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Many authors, labor leaders and/or politicians claimed to have been a "socialist" or "liberal" during the early 1900's or even as late as the 1960's but that must be understood in context. The struggles likely had clearer "bad guys" and "good guys." The "bad guys" were the owners of coal mining or other mining or manufacturing "company towns." Or factories where the workers were locked in, or even tied to their machines so they couldn't take breaks. The consequences, in the case of the Triangle Shirt Waste Factory were gruesome and fatal.
In the early 1900's, when authors such as Jack London wrote or singers such as Joe Hill performed, the industrialists were a pretty raw lot, and that's being kind. Heartless owners paid workers peanuts, and often robbed their meager earnings in charges to live in company towns. Goons enforced the rules. And that was not optional. Thus, books that railed against the power and cruelty of bullies were often written by "socialists" but few could disagree with their message.
One of my favorites, Jack London, wrote a novel White Fang. The protagonist is a dog/wolf hybrid named, appropriately, White Fang. White Fang was bought from Native Americans (called First Nations in Canada) by a person who used the dog as a fighter, "Beauty" Smith. White Fang was "deputized" to fight with just about every dog or wolf that could be found. The dog put in to fight him was invariably ripped to piece, to the wild cheering of drunken crowds. Finally a bulldog was launched into the pen, who grabbed White Fang's throat. When White Fang was almost throttled and near death, a pair of decent people burst in, kicked the offending fight artist and sent the fight promoter sprawling, and then separated the animals and nursed White Fang back to health.While it was a childhood or young adult novel it illustrates what people should do. This is universal.
Appropos of Jack London, I do not think the fact that being relatively conservative makes a difference. No conservative in his right mind would advocate the kind of working conditions and deprivations of rights that were typical during that era.
So, while Jack London presented himself as a "socialist" in this days it was hard for any decent person to be "pro-capitalist"; that meant supporting the Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and some almost indescribable brutes.Even in the days of the "I Have a Dream" speech, being "against" what Martin Luther King was advocating was almost unconscionable.
It was far easier to support those "left-wing causes" than transgender bathrooms. The debates are so much harder now.
Why does it seem to you that who the "bad guys" are now isn't as clear as back then?
I somehow don't think that people who want only males or only females in their bathrooms rise to the level of evil of the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Those people locked the exit doors. When fire broke out hundreds needlessly died. Or the level of evil of the copper mines in the West that paid the workers about $0.01 per hour (or not much more) and effectively stole those wages. Or for that matter most slaveowners or former slaveowners.
I find a major difference in evil between Orville Faubus, the governor of Arkansas who prevented integration of the schools, making the use of the National Guard necessary, and a white or Asian student who wants to get into college free from reverse discrimination. I can find no decent person who supported the use of snarling and biting police dogs and fire hoses against peaceful demonstrators. Or shooting civil rights workers in the south. Contrariwise, I find two sides to stories such as Trayvon Marin, Fergeson, Missouri, Freddy Gray and the like.
I somehow don't think that people who want only males or only females in their bathrooms rise to the level of evil of the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Those people locked the exit doors. When fire broke out hundreds needlessly died. Or the level of evil of the copper mines in the West that paid the workers about $0.01 per hour (or not much more) and effectively stole those wages. Or for that matter most slaveowners or former slaveowners.
I find a major difference in evil between Orville Faubus, the governor of Arkansas who prevented integration of the schools, making the use of the National Guard necessary, and a white or Asian student who wants to get into college free from reverse discrimination. I can find no decent person who supported the use of snarling and biting police dogs and fire hoses against peaceful demonstrators. Or shooting civil rights workers in the south. Contrariwise, I find two sides to stories such as Trayvon Marin, Fergeson, Missouri, Freddy Gray and the like.
What makes you think that bathroom access is the only issue that people who are talking about socialism/liberalism care about?
Is free/affordable access to healthcare not equally as important as some of the issues you are talking about here? How about issues like paid family and sick leave? Are those not issues important to everyone because they get fired because they have to miss work due to an illness?
This is all nonsense to confuse ignorant white people to vote for politicians who adopt public policy that benefits rich people.
Like everywhere else in the first world, we live in a social democracy. We use taxes to fund things that are for the public good. We’ve had public schools and public libraries forever. The rich people who pay most of the taxes have manipulated this so social democracy->socialist->evil commie.
Similarly, liberal means open to new ideas. I’m a liberal. I’m always learning. I’m always changing my worldview as I learn new things. Rich people have corrupted this so liberal to poorly educated unengaged people is now a bad thing. Why? Because they want to squish rational public policy discussions about things that would benefit the country but would require taxing rich people to fund them.
So when anyone spouts Fox News rhetoric about “liberal” and “socialist”, I first check to see if they’re rich people merely being greedy or ignorant people being manipulated by the greedy rich people.
...
So, while Jack London presented himself as a "socialist" in this days it was hard for any decent person to be "pro-capitalist"; that meant supporting the Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and some almost indescribable brutes.Even in the days of the "I Have a Dream" speech, being "against" what Martin Luther King was advocating was almost unconscionable.
It was far easier to support those "left-wing causes" than transgender bathrooms. The debates are so much harder now.
There's some false equivalence going on. For one thing, you haven't separated social vs. economic issues.
Also, you used something as trivial as transgender bathrooms as your example of a left-wing cause, after giving examples of serious issues that were economic in origin.
Who even decided that transgender bathrooms are a "liberal" issue? If I remember correctly, it were various social conservative groups who raised a stink about this and turned it into a rallying issue.
For modern social issues, how about race relations in post-2000 America? There's a gaping divide between liberal and conservative viewpoints there and it's pretty serious as it'll affect the fabric of our society.
It's not even as if the disagreement between economic liberals and conservatives is over. The middle class in the U.S. has been losing their fraction of the total wealth that they helped produce, ever since that peak from around the 1960s. Money is business and business is economics, so this is always serious.
Is losing nickels and dimes in the value of your labor over 5 decades okay with fiscal conservatives of any social or economic persuasion? I would think not since many members of that class have been calling out problems with being nickeled and dimed by the government's taxation and spending for all that time.
How about national infrastructure? Plenty of problems there to solve. Are those causes liberal or conservative? Water mains, freeways are easy to understand. So how about telecommunications and Internet infrastructure? Health care infrastructure?
Your argument probably should've simply said that the past was a simpler time therefore in retrospect the issues seem easier to take sides for.
Many authors, labor leaders and/or politicians claimed to have been a "socialist" or "liberal" during the early 1900's or even as late as the 1960's but that must be understood in context. The struggles likely had clearer "bad guys" and "good guys." The "bad guys" were the owners of coal mining or other mining or manufacturing "company towns." Or factories where the workers were locked in, or even tied to their machines so they couldn't take breaks. The consequences, in the case of the Triangle Shirt Waste Factory were gruesome and fatal.
In the early 1900's, when authors such as Jack London wrote or singers such as Joe Hill performed, the industrialists were a pretty raw lot, and that's being kind. Heartless owners paid workers peanuts, and often robbed their meager earnings in charges to live in company towns. Goons enforced the rules. And that was not optional. Thus, books that railed against the power and cruelty of bullies were often written by "socialists" but few could disagree with their message.
One of my favorites, Jack London, wrote a novel White Fang. The protagonist is a dog/wolf hybrid named, appropriately, White Fang. White Fang was bought from Native Americans (called First Nations in Canada) by a person who used the dog as a fighter, "Beauty" Smith. White Fang was "deputized" to fight with just about every dog or wolf that could be found. The dog put in to fight him was invariably ripped to piece, to the wild cheering of drunken crowds. Finally a bulldog was launched into the pen, who grabbed White Fang's throat. When White Fang was almost throttled and near death, a pair of decent people burst in, kicked the offending fight artist and sent the fight promoter sprawling, and then separated the animals and nursed White Fang back to health.While it was a childhood or young adult novel it illustrates what people should do. This is universal.
Appropos of Jack London, I do not think the fact that being relatively conservative makes a difference. No conservative in his right mind would advocate the kind of working conditions and deprivations of rights that were typical during that era.
So, while Jack London presented himself as a "socialist" in this days it was hard for any decent person to be "pro-capitalist"; that meant supporting the Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and some almost indescribable brutes.Even in the days of the "I Have a Dream" speech, being "against" what Martin Luther King was advocating was almost unconscionable.
It was far easier to support those "left-wing causes" than transgender bathrooms. The debates are so much harder now.
That's because the lines keep moving. The so-called left-wingers of the early 20th Century would most likely identify with the far right today. I mean, everyone loves to talk about the many benefits of Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger. And they would mostly be right. But Margaret Sanger also advocated eugenics, writing about weeding out the "unfit." Imagine the uproar if anyone used that kind of language today.
What's more, many of the most cherished goals of the labor movements in the early 20th century have been institutionalized in law and business practice. A forty-hour week. Safe working conditions. Protection from exploitation. The elimination of child labor. Health benefits. If you magically transported a labor activist from the early 20th Century to the average manufacturing plant today in this country, it would be like a visit to the Elysian Fields for him. "What are you complaining about?" would be his likely reaction.
And I could only imagine what these folks would say about the modern debates on subjects such as transgender rights or illegal immigration. The gains are becoming far more incremental.
What's more, the proponents of socialism have to own up to its manifest failures. Any number of ideals of socialism have proved disasters in practice, from state ownership of enterprises to the top-down governance of society. From Russia to Maoist China to Cambodia to more benign disasters such a Venezuela and Great Britain before Thatcher, the more fully the principles of Socialism have been exercised, the more sclerotic the economy becomes and the more rights have been curtailed to ensure compliance. All you have to do is watch the brutal descent of Venezuela from its place as Latin America's strongest economy before Chavez to the complete basket case it is today. And that happened over a span of twenty years.
Even the much ballyhooed example of Scandinavia isn't much an argument, given how that countries such as Sweden have famously cut back their statist programs and actually today enjoy considerably more economic freedom than that of the United States. If you look at the arc of those countries, their enormous welfare states were funded by the accumulated wealth gained in previous decades of laissez-faire capitalism. Over the past couple of decades, Scandinavian countries have retreated from those generous policies, enacting corporate tax cuts and loosening labor laws.
Point those problems out to a proponent of socialism and they always point to the unfair challenges socialism has faced. Yet, that argument is weak cheese, for it actually argues the opposite. It implies that socialism requires a set of rarefied conditions to succeed, kind of like growing orchids in a hothouse. In short, just when the lunatic fringe in this country is toying with socialism, the few countries where it actually kind of functioned are slowly abandoning it.
This is all nonsense to confuse ignorant white people to vote for politicians who adopt public policy that benefits rich people.
Like everywhere else in the first world, we live in a social democracy. We use taxes to fund things that are for the public good. We’ve had public schools and public libraries forever. The rich people who pay most of the taxes have manipulated this so social democracy->socialist->evil commie.
Similarly, liberal means open to new ideas. I’m a liberal. I’m always learning. I’m always changing my worldview as I learn new things. Rich people have corrupted this so liberal to poorly educated unengaged people is now a bad thing. Why? Because they want to squish rational public policy discussions about things that would benefit the country but would require taxing rich people to fund them.
So when anyone spouts Fox News rhetoric about “liberal” and “socialist”, I first check to see if they’re rich people merely being greedy or ignorant people being manipulated by the greedy rich people.
Well this is interesting. How do you check to see if they're rich? Follow them around for a couple weeks and add up how much money they spend? Maybe hide under their car Cape Fear style to check out their home? And what happens if you decide he's being greedy, then find out that just last week he paid for an entire bus load of kids to go to space camp? I mean how silly would you feel right?
As to the OP, I think you're right jbg. Just a few days ago, an illegal alien raped a little girl in Philadelphia after an ICE detainer was ignored and he was released. Sadly, this happens all too often, along with murders, deadly drunk driving wrecks, ect. I wonder sometimes what these people think about when a prisoner they should have held but didn't, kills someone? That is a "left wing cause" that is absolutely indefensible.
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