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| Source:DSA- Democratic Socialists of America. |
Source:FreeState MD
“These terms that mean so much to passionate ideologues, like “privilege” or “personal responsibility,” do not really belong to either side. Being a liberal does not make a person a socialist, and being conservative does not make someone a racist.
After every State of the Union and rebuttal, operatives and journalists go on a noble mission to “fact-check” what’s been said. As these convenient “facts” become easier for anyone to Tweet in reinforcement of their particular worldview, we Americans observing at home are asked to buy into the platform outlined by either side for another year. In a special year like this one, we even get to vote the liars out of office if they don’t live up to their promises.
What happens, though, when thoughtful people acknowledge that this model of assessing the health of our nation and setting its agenda is crumbling apart? Furthermore, what would happen if instead of dissecting the disses and assertions, we stepped back beyond The Jobs Narrative we’re being told is the most important thing at stake this Election Cycle and considered what is really going on in 2012?”
From The Huffington Post
“Whether you love it, hate it, or have never thought about it, chances are some politician wants to ban it. “Welcome to the Nanny State Nation,” says reason.tv host Drew Carey. “Where the government minds your own business.”
Maegan Carberry is right: being a Liberal doesn’t make someone a Socialist. And being a Conservative doesn’t make someone a racist. But that should go without saying to anyone out there in the universe who actually understands liberalism, socialism, conservatism, and racism. I admit, that’s a very small club that you could fit into a phone both and still have room left over.
But the question is why being a Liberal or Conservative, doesn’t make those people Socialists or racists. Because both liberalism and conservatism are based on individual liberty and limited government. Liberals and Conservatives both believe, going from Jack Kennedy to Ron Reagan, that people should be judge as individuals, not members of groups.
What gets stereotyped today as liberalism and conservatism, aren’t liberalism and conservatism. But in liberalism’s case, sort of looks like neo-communism or democratic socialism: wanting government to take care of people with a King Kong sized superstate there to manage our economic and personal lives for us. Managing our education, health care, health insurance, diet and exercise, what we can watch and how we can talk to people. Socialists tend to believe that the world is too complicated and big of a place to let individuals manage their own lives for themselves.
In conservatism’s case, it’s really Christian-Theocracy and Protestant-Fundamentalism: a mixture of a warped interpretation of Christianity, that you would think would’ve been made up in some Hollywood script, but that there are Americans who take this theocratic ideology seriously and treat it as its real. Mixed in with martial law, where personal freedom, things like to the right to privacy, Freedom of Speech that so-called Christian-Conservatives (Protestant-Theocrats, in actuality) disagree with, where property rights are essentially outlawed, in the name of protecting the moral fiber, character, and security of the superstate. Big government authoritarian nanny statist ideology when it comes personal issues and freedom.
Liberalism is not socialism or communism. And conservatism is not Christian-Theocracy, which is a theocratic and military authoritarian ideology. Liberalism and conservatism are both anti-statism. Not anti-state, but that the state needs to be limited to doing the things that the only the state can do. Which doesn’t include managing the lives of the people.
