more than it costs to maintain the public education system. The province’s ratio of net debt to gross domestic product for 2010-11 was 34.9 per cent. That's nuts. And the Liberal government announces a 14 billion dollar deficit for 2011-12 as good news and still increases spending because it doesn't have the poltical will to take-on the public sector unions. They are both part of the same bankrupt system. A conservative government would at least make an effort to reduce spending, but it would also be hamstrung by the entrenched entitlements.

Its an intolerable burden on the tax base. Government spending is the villain. There is no question in my mind and yet we have public sector unions, demanding jobs for life, no cuts, protesting in Wisconsin because the governor decided it was time to take their colletive bargaining rights away, (that FDR never intended they should have in the first place),until the public-sector unions became the beasts that that they are. Protests protests protest. What we need is a public uprising against governement spending. We need to send a message to polticians that its OK to take on the unions and dismantle the whole crazy system. The Tea Party is sending that message and its resonating with much of America but here in Canada where we are so superior, we ridicule the Tea Partiers as hicks and rednecks and rascists

As Ambler pointed out we have a private sector that has to work like dogs to keep up with financing pensions for the public sector, when it can't even pay for its own pensions. Polticians have created a privileged class of citizenry that depend on government for their income and these people come first and to hell with everybody else. And these bureaucracies are entrenched.

Some mentioned FDR. I think you can argue that FDR's New Deal might have prolonged the depression, but that's water under the bridge. What FDR did warn against though, which was ignored, was collective bargaining rights for public employees. FDR was clear. There should not be an adversarial relationship between the people and the public employees. FDR is credited as being the father of the American public service but he never envisioned the horror show that we have now. In no sane universe should public sector workers have collective bargaining rights. We the people should be able to hire and fire them as we see fit. We should only be paying for the government that we actually need. But unfortunately liberals have built their power base amongst the public sector unions and other entitled entities that live off the government, so I think we are heading towards armageddon. Our ecomomies simply cannot sustain the levels of goverment spending that we have had to endure.

Yes we need regulation but restrained regulation. We can't have government interfering in the housing market to the extent it did. We can't afford the carbon-tax and cap-and-trade schemes being proposed by earth worshipping liberals. These people are the new pagans. Worshipping their earth gods, while humanity suffers. I think they must have golden calves in their back yards as well. Its biblical. We need Moses to charge down from the mountain again, throw a tantrum and restore sanity.

Nicely said, tiff.