Are all Liberals High?
JohnSmith69
layin low but staying high
Philosophical political questions from my high journal.
Being high makes me liberal. It makes me sympathize with liberal ideas and strategies. And being high makes me happy and content. Question. Does this mean that being liberal makes me happy. Am I a closet liberal. I can't imagine it but I'm afraid maybe it might be something like that.
How else can I feel liberal and feel happy at the same time. Cause I think the high me is the real me.
Now I understand the 60s. Fucking amazing. I can't believe it. Am I a hippie at heart? But I don't really like the Grateful Dead. All I knows is that I see. Bob Dylan told me all of this. He showed me and told me. In words. And pictures.
One toke over the line. I understand, I see it. It has opened my eyes.
Every single song is amazing, almost life changing. My mind is so open. Are all liberals high?
I think they must be. Why hasn't Anne Coulter figured this out?
45 comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8yU8wk6…
A liberal will collect evidence first, and then formulate an idea from what they've collected. Basically, a liberal will use the scientific method to make a theory while a conservative already knows what they want to believe regardless of what the evidence suggests. We see this in all the big issues: global warming, gay marriage, a woman's soverienty over her own body....there's no debate with a conservative about these issues because evidence contray to their point of view is irrelevant to them. A liberal looks at the facts, and then decides what's what.
I also am a fiscal conservative and social liberal, and I think most people with that viewpoint tend to be libertarian.
On top of it all, everyone seems to have a hidden agenda. Obsama, higher taxes and costs for everyone. That way we have less people polluting the planet. The green agenda. The conservative agenda, not sure what it is unless it's we will do as we please. My way or the highway. Can't we ll just get long somewhere in the middle?
Liberals have more of a motherly side to them always worried about taking care of things in a idealistic way such as taking care of children (education/healthcare/environment). Conservatives are more fatherly and concern themselves with business (jobs) and law and order (military/police).
It's not a perfect system as nothing is (except Rickyboy's), however when you deal with as large of a beurocrat like we have running the strongest capitalistic machine ever made, there is always going to be fissures if you look close enough at the surface. It is due to capitalism and our constitution that keeps us on top of the world in many categories despite our politics. See the forest through the trees, because if you are really good at something I don't see entrepreneurs running over to China, Russia, or even Europe to make themselves successful. USA is ground zero for innovation because in other countries they won't allow you to do an idea unless they know for sure it will work, where in America you're encouraged to try even if you fail. This think tank is critical because Americans will always get it right after exhausting all other ideas, whether your Republican or Democrat.
Global warming. The scientific debate is over; the real issue is what to do about it. But most conservatives don't understand the science behind it, or just reject it.
Gay marriage: All the evidence suggests same sex partners are just as capable as heterosexual partners of raising children successfully. Yet the conservative point of view is that it's bad for children.
Trickle Down Tax Theory: All the examples we've had shows it makes things worse, not better, when the richer people pay less taxes than the middle class. Yet conservatives reject the mountains of eveidence and cling to the very few studies that support that economic theory.
By definition, a conservative knows what he knows and will only look at evidence that supports his belief. By definition, a liberal looks at all sides. He make make the wrong decision based on what evidence he finds the most compelling, but a liberal won't reject contrary views out of hand. This is by definition; not someting to ascribe to you or me.
FUCK YEAH!! We got it good over here don't we? Food always on the table, nice bed to sleep in, and an occasional chick to party with all without having to work slave labor for 60 hours a week. Work/life balance is great!
Conservatives are right in a lot of areas: fiscal responsibility, a less intrusive government, states rights when they don't trump civil rights, and an adequate millitary. Liberals are also right on a lot of issues: equality of access to opportunity, flexibility in interprting the Constitution, universal health care, progressive taxes...
I never said I had an open mind or was non-judgemental. I am VERY judgemental, and I'm pretty set in my ways. Why do you think I have said I was openminded? Oh yes...the conservative mind formed that opinion without any real evidence.
It is not so easy in Canada. Like you we have liberals and conservatives in Canada. But we also have Liberals and Conservatives, as in the Liberal Party of Canada and the Conservative Party of Canada. To make it more confusing there can be liberals in the Conservative Party and there can be conservatives in the Liberal Party.
On some matters I am a conservative and on other matters I am a liberal. In my lifetime I have voted for candidates of both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. There are several other political parties in Canada as well but if I tried to explain all the nuances of politics in Canada I would explode the heads of you Americans.
I wish like Canada, we had a liberal and conservative party instead of forcing Democrats and Republicans in to niches they are then required to fulfill. We could solve 90% of our country's problems if Congress and the Senate had term limits, but that's not going to happen in my lifetime.
Since our government is elected by the people, it's a good thing for people to discuss policies and the mechanics of how these policies are implemented. To say we're not qualified to elect our representatives is to say you don't support a democracy as the most moral form of government. Would you prefer subjecting yourself to the will of a dictator or king?
I never said we weren't qualified to elect our representatives I said that the way that this country is set up as a republic doesn't allow us to. A republic has us voting for electors (those influential folk I referred to in my previous post) who vote for the representatives who actually vote for the president (google electoral college if you want to know more)
Rockstar that is quite a spin you put on in reaction to my post, stating something about dictatorships, but none the less it is another example of why we live in such a great land when someone can have a platform to which they can express themselves. The saying goes we have "free speech", just the same as we have the right to ignore "free speech".
It's true what you state about democracy, and it is also true that in our democracy we can try out all our options before eventually getting it right.
But back to the original point of the post. No matter how you view these philosophical issues, smoke weed so you can understand others' viewpoints. I spent a night as a liberal. I truly felt like I understood liberalism in a way I never could before, and in many ways I sympathized. I'm sober now, and I doubt that my political views have fundamentally changed. But what did leave a lasting impression on me is that being a liberal wasn't nearly as bad as I would have thought it would be.
For those of you who don't like weed or politics, I promise that my next post will be about sex with strippers.
My liberal friends tell me I'm a bad liberal because I want to abolish the minimum wage, hate unions and don't want to ban all guns. I also want to keep the tax rates where they are now. But then I'm called a liberal because I think our government should fund abortions and provide free birth control. I also want to leaglize all immigrants who have no criminal record. I think the military budget should be cut 10% at least.
So I'm really not firmly entrenched on either side of the aisle; it depends on the issue. I think you're the same way; you probably support gay marriage but think tax cuts for the rich help the economy.
I did not come to these views over night.
But liberalism and the hippie era are also drawing on transcendentalism, the idea that truth is found by using both empirical evidence and rationality. This is expressed in the writings of someone like Henry David Thoreau. I think this is the sort of thinking Rockstar is getting at.
But so much of today's thinking is rooted in how people sided pertaining to the Civil Rights Movement and the War in Vietnam. This is when the lines were drawn.
Unfortunately so much conservative thinking is actually reactionary, reacting in fear of liberalism or progress of anytime, and wanting to maintain existing social hierarchies at any cost.
http://www.amazon.com/Reactionary-Mind-C…
SJG
https://sites.google.com/site/sjgportal/
https://www.lp.org/platform
Conservative Republicans and libertarians share similar views about personal responsibility and the role of government, with the differences being one of degrees. I have therefore always viewed a libertarian as a more extreme form of conservatism that what the Republican Party offers. Libertarians and liberals do occasionally reach similar positions on certain issues. However, those similarities are usually reached for very different philosophical reasons.
SJG
https://sites.google.com/site/sjgportal/
and for all the dumbass liberals playing along at home in your parents' basement that was a rhetorical question - the answer being "NO"
Unfortunately lots of other people go in for reactionary thinking, and Libertarianism, or ideas about who are and who are not the "Real American", are part of this.
And then who are these people who want to protect their primary TUSCL registration, by using lots of aliases?
SJG
https://sites.google.com/site/sjgportal/
Gimme Shelter, latest tour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxPoCgk7…
However, my sense is that most hunters are conservatives. So I suspect the conservatives will disproportionately get the wildebeest treatment when we lions rise up to kill you damn dirty apes. I suspect the liberals will, by and large, be willing to go with the flow when we lions take over.
There are intractable people who ignore evidence all over the political spectrum.
You also have the added hitch that evidence can be distorted, misrepresented and simply manufactured.
That's some funny stuff! And some actually think you are stupid enough to believe it! Good job!
All that is is a way of telling people that they have to accept the existing social hierarchy as it is, and that if they don't feel right about it, then it is they who have the problem. Start going after a Libertarian and interdicting their cash flow and they are the first one's to threaten a lawsuit, and then to find out that they really have no basis.
Libertarianism is based on a fixed concept of personhood. But for many people such personhood has never existed. You've got Medical Muchausen's by Proxy Syndrome, but there are also Psychiatric Muchausen's, Developmental Disabilities and Neurological Difference Muchausen's, and Delinquency and Salvation Status Muchausen's. And then there are just the old fashioned physical, sexual, and psychological child abuse.
The survivors of such believe the same ideas about personhood and self-reliance that their abuser parents did, and so they have not even begun to fight back. And so they continue to be subjected to more abuse by Psychotherapists, Clergy, and the Mods and Admins of Online Recovery Movement Forums.
Everybody wants to do well. They don't need someone lecturing to them about the self-reliance ethic. But our society is greatly unfair, and to its most vulnerable members, of course.
So you've got white girls growing up subjected to abuses of all sorts, who then go on to become substance addicted stripper - escorts, who take advantage of their Sugar Daddies and trash hotel rooms and wreck cars and so on.
The only way anything will ever change is if our society starts to understand that everyone wants to do well. People are not innately destructive. It is just that people have been taught to have children in order to exploit them, because this gives them an adult identity. So until this is stopped, things are spiraling downwards.
Stopping these abuser parent is real simple. All you need is .50 for a .45 slug. But to get the government to do it, when our economy depends upon the middle class family and keeping up appearances, the government has to see that it has no other choice or people will do it themselves.
SJG
https://sites.google.com/site/sjgportal/
Stones, Washington 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKOjhv2f…