I can see how somebody might find Monty Python to be sophomoric. I haven't seen it for some years: maybe if I watched it again, I'd think it was dated.

Meanwhile, from Sweden, the silliest liberal idea of the year--"feminist snow removal."

Meanwhile, from Sweden, the silliest liberal idea of the year--"feminist snow removal.">

Who cares how many capitalist pigs
were injured?

<Top 25 Conservative Movies>>

Well, let's get one thing agreed upon straight out of the gate: Movies.

Nearly everything I do - and that includes writing on internet forums - is done deliberately, with analysis of nearly every angle.

I mentioned RHPS as an example of a movie because <you> cited it yourself. And my step brother, the hard hard hard right conservative that he is, loved RHPS in his youth.

Movies in general, though, don't really belong in our discussion because nearly all of them are thematic and the themes tend to appeal to certain political sides, in a way that no caffe latte ever can!

Which is why I focused more on consumerism related to items like coffee and SUVs, because nearly any idiot can go to a movie and see the thematic adherence to one political side or another.

BTW I suspect, but haven't proven, that this is a significant reason why many young white males called for a boycott of Star Wars VII on line - it clearly was made with the idea of exclusion of their group from the heroic arc. The protagonists were a white girl and black guy.

Gee, where I have I seen that before? Only 99% of all TV commercials from the last 15 years. No wonder MGTOW is growing.

More to follow. Or not. Depends on how interesting the holiday weekend becomes.

I think that's where I keep getting confused.>

Because CTR (conservative talk radio) muddies the water. They won't discern between the two.

Personally, when I listen to any popular conservative media figure, be it Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or any of the others, when they use the word <liberal> I really don't know what the heck they mean!

They certainly are not describing FDR or JFK.

Where do we go from here on terminology? Do we define a Neo Classical Liberal?

A Classical Neo Liberal?

Anything in between?

Personally, when I listen to any popular conservative media figure, be it Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or any of the others, when they use the word <liberal> I really don't know what the heck they mean!>

I think that's where I keep getting confused.>

That's because it's a lie optimal.
Think flim-flam man, snake oil salesman, or Bernie Madoff.

Victims are useful to Democrats, success isn't.

Victims can be used for:

1) Multi-trillion dollar programs
2) Great Bureaucracies
3)Affordable Housing
4)Food Stamps/Welfare
5)Slandering Republicans
6)Race baiting
7)Victims votes

Of course, it's really for one thing.
To get the Democrat voted in on election day.

Now if I snap my fingers and everyone is successful in America, all that goes away.

No reason for high taxes,
no reason for government bureacracies,
and Republicans cant take away what you don't receive from the government. (even if that is a lie)

Government control/high taxes are a difficult, sell when everyone has freedom and are actually "paying" taxes.

If there was any truth to liar Obama,
his first day in office would have been "black day" in America.

...but he cant end what lines his parties pockets and empowers himself.

They certainly are not describing FDR or JFK.>

FDR was elected in 1933, almost 100 years ago. JFK in 1960. That was a long time ago; we live in 2016 and the current ideas associated with liberals is different.

What the old liberals like FDR have in common with today's liberals is the idea that government can and should cure the ills of society.

However, modern liberalism has a new element of vehement rejection and opposition to traditional moral values. In light of this, the ideas of what constitutes a societal ill have changed radically and are expressed in the tearing down of traditional Christian values and replaced with a value system based on Humanism.

Today's liberal wants men in the ladies room because it's <equal> and <tolerant>. In FDR's time this wasn't even on the radar. There are many more examples like this that define the difference between liberalism today and in the time of FDR or even Kennedy.

It's almost as if humanists and atheists have hijacked liberalism in order to get their hands of the governments levers, controls and money bags. That is, they see liberals using government to fix things wrong with society and said to themselves, "Hey, what could we do with the power of the US gov't in our hands?"

Then they contaminated liberalism with ideas of humanism and atheism so that now, when these liberals are in power, they can use the government as an instrument of their humanist, anti-Christian, atheist agenda.

As I said earlier, FDR liberals and modern liberals both wanted to use the gov't to cure the ills of society. The difference is that their ideas of what an ill is have changed radically.

It's not enough that you stole my "shoeshine kit" tagline, but now you have to steal my "hot chocolate with both hands" tagline too?

Cowards like you, Bartle, Abdel, lil jiff, et al. Who have no explanation for your lies, and decades of failure.>

LOL, <diceman> you crazy kook. Your posts are always good for a laugh.

Well, I don't like to assume that I know what someone is thinking. It leads to misunderstandings. So I appreciate the clarification.

That was an excellent post, by the way.

Your posts are always good for a laugh.>

Which, the dead black people parts,
or what it cost the taxpayer?

<I argue more with <ljfyffe> and <AI> than all other Rogoff posters combined.>

It's just a short conversation with me where I ask a number of yes or no questions and follow up based on those answers.>

Is there a, "standing 8 count?"

<yes or no questions>

I select topics, not people, to discuss. Topics I am interested in.

The part where you think I am a liberal. That's hilarious.>

Did the liar forget his post praising Obama's achievements?

Guess that makes you Mr. Conservative.

Part 1.

That is a good question. There are probably two reasons. But before I state them, I want to clarify terminology.

I think of political views in the US as a square comprised of 4 smaller squares, like the section of a chessboard made up of the squares a1, a2, b1 & b2.

On the left we have two main groups, the dominant group in a2, which is liberals, and the lesser group in a1, progressives and greens.

On the right we also have two main groups. The traditional conservatives (both culturally and economic) dominate the right and are in square b2, and the libertarians tend to side with the Republicans, and inhabit b1.

I typically exist on the border between a1 and b1. Most of my political views are either green (pro EPA and renewable energy), libertarian (legalize pot), or progressive (let gays marry).

So every 4 years I find a candidate I like, and he is quickly defeated in his party's primary competition. For example, for the Dems, Gore beat my guy Bradly in 2000. And in the GOP, W beat my guy McCain in 2000.

But I kind of got off on a tangent here. My point was that I don't think of liberalism as a battle to the death for being able to pee anywhere you like. As a child of the 20th century, the word "liberal" still evokes ideas of environmental protections, a minimum wage, and the right to unionize.

Now we could nit pick each issue. For example, I support a minimum wage, but don't want to see it go up very often.

I support OSHA, but wouldn't want Ralph Nader to run it.

In other words, on liberal issues let's have moderation and not get carried away.

Which leads me to my answer of your question. Why do I reject liberalism? Because it <always> gets carried away.

Probably my favorite example is the idea of having reparations for slavery, an idea supported by Kucinich when he ran for president.

I think this is a horrible idea. In fact, although I rarely use the word "evil" I think it is warranted in this case.

Let's say just exactly what this idea means. People who support it want to take money from people who never benefited from slavery, and give it to people who never suffered slavery.

The only time reparations for slavery would have made sense is when the perpetrators and victims were still alive - in the 1800s!

The idea is problematic for other reasons. If I am Black and my family came to America in 1907, for example, do I get the payday or don't I?

What if I am White but on welfare? Do I have to give up a welfare check for a Black person to get reparations?

Why does liberalism get carried away? Because it is based on the individual liberals' sense of what is fair and what isn't.

Most liberals I know are women. My mother, my sister, my Aunt, my Aunt in law, my paternal grandmother - they are all liberals. They are emotional and fickle. There is no fundamental structure underlying the liberal cause and unifying it.

And this drove its success in the late 19th century and most of the 20th century. Liberalism was starting from a baseline societal structure that was heavily skewed towards the rights of capital and the rich, so liberalism gained a wide following.

But as the philosophy achieved wins in labor laws, the environment, and civil rights, it increasingly moved to championing dubious causes such as reparations for slavery. These new causes are clearly unjust to many sensible Americans, and this fractured the movement. The first signs of this fracture were the "Reagan Democrats" of the 1980s.

The number 1 issue for a presidential election, though, is the economy. So the recession during the first Bush administration stemmed the tide of the fracture of the liberal movement (for a time), allowing the moderate Bill Clinton to win as a Democrat (although Clinton was no liberal).

But Clinton won in part due to exceptional charisma. A moderate-to-slightly-liberal Democrat like Gore should have won easily in 2000, but lacking charisma and being the poster child for liberalism, which was going off the deep end more and more by the end of the 20th century, with causes many Americans view as "kooky", he of course lost.

Once again, a devastated economy allowed the Democratic Party to win in 2008, with a charismatic and almost scandal-free minority candidate.

But if Al Gore couldn't win in 2000, I don't think it should be too surprising that HRC couldn't win in a similar scenario in 2016.

Personally, I believed the math. Nate Silver nailed it in 2012, but then the hints of a Trump victory were hiding in plain sight all along.

What did we hear, over and over, more than anything since he started running in 2015? <Trump says what I am thinking>, said voter after voter. They felt like they couldn't speak their minds, but the billionaire could do it for them (it's true).

So why should I be surprised that polls underestimated Trump support? Some Trump voters weren't admitting they were Trump voters.

But this doesn't answer your question.

I already gave one of my two reasons, and just wanted to write a political historical narrative to explain what I have in mind when I say that liberalism goes too far.

In summary, liberalism started with the fight to organize labor in the 19th century, and won victory after victory for 70 to 80 years, and got carried away by going too far. It always goes to far, and so I don't trust it. Where will it end?

Second reason I reject liberalism?

Liberalism is the only way for radical feminism to acquire power in our society. And this is a bad thing, as far as I can tell.

Why? Big picture here: Mankind was converted from a prehistoric tribal species scratching out a living through hunter-gatherer living. What transformed it from just another mammalian species to the dominant species on earth, with advanced technology, wealth, space travel, wildly successful population growth, etc. etc. etc.?

It was the formation of patriarchal society. As primitives, men competed for women in a sexual marketplace that was defined by the law of the jungle. Homo sapiens only really freed up time for advancing technology and the critical division of labor by finding a way to include everyone in society.

Instead of one (or a few) dominant male taking all the females like other primate and mammalian species, man created the institutions of Western civilization, such as marriage and family. By having a more equitable sharing of reproductive opportunities, males stopped fighting amongst each other for women and set to work learning farming, building, and later on, more and more ways to advance technology.

Radical feminism seeks to basically set this paradigm on its head, by taking this decision for the common good away from males and giving it back to females. BAD IDEA!

Women are fickle, vindictive, and irrational. Or rather, maybe not irrational, but willing and able to rationalize their emotional decision making.

And it hasn't ended well! 80% of divorces are initiated by women. This leads to broken homes and traumatic childhoods for our youth.

Also, women love bad boys, so we are now faced with the fact that violent criminal men have a higher average number of children than do law-abiding, hardworking men in America.

First of all, I focus on individual issues, rather than blanket statements, when assessing a president and his 4 or 8 years in office.

To say that I "praised Obama's achievements" cannot really rise to the level of being "wrong". It is better described as "obtuse", since I don't even look at the world in binary black and white as much as I see a spectrum of views and outcomes.

Obama has done many things that I like, a few that I don't, and some just happened on his watch but were not up to him.

But you wouldn't understand. It is clearly too subtle for you.

But you wouldn't understand. It is clearly too subtle for you.>

Oh, Ok, I get it, we're into the "subtle" points.

Hey, have you ever see them pictures of Hitler with German Shepherds?

The dogs always looked happy, healthy.

Obama has done many things that I like, a few that I don't, and some just happened on his watch but were not up to him.>

To borrow from former Governor Ann Richards: