"Liberals and Conservatives" Part 2
 

The last thread was opened when I typed my post, and closed right before I entered it. I'd like to express my frustration towards the moderator who closed it, but also realize he/she was just doing their job.

So without further ado...I present:

http://home.earthlink.net/~schuchfolk/Tehlibcons.JPG

So here, you have the classic "righties" and "lefties" axis. (You've seen this presentation before many times if you've been to this forum.) This isn't actually economic--just an amalgamation of "things" associated with each side. The dictionary definitions of 'liberal' and 'conservative' bring up both the economic uses and the real sociological uses.

So some smartass thought up this grid, which is certainly a meritable idea:

http://home.earthlink.net/~schuchfolk/Tehlibcons2.JPG

There are still many problems with this, however. The two political parties we know and hate are actually both pretty left-leaning (again NOT economically. I'm not talking about that at all yet.) They change a lot of societal structures, and are both into heavy-spending. That's the way they function though, not the views of their members--which may correspond a bit better to what you'd expect on the graph.

So new problems: how can we have a liberal lassaiz-faire person and a conservative communist not be in the center? Let's try Dubya's strategy, and add another axis!

Tadah!

http://home.earthlink.net/~schuchfolk/Tehlibcons3.JPG

Now wait a second... don't leave... there's more we could add...

We're just now discovering the wide varieties of Centrism on this board, so perhaps I should add a Centrist axis to it as well.

Tadah! Unfortunately, I haven't figured out the order for everything yet. That'll take a while.

http://home.earthlink.net/~schuchfolk/Tehlibcons4.JPG

Message: we need another system for determining political orientation, for the purpose of parties fulfilling all those niches, rather than two main parties in the origin of everything.

Umn, if the previous thread was spam, wouldn't this thread be spam too? Or was the whole thread just closed for that one link to the political orientation poll?

EDIT: Oops, I seem to have missed the entire third page of that thread, which was pretty bad.

i agree with those charts you posted and all, i just wanted to say you really should edit the "frustration" and disscuss it with him in private messages or e-mail. publicly complaining about a mod is never a good idea

anyway, i think you need to replace "conservative" with "right wing" and "liberal" with "left wing" on the charts. they don't actually mean the same thing. they represent a set of specific economic and social veiws, not just the economic wings

Hey, somebody who actually knows who Ayn Rand is.
Although, if I was going to have a 3 axis graph, I'd probably do:
Militant vs Pacifistic
Authoritarian vs Libertarian (socially)
Communistic/Nationalistic vs. Free Market
That way you include social, economic, and foreign affairs issues. But, hey, whatever.

I find myself wondering the same thing.

Don't be frustrated with me, Mental-Rectangle, be frustrated with the people whose spamming got the last thread closed in the first place.

Uhh... Heh... wasn't expecting that Neologic comment to throw everybody off...

Anyway, I think that 3-D graph is okay, only I don't understand how Liberal and Conservative are independent of both Economics and Largeness of Government. Usually they're associated with either one or the other.

Also, to Anon, I think Militant/Pacifistic is too specific. It probably would be more like Interventionist/Isolationist.

And eventually, after thinking up thousands of political labels, there may only be one or two people in each of those labels.

interventionist/isolationist works. However, in that case the liberal/conservative label is practically impossible to apply. At least with economics, you can generally say that liberals want more economic control/socializatoin/nationalization while conservatives prefer the free market (although if the current Republican Party is any indication of conservativeness, that doesn't work either), and with social issues it's generally that liberals are tolerant of a variety of social behaviors, while conservatives generally want more social controls (although when it comes to things like gun rights, political correctness, and people like Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman trying to ban violent media, there are some areas where that doesn't fit either). With interventionism and isolationism, the only difference between conservatives and liberals is the type of intervention they want - liberals want to babysit the world (as though there isn't a single adult anywhere in Africa or South America; ever notice how none of those charity commercials mention how the parents aren't taking care of their kids, and that maybe that's part of the problem too?), while conservatives want to force other countries to follow our rules through military force.
Although, as long as we're trying to move away from something liberal-conservative based, you're prolly right. Consider my complaints on that issue withdrawn.

As for why liberal and conservative shouldn't be their own axis, it's partly because of what I mentioned above (each of them already basically has a side on each axis), and partly because they're so friggin hard to define (hence the reason for starting the other thread!).

In my opinion, the application of "liberal" or "conservative" to specific policy positions will never hold up over more than a generation's time period, most often even less. Rather, liberalism and conservatism constitute differing methods of formulating ideals upon which policy positions are based.

Conservatives believe in the Golden Age, which is a period in the past in which society achieved high ideals, and from which we have thereafter decended, i.e., the good old days. The extremism of your conservatism is determined by how far back you want to go, and by the tint of the rose-colored glasses you use to look at your Golden Age. Generally, conservatives tend to fear change as further degradation of social virtue. Hence the term applied to the most extreme conservatives: Reactionaries. In the modern day United States, most conservatives have settled on the Regan Era has the Golden Age.

It is only by this definition that you can call both Metternich and George W. Bush conservatives. Otherwise, you're spouting nonsense.

Liberals, as may be expected from their general antagonism towards conservatives, believe in something new, that society has been advancing and will continue to make entirely new advances in the future, and that these advances will be generally (if not exclusively) beneficial to humanity. In contrast to conservatives, liberals usually take a dim view of past societies. The extremity of one's liberalism is directly related to the extent of the changes one wishes to make to the current society. Liberals tend to hail change as signs of progress, hence the term "radical" for extreme liberals.

In the middle are moderates, who are those who want "Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today." (Kudos, Terry Pratchett, for the excellent wording.) It's kind of hard to be an extreme moderate.

Wasn't that what everyone wanted? A party exactly portraying their own views and not grouping them with anyone else who might make them look bad by association. It's kind of like a flow chart, you just run it through the different spectrums in whatever order until you have singled out one exact individual.