Is it just me or do hardcore ideological groups have a lot in common?

Occupy Wall Street, The Tea Party, Greenpeace, The Christian Right, Militant Atheists, Ayn Rand Loving Objectivists, to me they're all the same. They're groups of people who get together and say “we're going to fight for freedom and justice, by all believing and doing the exact same thing and attacking everyone who doesn't agree with us.” This isn't very useful. It's just an easy excuse to avoid thinking for yourself.

I think they all have more in common than they'd like to admit. They seem to enjoy using the same propaganda tactics. If someone doesn't agree with them, just resort to name calling – communist, fascist, capitalist pig, lazy bum, dirty liberal etc. If that doesn't work use straw-man arguments. And if all else fails, resort to conspiracy theories – 9/11 was an inside job, global warming isn't happening, carbon dating was made up to support the liberal agenda, and so on and so forth.

What do you guys think?

 

Their tactics might be similar, but their objectives have stark differences.

 

I think you don't know how to tell the good from the bad, but you do know how to contrive a sense of superiority by putting yourself above practically everybody.

 

Not really, their objectives are control, power, self aggrandizement, and retrabution for criticisms real or imagined.

 

Yeah, but watch what happens when you say this:

Hey, guys. We should all just get along and put aside our differences and focus instead on our common goals. The democrats just want everybody to be okay, that's not a bad thing. The libertarians just want to be free, that's good. The greens want to preserve the ecosystem, and I think we all like ecosystems. The republicans just want to be rich ... well, that's okay, I want them to be rich. These are not mutually exclusive goals. All of these things are possible at the same time -- in fact, all of these things are necessary components of all the other things. We shouldn't be working against each other, we should be working for each other -- isn't that the logical point of politics in the first place?

Observe.

 

You hit at something fundamental here: most debates are useless exercises because few people respect themselves enough to think critically. I really think that if the public education system was better at teaching kids self-respect from a young age, society would be far more intelligent and effective. Instead, our elementary schools usually pressure kids to respect authority and suppress original thought. This is a difficult problem to fix, but if we did fix it, it would be extremely worthwhile.

 

All extremists are cut from the same cloth.

 

Not really. I have the same goals as some of these organizations. Where I differ is that I'm willing to think for myself regarding the means. For instance, I think environmental protection is important and we really ought to tackle climate change. However I probably disagree with a lot of Greenpeace members on a lot of things. I think that GMOs and Nuclear Energy present good opportunities to preserve the environment if used responsibly, however Greenpeace members might just insist I was a pusher of nukes and frankenfoods.

 

The claim is hollow without evidence that the overwhelming majority of the members of all the groups you named are different from you in that respect.

Your apparent belief that there is something that needs tackling in that respect does not suggest to this observer that you are a particularly independent thinker.

 

They're alike in the sense that they are all very committed to what they believe in, but I think it ends there. The groups, themselves, are all very different. To paint them all with the same broad brush is lazy and/or relativist, in my opinion.

 

If I'm not mistaken, objectivists believe that the only moral society is one free from the use of force. While they might seek power to achieve these ends, I don't believe their end goal is power or control.

 

Are you implying that I need to agree with you regarding climate change in order to be an independent thinker? That would be a self-defeating statement.

Anyway, I think the charge that anyone who believes in climate change is a conformist comes from the false belief that it is a political issue and not a scientific one. Frankly I don't think Al Gore should have made a movie about it, because by doing so, he set the wrong precedent. He set the precedent that it matters what a politician thinks of climate science. My opinion is that getting opinions on whether or not climate change is happening from someone who doesn't have a climate science degree is like getting medical advice from someone who doesn't have a medical degree.

Basically, I only trust qualified professionals to tell me what's happening to the atmosphere, the same way I only trust qualified professionals to fix my car.

 

I am racking my brain to think of groups that do not fit this description -- any group overtly linked in any way to an agenda has them . Quite reasonably .
I suspect the OP is telling us absolutely nothing , apart from listing a few groups he does not relate to --- for whatever reasons . Even , "retrabution ".

 

I think you are proving his point

 

They are almost identical right or left. The problem is that stupid people don't know they are stupid and they will never accept this reality.

 

Agreed,

The OP sucks the life out of any activism pretty much. The basis of revolution is a common goal passionately voiced and actively sought. If everyone thought that anything of a revolutionary or idealist stance was simply against freedom, or some kind of arrogance (wanting everyone to think as you do, or believing that they should) then there would be no revolution, so for the powers that be this would be a fairly useful notion for the public to believe. But yes there are similarities, but you could say that about any movement. They all have an ideal, and a goal to make that reality. Though I don't know about Occupy, I mean in terms of the goal. It's a little disparate, it's kind of a vague shout at the heavens but maybe I'm missing something. Anarchism? Socialism? Communism? Or just a more regulated capitalist system? Or just a complete dismantling of the monetary system all together?

Anyway, Wall Street ate my cat.

 

Well, worse are the extreme center. That ones that one to kill the welfare state, condemn million of people to poverty....

And what the hell, the OP is comparing many different things. Atheists just want to live ther lifes and leave them alone. OWS wants more equality and freedom, and it is organized horizontally and everybody can participate on it. More freedom than that impossible.

Tea Party are asking for more power of the corporations. The goals of each group are absolutely different.

GreenPeace and tell that it wants more power is showing ignorance.

 

Actually it isn't much like that at all, because every physician who has practiced longer than ten years has recorded hundreds of case histories by which his competence may be assessed, whereas climatologists taken together haven't recorded one. So on close inspection, the parallel is exposed as nothing short of preposterous.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that that comprises <1% of the issue of global heat content, I defy you to name a single climatologist who has demonstrated competence sufficient to induce a reasonable person to take his or her pronouncements WRT the future of global climate as more compelling than those of an astrologer.