Doulos, not so much actually.

There is a lot of voter suppression efforts out there and if it's close, it can be stolen.

Additionally, it's a sort of big oversight to pretend down ballot doesn't matter.

Now, all that being said, I'm more in your camp than not.  And all that looking about didn't factor in the debates, yet.  It will take a few days to integrate those details into the race.

Pretty much everything I had read that is even marginally non-partisan admits that Obama has already won.

Again, I don't care either way, but it would take some sort of truly epic collapse to change things.

I would tend to agree that Obama is just about in the bag, and in fact, was in the bag last year even. My expectation is that the GOP isn't making a serious thrust for 2012 (not to say Romney isn't a serious candidate); they're setting up for 2016, and to hold the house this year.

You are right on all counts, as the election results tonight bear out, Obama takes most of the key swing states, and the republicans hold the house, but lose ground in the senate.

(Edit: Assuming an Obama Victory)

Well at least in 2016 we have a good chance of 2 completely "new" candidates from both sides (not new in that we've never heard of them before, but that they've never gotten past primaries).

Maybe Romney would run again, but I don't think the parties are so forgiving to the primaries they elect and fail to win (maybe I'm wrong).

Oh, and Ron Paul is 77, so it'll be exciting to see what happens to that movement in 4 years if old age catches up to him; will they continue under one of his understudies, will they be reabsorbed by one of the big parties or one of the other 3rd parties?  I'm definitely interested.

Hell, Lyndon Larouche is 90...when is he going to kick the bucket?
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:37, Wed 07 Nov 2012.

Isn't Larouche in prison for fraud?

Yeah he got 15 years for mail fraud and tax evasion, but he got out on parole in 1994 and completed his sentence in 2004.

I believe Ron Paul said he isn't running. This year there was another fellow, Gary Johnson(?) who basically said "what Ron Paul says", so it wasn't much of a campaign.

The election was satisfactory to me. I'm not surprised about Obama, and I preferred him by far over Romney. We had some good and some bad local initiatives. I don't think the world is going to end (well, maybe in December with the Mayan calendar, but at least it won't be our fault).

It's funny you say that; apparently according to my therapist, they were asking people questions regarding "Election Anxiety", to see if any of the clients felt they couldn't go on living if one person or another was elected president.  I had a feeling that they put you on suicide watch if you say yes.

It makes me think that people take the presidential elections way too seriously.  It's just one branch of the government.  Local elections are far more important to your everyday life.

http://www.libertarianrepublic...in-america-only.html

Uh, hmm.  I hope he boycotts the EBT places when I'm not around, because I don't think it'd end well if he started insulting people in line who use EBT.  That's like making really loud fake coughing sounds because you see somebody smoking, those people are annoying and I don't even smoke.

That guy's a goof. Firstly, all of the places he listed fall closer to either the socialism or fascism side of the spectrum. From what I've seen, the US is the MOST libertarian of nations (if there's one I'm not aware of, please prove me wrong), protecting individual rights against both government infringement, and infringement by 'the thug with the biggest gun'. If you want more libertarian than that, your choices are Sealand or Antarctica.

Secondly, Obama really is a right-winger in almost every respect. He's been fighting our wars better than Bush did, and investing heavily in military (which isn't a libertarian idea anyway), he hasn't touched gun rights, if anything he's acted against homosexual marriage issues, he hasn't seriously raised taxes, he provided more welfare for corporations than for individuals.

Thirdly, Romney is the contrary position from a Libertarian. And he wasn't seriously going to eliminate government departments. When's the last time a president did that? I don't even know if a president CAN do that. Making homosexual marriage illegal isn't libertarian, nor is a bigger military. Gary Johnson wasn't a serious contender. I can't comment on his senate or HoR candidates.

EBT CAN BE a libertarian tool. Most US libertarians believe that that includes just freedom from government interference (including taxation). But the classic liberal (meaning 'free', not 'left-wing') view includes a recognition that liberty is infringed by not just government, but other hostile forces, including financial hardship.

On the other hand, just short of 50% of Americans are dependent on government aid in one form or another. This does not bode well for American democracy. If the majority of Americans are dependent on government aid, those voters do not have the personal, financial liberty to vote what is best for their country. People will naturally vote for their own self-interest, and if your self-interest is 'more government giving me money', that, has the potential to core out the economy.

Overall though, the guy is a blowhard, not a libertarian. There wasn't a serious libertarian candidate in this race. And disengaging from society certainly won't help your cause. What he needs to do is take on a friendlier educational stance. Find better evidence to support your beliefs and create awareness. In the meantime, don't belly-ache about Obama; he's certainly no Clinton.

In reply to Sciencemile (msg # 573):

Wow, where did you find that guy?

Hey all.  I read a very short e-book recently that I thought some people here might enjoy, so am now passing on a bit of a review for it to you guys.  It's called "The three languages of politics" by Arnold King.

The basic premise is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians use different linguistic short-cuts, which work well when communicating with their in-group, but which lead to people talking past each other when speaking to people in different groups.  King says liberals tend to use what he calls an "oppressor/oppressed" axis in their speech, in which those who are oppressors (or allow oppression) are the bad guys, and those who oppose it are the good guys.  By speaking this way, progressives indicate whose views can be ignored in a discussion, and who (in their view) should be listened too.  Similarly, conservatives tend to use what King calls a "civilization/barbarism" axis, and libertarians use a "enhance/restrict personal choice" axis. I agreed with him on all these, though the conservative "civilization/barbarism" one threw me at first, since he was using the words slightly differently than I tend to think of them when I hear/read them.  He meant that conservatives tend to view the "good guys" to be the ones who are defending/promoting/protecting traditional institutions that they consider to hold society together (civilization) and view the "bad guys" to be those who oppose such institutions, or who are willing to let them decay/weaken/etc (barbarism).  To me, "civilization" tends to carry connotations of large, urban places, and also modernity, which wasn't the sense King was using it, and likewise, barbarism to me carries strong connotations of violence, which wasn't necessarily implied in Kings usage.  But whatever the case, once I understood what Kind meant with the terms, I thought he was pretty much spot-on.

Going beyond that basic idea, King argues that we tend to use these separate languages to engage in "motivated" rather than "constructive" reasoning.  I think all of us here are pretty familiar with these ideas, even if we haven't heard them called that before.  King sums it up very nicely (in my opinion) when he says that constructive reasoning is what we do when we're acting like an idealized judge, trying to figure out, from a neutral position, what is right/true/best/etc.  Whereas motivated reasoning is what we use when we're acting like an idealized lawyer, picking one side, and accepting any and all evidence in favor of it, while scrutinizing all conflicting evidence with the harshest possible interpretation.  King says that once we reduce opposing views to those of the "bad guys" of our particular group, we can achieve closure.  We feel we no longer really need to address the points they bring up, and can just write them off as being unreasonable, or part of the problem ("oh, of course he'd say that!  He's one of them!").

King argues that we need all the view points in a functioning society, but that our current way of using the three languages is making this more difficult.  He makes what I thought was a very good point, in saying that the vast majority of political punditry/commentary is aimed almost entirely at getting people to not listen to the other side(s) of an issue.  Most people speaking to an audience about politics these days (whether on talk radio, news paper opinion columns, the internet, or whatever) are speaking to people in their own group, and are telling them why they can safely dismiss the views of the other group(s).  In other words, progressives will tell you you can ignore conservatives because they're oppressing someone, conservatives will tell you that progressives and libertarians should be dismissed because they're either destroying our society or letting it be destroyed, and libertarians will tell you that progressives and conservatives can be dismissed because they want to control your actions and limit your choices.  Instead of being a tool for helping us communicate and engage in constructive reasoning to reach the best solutions, the way we tend to use language is actually making it harder to do so, and making it easier for us to just ignore/dismiss the views of those who disagree with us.

King makes clear that he's not saying we shouldn't disagree, or shouldn't argue or debate things.  He admit's he's firmly in the libertarian camp.  He doesn't think all three groups are equally valid, and isn't trying to say that they are.  What he's saying is that we're cutting ourselves off from opposing views, which increases the chances of making mistakes, regardless of which group we're in.  He offers some helpful ideas on how to reduce this, which I'll mention here.

One is that all too often, we think we know what the "other side" wants better than they do, and that we're very quick to label other groups unreasonable.  He suggests that we're not in a position to evaluate whether anyone other than ourselves are being unreasonable.  It's fine to believe they are wrong, he says, but if we find ourselves thinking that they're being unreasonable, we're probably engaging in motivated reasoning, and not actually seeing the situation through their eyes.

Another is the idea of the "political turing test."  The idea being that of putting someone in a group of other people, and seeing if they can "talk the talk" of that group long enough to convince that group that they are "one of them."  For example, taking at libertarian and putting him in room full of conservatives, and having them talk politics for a while, and see if everyone figured the person was conservative.  He argued that if you can't do this well, you probably don't actually understand what the other side is actually saying/thinking.  You need to be able to speak their language, not because it will help change their minds necessarily, but because you won't be able to understand their points if you can't.

He gives an example from a libertarian's blog, saying something along the lines of "progressives want a nanny state where the government does everything for you, and conservatives want a police state, where the government keeps you line."  This, he said, would clearly fail the political turing test, because no progressive would say they want a nanny state, nor would a conservative say they want a police state.  When we say "the so-and-so's want X" but the people we're talking about would never say that, then we're engaged in motivated reasoning, and are explaining (to ourselves) why we can ignore them.  It can be fair to say that one groups choices might lead to X, but if we say the want X, we're probably trying to justify ignoring/dismissing them rather than evaluating their ideas constructively.

In short, I found it an interesting read, and one that certainly got me thinking about discussions here and elsewhere.  I'd recommend it to anyone interested in such topics.

Interesting, and definitely some good points. I see this a lot with my friends, who are predominantly liberals. The big bad now is 'privileged', and as soon as someone is labeled with it, they're shut down and shouted out.

I definitely like the Turing test idea.  King is right; every view is grounded on some perceived need, and it behooves us to recognize our needs so we can address them well. That doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but you have to understand the complaint well enough to safely appraise it, and that isn't happening in the current environment.

I think the worst bit of this is the way the people with the strongest views only communicate with those who share those views.

I actively try to to get away from that. I read a very liberal / left news site, and need to find a decently formatted conservative news site (I used to read Fox, until they screwed up the page layout so bad I gave up on it).

Does the author think individuals exclusively fall into only one of these three camps? Reading over his pairs, I can think of three different issues where I am respectively progressive, conservative, and libertarian.

I don't recall him saying one way on the other or that, but I'd guess he'd say it's more of a tendency, rather than a set-in-stone, you're-always-one-or-the-other kind of thing.  I'd guess he'd say that when we're engaged in constructive reasoning, trying to figure things out for ourselves, we probably use a lot more of information, which would sort of be using all three.  But once we make our mind up, and try to convince others, we'd probably have a tendency to use just one.  It might also depend on who you're talking to.

To a degree, I guess your question wasn't what King was focusing on.  He was looking at how the groups each spoke; your question is more along the lines of what makes you part of one group or another.  I read a different book a while back that addressed that, I think by a guy named Haidt, but I'd have to go check that.  Anyway, his idea was that what made us liberal, conservative, or libertarian was how much weight we put on each of the six "moral pillars" he had identified.  He said we all used all six, but different groups viewed some as more important than did others.  King's idea fits pretty nicely on this, as the styles of speech he identified match up pretty well with the important pillars of each group.

I guess maybe it comes down to how do you view/think of the people who disagree with you on those three issues?  Do they seem to all be mistaken in the same/similar way to you, or in three different ways?  If the former (say, something like "they're all just trying to hold onto their power at the expense of the weak in each case") you might be more in one group, but if in each case you have a very different explanation of why people don't see things your way, you may not feel a strong affiliation to any of the three groups.  Based on the fact that you say you actively try to get away from the situation where people only talk to those they agree with, that seems entirely possible.

Which is all a very long-winded way of saying, "hmm, I don't know...good question!" ;)

I don't want to derail this into something else with my examples, so please don't follow up by bashing these :)

I put my abortion views in the liberal group, and see unborn children as oppressed. I find it very hard to be reasonable on this, because I see the role of the state as protecting the weak from the strong, and few are as weak as a baby. I understand that the other side sees this as a libertarian issue, and could probably "talk the talk" for awhile, but I don't see it leading to greater understanding.

I am conservative with respect to the principle of religious toleration. I respect other people's right to be any religion or none, but I see as "barbarians" (to use the book's term) those who mock or seek to destroy all religion. Criticism and questioning are fair, but mockery is an emotional attack on a person, not on a religious position. I don't think I could "talk the talk" on that one.

On the libertarian front, both positions can be seen as "good" on different issues (unlike the above terms, where "oppressor" and "barbarian" have inherent connotations of "bad"). I can oppose motorcycle helmet laws (libertarian) while being in favor of mandatory driver insurance (anti-libertarian), and see both as good. Nothing I can think of on the libertarian axis is a really strong view, and people could talk me out of it with statistics. If I held a libertarian view really strongly, I would be inclined to list it as a liberal view instead, and see those opposed to it as "oppressors".

Perhaps that's where his thesis falls apart. Don't strong-minded libertarians see their opponents as oppressors, and turn into liberals?

On the libertarians 'becoming' liberals if they viewed the government as oppressive, I guess it would depend on the language they used.  The book was less about how people felt about things, and more about how they talked about them.  If a libertarian said the government was oppressive because it was taking away personal choice, that would still seem to fit into the 'language' of libertarians, I think.  To slip into the progressive language, they'd need to be speaking more about the government being too strong, and the people too weak, or something like that, I'd guess.

I should probably stress that the two word descriptors of the three languages probably don't full encompass what he's trying to get across in each case.  And (as he points out himself), since he's a libertarian, he's probably done a better job describing the languages of libertarians than of progressives or conservatives.  So its possible there's a better pair of words to describe the progressive language than oppressor/oppressed.

This is a very interesting point. 90% of the pro-choice arguments I've seen have been really libertarian arguments about the right of women to make health decisions free of government legislation (and these arguments have been made almost wholly by liberals). However, I agree with you that in this power relationship, the woman may be somewhat oppressed by the government, but no one is as oppressed as the fetus. The libertarian view would be 'the woman chooses what she wants', but the liberal view should be 'the fetus's right to life must be protected'. (Most of the libertarians I know are pro-life.)

I hate to say it, but I wonder if this is evidence of people naturally being stuck in their own viewpoint. "I believe in sticking up for the oppressed, as long as it doesn't impact my ability to enforce my will on others."

Really?  That's sort of interesting to me, as most of the liberal arguments from the pro-choice side seem to fit more into the oppressor/oppressed language, I think.  It seems like a more natural fit in the libertarian language, but it usually actually seems to be about someone with power trying to keep someone without it down (eg, "white men trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant").  I usually hear them trying to demonize the people pushing for anti-abortion laws rather than demonize the government.  It does seem like there's a lot of overlap between the libertarian language and the progressive language when people view the government as the one doing the oppressing, but I think there's still a bit of difference.


hopefully without derailing the thread, I think it's important to keep in mind that the pro-choice side doesn't really view a fetus as something that can be oppressed.  It's not that they think it's being oppressed, but don't care, it's that they don't think it's actually capable of being oppressed.  Its similar to how the vast majority of people don't think fish are being oppressed right now.  It's not that they wouldn't think it's oppression to round up humans and eat them, it's just that they don't view fish as things capable of being oppressed.  I don't view liberals who eat fish as putting aside their objections to oppression.  Likewise, I think it's somewhat unfair to characterize liberals who are pro-choice that way.  You can argue that they should view fetuses as capable of oppression, but I think once you view them as sharing that view with you and just throwing their morals out the window for convenience then you're falling into the kind of trap that King talks about.  By viewing them as immoral/irrational by their own standards, rather than trying to figure out how their reason works, you're justifying to yourself why you don't need to take their view seriously, rather than coming up with something that will actually change their point of view (or potentially cause you to rethink your own).  As King puts it, it's okay to think someone is wrong, but if we conclude their being irrational, we're probably engaged in motivated reasoning, and not actually understanding their position.

(Apologies for switching your points around, Tycho. It works better that way)


</quote>

I also think katisara went a bit too far there in attributing knowing oppression to those who are pro-choice. I have met very few people who say "the fetus is a person, and I have a right to kill it anyway"; most deny that the fetus is human.

I think in general very few people will imagine themselves as oppressors. Everyone wants to think of themselves as good.



Aren't you falling here into the same trap you warned katisara about? You're assuming that pro-life people are lying about their motives and are really "trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant".

Sorry, should have been more explicit that that wasn't intended to be read as an argument I was making, but rather an example of the kind of arguments made by pro-choice advocates.  I wasn't saying "this is how it is," but rather "this is how they think it is."

In the abortion debate though, pro-choice people tend to accept the fetus is not a person as an a priori assumption (and, judging by the rhetoric, that a 9-month-old fetus is not a person). This is used to support the argument that a woman's choice trumps that of the child's. I've never seen a pro-choice argument that goes 'well the fetus also has a right to life, but ...'

The pro-life side accepts the fetus is a life as their thesis, and the choice vs. life argument is the conclusion.

Of course I'm speaking in generalizations, and based on my own experiences. But I'd have a lot more respect for the pro-choice side if I saw more rhetoric that actually addressed the pro-life side's concerns; that the fetus is a life. As it stands, the two sides seem to be talking past each other; pro-choice says a woman should have sovereignity over her own body, pro-life says that murder is wrong. Both sides fundamentally AGREE with the other, but they aren't tackling the actual point of conflict; is a fetus a person who is then murdered during an abortion?

(I think most reasonable people would agree that a person's control of their own body does not extend to the point that they are permitted to kill another person. Of course, if that's not the case, then at least the topic should be 'am I allowed to kill another person when it infringes upon my personal sovereignity?' which is another discussion I just don't see coming up.)

The point I'm coming around to is, ultimately, people are selfish and want to be accepted by their peers. I don't see the liberal argument here being one of protecting some oppressed minority, but of protecting their self-interest. (I don't see the conservative argument as some great charitable gesture either though, but there's no claim that it is.) I expect most liberals would support increased rights for group X until it came to significant costs to themselves (which is likely why so few corporate magnates are also on the social welfare bandwagon). And most conservatives will only support 'the way it was' until it begins to harm them.

I'd agree with this pretty much 100%.  Though, I despair of much chance of making any progress even if they did discuss it, since both sides take their position by assumption, so there's not much chance of changing either of their views.  I've brought up an alternative view here before (and we can touch on it again if we like, but I'm not sure we have much new to add just now) that's somewhere in between, but neither side seemed to view it favorably.  Seemed like anything other than their starting assumption (whichever side they were on) was viewed as impossible from the get-go.


Somewhat ironically, I think most pro-choice people would agree that control of your own body doesn't let you kill someone, but most pro-life people would.  The issue being self-defense, and when/if you can kill someone who's threatening you.  But that's largely an aside, and misses the point, since, as you point out, the question in the abortion case isn't whether it's okay to kill a person who's controlling your body (both sides tend to agree that it's not), but rather whether the fetus is a person (where the two sides can't agree).


I think it's important, in the context of the discussion, though, to separate the argument from the language.  King's book was about the language, not about the reasoning they actually use.  When I hear liberals talk about abortion rights, I very much hear them talking about being oppressed.  Whether they legitimately are oppressed (and the degree to which that would even matter) is something we could debate, but sort of misses the point of this particular discussion (we can re-open the abortion discussion if we want to go into that, though).  Pro-choice advocates, whether correctly or not, do seem to view themselves as victims of oppression, and do seem to view the pro-life side as people who want to take away the rights of women.  The degree to which they are or aren't correct about that is sort of besides the point when considering whether King is right in his assessment of how groups talk.  Does that makes sense?  I feel like we're sort of discussing two different but related things at once, and that it might be confusing things a bit.  The issue of whether progressives view women as oppressed, and speak about them that way, in the context of the abortion debate is, to a degree, independent of whether or not women are actually oppressed.  I feel a bit like you're focusing on the latter issue, while I'm more looking at the former.


Perhaps, but again, this is sort of a different issue than what King is discussing.  Even if you are correct, Kings model could still be completely valid.  For example, if, as you say, liberals would stop supporting more rights for X up until the point where doing so caused costs to them, they could still frame their position in terms of oppression--particularly by claiming to be the oppressed groups themselves.  Likewise, conservatives might stop supporting "the way it was" once doing so begins to harm them, but they could still use the civilization/barbarism language to describe their position.  The fact that their position has changed doesn't necessarily mean that they'll change the type of language they use to describe the new position.  They might still feel they're trying to uphold civilized society and defend it against those who seek to tear it down, even as they themselves are the ones proposing a change to the way things work.

That's a good point that I totally missed, thank you.