
Puzzles for Liberals - dsego
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/467716.html
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exolymph
Should be re-titled "The Worldview Problem for American Politics" since
"Puzzles for Liberals" is just the first subsection.

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norea-armozel
I can say as a former conservative that the author is right in that political
ideologies have their own lexicon for common words. It's probably why I'm not
a conservative (or in most instances not a liberal) anymore since I tend to
speak plainly. Even when I was a "born again" I honestly thought that gay
marriage was none of my business and the State should just recognize them
since it handles the marriage licenses anyways. That got me quite a bit of
flak from other conservatives, but my point was if the State manages one kind
of marriage then it must have the sovereignty to manage the other kinds
whether we personally like them or not. To me it wasn't about promoting life
styles, it was about what is the rightful, legal authority of the State. It
seems that theoretical framework was lacking from conservative ideologies
(probably still is) of the time. Plus, liberals have the same sort of
ideological black holes in terms of selective policy stances (anti-drug-war,
but pro-gun-regs) which immediately turned me off to them after I left my
conservative views behind.

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wodenokoto
seems like you are what in european parlance is called a "liberal".

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norea-armozel
I'm center left in most global political ideology tests. I subscribe to some
form of Mutualism (Prodhoun). But I'm not sure that would classify me as
liberal by most left party standards.

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chillacy
This was a longer read but it was very interesting. Some time ago I stumbled
upon an article analyzing the rationale behind conservative dislike of
abortion, which argued that abortion allows a woman who engages in premarital
sex to get out of the "punishment" of bearing a child out of wedlock. That
seems to fit within the theory presented here.

Also a sidenote that the two stories about the different families reads like
material for the first and second Bioshock games, respectively. Andrew Ryan
being objectivism and triumph of the individual gone wrong, and Sophia Lamb
representing socialism gone awry.

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paulddraper
One I would add to puzzles for conservatives, that continues to puzzle me:

Liberals seek to limit or even outright ban firearms, because they are related
to many injuries and deaths each year. But they do not advocate banning
alcohol, which is the cause of far more injuries and deaths every year. This
seems inconsistent. Why is it not?

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TheCoelacanth
> But they do not advocate banning alcohol

Don't they? I'm pretty sure liberals already tried and succeeded at banning
alcohol back in the 1920's. They gave up on the idea when it turned out to be
a complete disaster.

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exolymph
As a fairly classic liberal who would prefer more gun control (though not
outright banning) but doesn't think alcohol should be banned, here's my
rationale: I'm interested in _outcomes_ more than principles. Like
TheCoelacanth said, banning alcohol worked out terribly in practice. But based
on the example posed by Europe, stricter gun control could have a positive
effect on America.

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paulddraper
Outcomes-over-principals approach is exactly why I compared the two exercise
of freedoms on their empirical effect on violence.

With that in mind, would you support more alcohol control, analogous to
whatever level your desired gun control is? (Perhaps registering containers of
alcohol, prohibiting felons from owning alcohol, consumption permits requiring
background checks, etc.?)

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PS Using Europe as a model of legal gun restrictions is a convenient choice.
Mexico or many South American countries would be less convenient examples.

