(12-21-2020, 02:08 AM)americus 2.0 Wrote:

(12-20-2020, 07:24 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: I studied mostly American history and Ancient history.  

My original comment was, ordinary liberals, not far-left radicals, but the mass of liberals just to the left of center, are not racists and the policies they espouse are not racist, even though we may not like those policies.  

Personally, I think a lot of the policies liberals espouse are discriminatory, and for that reason very bad policy.  But racism and discrimination are not the same thing, because the policies they espouse are not based on the belief that one group is superior or inferior to the other; the policies they espouse are based on the belief that one group needs help to overcome external disadvantages and achieve equality.  

Then somehow, we went down a rabbit hole about whether LBJ was a racist and whether the Civil Rights Act was supported by racists, and whether the Democratic Party is historically more racist than the Republican Party, which is so far off topic from what I was talking about, that I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, because I don't think it's relevant, and it's a waste of my energy.  

That's like a lot of discussions on this political message board- people argue smaller and smaller points and go way off track from the original thing they were discussing.  And eventually it gets into name-calling and personal attacks as the participants get frustrated with being unable to "win."

The article was clearly written regarding leftist liberals/radicals even if the author simply referred to the as "the left". That's the problem most people have- they can't (or won't) distinguish the radical left (progressives and neo-marxists) from the traditional left, nor do they distinguish the far right (hardline conservatives with some of the more extreme religious groups, neocon?) from the traditional right. Then you have the mixed bag of crazy. 

You're trying to have a discussion about traditional democrats/liberals and the rest of us are talking about leftist liberals. It doesn't matter if, as you say and I partially agree, the majority of the left isn't racist when the ones who are racist are making the most noise and actually being endorsed by politicians by their silence. Those riots in Portland, Seattle, Wisconsin and other locations should have been firmly denounced by Biden as a presidential candidate, by Harris as VP candidate, and the mayors and governors of all those cities and states but they said nothing. Crickets. 

Until the two parties rid themselves of the radicals on both sides they will continue to be hijacked for a cause that isn't even theirs.

Small nitpick, but conservatives need to stop referring to progressives as liberals. Liberals are far more in line with conservatives. Liberalism is all about freedom and the individual. The debate between liberals and conservatives used to be based largely around federalism and anti-federalism, but we shared all the values around freedom of choice. Think Bill Maher. Progressives do not care about individual freedom. They think they have the answers, and if people comply things will get better. Think AOC. Two totally different animals.

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