You've got them confused. It is like you think cats and kittens are different species. Show me one of the these liberals and I'll show you that they are a leftist.
Me. I am far closer to being a conservative than being a Leftist.
I support Trump and will not vote for Democrats until Democrats completely drop the idea of Socialism and Globalism.
I do not give a flying fuck what color you are, what you do with your body, or your choice of boinking partners as long as it's between consenting adults.
I absolutely reject abortion after the start of the 5th month, because that's when the brain starts to develop. Before that, the fetus is not an individual. After that, I believe aborting a child should legally be considered murder.
I support gun ownership, but also have no issues restricting civilians to hand-portable firearms, because civilians won't be fighting open battles if we ever really need to defend ourselves from the government.
There is no fucking way I am a leftist, but many of you would not consider me a conservative either.
So you're saying that a person does not have to be either a liberal or a conservative, but can be somewhere in between, or something else.
IOW - you aren't really a liberal, but you hold many values that 20-40 years ago would have been associated with liberals.
There are many people in the same boat - some who are branded conservative, but are not really that either, and it is too bad that there isn't a better way for them to define themselves.
I do not like labels because they are rarely accurate. At the same time we need to use labels to at least approximate describing ourselves.
Liberal and conservative is not a binary descriptor. There are people that go FAR beyond liberal to the Left (Leftists, etc.) and people that go FAR beyond conservative to the right (Alt-Right)
Imagine a rainbow. The parts of it we can see are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. That's seven distinct colors. BUT other than at the very center of each color, there is variance and 'impure' colors all throughout the rainbow. We've invented color names for many of those colors, but there are literally an infinite number of variants.
That's like politics, except politics are even more complex! It's not just color in politics, it's many different variables.
However, going back to the rainbow example, something halfway between the middle of red and orange might be called, say, ochre, but you can't call something halfway between orange and yellow 'ochre' because that isn't how ochre is defined.
So, generally, someone somewhere between Liberal and Leftist might be called Liberal or Leftist, but there is really no way to consider them Conservative because they are too far from conservative in the scale. The same thing for someone like me who is between Conservative and Liberal. I will reject being called a leftist because I abhor much of what they stand for. The same thing for the Alt Right. I will reject that descriptor too, because many of the Alt Right believe in things that seem stupid to me.
This confusion is part of the reason we see Tribalism so much in modern politics. The water is so muddy with different beliefs - people congregate and establish groups of mostly-similar thinkers, and those groups are fluid. The identity of the group is a lot easier to grasp than the ideology.
Trump himself could have been considered a blue dog Democrat, or even a full blown liberal twenty or thirty years ago.
All that said, it boils down to this. There are dividing lines between Leftists and Liberals. Same with Conservatives and the Alt-Right.
Liberals and Leftists disagree on how to use political power, with Leftists wanting government to usurp power and rapidly force the changes they want onto the people at nearly any cost, while Liberals want govern within the framework of the Constitution to guide the country gradually into changes that benefit everyone in the long term. Leftists want to shut down law enforcement, and imagine some new way to police the nation. Liberals want to enact stricter guidelines for training and monitoring law enforcement personnel.
It's so damn complex to talk about it, but, again...
TLDR: Politics isn't binary, it's all shades of black and while.
Again, you are confusing Liberals with Leftists.
Liberals want changes that lead to more freedom.
Leftists want changes that lead to less freedoms.
Conservatives want people to stay off their damn yard! <grin>
You've got them confused. It is like you think cats and kittens are different species. Show me one of the these liberals and I'll show you that they are a leftist.
Me. I am far closer to being a conservative than being a Leftist.
I support Trump and will not vote for Democrats until Democrats completely drop the idea of Socialism and Globalism.
I do not give a flying fuck what color you are, what you do with your body, or your choice of boinking partners as long as it's between consenting adults.
I absolutely reject abortion after the start of the 5th month, because that's when the brain starts to develop. Before that, the fetus is not an individual. After that, I believe aborting a child should legally be considered murder.
I support gun ownership, but also have no issues restricting civilians to hand-portable firearms, because civilians won't be fighting open battles if we ever really need to defend ourselves from the government.
There is no fucking way I am a leftist, but many of you would not consider me a conservative either.
The world is NOT binary.
So you're saying that a person does not have to be either a liberal or a conservative, but can be somewhere in between, or something else.
IOW - you aren't really a liberal, but you hold many values that 20-40 years ago would have been associated with liberals.
There are many people in the same boat - some who are branded conservative, but are not really that either, and it is too bad that there isn't a better way for them to define themselves.
I do not like labels because they are rarely accurate. At the same time we need to use labels to at least approximate describing ourselves.
Liberal and conservative is not a binary descriptor. There are people that go FAR beyond liberal to the Left (Leftists, etc.) and people that go FAR beyond conservative to the right (Alt-Right)
Imagine a rainbow. The parts of it we can see are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. That's seven distinct colors. BUT other than at the very center of each color, there is variance and 'impure' colors all throughout the rainbow. We've invented color names for many of those colors, but there are literally an infinite number of variants.
That's like politics, except politics are even more complex! It's not just color in politics, it's many different variables.
However, going back to the rainbow example, something halfway between the middle of red and orange might be called, say, ochre, but you can't call something halfway between orange and yellow 'ochre' because that isn't how ochre is defined.
So, generally, someone somewhere between Liberal and Leftist might be called Liberal or Leftist, but there is really no way to consider them Conservative because they are too far from conservative in the scale. The same thing for someone like me who is between Conservative and Liberal. I will reject being called a leftist because I abhor much of what they stand for. The same thing for the Alt Right. I will reject that descriptor too, because many of the Alt Right believe in things that seem stupid to me.
This confusion is part of the reason we see Tribalism so much in modern politics. The water is so muddy with different beliefs - people congregate and establish groups of mostly-similar thinkers, and those groups are fluid. The identity of the group is a lot easier to grasp than the ideology.
Trump himself could have been considered a blue dog Democrat, or even a full blown liberal twenty or thirty years ago.
All that said, it boils down to this. There are dividing lines between Leftists and Liberals. Same with Conservatives and the Alt-Right.
Liberals and Leftists disagree on how to use political power, with Leftists wanting government to usurp power and rapidly force the changes they want onto the people at nearly any cost, while Liberals want govern within the framework of the Constitution to guide the country gradually into changes that benefit everyone in the long term. Leftists want to shut down law enforcement, and imagine some new way to police the nation. Liberals want to enact stricter guidelines for training and monitoring law enforcement personnel.
It's so damn complex to talk about it, but, again...
TLDR: Politics isn't binary, it's all shades of black and while.