The Right and the Left need each other - debate

[MilSpecs]

American version, God and everyman's right to be a king.

I can't argue with that.

That said, I don't see how anyone can argue that the left is not progressive and the right is not conservative. It is hardly playing with words, STA. It has been part and parcel of those terms forever.

[Speaker to Animals]

American version, God and everyman's right to be a king.

I can't argue with that.

That said, I don't see how anyone can argue that the left is not progressive and the right is not conservative. It is hardly playing with words, STA. It has been part and parcel of those terms forever.

It's playing with words. The political label "progressive" was used by lots of different people, right and left, going back to the 19th century. It's a bullshit slogan that people use to obfuscate policies that would not otherwise be acceptable. It belies a kind of historicism fallacy as well; that there exists some sort of arc of history, where one can be on the right side or the wrong side, and that social changes evolve towards some goal.

It's nonsense not unique to either right or left, unfortunately.

[Smitty-48]

American version, God and everyman's right to be a king.

I can't argue with that.

That said, I don't see how anyone can argue that the left is not progressive and the right is not conservative. It is hardly playing with words, STA. It has been part and parcel of those terms forever.

Whoever said that the prerogatives of a collective was progress over individual sovereignty?

Whoever said progress was not achieved by conservation?

Not the Founder Fathers of America, I assure you.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Whoever said that the prerogatives of a collective was progress over individual sovereignty?

Whoever said the prerogatives of a hierarchy over individual sovereignty was the principle of civilization?

[MilSpecs]

That said, I don't see how anyone can argue that the left is not progressive and the right is not conservative. It is hardly playing with words, STA. It has been part and parcel of those terms forever.

It's playing with words. The political label "progressive" was used by lots of different people, right and left, going back to the 19th century. It's a bullshit slogan that people use to obfuscate policies that would not otherwise be acceptable. It belies a kind of historicism fallacy as well; that there exists some sort of arc of history, where one can be on the right side or the wrong side, and that social changes evolve towards some goal.

It's nonsense not unique to either right or left, unfortunately.

Progressive literally means change. Conservative literally means tradition. These are not pejorative terms. Why is there such resistance to the concept that they could be good or bad, depending on the context in which they're used? That's the entire premise of this debate!

[Smitty-48]

America asserted that progress was not achieved by the prerogatives of a collective, but rather exactly the opposite, the perogatives of the individual sovereign conserved for all time through the blessing of liberty therein, against all collective sovereignty, be it the British Crown, or even in fact the United States government itself, is the path to progress, and how America would in fact to come to rule the world, as an Empire of Liberty.

[Smitty-48]

Progressive literally means change. Conservative literally means tradition. These are not pejorative terms. Why is there such resistance to the concept that they could be good or bad, depending on the context in which they're used? That's the entire premise of this debate!

No, progress means towards a destination, if that destination does not conserve the sovereignty of the individual against the prerogatives of a collective, then that progress is perjorative in the American context, if the progress does not preserve the blessing of liberty, of the individual above all else, then that progress is inherently un-American, literally, American means invidual liberty comes first and foremost, all collectives take a back seat, and individuals are ensured against being forced to subjegate themselves to the prerogatives of any collective, short of war to defend the republic itself, which by the way, is the only basis of income taxation.

[Okeefenokee]

Nope, that's not it neither, the Yankees are not on the Left, and the dogma is not pro-worker anti-aristocracy, it's merely good ol' fashioned American triumphalism. Again, you're trying to impose your Cultural Marxist Eurodogma on an American paradigm, but it just doesn't fit.

The Yankees are a Banking Aristocracy, hardly pro-worker, looking down upon everyone from a very great height, on Wall Street. The nexus of Yankee power, in on Manhattan Island, and nobody in the history of the world, has strung more leftists to the lampposts, than the Yankees.

And before you invoke Hitler and Stalin on the Eastern Front, just remember, first the Yankees backed Hitler, then they backed Stalin. Who do you think paid for the Eastern Front? That's right, was the Yankees. Them Yankees have always pitted the collectivist workers against one another, divide and conquer for the win.

Hmmm...

Cultural Marxist Eurodogma?

I would say I'm summarizing a pretty standard reading of the American Civil War.
The North was anti-slavery because slavery was bad for the Northern capitalist system...
Both the independent landholder side of the equation... because the slaveholders owned massive plantations and independent landholders couldn't compete and industry that paid wages that didn't want to compete with slaveholders.
Two competing economic systems that didn't tolerate one another went to war.
The North had a (relatively small) left whose values were abolitionist and prolabour and a right who didn't give a fig about either certainly. The North cautiously courted abolitionist sentiment but often didn't trust it.

As for Smitty's American Triumphalism dogma... sounds like some DIY political philosophy you cooked up in that crazy noggin' of yours.

Well you're at least looking at in from the right perspective, rather than trying to define it on moral grounds. The southern economy could easily tolerate the north. The north was buying something like a third of the southern crop each year. The other two thirds were going to Europe, so the north really didn't mean that much to the south.

It was the north that couldn't tolerate the south.The north didn't have any colonies to exlpoit. European industrial centers did. The north couldn't compete with Europe without a colony, so they picked the south. The ground word was laid in 1887, and this effort continued for about 75 years before it turned into a war.

The north wasn't worried about slaves in the north. Swap out an indentured servant with a slave in a factory, and what difference have you made? No, it was slaves in the south that the north had to get rid of. Under normal circumstances, an agrarian society should not be able to stand up to an industrial one, but the north/south relationship had all the chips on the wrong numbers. The south could trade freely with other countries. That's not the way a colony's supposed to work. The north didn't have any colonies. That's not how industry is supposed to work. The industrialists in the north had higher labor costs than the famers in the south, and that's completely backwards.

Normally, an industrial power would just send in the troops, but you can't do that when you're invading your fellow states. So the north spent 75 years trying to squeeze the south through an American version of Mercantilism until the south finally said, "fuck it. we're done with this shit," and the north invaded.

Smitty's right. This is business vs business.

[DrYouth]

America asserted that progress was not achieved by the prerogatives of a collective, but rather exactly the opposite, the perogatives of the individual sovereign conserved for all time through the blessing of liberty therein, against all collective sovereignty, be it the British Crown, or even in fact the United States government itself, is the path to progress, and how America would in fact to come to rule the world, as an Empire of Liberty.

The cult of individualism is running it's course...
The ruin of the commons, the plague of addictions, mental illness and incarcerations are the testimony to it's limitations.
Tending to the good of the collective, the common good and the strength of community and connection is sorely needed medicine.

[Okeefenokee]

Abolitionists were not "left". "Left" was the slave lords. Democrats in the northern cities kept the poor workers on the vote plantation same as today. They claimed they were looking out for the little guy, who was just trying to get by to feed his family, while the republicans wanted to free millions of slaves to flood the labor pool and drive down wages. Democrats have been doing this stuff for a long time. They are good at it.

Anything that deviates from tradition is 'left' (progressive). 'Right' in this context would be anyone who wanted to keep things the way they were (slavery in some states and prohibition in others).

Also, the Great Migration didn't take place until the 1900s, so obviously millions of ex-slaves didn't flood the labor pool and drive down wages. They stayed where they had already been working.

That would put gay rights people on the right and their opposition on the left. That definition is not correct. It could never work. Every time a decision was made one way or the other, the sides would switch to reflect who is now on offense/defense.