What are you? Liberal? Conservative? Why?....

I understand what I am talking about, but I don't think that you do. It appears that you are unaware of the difference between the liberal philosophy of John Locke and Madison and the liberal philosophy of today's liberal. It is deceptive to try to use the original meaning of liberal to describe today's pseudoliberals. The classic definition is long dead.

 

I'm gonna say centrist as I am left-leaning on social issues (racial divide, war, etc.), yet veer more to the right when it comes to economics.

 

Both of your sources seem biased and filled with rhetoric.

Your experience is drastically different than mine. Though I do think we have a good number of conservative volunteers that work for us behind the scene, most avoid direct contact.

But charity is such a broad term. I am sure boatloads come from conservatives for children; the terminally ill and war orphans and so on. And some charities are educational non-profits like museums or libraries. In some sense donations to churches, if they provide community services, could be a form of charity too.

Those charities do need funding, and I wouldn't want to discourage it. But charities that focus on the homeless, the mentally ill and addicts, (the ugly distasteful charities), need help too.

 

I sincerely doubt you know much about Locke. Locke was against excessive wealth and land ownership.

 

You are seeing Locke through a pseudo liberal lens, and are instinctively defending the liberal collective. Locke stood for many things, so your focus on "Locke was against excessive wealth and land ownership" suggest commie interests. How do you suppose Locke would view massive wealth redistribution, or forcing we the people into government controlled health care? How do you suppose he would view suppressing speech that challenges psuedo liberal agenda or politicians? Do you think that Locke would have encouraged and stood by the creation of a dependent class of people who rely on welfare in exchange for votes that will keep government more powerful than we the people? Locke stood for many things, but cherry picking bits and pieces that support the commie and socialist agenda of today's liberal does not mean that Locke was a 21st century progressive, socialist, commie, or elitist. I would be surprised if he would not be disgusted to see the intolerance of religion, particularly Christianity, that today's "liberals" have.

It does not matter which block you vote for in that poll, because they are just different ways of expressing the same commie and liberal position. Even if there was an option to state that you are a "Locke liberal", today's liberals would not be able to see the difference between what they stand for and what Locke stood for. Today's liberals would hijack that name without thinking twice. Ironically, my conservative position is closer to Locke's than the position of the modern day liberal who would claim the "Locke liberal" title.

 

How interesting that you start by claiming I see him through a lense from the two things I said he was against while going on a long rant doing exactly what you accused me of.
Ask yourself who is really looking at him through a partisan lense. Furthermore I don't see Locke as infallible but as a product of his time. One of the best and most enlightened of his time but still very much a product of it.

I didn't vote... Because I don't really identify with any single ideology. Your ridiculous idea that everything is liberal is beyond the level of intellect I need to waste my time on.

 

Since I am a conservative, I actually CAN see through both lenses. Conservatives are born as commies, screaming for a bottle, and evolve to being conservative during their lifetime. Since I was once a liberal and am now conservative, I can still remember my liberal thoughts. I can remember the enlightened feeling that I used to get as I listened to NPR during my commute, and I can remember what I expected from the government. In the case of liberals, they have never been conservatives, which means that by default, they are unable to think like a conservative. Liberals can only think like liberals, but conservatives can think like liberals AND like conservatives. This is why I can recognize the difference between a Locke liberal and today's liberal. This is also why I know that liberals will resent and dispute the concept that liberals are limited to thinking like liberals while conservatives can think like either one, and that they won't process the implications that this concept will have on their liberal response.

 

Democratic socialist. Liberals have failed at keeping their promises to the people of this country.

 

Well John Locke and Madison can't necessarily be considered leftists in our sense today. However, liberals, communists, socialists, and I suppose even anarchists can be considered leftists. So in a sense, they are all, indeed, left wing political beliefs. However, classifying them as all communists is quite ignorant. It'd be like going to the Middle East and saying that all the people there are Syrians. While they are all Arabs, they are not necessarily Syrian, and the statement itself is quite ignorant.

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And as a side note, more fascists than commies, what a win!

 

Too bad we're both as irrelevant as each other in real life :/

By the way, well done for your posts on this thread. You have by far the most solid understanding of communism and leftism of any fascist to whom I've ever spoken. (And you're not spouting Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy garbage, which is what I've come to expect from fascists.)

 

Through that liberal lens that you use to evaluate my post, this would be the natural conclusion. I completely understand how you have come to this conclusion, since you are limited to what you can see through that lens.

I see where you are going with this, and again, I understand. I realize how broad the brush that I use appears to be when people read what is perceived as broad sweeping generalizations in my posts. If you objectively evaluate my posts, you might find that I am less ignorant about things than you might think.

 

Did you just call me a liberal? What an insult....

 

Did you just call a fascist liberal?

What is not being objectively evaluated? Not all leftists are communists. That's painfully obvious, given how much infighting and splitting happens on the left.

 

neo-fascists are more concerned with white power than true fascism. While I do not agree with communism or that much left wing ideology, I think you should at least understand what you disagree with. I hate both sides pretty equally, as Mussolini says, fascism is against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left, as such, though, I find that I have a third opinion that's against both sides and confuses the centrist every time.

 

I identify as an independent but centrist is the closest poll pick.

 

I'm Kilroy

 

In the American sense of the term it's basically become a synonym for Democratic Socialist. Both being state worshipers I understand the meaning behind it.

It really depends on how your dividing people. State control compared to anarchy? If that's it your going to have monarchist, fascist, communist, socialist, liberals, nationalist, and populist all on one side, and anarchist, constitutionalism, and small r republicanism on the other side.

The fact is I've seen multiple different ways to divide up different political philosophies. It's a bit difficult to put ideals on a line. Of course we all do it, because saying left, right, center is easy to compartmentalize, but in reality it doesn't a correct image of the situation.

 

It is pretty fun watching a buncha liberals debating what variation of liberal they are. I also get a kick out of what kind of stuff college kids bring home for the holidays. You raise them right, and then they go off to college and learn some new way to view the USA in a way that is better than what our founding fathers intended. They come out of the closet as gay, they get tattoos and piercings, and vote for free stuff paid for by the unlimited magic money supply of the government. They somehow fail to see the connection between Judeo Christian values and the development of Western civilization, and they even learn to despise their own country. It takes a lifetime to straighten this mess out, unless they get a wild hair and try to start their own business or figure out how to make a good living. Those poll options are there to satisfy all those folks who need to identify with a certain variation of commie/liberal. College kids love these options, and many of them hold onto their specific variation of liberal for the rest of their lives.

 

I don't really know how to respond to you. Your location shows as Europe, you have the term pre teen in your name, and you have a youthful avatar picture that suggests that you are very young. If your location were listed as something in the USA, I would write you off as a good hearted college kid who is trying to pick out which variation of liberal was trending, but I can't tell enough about you to know how to respond.

Objectively evaluating can only be done by objectively looking through a subjective lens if you are a commie/liberal.

 

Gay, female, environmentalist= unapologetic liberal! Conservatives suck in all three of those areas.

 

liberal or progressive on some issues, tending toward centrist on others.

 

All three? Like you, I enjoy getting with females, and I happen to build electric cars. You got me on the gay thing, but not the other two.

 

There's an Orwellian term if I've ever heard one

 

We Europeans call American liberals "social democrats", not "democratic socialists." Democratic socialists have the ultimate goal of socialism but want to achieve it by electoral means and through gradual, top-down reforms. Social democrats advocate Keynes-inspired "big government" capitalism with high taxes and a welfare state, much like American liberals. But I wouldn't call these people state worshippers, either - unlike fascists and some conservatives, they don't support too much government interference in people's personal lives, with the exception of the gun control issue (I think the liberal position on that is ridiculous and contradictory.)

Actually, communism has the end goal of a stateless society just like anarchism does, and anarchism evolved from the same root as communism (i.e. Marxism). Since most political ideologies' support for state intervention varies depending on the situation, I don't think statism vs. anarchism is a good way to organise political ideologies. The way I usually do it is "revolution vs. reaction", with more revolutionary/progressive ideologies on the left and more reactionary/conservative ideologies on the right. So on the left would be all forms of socialism and American liberalism, and on the right would be all forms of primitivism, market libertarianism and conservatism. But I agree that this sort of compartmentalisation is difficult.

Dude, if you consider me one of these "college kids", I won't be going to college/uni until 2020.

Trust me, Europe has its fair share of self-righteous college liberals too.

I don't see why my nationality or age is at all relevant. It doesn't affect the definition of communism or liberalism (I'm using the American definition of liberalism here, though I do think the European one is more sensible) and it shouldn't affect how you debate with me.

And how might this be done? "Objectively looking through a subjective lens" sounds as contradictory as...well, liberalism

 

Which is why you have to use a political compass over the spectrum. See, Hitler was upper centre, which would be authoritarian, but a mixed economy. Stalin was upper left, authoritarian and planned economy. Gandhi was bottom left, more anarchy oriented, but also more welfare oriented. The more down you go, the less government you want, and the more right or left you go, the more you advocate for a certain economy. This makes classifying liberalism and communism easy. True communism would be bottom left, whereas liberalism would be more upper left, but less up than Stalin.