What is keeping the coalitions together? The anti-nuclear stance of the left is the biggest weapon that could be deployed if one thought that warming would lead to catastrophe. I infer that nobody believes it will, and that nobody cares about the other tradeoffs you correctly show. Something else fundamentally unites the left: The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.
At this point I tend to believe they merely want power. The power to bend others to their will. Policies and 'goals' don't really matter. And since most of them know little if any history, they all tend to believe they'l' have the boots, spurs, and whips and be in the saddle.
> The anti-nuclear stance of the left is the biggest weapon that could be deployed if one thought that warming would lead to catastrophe.
The core of the Green movement is a reaction against the type of massive technocratic systems popular during the first half of the 20th Century. Nuclear power plants are very much an example of this kind of complex technocratic system. They're say and clean as long as nothing goes wrong, then well...
Not really. That was something that got globed on. Helped by the fact that while the Boomers were growing up the word "Capitalism" was used to refer to the highly technocraticly managed post-New Deal economy.
The Trump coalition is falling apart. In 2016, he said Evangelicals gotta vote for him, cause of the supreme court. Well, they don't anymore. They already won Dobbs v Jackson. And that's unlikely to be overturned.
Don't underestimate ol' Clarence. I read somewhere that many black men die young, but once they make it "over the hump", so to speak, there are many black centenarians. Just look at Thomas Sowell. He'll be around forever!
And even if Clarence Thomas dies and Biden replaces him with a super-liberal justice, Dobbs is still not likely to be overturned. Even if Justice Roberts didn't wanna completely overturn Roe, he believes in Stare Decisis. So, he won't wanna see decisions bounced around like a ping-pong ball. He'll prolly vote to maintain Dobbs. Dobbs is safe. Especially if Evangelicals vote in pro-life Republican Senators who will not confirm Biden's anti-life scotus nominees. And they're well aware they can split their ballot.
hWhat might happen: Dems will try to legalize abortion on a federal level, overriding state law. hWhilst a temporary setback, I think this might actually end up being the nail in the coffin for abortion in America. Right now, it's kinda an open question: the States can set their own abortion laws. But can the Federal government? Once you open that door, you open the door to a federal abortion BAN. And pro-life groups will mobilize to make that happen.
Plus, evangelicals are sick of Trump's BS. Many evangelicals are non-hwhite and many hwhite evangelicals embrace their non-white brothers and sisters in Christ. Trump is... openly racist. Plus, I don't think Evangelicals really see him as one of them. They're not supposed to judge the sincerity of another's conversion, but come on... The man doesn't have a humble heart, he's probably a big philanderer, etc.
Evangelicals don't need him and don't particularly like him. I think he will lose in 2024.
You don't sound like you know many actual Evangelicals. I have no religion to speak of, but I come from an area just full of Evangelicals, I know many, have several in my family, and speak with them relatively requently. I have heard, at this point, not a single Evangelical who who voted for Trump in the past but now won't. They may (even probably) exist but they appear to be rare. And the numbers of Evanglicals are perhaps large, but not huge, so any 'defection' from Trump by tiny portion of them seems unlikely to have much effect.
Plus you apparently overlook that a great many Christians of all types feel under siege from the Left. It's not just Evangelicals who back Trump. A great many Catholics do as well.
And, I have never, ever met an Evangelical (out of hundreds, even thousands) who was a racist. I am sure they must exist, but race is not as important to them as behavior. Skin color is very low on any list of traits they pay attention to.
Anyway, neither the pro- nor the anti- abortion group is likely in the next few decades to get a bill favoring their choice through either House of Congress, let alone passed into law.
However, I do agree that probably no Evangelical sees Trump as one of them, because he is not, and doesn't claim to be. He merely says he will be a better choice for them than Biden has been, and they agree. So do I. He could hardly be worse for them.
And you should remember that Evangelicals tend to be serious about the Fallen state of humans. They don't expect nor demand perfection from anyone, not even the President of the US.
You're right. I don't actually know too many American Evangelicals or hwhat they think. I'm a Canadian Evangelical. And this is hwhat *I* think. Perhaps I am projecting a little... 😛
I suppose that could explain a lot. I taught college in Detroit Metro for 20+ years, and we had a fair number of Canadian students. I found them to be reasonably distinct from US students in some ways. For sure their Canadian experience growing up rarely mapped 1-on-1 to the US experience.
And maybe the term Evangelical isn't quite the same. I grew up in Midwest farming country. The Evangelicals were all "low church" Baptists, Assembly of God, and the like. They frequently get called "Bible pounders" but they aren't really, in my experience like that. We also had a reasonable number of Pentacostals of one stripe or another.
> The Trump coalition is falling apart. In 2016, he said Evangelicals gotta vote for him, cause of the supreme court. Well, they don't anymore. They already won Dobbs v Jackson. And that's unlikely to be overturned.
BTW, is throwing people who helped you under the bus really a virtue among Canadian Evangelicals?
> Evangelicals don't need him and don't particularly like him.
Evangelicals don't want their children encouraged to have themselves castrated, despite the Democrats' push to make that kind of encouragement mandatory in public schools.
"The modern American left is also a coalition. Someone who thinks of himself as a leftist is probably in favor of increasing environmental regulation, redistribution in favor of the poor, greater government regulation of business, gay rights, feminism, prohibition of private discrimination on any of a considerable variety of grounds, foreign economic aid. He is probably against aggressive foreign policy, anti-nuclear, suspicious of law enforcement and the criminal justice system."
That's why I'm not on any teams, but I'll join any coalition that is willing to have me.
Hmm. In 1997 a young journalist discovered an interesting coalition. He discovered 'nativists' as a political group and tried to dig their ideological basis only to find that the anti-immigrant "blood and soil" type people were actually pro-abortion anti-life people. In short the CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA etc. kind of organizations have links with Planned Parenthood.
That young journalist with conservative leaning was outraged that these conservatives were in fact pro-abortion people. Name of that journalist was Tucker Carlson.
It is pretty interesting that something like CIS (Center of Immigration Studies) which is behemently anti-immigrant and provides people for Trump administration has same roots as Planned Parenthood, one of the key democratic leaning institution.
While there are some ideology coalitions looks like some people are good at doing opposite, appear in both boats with different avatar but with same end goal.
Finally, I agree that people push things that aren't necessarily true in order to advance their causes. And it's kinda sad. I can offer some examples, based on my experience in the pro-life movement:
* The 2017 Canada Summer Jobs "kerfuffle". The government of Canada subsidizes summer jobs for students. They give grants for charities, non-profits, etc. to hire summer interns. Including to faith-based organizations. Like Christian Summer Camps. (It's worth noting that Canada doesn't have an "establishment" clause to prevent government from giving money to churches or religious orgs.) Apparently, local MPs (like congressmen) had a lot of say over hwhich orgs in their area got summer jobs grants. And pro-life activist organizations would hire summer interns to do pro-life activism all summer. If the organization happened to be based in a riding (electoral district) with a pro-life Conservative MP, they might get summer jobs grants. And pro-life orgs would purposely headquarter themselves in such conservative ridings. In 2017, rabidly "pro-choice" PM Justin Trudeau decided to ban pro-life orgs from getting summer jobs grants. He initially did this by adding an attestation on the application form saying something like: "We respect Charter rights and other rights including reproductive rights..." Pro-life organizations got up in arms cause they were losing their summer jobs grants. But they realized, correctly, that most Canadians are not pro-life so they made a scandal about how this would affect any faith-based organization. For example, if a Christian summer camp for disabled kids wanted funding to hire camp counsellors, they might be denied if their particular denomination happens to be pro-life. The government later clarified the attestation to specifically say that they would only deny funding if the core mandate of the organization or the particular job they were asking to be subsidized was to end abortion. They gave specific examples of jobs or organizations that would not be denied funding, including religious summer camps run by pro-life denominations. Yet, the pro-life rabble-rousers continued to complain and say that was not good enough. But many Christian orgs (including from pro-life denominations) did (quietly) apply for summer jobs funding and were granted such funding.
* Post-Abortion-Syndrome: Pro-lifers want people to believe that having an abortion can cause all sorts of mental health issues for women. "Pro-choicers" want people to believe that there are absolutely NO mental health risks associated with abortion. The truth is something in between. But generally closer to the "pro-choice" view.
Adult women who have legal abortions for the first time, GENERALLY have no worse mental health than adult women hwho carry unplanned pregnancies to term. BUT, there are several groups of women who are more likely to have mental health issues because of abortion, including minors, women who have multiple abortions, women who were pressured or coerced into having the abortion, women who have generally pro-life spiritual beliefs, etc. These are a lot of women! Both sides misrepresent the data to support their position.
* Dangers of abortion: Before Dobbs, many pro-life groups realized that they could use government to do hwhat government does best: killing an industry through regulation. And so they favoured all sorts of unnecessary regulations on abortion clinics in the guise of protecting women's health. But really, although there are some awful tragedies, first-trimester abortion generally IS safer than childbirth ... for the mother. Obviously not for the baby! As someone hwho is pro-life libertarian-ish, I was amused to see so many leftists decry over-burdensome regulation of the abortion industry.
With things like these, on the one hand, I want my side to win. I want to see an end to abortion. I want it to be banned and unthinkable. I want less babies to be aborted. But I don't feel comfortable lying to people to make that happen. It's not just the immorality of lying, per se, but simply that it can hurt our credibility. If a pro-life organization said things that were found to be untrue, it's gonna be harder to convince people that we're being honest with them when we say that an embryo is a living human organism, for example. Yet, this "misinformation" DOES help us... hWhat to do? My brother had a good suggestion: Find some "useful idiots" who will go around spreading disinformation for you. Don't let it come directly from reputable pro-life orgs. If the disinformation takes root, it can help you. If people find out it's not true, it will be the reputation of the "useful idiots" that will be tarnished, not the reputation of pro-life orgs. idk. Seems a bit Machiavellian, but it might work! 😛😂
> classical liberals in the old conservative coalition mostly supported an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy, reflects tribalism, us vs them thinking, more than intellectual consistency.
I thought the old classical liberals supported an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy because they, you know, opposed communism.
As for States rights vs national rights, etc. I think generally having decisions made on as local a level as possible is probably the best way to get hwhat we want. It's hard to get a hwhole country to change, but if we could get one state to do hwhat we want, then we could just move to that state. But ultimately, it's the hWHAT that matters not the HOW. I thought a lot about this. As you may have noticed from previous comments, I'm STRONGLY pro-life. (I'm saying that as context for hwhat I'm about to say next, not to start a debate on that topic, but I will not shy away from the debate if any of y'all want it.) I thought a lot about the UN, the EU or supra-national organizations like that. I would hate them if they actively tried to force countries to legalize abortion. But I would LOVE them if they banned abortion world-wide. Given they don't seem to do either and are, especially in the case of the UN, pretty weak. I don't have very strong opinions about the UN.
I am actually slightly in favour of the EU because they have open immigration and free trade between member states whilst still letting Malta ban abortion.
Taking it a step further, I don't even really feel strongly about democracy. I did a thought experiment a hwhile back: If I had to choose between:
* Country A: Which had all the policies I like: abortion ban, free speech, open immigration, low taxes, low regulation, general freedom, etc. but was an absolute dictatorship. No elections. No voting. At all.
* vs. Country B: Which had free, legal abortion, high taxes, lots of restriction on freedom of speech, many restrictions on immigration, lots of stupid regulations, etc. but it was a democracy (Basically Canada)
... I would choose country A in a heartbeat!
The right decisions, the right policies are important, regardless of hwho makes them. That's hwhy I think the following are kinda foolish:
- Libertarians hwho oppose States forcing cities to have less restrictive zoning, simply because this is being imposed from the state level rather than decided locally
- Anti-colonialists like Manuel Quezon: “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans.” 🙄
That being said, there are certain principles that I hold dear and don't just favour as a means to an end. For example, Free Speech. Even if I was living in a pro-life country, I still think that "pro-choicers" ought to have the right to express themselves and protest and try to convince the powers that be to overturn the abortion ban.
So, I have some values that I guess I see as a "means to an end" and others that I see as an end in themselves.
Even my support for free-market capitalism is generally a "means to an end". I honestly see free-market capitalism as the best way to reduce absolute poverty worldwide. I truly believe free trade and free immigration would result in less people starving to death. A rising tide lifts all boats. But if someone could convince me that a particular government intervention might reduce absolute poverty without:
* Killing people. (Even unborn babies.)
* Confiscating more than half of people's wealth or income
> I am actually slightly in favour of the EU because they have open immigration and free trade between member states whilst still letting Malta ban abortion.
They also have a massive unaccountable bureaucracy.
...Critics point out that diverting large amounts of farm land and farm output from producing a lot of food to producing a little fuel will cause, indeed has already caused, a steep increase in price of maize, a food consumed mostly by poor people...
While a huge new market should raise prices, all you can say in fact is that prices may have fallen more slowly than they would have without the biofuels program. Prices for all major grains have fallen quite steadily for over 100 years, with only temporary bumps up, in the 1970s, and in the early years of this century. Basic foods are cheaper now than at any time in recorded history. Certainly there is no long-term 'steep increase' in grain prices in general, nor corn in particular.
> Nuclear power is another obvious problem for the left. It provides a way of replacing a large fraction of fossil fuel power with an alternative that does not produce CO2, using current technology at costs not wildly above current power costs, as France has demonstrated. Arguably, it provides the only such way.
It does not. Currently nuclear has the highest levelised cost of energy (
* Anti-Nuclear activism focused exclusively on nuclear risk and pollution (likely because they frankly don't care about costs).
* Nuclear energy used to be relatively and absolutely cheaper.
* Reaction against the German Greens stupid push to shit down nuclear nationwide (the most expensive part of nuclear energy is constuction, if you have your plant up and running, it is an absolute waste not to run out its lifecycle)
Nuclear power rose so much because of regulatory burden and rising labor costs. Perhaps - one might argue - if people chilled on the regulations nuclear would be affordable again. But France has not "demonstrated" that.
I didn't say nuclear power was less expensive than alternatives, I said it was not wildly more expensive. People seriously worried about global warming are willing to do costly things to prevent or slow it, but not that costly thing.
That could very well be the case. Go ahead, try and argue for the repeal of the more insane safety standards! But don't advocate for building nuclear *while those regulations are still on the books*, because it will cost you an arm and a leg.
I think that referring to these movements as "ideologies" is a mistake, a category error even. But I would refer to all movements that contain more than one person as coalitions, for reasons that should be obvious.
What is keeping the coalitions together? The anti-nuclear stance of the left is the biggest weapon that could be deployed if one thought that warming would lead to catastrophe. I infer that nobody believes it will, and that nobody cares about the other tradeoffs you correctly show. Something else fundamentally unites the left: The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.
At this point I tend to believe they merely want power. The power to bend others to their will. Policies and 'goals' don't really matter. And since most of them know little if any history, they all tend to believe they'l' have the boots, spurs, and whips and be in the saddle.
> The anti-nuclear stance of the left is the biggest weapon that could be deployed if one thought that warming would lead to catastrophe.
The core of the Green movement is a reaction against the type of massive technocratic systems popular during the first half of the 20th Century. Nuclear power plants are very much an example of this kind of complex technocratic system. They're say and clean as long as nothing goes wrong, then well...
The core of the Green movement is anti-capitalism.
Not really. That was something that got globed on. Helped by the fact that while the Boomers were growing up the word "Capitalism" was used to refer to the highly technocraticly managed post-New Deal economy.
The Trump coalition is falling apart. In 2016, he said Evangelicals gotta vote for him, cause of the supreme court. Well, they don't anymore. They already won Dobbs v Jackson. And that's unlikely to be overturned.
Don't underestimate ol' Clarence. I read somewhere that many black men die young, but once they make it "over the hump", so to speak, there are many black centenarians. Just look at Thomas Sowell. He'll be around forever!
And even if Clarence Thomas dies and Biden replaces him with a super-liberal justice, Dobbs is still not likely to be overturned. Even if Justice Roberts didn't wanna completely overturn Roe, he believes in Stare Decisis. So, he won't wanna see decisions bounced around like a ping-pong ball. He'll prolly vote to maintain Dobbs. Dobbs is safe. Especially if Evangelicals vote in pro-life Republican Senators who will not confirm Biden's anti-life scotus nominees. And they're well aware they can split their ballot.
hWhat might happen: Dems will try to legalize abortion on a federal level, overriding state law. hWhilst a temporary setback, I think this might actually end up being the nail in the coffin for abortion in America. Right now, it's kinda an open question: the States can set their own abortion laws. But can the Federal government? Once you open that door, you open the door to a federal abortion BAN. And pro-life groups will mobilize to make that happen.
Plus, evangelicals are sick of Trump's BS. Many evangelicals are non-hwhite and many hwhite evangelicals embrace their non-white brothers and sisters in Christ. Trump is... openly racist. Plus, I don't think Evangelicals really see him as one of them. They're not supposed to judge the sincerity of another's conversion, but come on... The man doesn't have a humble heart, he's probably a big philanderer, etc.
Evangelicals don't need him and don't particularly like him. I think he will lose in 2024.
You don't sound like you know many actual Evangelicals. I have no religion to speak of, but I come from an area just full of Evangelicals, I know many, have several in my family, and speak with them relatively requently. I have heard, at this point, not a single Evangelical who who voted for Trump in the past but now won't. They may (even probably) exist but they appear to be rare. And the numbers of Evanglicals are perhaps large, but not huge, so any 'defection' from Trump by tiny portion of them seems unlikely to have much effect.
Plus you apparently overlook that a great many Christians of all types feel under siege from the Left. It's not just Evangelicals who back Trump. A great many Catholics do as well.
And, I have never, ever met an Evangelical (out of hundreds, even thousands) who was a racist. I am sure they must exist, but race is not as important to them as behavior. Skin color is very low on any list of traits they pay attention to.
Anyway, neither the pro- nor the anti- abortion group is likely in the next few decades to get a bill favoring their choice through either House of Congress, let alone passed into law.
However, I do agree that probably no Evangelical sees Trump as one of them, because he is not, and doesn't claim to be. He merely says he will be a better choice for them than Biden has been, and they agree. So do I. He could hardly be worse for them.
And you should remember that Evangelicals tend to be serious about the Fallen state of humans. They don't expect nor demand perfection from anyone, not even the President of the US.
You're right. I don't actually know too many American Evangelicals or hwhat they think. I'm a Canadian Evangelical. And this is hwhat *I* think. Perhaps I am projecting a little... 😛
I suppose that could explain a lot. I taught college in Detroit Metro for 20+ years, and we had a fair number of Canadian students. I found them to be reasonably distinct from US students in some ways. For sure their Canadian experience growing up rarely mapped 1-on-1 to the US experience.
And maybe the term Evangelical isn't quite the same. I grew up in Midwest farming country. The Evangelicals were all "low church" Baptists, Assembly of God, and the like. They frequently get called "Bible pounders" but they aren't really, in my experience like that. We also had a reasonable number of Pentacostals of one stripe or another.
If you're what passes for an Evangelical in Canada, Canada is doomed.
I haven't seen evidence of Trump being racist at all, let alone "openly racist." What do you consider the evidence to be?
> The Trump coalition is falling apart. In 2016, he said Evangelicals gotta vote for him, cause of the supreme court. Well, they don't anymore. They already won Dobbs v Jackson. And that's unlikely to be overturned.
BTW, is throwing people who helped you under the bus really a virtue among Canadian Evangelicals?
> Evangelicals don't need him and don't particularly like him.
Evangelicals don't want their children encouraged to have themselves castrated, despite the Democrats' push to make that kind of encouragement mandatory in public schools.
"The modern American left is also a coalition. Someone who thinks of himself as a leftist is probably in favor of increasing environmental regulation, redistribution in favor of the poor, greater government regulation of business, gay rights, feminism, prohibition of private discrimination on any of a considerable variety of grounds, foreign economic aid. He is probably against aggressive foreign policy, anti-nuclear, suspicious of law enforcement and the criminal justice system."
That's why I'm not on any teams, but I'll join any coalition that is willing to have me.
Speaking with Groucho: A club that would take me, I wouldn't join. :-)
Hmm. In 1997 a young journalist discovered an interesting coalition. He discovered 'nativists' as a political group and tried to dig their ideological basis only to find that the anti-immigrant "blood and soil" type people were actually pro-abortion anti-life people. In short the CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA etc. kind of organizations have links with Planned Parenthood.
That young journalist with conservative leaning was outraged that these conservatives were in fact pro-abortion people. Name of that journalist was Tucker Carlson.
It is pretty interesting that something like CIS (Center of Immigration Studies) which is behemently anti-immigrant and provides people for Trump administration has same roots as Planned Parenthood, one of the key democratic leaning institution.
While there are some ideology coalitions looks like some people are good at doing opposite, appear in both boats with different avatar but with same end goal.
Finally, I agree that people push things that aren't necessarily true in order to advance their causes. And it's kinda sad. I can offer some examples, based on my experience in the pro-life movement:
* The 2017 Canada Summer Jobs "kerfuffle". The government of Canada subsidizes summer jobs for students. They give grants for charities, non-profits, etc. to hire summer interns. Including to faith-based organizations. Like Christian Summer Camps. (It's worth noting that Canada doesn't have an "establishment" clause to prevent government from giving money to churches or religious orgs.) Apparently, local MPs (like congressmen) had a lot of say over hwhich orgs in their area got summer jobs grants. And pro-life activist organizations would hire summer interns to do pro-life activism all summer. If the organization happened to be based in a riding (electoral district) with a pro-life Conservative MP, they might get summer jobs grants. And pro-life orgs would purposely headquarter themselves in such conservative ridings. In 2017, rabidly "pro-choice" PM Justin Trudeau decided to ban pro-life orgs from getting summer jobs grants. He initially did this by adding an attestation on the application form saying something like: "We respect Charter rights and other rights including reproductive rights..." Pro-life organizations got up in arms cause they were losing their summer jobs grants. But they realized, correctly, that most Canadians are not pro-life so they made a scandal about how this would affect any faith-based organization. For example, if a Christian summer camp for disabled kids wanted funding to hire camp counsellors, they might be denied if their particular denomination happens to be pro-life. The government later clarified the attestation to specifically say that they would only deny funding if the core mandate of the organization or the particular job they were asking to be subsidized was to end abortion. They gave specific examples of jobs or organizations that would not be denied funding, including religious summer camps run by pro-life denominations. Yet, the pro-life rabble-rousers continued to complain and say that was not good enough. But many Christian orgs (including from pro-life denominations) did (quietly) apply for summer jobs funding and were granted such funding.
* Post-Abortion-Syndrome: Pro-lifers want people to believe that having an abortion can cause all sorts of mental health issues for women. "Pro-choicers" want people to believe that there are absolutely NO mental health risks associated with abortion. The truth is something in between. But generally closer to the "pro-choice" view.
Adult women who have legal abortions for the first time, GENERALLY have no worse mental health than adult women hwho carry unplanned pregnancies to term. BUT, there are several groups of women who are more likely to have mental health issues because of abortion, including minors, women who have multiple abortions, women who were pressured or coerced into having the abortion, women who have generally pro-life spiritual beliefs, etc. These are a lot of women! Both sides misrepresent the data to support their position.
My source is the documentary "Hush" (https://vimeo.com/168394412 around the 1 hour, 15 minute mark) whose source is an article behind a paywall: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-23092-001
* Dangers of abortion: Before Dobbs, many pro-life groups realized that they could use government to do hwhat government does best: killing an industry through regulation. And so they favoured all sorts of unnecessary regulations on abortion clinics in the guise of protecting women's health. But really, although there are some awful tragedies, first-trimester abortion generally IS safer than childbirth ... for the mother. Obviously not for the baby! As someone hwho is pro-life libertarian-ish, I was amused to see so many leftists decry over-burdensome regulation of the abortion industry.
With things like these, on the one hand, I want my side to win. I want to see an end to abortion. I want it to be banned and unthinkable. I want less babies to be aborted. But I don't feel comfortable lying to people to make that happen. It's not just the immorality of lying, per se, but simply that it can hurt our credibility. If a pro-life organization said things that were found to be untrue, it's gonna be harder to convince people that we're being honest with them when we say that an embryo is a living human organism, for example. Yet, this "misinformation" DOES help us... hWhat to do? My brother had a good suggestion: Find some "useful idiots" who will go around spreading disinformation for you. Don't let it come directly from reputable pro-life orgs. If the disinformation takes root, it can help you. If people find out it's not true, it will be the reputation of the "useful idiots" that will be tarnished, not the reputation of pro-life orgs. idk. Seems a bit Machiavellian, but it might work! 😛😂
> classical liberals in the old conservative coalition mostly supported an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy, reflects tribalism, us vs them thinking, more than intellectual consistency.
I thought the old classical liberals supported an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy because they, you know, opposed communism.
The did oppose communism. But the aggressive foreign policy part is the coalition's work
As for States rights vs national rights, etc. I think generally having decisions made on as local a level as possible is probably the best way to get hwhat we want. It's hard to get a hwhole country to change, but if we could get one state to do hwhat we want, then we could just move to that state. But ultimately, it's the hWHAT that matters not the HOW. I thought a lot about this. As you may have noticed from previous comments, I'm STRONGLY pro-life. (I'm saying that as context for hwhat I'm about to say next, not to start a debate on that topic, but I will not shy away from the debate if any of y'all want it.) I thought a lot about the UN, the EU or supra-national organizations like that. I would hate them if they actively tried to force countries to legalize abortion. But I would LOVE them if they banned abortion world-wide. Given they don't seem to do either and are, especially in the case of the UN, pretty weak. I don't have very strong opinions about the UN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPfVkuPmpc8
I am actually slightly in favour of the EU because they have open immigration and free trade between member states whilst still letting Malta ban abortion.
Taking it a step further, I don't even really feel strongly about democracy. I did a thought experiment a hwhile back: If I had to choose between:
* Country A: Which had all the policies I like: abortion ban, free speech, open immigration, low taxes, low regulation, general freedom, etc. but was an absolute dictatorship. No elections. No voting. At all.
* vs. Country B: Which had free, legal abortion, high taxes, lots of restriction on freedom of speech, many restrictions on immigration, lots of stupid regulations, etc. but it was a democracy (Basically Canada)
... I would choose country A in a heartbeat!
The right decisions, the right policies are important, regardless of hwho makes them. That's hwhy I think the following are kinda foolish:
- Libertarians hwho oppose States forcing cities to have less restrictive zoning, simply because this is being imposed from the state level rather than decided locally
- Anti-colonialists like Manuel Quezon: “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans.” 🙄
That being said, there are certain principles that I hold dear and don't just favour as a means to an end. For example, Free Speech. Even if I was living in a pro-life country, I still think that "pro-choicers" ought to have the right to express themselves and protest and try to convince the powers that be to overturn the abortion ban.
So, I have some values that I guess I see as a "means to an end" and others that I see as an end in themselves.
Even my support for free-market capitalism is generally a "means to an end". I honestly see free-market capitalism as the best way to reduce absolute poverty worldwide. I truly believe free trade and free immigration would result in less people starving to death. A rising tide lifts all boats. But if someone could convince me that a particular government intervention might reduce absolute poverty without:
* Killing people. (Even unborn babies.)
* Confiscating more than half of people's wealth or income
* Running up a public debt
* Restricting free immigration, free trade, free speech
* Without significantly restricting freedom in general
... I might be for it.
> I am actually slightly in favour of the EU because they have open immigration and free trade between member states whilst still letting Malta ban abortion.
They also have a massive unaccountable bureaucracy.
Yeah, and most of the good stuff the EU gets credit for you don't need the EU for; the EEA (via the EFTA) is enough.
Just a quibble, not affecting your main argument:
...Critics point out that diverting large amounts of farm land and farm output from producing a lot of food to producing a little fuel will cause, indeed has already caused, a steep increase in price of maize, a food consumed mostly by poor people...
While a huge new market should raise prices, all you can say in fact is that prices may have fallen more slowly than they would have without the biofuels program. Prices for all major grains have fallen quite steadily for over 100 years, with only temporary bumps up, in the 1970s, and in the early years of this century. Basic foods are cheaper now than at any time in recorded history. Certainly there is no long-term 'steep increase' in grain prices in general, nor corn in particular.
https://keski.condesan-ecoandes.org/historical-corn-prices-per-bushel-chart/usda-ers-chart-detail.html
> Nuclear power is another obvious problem for the left. It provides a way of replacing a large fraction of fossil fuel power with an alternative that does not produce CO2, using current technology at costs not wildly above current power costs, as France has demonstrated. Arguably, it provides the only such way.
It does not. Currently nuclear has the highest levelised cost of energy (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity) of any widely deployed technology and it is on a rising trend. France's nuclear reactors are all decades old at this point (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Histogramme_des_%C3%A2ges_des_r%C3%A9acteurs_nucl%C3%A9aires_fran%C3%A7ais_en_service_en_2020.svg) and new ones plagued by delays and cost overruns. Yet somehow Nuclear got the reputation as the "cheap" green option. my guess it it's because:
* Anti-Nuclear activism focused exclusively on nuclear risk and pollution (likely because they frankly don't care about costs).
* Nuclear energy used to be relatively and absolutely cheaper.
* Reaction against the German Greens stupid push to shit down nuclear nationwide (the most expensive part of nuclear energy is constuction, if you have your plant up and running, it is an absolute waste not to run out its lifecycle)
Nuclear power rose so much because of regulatory burden and rising labor costs. Perhaps - one might argue - if people chilled on the regulations nuclear would be affordable again. But France has not "demonstrated" that.
I didn't say nuclear power was less expensive than alternatives, I said it was not wildly more expensive. People seriously worried about global warming are willing to do costly things to prevent or slow it, but not that costly thing.
> and new ones plagued by delays and cost overruns.
That's because they're being held by regulators to ever more insane safety standards.
That could very well be the case. Go ahead, try and argue for the repeal of the more insane safety standards! But don't advocate for building nuclear *while those regulations are still on the books*, because it will cost you an arm and a leg.
I think that referring to these movements as "ideologies" is a mistake, a category error even. But I would refer to all movements that contain more than one person as coalitions, for reasons that should be obvious.