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Their villain list includes (...) James Cameron

WHERE'S MY POWDERED WIG?

I want to be a hip-hop tea partyer.

It means you gotta keep your horses away from hornet nests.

Sebster is a Communist.

I knew it.

Mannahnin wrote:Hey Fraz, nice job going after the poster instead of arguing against their argument!

That said, most of the rhetoric in the note is more akin to Libertarian stuff (especially the overall hate for taxes and the government), which is not the same as the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement seems to be a bit of a catch-all right now, including Libertarians but also including a lot of other anti-government and reactionary conservative elements. There are some parts of the note (like support for government healthcare, and anti-religious ranting) which really don’t resemble anything coming out of the Tea Party.

While some forms of libertarianism are pretty hostile towards religion (Rand), the support for government healthcare, and tacit support for Marx's communist doctrine, seem to skew him away from it. He also blame collusion between companies not having been stopped by the local justice department, and specifically criticises capitalism, rather than some sort of "mockery of capitalism".
He has a very strong populist feeling to him, and this makes him seem more "tea party" than traditional Libertarian to me, although I don't think he can be said to be of either group, really.

The guy really must have snapped at the end. Even if you accept the need to kill a bunch of people to get everyone to listen to you, his plan for doing so was stupid. He was an engineer, he should have had a better idea of how much damage his small plane would do (not a whole lot, if you compare it to the Fort Hood shooter, or another major attack). Starting your own house on fire (with your family inside) doesn't make any sense either, it just makes you look even crazier than you otherwise would.

You sound like one of the vegetarians who say they're going to go out and shoot hunters so they know what it feels like.

You appear to have some sort of all-consuming neurosis pertaining to golf.

Are you OJ Simpson?

I want that on a t-shirt!

We don't know. He's too good at it.

Well, they're named after the Boston Tea Party. My guess is they started out calling themselves the tea party, got called teabaggers by people making fun of them, didn't know they were being made fun of and so used the name themselves, then slowly figured it out.

He's typing from inside a rhino. The coward! The fool!

BaronIveagh wrote:That said... when you vote, Vote No to any government at all with the weapon of your choice! Anarchy Forever!

ANARCHY!

sebster wrote:Communism, in really simple terms, refers to a state controlled economy, where the means of production (farm land, factories etc) are owned by the state. Contrary to popular myth, the individual can still own private property, and different people can earn different amounts based on how valuable they are. But there would be no private enterprise, all business would be state owned.

Are you sure about this? My understanding of it is that what you are describing as Communism is really (idealized) Marxist socialism. "Communism" being a post-socialist stateless society where the means of production are owned by the people directly.

Socialism refers to a wide variety of beliefs, all of which argue to a greater or lesser extent in government involvement redistributing wealth. Every developed nation on Earth, including the US, is socialist, as they all have programs such as welfare and progressive taxes. A nation without some measure of socialism isn’t actually sustainable for very long.

To say that every nation is socialist because it contains some socialism is misleading; the word isn't usually used that way, or at least it isn't to my knowledge. It would be like saying that every person is old, because every person has aged to some degree; or that an orangish-yellow paint is red because it contains red pigment (pun unintended). Whether or not a nation is socialist becomes a matter of degree, rather than a fact.

It doesn’t make any sense to charge someone else with being socialist for arguing for progressive social reform (such as universal healthcare) as it’s very unlikely the attacker himself rejects all socialism. Its safe to assume they don’t know what they’re talking about, or don’t care they’re spouting nonsense.

This too, I disagree with. Socialist is a matter of degree here as well, and to accuse someone of socialism isn't to accuse them of ever favoring any sort of socialization, but rather of favoring a great degree of socialization.

Of course, the issue with calling someone a socialist in the United States is that there's no debate over the merits of "socialism"; socialism has become so synonymous with evil (or at least huge inefficiency) that instead of judging the merits of a socialist policy, the merits of the policy are judged, and it then becomes "socialist" if found wanting. Which leads to a lot of running around and pointing fingers, and (probably) a lot of annoyance by those who still call themselves socialists.

ShumaGorath wrote:When taken outside of an absolute context the term socialism loses all meaning. It's not a term that withstands varying degrees. Note that everyone using it in modern times uses it wrong and typically either derisively or faux philosophically. It's modern use is little different than that of populisms, the difference however is that socialism actually had a meaning.

Relative terminology when used in a derisive aspect is a race to the bottom with little substance or meaning. A serial killer could refer to a conservative as a socialist (to kill without purpose for ones self is purely against the ideals of socalism) but that doesn't mean the comment makes sense. Not all words should be relative, and the common usage of a term, while pervasive, is not always correct, nor should it be defended as such.

I'm actually making a distinction between three uses of the word, not two. The first being its applicable to anything that's not the most extreme form of anarcho-capitalism (and even that is up for debate, as there's not going to be universal consensus over what "true", 100% anarcho-capitalism would even entail), the second being applicable to a subjectively large amount of government control in the economy, and the third being necessarily an evil or ineffective policy.

As you pointed out, the third definition is a poor one. I maintain that the first is no better, though; it encompasses nearly everything, and means that the word "socialist" is nearly meaningless. There are many people who consider themselves socialists, and most of them wouldn't support a society where nearly everything is privately owned (but with a sliver of public intervention; the occasional fire department or something). The second definition isn't going to tell you absolute facts, any more than "old" is going to tell you a person's age, but it gives an idea of where something broadly falls, which is more than can be said of either other definition.

ShumaGorath wrote:Bingo. The terms true meaning is essentially a meaningless expression likened to that of "governance for the people". The term socialism outside of the context of direct comparisons between political theory or theorists is by definition and nature subverting or caustic. The term has only a useful relative meaning, and it's only use is to lambast or iconify. It's not a word that should be used commonly if at all.

You're never going to get a hard grasp on "conservative", "liberal", progressive", or "capitalist" either. But that's the nature of using single words to describe complex ideas. If replaced the words with something else the same problems would reappear.

You can say that people should thus abandon the practice entirely, but I don't think that's going to happen. It's a necessary evil, caused by the lack of time people have to extrapolate on their beliefs and the lack of effort people will put into understanding complex ideas.

Except by common use and logical statement the "Second definition" isn't any more descriptive than the first two outside of what is directly inferred by the speaker at the time given the audience and the place. Comparing two social things within a socialist government within a socialist country on a socialist planet isn't helped when your saying that "One is more socialist than the other". Most languages on this planet are pretty broad and there are vastly better terms to use. Definition number two is prototypically a polite version of definition number three.

What's wrong with things needing context to be meaningful? A word that requires context to be understood is better than a word that doesn't describe anything to begin with. The second definition's relation to the third is caused by a dislike of things being in relation to the government, but this isn't going to change as the word used to describe the concept does.

ShumaGorath wrote:If a term is dependent entirely on context than it is fluid and has no meaning, becoming an somatic icon representing a current idea or descriptive device rather than a functional phrase. The word "Ow" requires about as much context as socialism, and has roughly the same level of accurate description and use.

Every word requires context to some extent; after all, words don't have truly objective meaning. If no one speaks english they're not going to know what a dog is, nor are they going know what one is if they generally speak english but have no experience with dogs in any capacity (this would be quite strange, but you see the point I'm trying to make).

But to repeat myself, what makes socialism so far gone that it can no longer be used meaningfully, in contrast to conservatism, liberalism, progressivism, and capitalism? There are a dozen permutations of these words, and I'd be willing to say that liberalism and conservatism especially are applicable to a wider range of (often contradicting) ideas than socialism is. Capitalism has many of the same problems as socialism itself, due to it being frequently used as the antonym.

sebster wrote:I was looking at the term as a descriptor of real world governments. There’s never been a society per the end-state of classical communism, so it isn’t a very useful descriptor, a better definition is one that fits those governments that have self-identified as socialist or have been generally recognised as communist. That, to me, is a state where the means of production (or at least the majority of the means of production) are state controlled.

All right, fair enough.

It isn’t misleading, as long you understand that every person is old, but some are older than others. Similarly, every government has socialist elements, but some have more socialism than others. Similarly, the developed nations of the world are also capitalist, but some are more capitalist than others.

Statements that are true but misleading are rarely misleading when further elaborated upon.

Which is why the charge is nonsense. When everyone is on a sliding scale, it doesn’t make any sense to charge someone with being on a different from themselves. ‘You favour a greater degree of socialism than me, and your level of socialism is self-evidently the amount that takes socialism from being acceptable to the amount that destroys freedom and democracy’… is, well, a nonsense argument.

Well now you're jumping to the "socialism = bad" definition. I doubt most socialists would consider their ideology to be inherently bad, just as I also doubt that most socialists would consider "socialism" to include far-right governments that have a bare minimum of government intervention.

Even if we follow your logic, though, must we then not ask ourselves by what bright line test we can decide if a nation is a democracy, a police state, a wealthy nation, a poor nation, a nation with a long history, or any other sort of sort of descriptor that gives a very generalized idea of what you're trying to express?

ShumaGorath wrote:I have never, in my life, seen any government mouthpiece "elaborate" after saying something is socialist.

I haven't seen much effort made for describing political ideologies in general; or at least, not for political ideologies they're not espousing themselves.

I think you misinterpreted what he was saying.

How so? I mean, I know sebster doesn't think that socialism is inherently evil. But I'm not saying it is either.

sebster wrote:Oh, and don’t get me started on people who call themselves socialist and expect people to know what they actually believe. The Socialist party at the local university is poles apart from, say, the Social Democrat Party of Germany.

I see what you mean; however, I think I'm going to get a better guess of what a self-proclaimed socialist thinks than a self-proclaimed liberal or conservative, much less someone declared a liberal or conservative by their opponents.

Do we? Can’t we just accept that every nation has elements of democracy, elements of a police state, elements of poverty, elements of wealth and all the rest. We can set about describing those characteristics in real terms, and not by assigning random definitions and seeing who does and doesn’t the arbitrary cut-off?

We can, a lot of time. If we're trying to discuss something in depth we're probably beholden to, or at least to otherwise define contestable terms.

However, there are plenty of times where it's simply quite inefficient to say that a country has a per capita GDP roughly equivalent to 7% of that of the United States, and easier to just call it an impoverished country.

Mannahnin wrote:I think that’s an illusion created by the fact that the word Socialism has not historically been used as much in discussing the internal politics of the US as the words Liberal and Conservative. I think it’s just the fact that you’ve seen it used less that makes it seem like it’s a more specific term, when it really isn’t.

I disagree. For one, I'm not as close to mainstream American politics as some people seem to think. For another, I'm not saying that socialism need be more specific than the other ideological terms, merely that it's not any more vague than they are.

What's a liberal? Both Adam Smith and Joseph Stalin, according to some common definitions of the term. Is the Libertarian Party conservative? Some will say they're one of the most conservative parties there is, but they propose radical change. Socialist, much like capitalist, is at least narrowed a little bit by the emphasis being on economic matters.

Socialism has previously more been a demonized term applied to Communist countries or Communist-supporters, back when we were at odds with the Soviet Union. Now it’s being applied primarily as a pejorative in US political debate, I suspect for two reasons- a) because it’s generally understood to be an antonym of Capitalism, and b) because Communist has gone out of style. Even when I've known people who called themselves Socialists, it usually just meant that they opposed some parts of Capitalism, without being really descriptive.

Of course. But just as socialism is made vague by its use as the opposite of capitalism, capitalism has been made vague by its use as the opposite of socialism.

Sure, but a big part of the problem in this country seems to be that post of what passes for political discourse, at least in the public arena, is nothing BUT these generalizations and superficialities. We have to require better, more in-depth thought of ourselves. And where politicians and pundits fail to display it, we should call them out on that. Not accept it as a necessary evil.

That the use of the words in vague or misleading ways isn't a necessary evil is not to say that the use of the words in any context isn't a necessary evil. Would you say that if in a speech Obama mentioned impoverished countries he was likely trying to manipulate the public through the use of vague, subjective terminology? There are times when that happens, certainly, but there are plenty of times when it doesn't.

Doesn't every political movement include elements of the National Socialist party?

That sounds like a good job for an anarchist.

Yay! Save us money!

FREE MOVIES!

sebster wrote:This might be a product of differing politics. Here liberal means something very specific (a strong belief in free markets and generally conservative social policy, funnily enough) whereas socialism is much fuzzier.

That's probably part of the issue. According to many Americans, socialism is actually a subset of liberalism, which leads to it being quite an extensive ideology indeed.

Shorthand is great, as long as everyone has a decent understanding of the underlying complexities. The problem is, I think, that we use shorthand almost exclusively and few people know there's real complexity underneath. For instance, you mention a country might have a GDP per capita of 7% of the US, but what's the form of that poverty? Poverty takes on many different forms and not all of them can be solved with the same methods - the issues in a resource poor but more or less politically stable nation like Bangladesh are wholly different to the issues in a country with abundant resources but a terrible government like Zimbabwe.

That sounds like a fair assessment.

sebster wrote:That seems more like liberal is being used as a synonym for left, when by my reckoning liberal and socialism are seperate (and very vague) sub-categories of the very vague category of leftwing politics.

Yep. Liberal is most commonly used to mean anything leftish; however it's sometimes used to refer to economically right wing ideologies, especially if they also involve less personal restrictions (this is sometimes referred to as "classical liberalism", which is in the same ballpark as libertarianism). Milton Friedman, for example, self-identified as a liberal, despite being one of the biggest names in right wing economics. (Come to think of, the Australian definition may be the only one not used.)

Frazzled wrote:If I could figure out what you just said, I'd probably have to suspend you for attacking other posters.

He doesn't like Shuma.

Mannahnin wrote:Sebster has won this thread about four times, though dogma has scored a few points as well.

And what am I, chopped liver?!