Progressives (Liberals)

You guys make opposite sides of the same coin. Both views have points of validity.

Edgar, none of these pseudo scientists who call for the elimination of our CO2 emissions and, as is the case with most of those usually quoted, also call for the elimination of emissions free nuclear power has any claim of credibility.

The great majority of renewable power around the world. and in this country. comes from dams & hydro electric plants, which are out of fashion with environmentalists now. More to the point nearly all of the good locations for them have already been developed - not much more growth can be attained .)
The remaining wind & solar renewable power is but a small fraction of that generated in either dams or nuclear plants. That means that if we are to shut down the remaining nuclear plants, as these same folks wish, the rate of increase of wind and solar power worldwide will have to more than triple (a very unlikely prospect) , just to stay even with the decline of nuclear power. The goals they set are laughably out of synch with their own expressed desires. The fact today is that, in this country and in Europe, nuclear power is being replaced by coal generated power in Europe and gas generation in the United States, and our emissions will soon begin rising as a result.

These folks are serious only about reducing the use of nuclear and fossil fuels, and not the welfare of the humanity that depends on them. Interestingly the latter and the decline in standards of living that will result from their policies are not addressed by them at all.

george
Your first sentence is:
1) another example of the tu quoque fallacy. I gather you are either so familiar with it in what you read or listen to and in your own thinking that you are unwilling to deem the thing legitimately categorized as fallacious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

2) is another claim you insist must be true because you have read it somewhere or heard it somewhere and have adopted with certainty but for which you offer up no evidence or any other support for the claim whatsoever. You just sort of yell it.

There is a way out of this. You could locate a or some sources from which you have been led to your claim that it is true. Then that or those sources can be investigated to see if they merit credibility. This is so simple a step and I'm at a total loss to imagine why you don't do so.

Nah. Warning Fox viewers (meaning Republican supporters of Trump) that there is a civil war going on and then instructing them to gather up their weapons isn't something done by someone who is sane (unless they just want to continue playing a role at Fox because the money is very good - which wouldn't be a better personality type).

I guess the conservative attacked in Berkley did not hear that.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272955/jussie-smollett-wasnt-assaulted-conservative-dan

Nonsense. My first sentence above is a proposition, not a syllogism. The paragraphs that follow amplify the very convincing arguments for it. Perhaps you should read your textbook more carefully.

The point is that so called scientists who both call for the abandonment of nuclear power and the early attainment of an emissions-free environment contradict their own stated objections and/or imply an enormous (but unacknowledged) drop in the human standard of living (possibly including mass starvation) to attain it. From a scientific perspective these omissions are illogical - one can't simultaneously argue that one must do "A" to protect the interests of humanity, and also insist that "B" is done, when doing "B" makes : "A" unattainable.

I'm not going to yell back and forth with you on any of this stuff. Perhaps others might want to do that but not me.

Retreat is indeed advisable in some cases. However, I'm not and wasn't "yelling" at you. I was instead addressing the points you had made or offered here, presumably for our collective discussion.

Then start coming up with some credible support for your truth claims.

This is a conversation, not an academic paper. With emphasis on the word "credible" you are as guilty of this supposed fault as am I. Nearly all the stuff you post here is from the blogs and opinion pieces of committed advocates of issues you support. Hardly admissible. That's hypocrisy writ large.

The facts I recited above regarding power generation are readily available to all.

But it is not the sort of conversation I have any interest in engaging.

Sounds good. Keep your word for a change.

If I did that I apologize to the world.

Copied from PDiddie's blog

News flash: whoever the Democrats nominate is going to be called a socialist by Trump. For that matter, every Democrat running in 2020 is going to be called a socialist by her/his Republican opponent. Better start getting over that **** NOW, Democrats. You can own it or you can get blown away by it.

Speaking for the world, we forgive you.

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True.

Also true.

Not nearly so simple, for all the reasons I argued earlier. What if, for example, polling by all the campaigns revealed that the use of the label "socialist" was so poorly understood and so weighted with negative connotations, would it be smart to self-apply that label without modifiers (eg "I am a social democrat") if that polled substantially better?

I already mentioned how I handle it. Just passing PDiddie's posted stuff along from time to time. He's much tougher than me, but I mostly agree with his positions.

That may be true, but I strongly suspect the Democrat leadership will try hard to avoid it.

There's been a lot of sometimes tedious discussion here about just what the term Socialism means, and the fact that some non socialist, capitalist countries like Sweden and Norway have often (incorrectly) been called socialist because of their high taxes and well-developed social welfare systems. One can argue about the respective definitions of socialism and capitalism, but the fact is the characteristics of governments operating under each label overlap in some areas. One can say however that governments with direct control of the means of production. or which, through comprehensive and active regulation, tend to control the major economic activities of the country, tend to be socialist, while those that involve the relatively free movement of capital, broad economic initiatives on the part of individuals and their corporations, with lower taxers and relatively less restraint and regulation, tend to be capitalist.

The new wave of very enthusiastic supporters of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders in the last election, quickly followed by the emergence of new, fairly radical, figures in the Democrat Congressional delegation, all appear to embrace the term socialism, but do so rather vaguely in terms of the specific thing they propose. They are clearly the most vocal and energetic group currently working to influence the growing list of declared Democrat candidate for next year's primaries. Will this growing flock of candidates echo this new rhetoric, and will they (for example) adopt the goals of the "Green New Deal" advocated by these folks? I suspect that they will, in the main, make vague approving statements about it, but will stop short of adopting its key elements as part of their proposed platforms. Moreover I suspect that as time passes many of the surviving/leading candidates will increasingly distance themselves from it. Bernie and a few other's will embrace it, but they are not likely to prevail in the primaries.

Why? Because they want to win an election, and free enterprise, a high degree of individual freedom and limited government remain central values of most American voters.

One way to look at it.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/trump-wants-you-to-be-afraid-of-socialism/

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are reviving the Red Scare as a central tactic of his 2020 campaign to retain the White House. In Trump’s view, a socialist system is synonymous with poverty and despair, government coercion, domination and control. It is antithetical to liberty and independence. This approach might seem curious, given that interest in socialist ideas is at an-all time high in the United States, as ordinary people react to an out-of-control capitalist system designed to enrich the rich. Trump and his party are betting that good, old-fashioned American individualism will overcome any desire for greater collectivism and more government-funded social programs.

If there is any doubt that this is guiding his path to reelection, Trump’s President’s Day speech on Venezuela is Exhibit A. During his roughly 30-minute address, Trump used the words “socialism,” “socialist,” “communism” or “communist” 36 times—roughly 1.2 times per minute. He echoed simplistic platitudes in an attempt to associate socialism with tyranny (“Socialism is about one thing only: power for the ruling class”). Trump first uttered the words, “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country” during his Feb. 5 State of the Union address, receiving wild applause—from both sides of the aisle. He repeated a version of that phrase on Monday:

[T]o those who would try to impose socialism on the United States, we again deliver a very simple message: America will never be a socialist country.
An earlier instance of the Trump White House exploring this strategy can be traced to a document published Oct. 23, 2018, by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, titled, “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism.” The document anxiously refers to how “[d]etailed policy proposals from self-declared socialists are gaining support in Congress and among much of the electorate.” It points out that “n a socialist system, the state decides the amount to be spent, how it is spent, and when and where the services are received by the consumer,” failing to mention that major monopolistic corporations often make such decisions for us in the current system.


The Republican Party has jumped on the anti-socialist bandwagon, fixating mostly on what it says are the enormous costs of progressive government programs (somehow never raising such questions about the bloated military budget), but also expressing horror at how “[f]or the first time in a lifetime, a wave of Democratic candidates are proudly calling themselves socialists.”

I have to admit it is a brilliant strategy. First, in conflating “socialism” with Venezuela, Trump makes the case that the U.S. is justified in rescuing Venezuelans from their government—fulfilling one of his latest foreign policy priorities. Second, demonizing “socialism” enables him and his party to denigrate the new, more progressive members of the Democratic Party who identify as democratic socialists. The GOP’s tactic is aimed at deepening an existing divide within the Democratic Party, which has long claimed progressive ideals but only recently begun to espouse them, thanks to the leadership of such self-described democratic socialists as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. And finally, by denouncing socialism, Trump and the GOP also undermine the socialist-style progressive policy proposals—such as Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal—that have gained steam in Congress and among the public.

There is a rich history of “the socialist” as a quintessentially American boogeyman. Irrational fears of socialists, communists, anarchists and pro-Soviet infiltrators overrunning the country destroyed many lives and careers in the 1920s and ’40s. There has never truly been a reconciliation or atonement for the two Red Scares, as they were called. Trump seems to be ushering in a third wave of anti-communist hysteria, to his political benefit. In fact, a newspaper editor in Alabama recently called for the Ku Klux Klan to engage in mass lynchings of Democrats because of the “socialist-communist ideology” prompting Democrats “to raise taxes in Alabama.”

This strategy puts left-leaning Democrats into the position of having to pick sides. Presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke have both asserted their allegiance to capitalism in recent days. Elizabeth Warren—widely seen as the best leftist alternative to Bernie Sanders, famously said a year ago, “I am a capitalist to my bones.” If the only politicians proudly claiming to be socialists are a handful of stalwarts like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, their most-favored policy proposals can be more effectively demolished in the political realm.

What none of the detractors of socialism (including those who claim to be leftist capitalists) likes to draw attention to is the fact that we already have a partially socialist country. Such programs as Social Security and Medicare, as well as our public schools, parks and libraries, are all products of a socialist style of government. The issue is not—as Trump likes to put it—whether we will become a socialist country, but how socialist can or should we be? We accept that elderly Americans—but not all Americans—deserve Medicare. The question of “why?” is always met with an answer involving affordability, never morality.

When pointing to examples like Cuba and Venezuela, critics of socialism hate to admit that U.S. policies aimed at isolating those nations have crippled their economies. There is less compelling evidence of the “evils” of socialism in such countries as Denmark, Norway, Sweden and other Scandinavian nations; free-market fundamentalist outlets like The Heritage Foundation engage in mental gymnastics to claim that those nations are not truly socialist. Or if they are, it is because they are first and foremost capitalist, or because their people want a socialist government—but Americans do not.

It is possible that Americans will fall for the Trump-GOP trick of using socialism as a political tool. As Trump has successfully demonstrated, if you repeat a lie often enough, to enough people, it begins sounding like the truth. Just as he has conned millions of his supporters into believing there is some sort of violent crime wave washing over our borders with Mexico, or that he is the focus of a “witch hunt” by the special counsel investigators, he can and will convince a significant faction of Americans that socialism is evil and that the U.S. could turn into Venezuela if a Democrat wins the White House in 2020.

But unlike the relatively abstract problems of immigrant crime and federal investigations, Americans know intimately the failures of our current economic system, as measured by their personal bank accounts and pocketbooks. Socialism does not cause medical bankruptcies, burdensome college debt, high housing costs, stagnant wages or any of those markers of economic insecurity and struggle we know all too well. Our current capitalist system does. Perhaps when Trump supporters and Republican voters see this year’s tax returns, they will understand just how their politicians conned them into thinking that the 2017 landmark “tax reform” law was yet another rigging of the economy to benefit the rich.

The most effective way to tackle Trump’s propaganda effort to deploy “socialism” as a dirty word is to counter with how capitalism has failed. Rather than defend the current system staunchly, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does (“We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is”), or demand tweaks to a failed system, as Warren does, it is time to hammer home how bad the system is and demand much more from government.

After all, Americans overwhelmingly favor higher taxes on the rich. If implemented, such taxes could fund a Medicare-style health program for all Americans, or better public schools, broader welfare programs or a government green jobs program. It doesn’t matter what you called such a trend—socialist, democratic socialism or a social democracy. The fact is that unfettered capitalism is antithetical to the well-being of ordinary people, and our current system—rigged to favor the wealthy over the rest of us—proves that.

If Trump wants to associate socialism with Venezuela, his opponents would do well to simply and boldly associate the U.S. with capitalism—and all the ways it has failed us.
Sonali Kolhatkar
Columnist