krebscycle

Some rules help with a simple guide that can provide rigorous analysis of politics

1. Conservatives favor preserving and extending the power of authority (police, army, bosses, etc.) and preserving and extending the privileges of incumbents (people who have or believe they have some privileges).
2. Liberals  (in the American sense) favor preserving and extending freedom by which they mean something like what Franklin Roosevelt said: “ Freedom of speech, Freedom of worship, Freedom from want,  Freedom from fear. ” This has come, after bitter struggle, to include “civil rights”. Liberal in the American sense is very different from European/South American “Liberal” which means “Conservative”.
3. “Socialist” and “Capitalist” have zero meaning in current political debate. The key economic distinctions are Conservative versus Liberal (US), morality, and Reality versus Ideology.
4. Professions of faith don’t mean much – what people call their political viewpoint is often not very informative and often disinformative. The specifics matter: If you are “leftist” who thinks President Obama’s health care reforms were terrible or a “rightist” who agrees, it’s the opposition to concrete improvements in social welfare that is important, not the excuse.
5. When Conservatives speak of “freedom” or “liberty” they usually mean privileges, particularly privilege to dominate or oppress other people.
6. Libertarians in the US are generally a kind of conservative who want to pretend that police, courts, the necessarily enormous body of commercial law and so on are somehow not government and that infrastructure, education, and public health can be provided by invisible pixies, magically.