Here is a hopeful primer on how I see the difference between liberals and leftist:
I live in the San Francisco-Bay Area. As everyone knows, San Francisco has a large population of homeless people and pandhandlers. There was just an article on the Chronicle webpage about the constant stench at the 16th Mission St Bart Station Plaza because many homeless people use it as a open-air restroom despite the public restroom booth right on the plaza.
A few years ago, there was a proposition ballot for a law called sit-lie which would allow police to move along loiterers more easily and issue civil fines.
I am very sympathetic to the plight of the homeless and believe in FDR's economic bill of rights. However, I still voted for sit/lie because that sometimes the pandhandler problem gets to be too much. You can pass four or five pandhandlers in a block or two. I have many friends who said they don't like going to certain areas of the city because of the likelihood of being harassed by panhandlers. Most other San Franciscans felt the same way.
However a lot of people screamed bloody murder at sit/lie and how it is all fascism. To me, the people who screamed bloody murder at sit/lie are leftists and simply not interested in any pragmatic solution. I support the welfare state and human dignity but not the right to harass people on the street for money.
While I think good policy is important, I am not fan of the Ygelias wonk school that much either. Though as others have pointed out, he is much more of a neo-liberal on economic issues. I disagree with his general assessment of tech-utopia, the end of retail, and growth growth growth. Also when it comes to antitrust law, he has no idea what he is talking about. FWIW, I am a new antitrust lawyer and am still learning but have at least studied and have some real world experience in the field.
FWIW, I do have a problem that many liberals seem to shy away from moral arguments and rhetoric but I do not think Elizabeth Warren is one of them. She might be a wonk but she can get down a meet people and do retail politics. I think a lot of liberals have an adverse reaction to the kind of populism as done by Sarah Palin and company for valid and invalid reasons. But for counter examples: FDR, LBJ, The Kennedy Brothers, pre-2004 John Kerry, Paul Wellstone, Gary Ackerman, Mario Cuomo, and Al Franken are or were very good at talking about liberalism as moralism. Based on my friends, I think you will start seeing a reemergence of a non-wonk left.
He has some good points but there are non-economic considerations that are equally important like how retail helps form a community and does not allow us to completely to become pod people.
Who are most? I often hear leftist as an insult from the Talk Radio set and they generally seem to mean people who still secretly wish the Weather Underground was more successful.
Maybe this is just me personally but to me a leftist is a Jacobin-type. I see politics as more of a circle than a line and there are lots of overlaps (especially in anti-democratic tendencies) among the farthest reaches of the left and the right. Perhaps I am thinking of the old debates between the Fabian socialists and the more radicals who wanted revolution. There are some reforms that I want that can be described as socialist but I would only achieve them through the democratic process and ballot box.
All of this is going to come with varying degree of confirmation bias. In my mind, liberalism is not a utopian-based worldview but to many conservatives it is. Many conservatives seem to pride themselves on being realistic about human nature while liberals are children and idealists. Though utopianists exists on all sides. My most basic worldview is that utopianism is a myth. There is not one happy solution that will turn everything into rainbows. This does not make regulation bad though. Just because a law does not get 100 percent perfect results, does not make unnecessary.
I'm going to take beef with this. A liberal (by which I mean a New Deal-Great Society type, not classical) is not necessarily a leftist. I am not Trotsky or Lenin or Mao trying to overthrow a government. My political heroes are people like Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Nye Bevan, Michael Foot, and Eugene Victor Debs. You can disagree with these people and some might be more left than others but they all worked under the rules of Democratic order and rule of law. They did not commit acts of terrorism nor did they claim elections in which they lost were invalid. Eugene Victor Debs very principally went to jail over his dissent on WWI.
By using leftist, you call everyone to the left of center out as being a secret supporter of a Robspierre styled reign of terror while not similarly calling out the far right for their rhetorical excess. As someone else said above, there are large elements of the American Right-wing who simply seem to view support for any kind of center-left politics as being anti-American and we are still aliens. This is simply wrong.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Polarization and Persuasion”
Here is a hopeful primer on how I see the difference between liberals and leftist:
I live in the San Francisco-Bay Area. As everyone knows, San Francisco has a large population of homeless people and pandhandlers. There was just an article on the Chronicle webpage about the constant stench at the 16th Mission St Bart Station Plaza because many homeless people use it as a open-air restroom despite the public restroom booth right on the plaza.
A few years ago, there was a proposition ballot for a law called sit-lie which would allow police to move along loiterers more easily and issue civil fines.
I am very sympathetic to the plight of the homeless and believe in FDR's economic bill of rights. However, I still voted for sit/lie because that sometimes the pandhandler problem gets to be too much. You can pass four or five pandhandlers in a block or two. I have many friends who said they don't like going to certain areas of the city because of the likelihood of being harassed by panhandlers. Most other San Franciscans felt the same way.
However a lot of people screamed bloody murder at sit/lie and how it is all fascism. To me, the people who screamed bloody murder at sit/lie are leftists and simply not interested in any pragmatic solution. I support the welfare state and human dignity but not the right to harass people on the street for money.
I believe in ordered liberty and equality.
"
I read that post.
While I think good policy is important, I am not fan of the Ygelias wonk school that much either. Though as others have pointed out, he is much more of a neo-liberal on economic issues. I disagree with his general assessment of tech-utopia, the end of retail, and growth growth growth. Also when it comes to antitrust law, he has no idea what he is talking about. FWIW, I am a new antitrust lawyer and am still learning but have at least studied and have some real world experience in the field.
FWIW, I do have a problem that many liberals seem to shy away from moral arguments and rhetoric but I do not think Elizabeth Warren is one of them. She might be a wonk but she can get down a meet people and do retail politics. I think a lot of liberals have an adverse reaction to the kind of populism as done by Sarah Palin and company for valid and invalid reasons. But for counter examples: FDR, LBJ, The Kennedy Brothers, pre-2004 John Kerry, Paul Wellstone, Gary Ackerman, Mario Cuomo, and Al Franken are or were very good at talking about liberalism as moralism. Based on my friends, I think you will start seeing a reemergence of a non-wonk left.
He has some good points but there are non-economic considerations that are equally important like how retail helps form a community and does not allow us to completely to become pod people.
Who are most? I often hear leftist as an insult from the Talk Radio set and they generally seem to mean people who still secretly wish the Weather Underground was more successful.
Maybe this is just me personally but to me a leftist is a Jacobin-type. I see politics as more of a circle than a line and there are lots of overlaps (especially in anti-democratic tendencies) among the farthest reaches of the left and the right. Perhaps I am thinking of the old debates between the Fabian socialists and the more radicals who wanted revolution. There are some reforms that I want that can be described as socialist but I would only achieve them through the democratic process and ballot box.
All of this is going to come with varying degree of confirmation bias. In my mind, liberalism is not a utopian-based worldview but to many conservatives it is. Many conservatives seem to pride themselves on being realistic about human nature while liberals are children and idealists. Though utopianists exists on all sides. My most basic worldview is that utopianism is a myth. There is not one happy solution that will turn everything into rainbows. This does not make regulation bad though. Just because a law does not get 100 percent perfect results, does not make unnecessary.
"
"Leftists v. conservatives"
I'm going to take beef with this. A liberal (by which I mean a New Deal-Great Society type, not classical) is not necessarily a leftist. I am not Trotsky or Lenin or Mao trying to overthrow a government. My political heroes are people like Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Nye Bevan, Michael Foot, and Eugene Victor Debs. You can disagree with these people and some might be more left than others but they all worked under the rules of Democratic order and rule of law. They did not commit acts of terrorism nor did they claim elections in which they lost were invalid. Eugene Victor Debs very principally went to jail over his dissent on WWI.
By using leftist, you call everyone to the left of center out as being a secret supporter of a Robspierre styled reign of terror while not similarly calling out the far right for their rhetorical excess. As someone else said above, there are large elements of the American Right-wing who simply seem to view support for any kind of center-left politics as being anti-American and we are still aliens. This is simply wrong.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.