Stupid political/media language

[Splush]

This isn't a debate and I suppose it's not immensely serious but whatever. I've been paying a lot of attention to the US presidential primaries lately and as a result I have a lot of built-up bile about the stupid ways that politicians and the media talk. I invite you to join me in nitpicking terminology!

Progressive - This is mostly an American thing, I think. Progress means "a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage", and based on this definition you'd think that everybody involved in politics would consider themselves progressive. But somehow progressive has come to mean a very specific set group of ideological goals, and making all conflicting goals by definition regressive and invalid. This is pretty stupid.

Values - If 'progressive' is a linguistic victory for the American left, then values seems to be the equivalent for the right. "Values" in political discourse has come to mean a specific set of values, generally meaning traditional Christian morals. I first came across this in 2004 when a woman from an American organisation probably called "Mothers against [something]" (fuck those people) described Bush as "strong on values". But everybody's strong on values, people just have different values. John Wayne Gacy was strong on values, it just happened that his values included raping and killing young boys, possibly while dressed as a clown.

Family Values - Speaking of which, this is increasingly meaningless as the definition of family becomes increasingly hard to pin down. It's ok, if you don't like gays just say it!

Intelligent Design - This shouldn't even be a political term but people keep making it one. It's just a bullshit way of trying to trojan horse creationism into education under a non-religious label and it's fooled precisely zero people ever. The sole goal of Intelligent Design research organisations is to fudge scientific facts to try to cram the square pegs of biblical accounts into the round holes of logic, and you can bet that the moment creationism gets "equal time" in American science classrooms they'll completely lose interest in whatever 'research' they were doing.

Evolutionist - Way to use "ist" to make evolution seem like a zany belief instead of the only logical conclusion available! Evolutionist wasn't always a political term, in fact Dawkins used to describe himself as one, but it seems that recently it's been hijacked by creationists desperate to make their opponents seem at least as silly as they are. Conveniently, you can also pronounce it as evilutionist to really hammer home how sinful those science-fearing motherfuckers are.

Liberal - "Liberal" as a divisive term seems to be an American construction that's quickly creeping into British political discourse. It felt like recently in Britain any politician would be proud to be described liberal, because liberal meant "valuing freedom and equality" rather than "slaughtering foetuses and sucking mullah dick". It used to roughly mean what 'libertarian' does today, and has somehow morphed into meaning something totally at odds with both its political etymology and its dictionary definition. For alarmist American media types "liberal" seems to be synonymous with "anti-freedom", which is like "lemons" being taken to mean "non-citrus". I blame the American media's desperate scramble to assign everybody into neat pro-skub and anti-skub boxes for the general convenience of party politics and the media themselves.

Libertarian - I like some of the principles of libertarianism but I'm pretty sure a lot of libertarians are just conservatives who want to hide their profound contempt for poor people under a the mask of a daring, edgy alternative ideology. Cryptobastard would be another good edgy name to adopt.

Terror - There's plenty of complaints to be made about the concept of the war on terror, but I'm still struggling with the language. When did we collectively decide to cut out the middle man and go after terror instead of terrorists? Is it just that we say it so many times a day that, along with it almost entirely losing meaning, we just get bored half way through the word and give up? It's like if instead of having a war on drugs you had a war on "being high". I get the impression that everybody knows how stupid "terror" is, but have just run out of stamina and given up complaining. Not me though, I intend to flog this dead horse for some time to come! Speaking of the war on terror...

Insurgents - An insurgency means "an armed uprising, or revolt against an established civil or political authority". For the people in Iraq taking potshots at coalition troops to be insurgents, the coalition would have to be the established civil or political authority, and it seems like a stretch to call anything in Iraq 'established' right now. We just call them an insurgence because "resistance" makes them sound endearing and romantic; resistance makes us think of charming French people ferreting Nazi secrets to British soldiers. Insurgents are inhuman scum who have the audacity to resist their occupiers!

Republicans and Democrats - These are terrible party names, America. Both parties are clearly pro-republic and pro-democracy. If I was voting based solely on the party names (which is my hypothetical right as a hypothetical American!) I'd have a tough time guessing what their ideologies were. I'd have to assume that the republicans are anti-democracy and that the democrats are pro-monarchy, and I'd probably think that it was pretty suspicious for an anti-democracy party to be running in a democratic election.

New Labour - American parties aren't the only ones with misleading names. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have very satisfyingly straightforward names, but New Labour now have so little to do with the labour movement that they should just be called "New". Or perhaps "The Third Way-hey!" By all accounts Gordon Brown has pulled things back to traditional Labour economic policies to some extent, but might just pull Labour back into being unelectable while he's at it.

Europe - Attention America: Europe isn't just one big homogeneous country, stop generalising you uncultured, slack-jawed, gun-toting rednecks!

Political Correctness - Political Correctness is effectively useless as a term now, because there's not one accepted definition of what it means. If you're a glass-half-full type of person PC might just mean trying to be nice to people, but if you're Richard Littlejohn PC means bizarre shit like giving every child at school sports day a medal regardless of athletic merit and THIS INJUSTICE WILL NOT STAND!

[Turkey Sandwich]

I agree with you in general, but especially about 'Liberals' and 'Political Correctness'.

I call myself a Liberal, because I know what the word means - the centre ground of respect for freedom, in between right and left, but with as much conviction as either. In America it's used in place of Socialism as the opposite of Conservativism, since for some reason Socialism seems to mean 'evil Communist traitor'. It annoys me when people over here try to use it in the American sense, because really by saying things like 'namby-pamby Liberals', they're implying that they themselves are right-wingers, and that that is the only sensible course. God knows what they would describe the BNP as - 'a little harsh'?

Similarly, with Political Correctness - Daily Mail readers, and people who allow themselves to be drawn into that mindset, made up this new meaning for the phrase. They just use it to feel victimised, trying to make out that the message of PC is that you must treat minorities better than you treat typical people. Of course the original meaing was just not to go round calling people 'niggers' and suchlike.
One example - people will tell you that the 'PC brigade' won't let people say 'brainstorm' any more, as it offends epileptics. This is just untrue, as explicitly stated by epilepsy charities and services, and the only people who ever mention it are the people saying how unfair it is you 'can't say it'.
Not to mention the fact that I believe the phrase refers originally to the US constitution, and is nothing to do with us...

That was more of a rant than a debate-point, but still. That's the kind of language that, when someone uses it in those ways, lets you know how ignorant they are.

[Splush]

Ooh I thought of another one.

Pro-Life - This is essentially meaningless, because everybody is in favour of life! What you mean is that you're anti-abortion. If you think abortion is such a bad thing then there should be no need to use code to describe your position. Pro-choice is a little silly too, but not quite as bad because "pro-abortion" might suggest you love abortion so much you're in favour of summarily executing babies willy-nilly, and I don't think anybody is running on that platform yet. I don't think anybody is really pro-abortion in the sense that they like the idea of the actual procedure, after all the actual procedure is a pretty horrible and presumably mentally-scarring act, but it's generally better than the alternatives. Pro-choice is more like Anti-anti-abortion.

[Boyinabox]

Two media ones here.


Europe - Attention America: Europe isn't just one big homogeneous country, stop generalising you uncultured, slack-jawed, gun-toting rednecks!

Ditto;

Africa - Land of the poor brown people, pretend to be interested by running one story a week on it reminding people that it is still full of poor brown people. (I'm looking at you CNN)

A new ... on the internet - WoW and Youtube may be the next big thing you say? (Here's looking at every third BBC news story which is something along the lines of "Did you know that people use Google Earth/Second Life/Amazon/iTunes/etc, cause we didn't")

Not as serious as your suggestions, but I still get iritated by world leaders meeting to discuss "Africa" or by just how long the delay is between X becoming blindingly influential on the internet and media running articles on in a curious "look what the geeks are doing on their interweb" way.

[Giant_Crab]

My dad does a certain amount of work in America, in that he'll be over there a few times in a year and he recalled a conversation he'd had with an American colleague the last time he was there, it went like this:

Dad: Most people from Western European countries would probably agree that the church and state should be kept seperate.

American colleague: Well I'd regard that view as degenerate.

So there's another doozy: degenerate.

de·gen·er·ate /v. dɪˈdʒɛnəˌreɪt; adj., n. dɪˈdʒɛnərɪt/ [v. di-jen-uh-reyt; adj., n. di-jen-er-it] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -at·ed, -at·ing, adjective, noun
–verb (used without object)
1. to fall below a normal or desirable level in physical, mental, or moral qualities; deteriorate: The morale of the soldiers degenerated, and they were unable to fight.
2. to diminish in quality, esp. from a former state of coherence, balance, integrity, etc.: The debate degenerated into an exchange of insults.
3. Pathology. to lose functional activity, as a tissue or organ.
4. Evolution. (of a species or any of its traits or structures) to revert to a simple, less highly organized, or less functionally active type, as a parasitic plant that has lost its taproot or the vestigial wings of a flightless bird.

Here's another American phrase: go figure

[Darkscull]

I also agree with pretty much all of this in general, and especially 'liberal'.

If this thread takes off the ground I might dig up some of my long circular discussions with katt about the term.

[gembird]

God Darkscull, you're such a wishy-washy liberal :p

But yeah, the phrases that irritated me the most out of all of them were 'intelligent design' and 'evolutionist'. Intelligent design is a fancy way of saying 'creationist' and if you look at what some of those guys are saying, it's hard to find any intelligence. As for evolutionist- evolution is a scientific theory, not a religion. Making it sound like the latter is just an excuse for the creationists to keep telling people that evolution can't be proved, blah blah blah.

[Darkscull]

As for evolutionist- evolution is a scientific theory, not a religion.

it may not be a religion, but dawkins sure makes it sound like one :p



anyway, to generalise the points made in this thread a bit more:

the problem is when terms like this cease becoming descriptive titles and become proper nouns.
too often nowadays the name given to something has nothing to do with what it is, and too often people think that the things which happen to be called by a certain term are the definition of the term.


that's not phrased too well, i'm afraid.

[Giant_Crab]

God Darkscull, you're such a wishy-washy liberal :p

But yeah, the phrases that irritated me the most out of all of them were 'intelligent design' and 'evolutionist'. Intelligent design is a fancy way of saying 'creationist' and if you look at what some of those guys are saying, it's hard to find any intelligence. As for evolutionist- evolution is a scientific theory, not a religion. Making it sound like the latter is just an excuse for the creationists to keep telling people that evolution can't be proved, blah blah blah.

You'll love this (http://blog.wired.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/05/doonesburyid.gif)

I will never understand creationists. Never.

[Splush]

the problem is when terms like this cease becoming descriptive titles and become proper nouns.
too often nowadays the name given to something has nothing to do with what it is, and too often people think that the things which happen to be called by a certain term are the definition of the term.
I think you're on to something, liberal as a noun irks me because it just feels like a way to put people in neat little boxes. Using conservative (small c!) as a noun is just the same of course. It's a way to pigeon hole somebody into a convenient set of beliefs so that you can say "oh he doesn't know what he's talking about, he's a liberal!" "I'm going to vote for this guy because he's a conservative and I'm a conservative! Who cares what his policies are!"

The main thing that irritates me when I follow American media and politics is that the whole system is so transparently oriented around dividing people into two camps and supporting the two party system. Mainstream politicians like it because they benefit from a two party system, and the news channels like it because it's easy to analyse an issue if all you have to do is present the liberal argument and the conservative arguments. Not that British politics is a lot better, ours might as well be a two party system after all, but at least it seems like the media isn't wholly complicit in engineering that situation. Every time I see liberal-as-a-noun popping up in politics or the media I fear we're following America's lead.

I don't like the way people are forced into these boxes because we should all just be independent people with our own opinions about different issues, but party politics creates people who follow the party line on all issues. The fact that you can take two totally separate issues, like climate change and gun control, and predict what somebody's opinion will be on one based on their stated opinion the other, seems fucked up to me. Not that everyone just mindlessly follows party lines by any means, but it's definitely a real phenomenon.

I'm hesitant to label myself as a liberal because though I do generally agree with core liberal values, I don't always agree with the liberal mainstream on issues like withdrawal from Iraq or smoking bans. On my Facebook profile I picked "other" in the political orientation section, which probably makes people think I'm a white supremacist or an anarchist or something :)

[Darkscull]

the british situation is becoming more like the american one, albeit stealthily. the linguistic and rhetorical trappings are coming slowly, which makes people think it's a while off, but in other ways we're already there:

one thing is the emphasis on personality, or rather, whichever personality the politicians say they have (á la david cameron liking the arctic monkeys).

the other is that the parties have taken on lives of their own separate from their policies or any written constitutions.
all the parties are becoming increasingly similar in their policies, with just a few key things defining their places on the political spectrum (for example stuff on tax and such. the sorts of things that, as splush said, tend to all be found in groups), and the emphasis is on getting the party in power rather than furthering any particular social agenda or preserving a particular status quo.
it doesn't seem to matter what they have to promise to get in (it's not like they're gonna stick to it anyway, but that's beside the point), whether it's something they actually support, just so long as they get in rather than the others.

for example: new labour should have been a group that split off from actual labour, and a few years earlier it would have been. as shown by the endless splitting in the further reaches of the political spectrum, and even in the mainstream (liberals becoming liberal democrats, parties appearing, disappearing), things used to be more fluid and based on aims and ideas.
now it's only the name, the brand, that matters, and everyone is clinging to coattails for a ride to power.


rant rant rant.
that was in danger of moving things offtopic to the state of british politics, but I think I managed to keep things grounded in the whole noun-ascendant culture that's appearing.



PS. the 'other' political choice on facebook appears to currently be filled up by socialists (or just generally any non-american left wing people). there are lobbying attempts to get socialist (and other terms) added, or to make the political box like the religion one - where you can write what you want. if they do add those terms, then 'other' will be the realm of the bnp and other extreme parties.

[katt]

Europe - Attention America: Europe isn't just one big homogeneous country, stop generalising you uncultured, slack-jawed, gun-toting rednecks!
![/I]

In the same sense 'america' could stand for mexico, canada or the united states. or even the south american countries :P

I prefer it to be called the united states but i don't really mind hearing it called america. Its kind of odd that we have a specific term for it 'the united states' yet we simply call ourselves 'americans'. we need a more specific term.

I think they refer to europe as a whole because of the Euro. It makes sense to consider it as a cohesive force when a currency is shared.

But i agree that the european countries are all very distinct (and more distinct differences that exist between the states; and yet the states are very different from each other too.. maine is very different from, say, california).

However, id have to say i think being upset at a different use of the world liberal and grouping europe into one block at times is kinda petty :P and as far as the media complaining about liberals keep in mind the left does plenty of complaining about 'conservatives'. 'liberal' is an arbitrary term for a general political set; they could be called 'brand x' and it would be used the same way as the word liberal is.

[Splush]

To be fair, I did say that using conservative as a noun is just as problematic. I'm not saying it's a one way thing.

I don't think it's petty at all, changing the meanings of established labels seems to be a huge political tactic these days, if you can redefine a term as something sufficiently different to its original meaning then it send group that align themselves around that term into disarray, spread doubt about what the word actually means and damage its ideological usefulness.

More generally it's just symptomatic of how the media and party politics seem to strive to keep everyone divided into these two polar camps, which is very unnatural.

I happened across this video earlier today and it's very relevant to this thread, Noam Chomsky talking about the changing meanings of libertarian and conservative: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPUvQZ3rcQ

[katt]

i think the two heavily divided camps dont exist just from media encouragement; they partly exist becaues people these days have very divisive beliefs of their own accord.

in the end most 'liberals' share more beliefs with each other than they ever will with most 'conservatives'. and often these two sides are very touchy about these core issues.

so the separation seems only natural to me ; yes it is goaded by the media at times but still.

There is some crossover but usually its so minimal that the people still stick to one side based on their most important issues

[gembird]

Yeah, but that's not the point here- it is true that people have those different political views, but I think what Splush was trying to say is that lots of people try to change the words associated with those groups to mean something bad, or just to confuse others.

[katt]

Yeah, but that's not the point here- it is true that people have those different political views, but I think what Splush was trying to say is that lots of people try to change the words associated with those groups to mean something bad, or just to confuse others.

the thread also included references to the media boxing people into 'two groups'. I believe that these groupings are not unnatural and not so much the fault of the media.

I was only talking about the liberal/conservative democrat/republican thing. That, and the europe were the only things i really felt like commenting on.

how is the word liberal bad? its not really confusing in that context either if you read about the issues it reperesents. a name is a name and is not all encompassing.

anyone who only looks at the name before they decide what they are or are not deserves to be confused :)

I also call liberals socialists and think that is a much worse (and more accurate) label. I think they probably prefer being called liberals in the US actually.

[Splush]

i think the two heavily divided camps dont exist just from media encouragement; they partly exist becaues people these days have very divisive beliefs of their own accord.

in the end most 'liberals' share more beliefs with each other than they ever will with most 'conservatives'. and often these two sides are very touchy about these core issues.

so the separation seems only natural to me ; yes it is goaded by the media at times but still.

There is some crossover but usually its so minimal that the people still stick to one side based on their most important issues
I disagree, I think divided camps naturally arise over specific issues, but the idea that you can lump a bunch of issues into one of two broad ideologies and bundle everybody into one camp or the other is an artificial situation engineered by party politics and the media. There is no reason why somebody who is anti-abortion should be more likely to be pro-free market and not believe in global warming, and I think that fact that those trends exist is a manufactured product of party politics and media that supports it. The goal is to create loyal voters who fully commit themselves to a side, perhaps initially because they were attracted by their stance one issue, and ends up taking the party line as their default position on all other issues, and it seems like that goal has been enormously successful in the states, just based on following political discussions on American forums.

And I maintain my position that describing the U.S. Democrats as socialists is either evidence that people just don't know what socialism means, or more likely that it's just the result of an ideological effort to demonize them. Both mainstream parties in the U.S. favour a mixed economy with a huge reliance on the private sector, calling either of them socialists is as misleading as those people who call Bush a Nazi.

[katt]

with all the silly side issues the meat and potatos of the whole deal is the economic issue. it always comes down to money. That is why there are two sides primarily (in my opinion at least).

Either you believe in increasing wealth redistribution, social benefits, and government takeover of private industry (like healthcare) or you do not. Either you want the government to dip their fingers deeper into everyone's money or you don't.

The democrats/liberals are no more pure socialists than i would be a pure capitalist (as i believe in modest taxation to cover the army, schools and public highways etc etc). But they definintely lean that way more than the right. I guess they would be state socialists.

edit : or sympathetic to the idea of moving towards something more closely resembling socialism

[Splush]

But my thing is that the fact there's only two feasible parties is an artificial creation in the interests of making life more profitable and convenient for the party politicians and the media. I can see that you could choose broad economic philosophies as a line by which to divide people, that makes sense, but why stop dividing there? I think palming everything else off as side issues is too flippant, because clearly people care deeply about a lot of non-economic issues. Like me personally, I tend to prioritise social issues higher than I do economic issues, if I'm choosing who to vote for or whatever. I think that if our democracies were really working in the peoples interests there'd be proper proportional representation and a whole host of different parties representing different sets of views, and narrowing down everything into two fairly centrist parties only exists for the benefit of the politicians and the media. The UK is closer to this ideal than the US is, like we have two respectable (and distinct) left wing parties coexisting and parties like the regional independence parties complicating things. When I see things like the American usage of 'liberal' taking off in the UK I worry that we're embarking down the path of abandoning all the nuances of our political system and focusing on two centrist parties with a dumbed-down discourse. And at least there seems to be a well-defined list of central principles dividing your two parties, in the UK it's becoming increasingly hard to tell the two main parties apart.

It seems like the way the US news channels like to approach issues is to introduce a story and then invite on two people, politicians or pundits, two represent the two ideological sides, and then they each go on to trot out the entirely predictable party lines until the moderator shuts them up. It's easy to see why the media likes a two party system, because that simplicity makes it really easy for them to do their job because they have that easy, dumbed-down framework to work with. You can sometimes see UK news channels and programmes doing that sort of thing, but generally they seem to take more nuanced approaches, less transparently built to divide people into two camps. I think it's understandable that the politicians who have bought into mainstream party politics would favour moving towards a simplistic two party system, and that goes for both the US and the UK, but it seems like in the US the media are actually actively supporting that goal.

I'm sure you saw the news stories about the media pushing more extreme candidates like Ron Paul (lol) or Kucinich out of their respective parties debates. It seemed particularly blatant in the case of Ron Paul, where polls showed him consistently outperforming rival candidates who were given podiums at debates where he was not. He didn't fit into the contemporary definitions of a republican candidate so the media just kept him out, even though a significant amount of republican voters were supporting him fervently. People argued that he should go back to the libertarian party, or run as an independent, but Paul is clearly well aware that the way politics and the media work in the US he'd be effectively invisible if he did either of those things. I'm no Ron Paul fan but that whole situation was pretty dreadful.

There's a lot of dispiriting things about politics and the media in the US (and a lot of good things, certainly) and any sign that we're moving towards that arrangement is worrying. I like the fact that I have no idea who I'm going to vote for in the next general election, I'd hate to have that choice eliminated by having the political system turned into a simplistic good vs. evil proposition.

And about the socialism thing, "sympathetic to the idea of moving towards something more closely resembling socialism" seems like a reasonable description to me, it's just shortening that to "socialist" that's an abuse of language.

[katt]

But my thing is that the fact there's only two feasible parties is an artificial creation in the interests of making life more profitable and convenient for the party politicians and the media. I can see that you could choose broad economic philosophies as a line by which to divide people, that makes sense, but why stop dividing there?

most people who are left wing tend to feel the same way about alot of issues (and vice versa for conservatives). Perhaps the two parties came about as a reflection of this?

I believe that in america the reason there are two parties is everyone is scaraed that if they DON'T vote for side a or side b the country will be placed in/or out of the hands of the economic leftists.

i think it is a reflection of more people losing touch with what america is supposed to stand for (low taxes) and therefore all the right wing people have to band together in one party to stop the socialist minded people. otherwise it couldnt be done.

and vice versa i suppose for those who want to take the country down a left wing path.

Although i am not very happy with who the republican party has nominated this time. he is hardly a conservative at all.

the alternative to this situation would be for there to be a selection of left wing parties (and this is what the media seems to be trying to put into place....the nomination of mccain is one sign this is happening) :) i actually prefer the fact there is still some difference between the groups as opposed to varying shades of the same left wing platform.



I'm sure you saw the news stories about the media pushing more extreme candidates like Ron Paul (lol) or Kucinich out of their respective parties debates. It seemed particularly blatant in the case of Ron Paul, where polls showed him consistently outperforming rival candidates who were given podiums at debates where he was not. He didn't fit into the contemporary definitions of a republican candidate so the media just kept him out, even though a significant amount of republican voters were supporting him fervently.

ron paul is a libertarian and should not have been running as a republican. no one wants that guy as president except for a handful of people. But yeah i agree the media has too much say in how candidates are presented.

its a rigged show almost these days


And about the socialism thing, "sympathetic to the idea of moving towards something more closely resembling socialism" seems like a reasonable description to me, it's just shortening that to "socialist" that's an abuse of language.

well arent socialists sympathetic to the idea of moving towards something resembling socialism :)

[Splush]

The whole McCain situation wouldn't be a problem if people weren't scared to start their own parties, and there was a system of proportional representation in place. Then McCain could lead a party, Paul could lead a party, Kucinich could lead a party and so on, and their popularity would be represented appropriately in parliament.

And of course anybody who does try to run independently or in an 'alternative' party like Nader is treated as a joke, or even worse a disrupting force, by both the media and the politicians. How dare this man try to give people a choice beyond "evil" and "slightly less evil"!

Also, if a two party system is a natural product of peoples' beliefs, why does the UK have two big left-wing parties co-existing? There's pretty start differences between the policies of the Lib Dems and New Labour, and although the Lib Dems are never close to having a majority in parliament they stick to their guns, and have rejected offers of coalitions with Labour because they know the proportional representation system at least gives their ideology some representation in parliament.

well arent socialists sympathetic to the idea of moving towards something resembling socialism :)
Socialists are sympathetic to the idea of moving towards something resembling socialism, with the ultimate goal of actually achieving socialism. The Democrats' aim is something that could be described as resembling socialism to a small extent, but is not actual socialism. Can't you see the distinction between "an ideology with some of the features of socialism" and "socialism"?

If the Democrat's ultimate goal was to seize the means of production for the state, you'd be quite right, but that's clearly not happening, they're less socialist than the UK Conservative party is. They want the state to have some control over the means of production, but so do the Republicans. Neither party proposes a pure socialist economy or a pure capitalist economy, they just offer tiny differences in the balances of public and private sector, and approaches to corporate freedom.

And if the Democrats secretly have socialist goals then why do two separate Socialist parties continue to exist in the US? Why wouldn't they just hop on board and ride the Democrat train to their socialist utopia destination?

I can only assume this is another example of people changing a word to suit their ideological ends, trying to draw from the deep well of anti-socialist fear that still remains in the US by tainting the Democrats with those associations. It seems to be effective globally too, I've heard people describe countries like Sweden as socialist so many times, even though some big economist (can't remember his name) who published a paper on the different global forms of capitalism a few months ago put Sweden and the US in the same category.

If you keep calling the Democrats socialists you're no better than somebody who calls the Republicans fascists to try to scare people away from them. The Republicans have certainly moved the country closer to something resembling fascism, but in such a tiny way that actually calling them fascists would be grossly inaccurate.

[katt]

The whole McCain situation wouldn't be a problem if people weren't scared to start their own parties, and there was a system of proportional representation in place. Then McCain could lead a party, Paul could lead a party, Kucinich could lead a party and so on, and their popularity would be represented appropriately in parliament.

Those would be some pretty awful parties :P


And of course anybody who does try to run independently or in an 'alternative' party like Nader is treated as a joke, or even worse a disrupting force, by both the media and the politicians. How dare this man try to give people a choice beyond "evil" and "slightly less evil"!

You know very well ron paul is a joke. Nader is less of a joke.

Well if you wanted such and such a party to win and a dooflicky came along to take votes away from your camp you would get upset too. its just a natural reaction because it feels like watching people who might agree with you throw votes away on someone who won't win.



Also, if a two party system is a natural product of peoples' beliefs, why does the UK have two big left-wing parties co-existing? There's pretty start differences between the policies of the Lib Dems and New Labour, and although the Lib Dems are never close to having a majority in parliament they stick to their guns, and have rejected offers of coalitions with Labour because they know the proportional representation system at least gives their ideology some representation in parliament.

I think the closer together people are in ideaology the easier it is to have more parties that break things down into minute shades. If more people in america were more right wing it would make sense to have several right wing parties that each had a chance of winning (because people would be less afraid to lose complete control over the direction they wanted the country to go in). As it stands this is not the case.

Therefore, you want to put all the votes into the basic idea of 'left' or 'right' wing you possibly can in order to win.

If there were more left wing people in the united states then having several left wing parties with various shades of differences would make more sense. From what i hear the torys are fairly left wing compared to the republicans too :) so perhaps you have three left wing parties?

In the united states cynical conservatives have started to call the republican party socialism-lite or democrat-lite. Meaning its moving too far left for their comfort.


Socialists are sympathetic to the idea of moving towards something resembling socialism, with the ultimate goal of actually achieving socialism. The Democrats' aim is something that could be described as resembling socialism to a small extent, but is not actual socialism. Can't you see the distinction between "an ideology with some of the features of socialism" and "socialism"?

I see the move towards the left as a potentially gradual progression that will not stop if left unchecked.

I do see the distinction but i also see those who like 'features' of socialism as, at least in part, socialists.

I also believe the democrats aim to promote 'small time socialism' as a tactic to introduce socialism without freaking people out.

And if the Democrats secretly have socialist goals then why do two separate Socialist parties continue to exist in the US? Why wouldn't they just hop on board and ride the Democrat train to their socialist utopia destination?


Like i just said, i think they are going for the 'small changes gradually' approach so people dont spook about it.



If you keep calling the Democrats socialists you're no better than somebody who calls the Republicans fascists to try to scare people away from them. The Republicans have certainly moved the country closer to something resembling fascism, but in such a tiny way that actually calling them fascists would be grossly inaccurate.

I believe that calling the democrats socialistic is more within the bounds of reality than calling the republicans fascists.

[faragher]

If more people in america were more right wing it would make sense to have several right wing parties that each had a chance of winning (because people would be less afraid to lose complete control over the direction they wanted the country to go in). As it stands this is not the case.I don't want to get massively involved in this, but:

You do realise, that by pretty much the whole rest of the world's definition, you do have several right wing parties in America? The Democrats are to the right of most mainstream right-wing parties in Europe, by any definition you would care to use. Our 'right-wing' party in the UK - the conservatives - would never dream of suggesting (anymore) that universal healthcare should be abandoned, or that we totally stop immigration, or that we reduce the availability of welfare much further.

This is why Splush (and myself) has a problem when they are described as 'Socialist' - they just aren't. Not even a little bit really. They have some vaguely leftist ideas - 'it would be good if people didn't die or suffer for lack of affordable healthcare' or 'we should provide good education for children of all backgrounds', but this is not socialism; socialism is 'there should only be one system of education and healthcare, controlled by the state, funded by the state (through taxation) and offering the same service to all, regardless of income'.

I also massively object to the american use of 'liberal' - I consider myself to be liberal, but I am in no way a 'liberal' in the amerian sense. Also, as Chris Rock pointed out, people may be liberal or conservative in different areas - for example, I am pretty conservative on some areas of law and order (I think that 'hatecrime' and domestic violence should be punished very harshly), but liberal on other areas of law and order (prostitution, drugs for example).

[GorillaBearBear]

The thing about liberal as a word is that iirc it was originally used to denote someone in favour of change or reform in much the same sense as radical was used in the 18th/19th centuries. Considering a lot of politicians like to run on a platform for change (Obama in the US and David Cameron in the UK, for example) that techinically makes a lot of politicians "liberal" but in the US it seems to be used as either a substitute for socialist or an insult that implies someone is somehow unamerican or horror of horrors a dirty communist.

But that's only a semantic point really and doesn't get this debate moving any.

Like i just said, i think they are going for the 'small changes gradually' approach so people dont spook about it.
That doesn't even come close to answering the question asked (why do seperate socialist parties exist etc etc.

[Splush]

Semantic points is all this thread is about!

My whole thing about needing multiple parties and proportional representation is all academic really, it's not like anything is likely to change. I think the power of the executive branch and the winner-takes-all system in the US probably means alternative parties are always doomed to stay tiny, because even if there's some semblance of proportional representation in the senate and congress the presidency is clearly the real prize and no alternative party is ever going to get that. Thinking about it, I now realise why people were so concerned about Blair's Prime Ministership being too "presidential", keeping power within a tight inner-circle and trying to ignore the commons instead of working with it. The more concentrated power gets at the top and the less meaningful normal MPs are the more dispirited alternative parties are going to be, and the number of viable parties is doomed to decrease, along with voters' choices.

I'll have to agree to disagree on the democrats=socialists point I suppose, it's not going anywhere. If nothing else it just seems tacky to me, a cheap scare tactic by people who should know better, but I guess plenty of people are happy to be tacky to defend their ideology.

I kind of wish I could go to a hypnotist who would convince me that america didn't exist so I wouldn't feel compelled to think about it any more.

[El Fisho]

In the USA you could argue that a lot of ideologies are umbrellaed under both the party flags. The Republicans have their moderates, fundamentalists, the new right and traditional conservatives whereas the Democrats can represent southern democrats, left wing democrats, 'new' Clinton like democrats and so on and so forth.

Its a mistake on anyones part to regard American parities are ideologically cohesive entities, their simply not. I would actually argue that there are more differences within the parties than between them.

---

In reference to defining ideological terms, like socialism and liberalism theres a loosing battle here. People define these ideologies by the yardstick of how they have been put into practice, and so Americans have a very different idea of a socialist to Europeans.

I do however find it alarmist to describe the Democrats as challenging the individualist, low tax, self dependent status quo of America. They abandoned the majority of their welfare ideas in the 80s when Reagen proved to them they would be unelectable with them.