The Lief Reservoir of Simple Truths and Smart One-Liners

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...any legal system where rich people are able to buy more/better legal representation than poor people is incompatible with most basic ideas of liberal democracy.

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People with ironically coloured avatars are scum.

That should be going into the Irony thread.

How dare you question my commitment to the party of Lincoln!

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Gosh, will this be the start of a bronze mine?

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HELL YEAH

I have long maintained that anybody using the words "fiscally conservative, but socially liberal" in any capacity other than to mock the phrase should be banned ASAP.

And what is wrong with being that mix?

It means you're stupid enough to actually believe that social and fiscal issues are independent from one another.

Yeah we get it you hate us move on to something else.

I'm not going to move on.  It's people like you who gutted my state's budget and stopped my hardworking parents from getting a raise in an entire decade.  It's people like you who've destroyed the public sector and made college completely unaffordable, causing me to be tens of thousands of dollars in debt, unemployed, and too poor to receive proper health care.  It's people like you who cause my friends to suffer so much, just because they were unfortunate enough to be born into a family that wasn't rich.  

You people literally destroy the livelihoods of millions of Americans, sh**t all over marginalized communities, and then expect us to tolerate you because you happen to think marijuana is cool?   off.  This country would be a better place if every "fiscal conservative, social liberal" were rounded up, shot in the back of the head, and buried in mass graves like the animals they are.

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Eh, I'm not complaining about people with opposing political views. They are fine and necessary. What is neither fine nor necessary is the utterly loathesome and contemptible act of perpetuating the crime against semantics that is "fiscally conservative, but socially liberal" and using it as your ludicrous moniker. That phrase and its utterance must be treated like Japanese knotweed and shown no mercy.

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k.....what phrase or title should someone describe themselves if they are for gay marriage (before most Dems), for legal weed (before most Dems), thinks prostitution and gambling should be legal but also think free trade is good, believes that private charity works better than govt handouts, and generally thinks lower taxes are better than higher taxes?


(and for the love of Og, don't pick apart the things above and explain why they are wrong, immoral or stupid)

One slight improvement would be "economically right-wing and socially libertarian". I mean that at least makes sense, although it is pithy and annoying. Why do people even need catchy advertising slogans to advertise their beliefs? Why not settle it to a cute jingle why you're at it?

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Political descriptors are toxic nonsense, yes. For the vast majority of people "personal political descriptors" are little more than mind-numbing thought-terminating cliches, carefully designed to avoid nuance. It's why I try to avoid them if I can (sometimes I fail, but nobody's perfect, of course)

 In the case of my bete noir FCBSL, it's especially meaningless because it's one of the vaguest descriptions around. Any political description that could being Gary Johnsln and Michael Bloomberg under the same category has to be a bit nonsensical. It doesn't even work as, like, a cutesy way for libertarians to describe themselve as, as sparkey seems to advocate, because "socially liberal" covers a large amount of policies that most libertarians would rather chop their own fingers off than endorse. (E.g. In an American context, a "socially liberal" policy on, say, gun control would not go down well in the Ron Paul 2016 rally)

In fact, I find it hard to describe which part of the phrase I hate more. I've already dissected the idiotic catchphrase "fiscal conservative" a phrase that yields no logical meaning beyond "oh I don't like debt very much". "Socially liberal" is pretty bad as well because it normally covers a list of about five current "social issues" currently on the tellybox, arbitrarily sorts one side as "liberal" and the other as "conservative", and pretends the aggregate result is a meaningful or somehow useful descriptor. But perhaps the worst is tha horrible conjunction "but" because it transforms the whole phrase into a really astoundingly smug affair. "You'll never guess what I am guys, I'm X but Y!!" as a proud FCBSL will tell you, in a way that makes it sound like they'd just discovered the Grand Unified Theory. That's a level of smugness normally only plumbed by Trotskyists, which is never a good look.

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I don't think you were quite finished with your post when you clicked "Post".

?

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One slight improvement would be "economically right-wing and socially libertarian". I mean that at least makes sense, although it is pithy and annoying. Why do people even need catchy advertising slogans to advertise their beliefs? Why not settle it to a cute jingle why you're at it?

"Are you liberal or conservative?"
"I'm actually pretty libertarian."
"What's libertarian?"
"I'm economically right-wing and socially libertarian."
"Uh... but what's libertarian?"
"Well, it means I'm economically right-wing and socially libertarian."
"You keep defining libertarian as libertarian, I just want to know what that means."
"ARGH, I'M NOT ALLOWED TO SAY FISCALLY CONSERVATIVE AND SOCIALLY LIBERAL BECAUSE IT UPSETS INTERNET LEFTISTS"

Just say you want less government intervention jesus christ is that so hard.

Or say you hate poor people and your ideology pretty much revolves around being a pothead who doesn't want to pay taxes.

Can you make a single political opinion without resorting to extreme hyperbole and hatred for those who disagree?

I don't speak hyperbole, I speak the unabashed truth.

I mean if you're trolling, then fair enough; but it must be said that it is normally an astute political move to understand how your ideological opponent's minds work, and "they just hate the poor" (while in same cases having the grain of truth) does not hack it.

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Oldiesfreak, you aren't using this thread correctly.

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The Turkish military may be secular, but it sure as hell isn't liberal by any functional definition, as the periods of time in which Turkey was under military rule in living memory can demonstrate. Kemalism is actually a pretty scary doctrine.

Should be forwarded to the media asap