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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13161)	5/17/2002 5:28:49 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

No, we are ashamed of you, of course. For your rigidity and all those things I said.

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13161)	5/17/2002 6:24:01 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

I like my theory better: Are you guys and gals ashamed of what you are? Or each other? Laz, I think much of the problem is how the terms are used. First of all, nobody uses the term, conservative, as a epithet. When the lefties around here want to insult a rightie, they don't call them "conservatives." Rather, they call them RWEs, usually, or something that indicates only a subset of the folks right of center, the blind and nutty subsets, not the entirety of conservatives. The word, liberal, OTOH, is used here regularly as an insult. If "beautiful" were used regularly as an epithet, people would cringe from that, too. But more importantly, I think, people use the terms to mean different things. The term, conservative, usually covers everyone to the right of center. Within that you have subcategories like neoconservatives and paleoconservatives, some would include libertarians, plus various strains like militia, populists, skinheads, etc. What is there to the left of center? This is a quote from that instrument that categorized political ideologies: "Other than that the major flaw is that I don’t know modern left-wing ideologies at all well, so the categories of "radical," "liberal" and "third-way" probably are not how leftists would classify themselves." The guy who wrote it says he's a "paleo-something" who doesn't know that much about categorizing the left. He came up with radicals, liberals, and third way. I don't know that the lefties could do any better than that. Whatever subgroups one assigns, "liberal" is not typically used to describe everyone to the left of center as "conservative" is on the right. We don't have neo- and paleo- or any hyphenated liberals, we have radicals and third way. Regardless of the details, I just don't think the two labels are comparable in their breadth. When I think of "liberal," I think of someone who thinks the Great Society, Affirmative Action, and unions were the way to go. Laz, there aren't many of those around here. Those among us who aren't "conservatives" are generally in that third-way category, more thoughtful and more centrist than what I would label a "liberal." This is the definition of third way from the instrument: "Third-way – More supportive of foreign intervention than liberals and less supportive of economic regulation, coupled with more-or-less progressive social views. "Third-way" is to liberal what neoconservative is to conservative." What is so horrible about that that it demands an epithet. Conservatives may not agree with that particular ideology, but it it not one that deserves ridicule. Go ahead and ridicule the radicals who support reparations or are eco-terrorists or anti-globalist, if you like, but our local lefties are generally not of that ilk. They're mostly nice, normal people who are somewhere near the center. Unless we have some common agreement on what these words mean, it's hard to deal with questions like yours, but I'm trying. If you want to ridicule liberals or those left of liberal, by my definition, you won't get any complaints from me. I just think you are casting too wide a net when you sling your epithet at the likes of E, CR, and Rambi.