Fear of the Left . . .

[_EAllusion]

America is not the only country that upholds the value of equality before the law while having an imperfect record of living up to that value.

[_EAllusion]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washin ... americans/

This Washington Post article deserves its own thread, but it is about the worldwide decline of liberal democracy in the eyes of expert opinion and models that attempt to measure it. The US in particular is being recently measured as plummeting to the point of being outside the bounds of a true liberal democracy. Of note for your point Ceeboo, many of the liberal democratic values you view as quintessentially American are under threat and America is probably worse along those dimensions than many other countries.

Ironically that’s *because* of dudes like Dennis Praeger.

[_Chap]

After all, as american's, we share the enormous good fortune to be american - citizens of the greatest country that this planet has ever seen!

Serious question: Have you been to any other countries?

Hey Schmo

Serious answer: Yes

I'm curious what your criteria for country greatness is.

... it doesn't matter where you came from - Your blood origins, your ethnic origins and/or your your racial origins. None of these matter. ...

Except that in every country in the world, America included (and in some respects above others) your ethnicity will make a very large difference to your life outcomes, such as your chances of being imprisoned and your life expectancy. It's insulting to pretend otherwise.

Another of these unique american values is Liberty. American liberty means that we are all born equal (This does not mean ending up equal as that is your business.) American liberty is cemented in enabling people the liberty to carve their own paths.

No-one is born equal in any meaningful sense that actually relates to how their lives are likely to turn out. Kids born into well-off families end up rich. Kids born into poor families end up poor. In most cases, their ability to change those likely outcomes is low, and getting lower in most countries, America certainly included.

Telling people that their race does not matter, and that their class origins don't matter is a hollow mockery. It's just a way of telling people that if things don't turn out well for them, it's their own fault.

[_honorentheos]

Telling people that their race does not matter, and that their class origins don't matter is a hollow mockery. It's just a way of telling people that if things don't turn out well for them, it's their own fault.

Exactly.

[_honorentheos]

Conservatives across this awesome country have felt, in large measure and for some time now, that they have had little to no voice/representation.

I'm very curious about this last statement, ceebs. When you say that conservatives have felt like they've had little to no representation, what do you mean by that specifically?

Ceebs, I hope you come back to this. I'm really unsure how conservatives can legitimately feel they've lacked representation over the last forty years. While we've had periods of one-party control of the White House, house and senate from both sides, if you start at Reagan there hasn't been a major imbalance in who has occupied the White House longer. There has largely been Republican control of the House and Democrat control of the Senate but typically with narrow margins and swings between the parties...it can't be that you feel the Democrats have been running things most of the last forty years. So...what DO you mean?

[Guest]

.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Ceeboo,

Don't be so literal. Chap probably means that race and ethnicity shouldn't matter, but reality is another matter. To tell someone who is systemically disadvantaged, whether they're poor or a woman like Chap, is just blithely ignoring human nature and how birds of a feather tend to flock together, which is totally cool as long as you're not white, heterosexual, male, and monied. If you're all that you can still be privileged and totes cool as long as you're a Democrat or whatever pussies are in England (which is like, 90% of the men over there these days).

- Doc

[_Bach]

by the way, telling people that their race does matter not only perpetuates racism, it is completely and utterly racist!

Kishkumanless hasn’t figured that out yet.!!

But great point nonetheless.

[_honorentheos]

Telling people that their race does not matter, and that their class origins don't matter is a hollow mockery. It's just a way of telling people that if things don't turn out well for them, it's their own fault.

Exactly.

Yeah... Exactly an enormous pile of rancid garbage!

by the way, telling people that their race does matter not only perpetuates racism, it is completely and utterly racist!

So you disagree that statistics that show the household you are born into has a significant influence on being able to predict your own income level and social status are valid? That they are just perpetuating stereotypes and prejudice?

For example, you would disagree with this article written by and targeted towards some of the same liberals you brought up in the OP?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... cy/559130/

The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children. We are not innocent bystanders to the growing concentration of wealth in our time. We are the principal accomplices in a process that is slowly strangling the economy, destabilizing American politics, and eroding democracy. Our delusions of merit now prevent us from recognizing the nature of the problem that our emergence as a class represents. We tend to think that the victims of our success are just the people excluded from the club. But history shows quite clearly that, in the kind of game we’re playing, everybody loses badly in the end.

[Guest]

Leftism — in its incarnations, such as Marxism, communism and socialism; expressed through egalitarianism, environmentalism and feminism; in its denigration of capitalism and Western civilization, especially America and Israel; in its supplanting of Christianity and Judaism; through its influence on Christianity and Judaism; in its celebration of race; and in its replacing of reason with romanticism — has almost completely taken over the news and entertainment media and institutions of education.

I don't know how to begin to unpack all of the b.s..

So feminism, environmentalism and communism are all part of some sort of continuum of the left? There were never any conflicts between communism and environmentalism or feminism? Anyone who would say that all of those elements are all are part of the same continuum is ignorant of history.

Socialism and Christianity? Ever heard of the Mondragon companies? Founder by Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, a Catholic Priest. Sill going and growing: there is a Mondragon inspired cooperative bakery down the street from me. For many, the heart of the teaching is that you should love God and your neighbor ("on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets"). The Protestant Calvinist Lord who helped those who helped themselves was 19th Capitalism's answer to compassion.

Catholics and most Protestants have been nearly universal in their condemnation of the policy of separating families at the border. Who has been more aligned with the religious community on this position, the Left or the Right?

So the left replaces reason with romanticism? So when people on the right say that God would never allow global warming, teach that dinosaurs roamed the earth with people, this is what you call replacing reason with romanticism? When conservatives block funding for the CDC to study gun violence as a public health issues, it's because of reason? the term 'American Exceptionalism' reasonable or romantic?

Celebration of race? More likely the Right. The left celebrates races and diversity. You know, all those people in the mud huts of Africa that the good Christian Americans don't want contaminating our country? Or was it someone other than Trump who expressed the wish for more Norwegian immigrants?

As far as an egalitarian spirit, I will cop to that. Funny how everyone on the right always describes the left as being the 'elites'. Guess it must be all of that egalitarianism, huh?