Civil liberties is a right-wing philosophy?

Post #183,847 by ben_tilly 11/10/04 2:50:28 PM Reply	Civil liberties is a right-wing philosophy? I think that you'll find few people on the Left who are for the Patriot act, the ongoing erosion of the 4'th amendment, and many other key civil liberties positions. Certainly it is my impression that organizations like the ACLU are more often thought of as left-wing than right-wing. As for financial discipline, while the Right gives that lip service, in recent US history actual accomplishments have been delivered more consistently by people on the Left, like Clinton and Dean. At least one the federal level, the biggest fiscal disasters have been delivered by conservatives from Reagan on. Take the last Presidential election, who had the better track record for financial discipline, Bush or Kerry? As for how representative I am or am not, there is certainly a left-wing fringe out there that I'm not representative of. And most don't present their opinions as carefully as I do. But I believe myself to be fairly mainstream on the left. Certainly in discussions with aquaintances who are left-wing, my views tend to match theirs fairly well. And, as I said before, my views are a very close match to Howard Dean's, who represents a fairly large block of people. I certainly have no trouble naming other IWETHEY people whose views I would describe as being close to mine. I won't do so mainly because I don't want to drag them into this discussion. But several of you know who you are... Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #183,851 by Arkadiy 11/10/04 3:07:15 PM Reply	Two facts: 1) you and some of the rest of the crowd here have distinctly different tone WRT Christianity 2) you think you're a "mainstream left" That leads me to conclude that, at least in your opinion, the other kind is not "mainstream". Question: what do the other people I quoted think about being "mainstream"? Mmoffitt, is your style representative of most of the "left" crowd? Another question: whom do your opponents consider more representative? We heard from AnotherScott. Beep, care to answer? I personally think that most people in liberal circls are like you, but most noise coming from there is generated by the other kind. I have to constantly remind myself about this, though. Still another question: what is the perception of "right" on the left? We heard from deS with his "old-fashioned Montana(?) honesty". We heard from mmoffitt with "flat earthers". Any more? Person to person, both crowds mostly have decent people. The IQ of a crowd, however, is the lowest IQ in in it divided by the number of participants. Hence the perception problems. -- This guy's ahead of his time! He's using quantum programming methods: in universes where invalid data is passed to this function, it does not return. Thus you are ensured that you will only have valid data after calling it. Optimally you'd destroy the universe on failure, but computers haven't quite advanced to that level yet. -- [link\|http://thedailywtf.com/archive/2004/10/26/2920.aspx\|The] Daily WTF
Post #183,852 by bepatient 11/10/04 4:14:46 PM Reply	I've come to find... that the members of this group are hardly a representative sample of one position or another. The "typical liberal" or "typical conservative" are not here. We are all >extremely< atypical. ;-) If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. _{Fudd's First Law of Opposition} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #183,853 by Silverlock 11/10/04 4:49:28 PM Reply	I think I have to agree The "typical liberal" or "typical conservative" are not here. Or anywhere. From those assigning the label, you will get a different interpretation of "typical" 11 times out of 10 opinions. ----------------------------------------- How do you convince a Washington Journalist that you're not slapping him in the face? Tell him you're not.
Post #183,855 by Arkadiy 11/10/04 5:26:50 PM Reply	"average programmer" :) -- This guy's ahead of his time! He's using quantum programming methods: in universes where invalid data is passed to this function, it does not return. Thus you are ensured that you will only have valid data after calling it. Optimally you'd destroy the universe on failure, but computers haven't quite advanced to that level yet. -- [link\|http://thedailywtf.com/archive/2004/10/26/2920.aspx\|The] Daily WTF
Post #183,881 by ben_tilly 11/11/04 11:56:48 AM Reply	Well there are multiple "right"s The perception of the current administration is as you might expect: they are arrogant, incompetent fascist bastards from the religious right. Feelings vascillate between fear that these yahoos are running the show, to shame that they represent us, to outrage at what they've chosen to do, to astonishment that people like this exist (and fool people)! More broadly I think that there is widespread understanding that there are multiple factions on the right wing. Feelings about people who are right-wing economically (like Milton Friedman) differ from feelings about the religious right (eg Ashcroft) differ from feelings about the neo-conservatives who've hijacked this administration (like Rumsfeld). But none of those feelings are very positive. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)

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