• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Progressives are always right...

BenBurch said:
Progressivism is a particular movement in American politics. Has nothing to de with Marx.
Click to expand...

Our progressives* only, then. Right.

*defined as: the ones we agree with, using the benefit of hindsight

McHrozni
 
McHrozni said:
Our progressives* only, then. Right.

*defined as: the ones we agree with, using the benefit of hindsight

McHrozni
Click to expand...

Educate yourself. There was a Progressive party in this country. Briefly called the Bull Moose party. American Progressivism is a defined movement that was a big part of. The checklist posting from earlier in this thread was derived from reading one of their Platforms.
 
Progressive mistakes vs. Conservative mistakes in an eggshell:

Progressives: You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

Conservatives: Better the eggs should spoil than we ever risk making a bad omelet.
 
INRM said:
What about eugenics? Didn't that come out of progressivist ideals? That was a disaster
Click to expand...

Good call, although the eugenics movement was an alliance of progressives desiring to improve society, and conservatives desiring to maintain the social status quo by stopping the underclasses from breeding.

When genetics advanced enough to show that genetic disorders were distributed more or less equally throughout society and that the upper classes were not in fact genetically superior to the lower classes, the movement collapsed.
 
Alright time to jump into this fun bucket.

First off, Marxism !=Communism Marx never had an -ism Communism as it was implemented was not the communist society of the proletariat it was and in many places is run as a dictatorship in the guise of communism. Marx and Engels did not have some grand solution, in fact they only predicted up until the proletariat uprising, much of which was spot on until the uprising.

Economic models, like liberalism or conservatism are neither good nor bad. People are not binary machines, in fact a study done by yourmorals.org found that conservatives and liberals differ greatly in their foundational views, one of the greatest area of differences is that conservatives tend to draw on 4 basic core needs whereas liberals have 6 major core needs. Where Liberals and conservatives greatly differ is in the needs for security and the needs for justice. conservatives value safety as one of their highest needs and this is a necessary viewpoint to have as we would not be here without someone who viewed safety as important. Liberals view justice as a highly important function, again an important need for progress.

Someone said before that America is like a car and that is a great analogy. As humans we are drawn toward forward momentum. Progressive thought pushes the boundaries as explorers, but the conservatives give us a safe place to return to when we push too far for the moment.

I think the real issue isn't whether progressives "win" it's not the right way to view it. Progressives expand and conservatives build foundations. They are both fundamental to the growth and development of people from the single person, to the family, to the community. If anyone has ever studied fractal geometry they understand that what is at the large is also at the small and vice versa. you can even see it on a planetary scale from a planet with a moon to the solar system to the galaxy to the universe itself.

If you view only in terms of winning and losing within a society then you limit your possibilities.
 
The Prestige,

Your assessment about the difference between liberalism and conservatism is completely inaccurate


Distracted,

Closer than The Prestige's analogy


Kevin Lowe,

Thank you


Avenging Watcher,

You definitely make some interesting points. I'd also agree that the issue shouldn't be that one is always right and the other is always wrong. Both views have their own merits and their own faults.
 
avengingwatcher said:
Alright time to jump into this fun bucket.

First off, Marxism !=Communism Marx never had an -ism Communism as it was implemented was not the communist society of the proletariat it was and in many places is run as a dictatorship in the guise of communism. Marx and Engels did not have some grand solution, in fact they only predicted up until the proletariat uprising, much of which was spot on until the uprising.
Click to expand...

No, it wasn't. Marx was wrong from the start. He thought the proletariat uprising would come from industrialized capitalist societies, not from feudal peasantry. And he thought that it was an inevitable historical development which would happen spontaneously, but in reality it was almost always instigated externally and never took hold at all in much of the world.

Economic models, like liberalism or conservatism are neither good nor bad.
Click to expand...

Indeed: they are accurate or inaccurate. Marx's model is wildly inaccurate.

Where Liberals and conservatives greatly differ is in the needs for security and the needs for justice. conservatives value safety as one of their highest needs and this is a necessary viewpoint to have as we would not be here without someone who viewed safety as important. Liberals view justice as a highly important function, again an important need for progress.
Click to expand...

Is not welfare a need for "security"? Is not the desire for personal freedom a need for justice?

Both conservatives and liberals value security and justice. But they don't share a common view of what those constitute.

I think the real issue isn't whether progressives "win" it's not the right way to view it.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with that.
 
It would be dishonest for progressives to only count the hits. Surely there have been many progressive ideas that were very bad and died a deserving death, thanks at least in part by the reaction of the conservatives. Similarly, it would be dishonest for conservatives to only count their successes of stopping bad progressive ideas.
 
BenBurch said:
Educate yourself. There was a Progressive party in this country. Briefly called the Bull Moose party. American Progressivism is a defined movement that was a big part of. The checklist posting from earlier in this thread was derived from reading one of their Platforms.
Click to expand...

If the OP said "the progressives", "the Progressives" or "Progressives" instead of "progressives" you'd have a point. But it doesn't.

There is also this, second post of the person who opened the topic:

A progressive is someone who seeks to change the existing order from a liberal perspective.

Looking at the last few hundred years they seem to be winning.
Click to expand...

As I said, progressives defined as the ones you (or Ben Church or whomever) agree with with the benefit of hindsight were indeed always right, historically (assuming you aren't kooks of one sort or another).

McHrozni
 
NoScotsman said:
A progressive is someone who seeks to change the existing order from a liberal perspective.
Click to expand...

If this is true, then you should never voted for the same party twice in a row. That is if you really want change every time.

So right now, in the USA, change (progressive?) would be voting all the bums out. Well look at that! I'm a progressive!
 
Wouldn't Saddam and the Taliban still be in power if the progressives were listened to? Wouldn't the Serbian army have ethnically cleansed the Balkans? Wouldn't Saddam have annexed Kuwait?
 
Virus said:
Wouldn't Saddam and the Taliban still be in power if the progressives were listened to? Wouldn't the Serbian army have ethnically cleansed the Balkans? Wouldn't Saddam have annexed Kuwait?
Click to expand...

I guess you could define "progressive" so as to make that true. Then again by that kind of thinking if the USA had listened to the conservatives then Europe would probably have been conquered by Nazi Germany and/or the USSR.
 
Ziggurat said:
No, it wasn't. Marx was wrong from the start. He thought the proletariat uprising would come from industrialized capitalist societies, not from feudal peasantry. And he thought that it was an inevitable historical development which would happen spontaneously, but in reality it was almost always instigated externally and never took hold at all in much of the world.
Click to expand...

Yes the uprising hasn't taken place but he was strikingly accurate on the weaker value of the unit of work and the need to work more for the same has been dead on. Marx himself towards the end of his life didn't believe in the uprising of the proletariat. Again, I don't think many people who have claimed communism as their government did anything more than abuse the good intentions of those less educated or too impassioned to realize the lies.



Ziggurat said:
Is not welfare a need for "security"? Is not the desire for personal freedom a need for justice?

Both conservatives and liberals value security and justice. But they don't share a common view of what those constitute.
Click to expand...

I was actually citing a study done by yourmorals.org. When conservatives view security it is in terms of physical and immediate security. Welfare is not actually a security issue but what we think SHOULD be done, we could physically survive without it. Protecting ones own life is a physically selfish need, whereas providing for others is an emotionally selfish need or a future physical selfish need.




Wouldn't Saddam and the Taliban still be in power if the progressives were listened to? Wouldn't the Serbian army have ethnically cleansed the Balkans? Wouldn't Saddam have annexed Kuwait?
Click to expand...

Virus - this isn't actually accurate. Serbia was a Clinton initiative and we could have taken Saddam out in the first Gulf War and Osama with a missile strike but the conservatives didn't want to do it. Also there was no progressive outcry to the Afghanistan war with almost unanimous support, save for Kuchinich.
Also there is a lot of evidence to show that some people are worse off under the current government in Iraq, women for instance have had rights shirked because of the religious beliefs of the majority of the country. Was Saddam a bad guy? Yes. Is it good that he is gone? Yes. but don't misconstrue facts to make it seem that the war has been without major sacrifice and was needed. There were non-violent or more covert way of taking out Saddam. A lack of creativity in military operations does not inspire my confidence in my leader.
 
avengingwatcher said:
Yes the uprising hasn't taken place but he was strikingly accurate on the weaker value of the unit of work and the need to work more for the same has been dead on.
Click to expand...

No, that has not been accurate either. The downward pressure on wages you refer to is not universal, and it is not a devaluation of labor, but rather the effect of competition from previously isolated economies. And while that downward pressure may have hurt some unskilled workers in rich countries, it has been a far greater positive affect on third-world workers. They haven't experienced the "weaker value of the unit of work" that you refer to.

What Marx never conceived of is the radical increase in worker productivity that technology has enabled. His conception of the total available wealth was therefore radically wrong, one of the consequences being that there's plenty of wealth in developed nations to give even ordinary workers a very comfortable lifestyle. And undeveloped nations can't provide that because they're undeveloped, so worker productivity is low, not because they're being exploited by capitalists.

Again, I don't think many people who have claimed communism as their government did anything more than abuse the good intentions of those less educated or too impassioned to realize the lies.
Click to expand...

Doesn't that rather indicate a symptomatic deficiency in the ideology, if it's so prone to such catastrophic misappropriation?

Also there was no progressive outcry to the Afghanistan war with almost unanimous support, save for Kuchinich.
Click to expand...

That's simply not true. There was little opposition in Congress, but there sure as hell was opposition among progressives. Not all of them, and perhaps not even most of them, but it was definitely there. Don't you remember Chomsky, for example, crying about how the invasion would cause genocide through mass starvation? I do.

There were non-violent or more covert way of taking out Saddam.
Click to expand...

No, there weren't. I don't know what makes you think there were, or what you think those options were, but no serious alternative has ever been put forward (and sending in special forces to assassinate him is not a serious alternative). There's an argument to be made for the costs of the invasion not being worth the benefit, but an invasion was the only realistic means available to remove Saddam from power.
 
theprestige said:
KaTrue moderation would be a careful, gradual approach to change, that valued the benefits of the existing order as much as it sought out responsible programs of improvement.

Oddly enough, most of the conservatives I know are willing to consider thoughtful change, whereas I have yet to meet a progressive who was willing to tolerate even for an instant the proposition that the existing order might have benefits worth understanding and preserving.
Click to expand...
My favorite political slogan:

"What do we want? Responsible, rigorously tested change! When do we want it? In due time!"

Yet somehow it does not seem to motivate many people... :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom