http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

a TED talk, which is very interesting and goes a long way to explaining the difference between the ideologies.

Haidt nails it down!

One of the things he touches on is a long-standing gripe I have with my fellow liberals. 

Liberal activists do as much "evangelizing" as the Christian Right.  Haidt points out the conservative hang-up on sex and the liberal hang-up on food.  Indeed, it is diet, health, "diversity," and the environment on which liberals scream unsolicited advice in my town.  The bumper sticker is a particular favorite outlet of their neuroses.  "Go Vegan!"
To which I am inclined to say,
"Go **** yourself!"

When I try to explain to my liberal cause-minded friends that what they do is equally obnoxious as your basic religious bigot who says, "Have you accepted Christ as your Lord and Saviour?" 
If you say no, they'll tell you you'll burn in hell forever if you don't.

Vegans will tell you you'll end up with some horrible disease, such as colon cancer, if you don't stop eating meat.  They will also push the whole weight of the suffering animal realm onto your shoulders.

Fitness buffs love to tell you of the sorry ends you will reach if you don't quit puffing those smokes.

Environmental puritans scold you for riding the elevator when you could take the stairs.  Even more obnoxious than the Vegans, enviro-scolds suggest you are responsible for the corruption and nigh destruction of our lonely blue planet!

"But," my liberal activist friends declare, "organized religion is just oppressive patriarchal superstition, what we tell you is scientific fact."

Ah, maybe...mmmaybe not...either way, the end result is just the same.  You have taken it upon yourselves to tell me what to do for my own good, for the good of others, and for the good of the world.  In doing so, you have placed yourself as morally superior to me and everybody else who does not think and behave as you do.  I don't care if you're a bible-thumper or a tree-hugger, you're still a smug sonofabitch. 

This is why I find libertarians easier to get along with even though I disagree with them on more issues than I do liberals.  The libertarians place a premium on minding your own damn business!  What a novel concept!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/15/thumbsup.gif

I'm not familiar with Ted, but I liked that clip.  I would also agree with Max's analysis.

I tend to be a cross between a liberal and a libertarian in that I generally avoid bothering people in their personal lives and decisions, but I still orient public policy toward helping society as a collective.

I'm not familiar with Ted, but I liked that clip.  I would also agree with Max's analysis.


TED is pretty sweet.  I've never been (it's basically a get-together for venture capitalists, so it's outa my league), but it's worth following online, and if you're ever worth more than $5-10M, it'll also be worth attending.  TED gets it right in that the ideas are worth spreading -- if you've got the capital to invest in 'em, you should probably show up, but the only way those ideas are going to make anyone any money is if they're seen by people.  Hence, the TED ethos of making the talks available to the public.


One of the things he touches on is a long-standing gripe I have with my fellow liberals. 


Same thing that I've had as a long-standing gripe with my fellow cons :)


This is why I find libertarians easier to get along with even though I disagree with them on more issues than I do liberals.  The libertarians place a premium on minding your own damn business!  What a novel concept! http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/15/thumbsup.gif


Also why I get along pretty well with Maxwell here.  Our economic policies might be almost diametrically opposed, but our goals are the same.  I don't want to put words in Max's mouth, and he can phrase it in a way he'd prefer, but I think we'd both be OK with something like "maximization of human freedom is the end; maximization of economic growth over some timeframe - about which we might not agree, but about which we could compromise - is merely a means to that end".  Everything else is just politicking.  Maxwell and I may think that aspects of each other's policies are wrong, but I don't think he's evil, and I don't think he thinks I'm evil either.  We have honest differences about how, but not about who or why.

As for the fundie maniac who froths at the mouth at how the Third Reformed Baptists should be in charge, as opposed to those heretics in the Second Baptist Reformation?  Or the hippie who froths about whether the letters "LGBT" are in the correct order, as opposed to the patriarchs who went with "GLBT"?  Let both these asses be set to grind corn.

Certainly maximizing human freedom is the goal, the questions involve defining what that means (it might seem obvious but there are many issues), and then finding a path to get there.  Actually I don't see it as a place, or and end but rather a working through.

this was in the paper today, i thought of this presentation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR2008091802265.html

Startle Response Linked to Politics
More Sensitive May Mean More Conservative, Study Finds

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 19, 2008; Page A09

People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button issues, according to unusual new research published yesterday.

The finding suggests that people who are particularly sensitive to signals of visual or auditory threats also tend to adopt a more defensive stance on political issues, such as immigration, gun control, defense spending and patriotism. People who are less sensitive to potential threats, by contrast, seem predisposed to hold more liberal positions on those issues.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080919/cm_csm/yfreeman;_ylt=ArSGf8fNtFDA6xKVeQRI21P9wxIF

this also reminded me of this thread.

"Real change in campaign '08: Stop hating the other party. By Seth Freeman
Fri Sep 19, 4:00 AM ET


New York - As angry and politically active as I am this presidential election, I'm starting to notice a problem as I fight for my side: The more engaged I am and the more the polls seesaw, the more I find I have an ugly desire to see the worst in the other side. The technical term for this condition is hate.

ADVERTISEMENT

Maybe you've had a bit of the same problem?

Try this experiment: Imagine that last week you read a report that the candidate you oppose did something truly awful – assaulted someone, took a bribe – something like that. The polls swing toward your side. Then, today, you learn it's untrue – the candidate is innocent. How do you feel? Disappointed? I think I know the feeling. It's a bad sign."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080919/cm_csm/yfreeman;_ylt=ArSGf8fNtFDA6xKVeQRI21P9wxIF

this also reminded me of this thread.

"Real change in campaign '08: Stop hating the other party. By Seth Freeman
Fri Sep 19, 4:00 AM ET


New York - As angry and politically active as I am this presidential election, I'm starting to notice a problem as I fight for my side: The more engaged I am and the more the polls seesaw, the more I find I have an ugly desire to see the worst in the other side. The technical term for this condition is hate.

ADVERTISEMENT

Maybe you've had a bit of the same problem?

Try this experiment: Imagine that last week you read a report that the candidate you oppose did something truly awful – assaulted someone, took a bribe – something like that. The polls swing toward your side. Then, today, you learn it's untrue – the candidate is innocent. How do you feel? Disappointed? I think I know the feeling. It's a bad sign."

Rarely does ANYONE make the news for being a loyal spouse and an honest broker...and they do, cynics like me call it a "feel-good fluff piece"!
8)



As for the fundie maniac who froths at the mouth at how the Third Reformed Baptists should be in charge, as opposed to those heretics in the Second Baptist Reformation?  Or the hippie who froths about whether the letters "LGBT" are in the correct order, as opposed to the patriarchs who went with "GLBT"?  Let both these asses be set to grind corn.

I don't know about this grinding of corn, but...
The worst was the portmanteau "LesBiGay."  I remember when the campus alternative sexual orientations club was called the LGBA.  Later it was amended to the LGBTA.  "What's that," I wondered, "the Lesbia Gay Bisexual Transit Authority?"
Ring ring ring goes the trolley...
What do you do if you're a transgendered lesbian male trapped in a woman's body?
:D

Libertarianism appealed to me once as anti-authoritarian, but a lot of self-proclaimed Libertarians have a blindspot about corporate authority and how it can easily supplant government authority when the state gets too weak.  That's my biggest complaint with it.  Similarly, my biggest complaint about liberals is their unwitting passion for thought control. 
For instance, I knew a fastidiously PC guy.  I was over at his house.  It was pouring rain outside.  I asked his son,
"So, do you like this weather, or do you hate it?"
"We don't say hate in this house, Max!" the old man chided me.
"Ah, I see," said I, "Do you like this weather, or do you despise it?"
The guy shot me a dirty look.
8)

 
Libertarianism appealed to me once as anti-authoritarian, but a lot of self-proclaimed Libertarians have a blindspot about corporate authority and how it can easily supplant government authority when the state gets too weak.  That's my biggest complaint with it. 


I can't find the image, but if it's any consolation, the meme of "there are no libertarians in recessions" is making the rounds of the blogosphere.

On most of the trading blogs, the political talk is kept to a minimum, but the underlying sentiment is decidedly libertarian.  We're as disgusted as anyone.  I lost a year's salary during the first three days of last week, and made it back in the last two days.  Count me among the disgusted. 

Because the money that I lost, I deserved to lose.  Dumb-ass position management and poor trading got me into a position where I was net long last week, and the bear tore me a new... well, he tore me new orifices I didn't even have last month.  That sucked.

But the money I made back due to the UK's banning of short selling, and the rumors of an RTC-like entity in the States (Thursday, my second-most-profitable day ever, saw the reversal as it happened and the whole screen lit up green, it was insane), and the US's banning of short-selling in financial stocks (Friday, my most profitable day ever, which explains exactly why the screen lit up halfway through Thursday), was looted, not earned.

If it's any consolation, if I'm still net long when the short sales ban expires on October 2nd, I'll get destroyed.  I don't expect a crash (20%+ drop) that week, but the banning of short sales in financials has materially increased that risk.  There's no more free market - it's an aristocracy of pull, and the legislation (interesting, this morning, that CNBC article looked like this Reuters article, but the CNBC version went down the memory hole.  rewrite fullwise, upsub...)...anyways, if the legislation being proposed is like the one at the Reuters article, it's basically the anti-dog-eat-dog rule of Atlas Shrugged, except it's about banks instead of railroads.  We're about a third of the way through that ponderous tome.  Perhaps directive 10-289's not far behind, where instead of banning short selling, they ban any selling of stock.  (Under normal circumstnaces, I'd put a smiley by that comment, but obviously the rulebook's out the window at this point.  This isn't a free market we're dealing with, this is the government, and by definition, there is no rulebook.)

Personally, I don't see what was wrong with enforcing the ban against naked short selling, which has been against SEC regs since the 30s, but against which there's been no enforcement in living memory.  For that matter, what was so wrong with the uptick rule, which was eliminated about this time last year, which is about when volatility started to spike.  SEC Chairman Cox has consistently refused to reinstate the uptick rule, and for the life of me I can't figure out what his reasoning is, other than that he refuses to admit that he was wrong.

Maybe it really was a short-term liquidity crisis, and by the time the ban on short-selling financial stocks expires on October 2nd, everybody who needs capital has managed to find some.  It's not entirely unfeasible, and from my limited perspective, I'd wager there's a 25-50% probability of that happening.  The catastrophe is postponed until after the election, and/or the dollar merely resumes its inexorable decline after last month's brief interruption, but most of us basically muddle through.

The flip side of that coin is that Friday, October 3rd, or Monday, October 6th, or (at the latest), Friday, October 17 (options expiration) / Monday, October 20 (the opening session after options expiry) are 1987-scale bloodbaths, and unlike 1987, we don't bounce back.

We have, after all, just had the best two days in the market since the crash of 1929.  For a good time, google a long-term DOW chart showing what happened in the next couple of years.

Rarely does ANYONE make the news for being a loyal spouse and an honest broker...and they do, cynics like me call it a "feel-good fluff piece"!
8)
I don't know about this grinding of corn, but...
The worst was the portmanteau "LesBiGay."  I remember when the campus alternative sexual orientations club was called the LGBA.  Later it was amended to the LGBTA.  "What's that," I wondered, "the Lesbia Gay Bisexual Transit Authority?"
Ring ring ring goes the trolley...
What do you do if you're a transgendered lesbian male trapped in a woman's body?
:D

Libertarianism appealed to me once as anti-authoritarian, but a lot of self-proclaimed Libertarians have a blindspot about corporate authority and how it can easily supplant government authority when the state gets too weak.  That's my biggest complaint with it.  Similarly, my biggest complaint about liberals is their unwitting passion for thought control. 
For instance, I knew a fastidiously PC guy.  I was over at his house.  It was pouring rain outside.  I asked his son,
"So, do you like this weather, or do you hate it?"
"We don't say hate in this house, Max!" the old man chided me.
"Ah, I see," said I, "Do you like this weather, or do you despise it?"
The guy shot me a dirty look.
8)



Well, at this point, they could probably call it the LPGA. ;)

Or the hippie who froths about whether the letters "LGBT" are in the correct order, as opposed to the patriarchs who went with "GLBT"?  Let both these asses be set to grind corn.


I never understood the need to single out L.  Aren't L's included in G?  And if we need to mention L specifically, then why is there not a special G category for men? ???

I never understood the need to single out L.  Aren't L's included in G?  And if we need to mention L specifically, then why is there not a special G category for men? ???


Of course, the word Lesbian comes from the Greek island of Lesbos (I know, I know), where the ancient Greek homosexual poet Sappho used to party with her friends.  My guess is that female homosexuality was considered discrete from male homosexuality, which in turn was unfairly defined by certain acts men of "straight" persuasion will also perform upon one another when there are no women around!
:-\\



Personally, I don't see what was wrong with enforcing the ban against naked short selling, which has been against SEC regs since the 30s, but against which there's been no enforcement in living memory.  For that matter, what was so wrong with the uptick rule, which was eliminated about this time last year, which is about when volatility started to spike.  SEC Chairman Cox has consistently refused to reinstate the uptick rule, and for the life of me I can't figure out what his reasoning is, other than that he refuses to admit that he was wrong.

I have a ways to go before I'm in that coveted "investor class," which has lost some lustor over the past month!
:P

But don't forget about the GLBA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (199), which repeated portions of the Glass-Steagall act (1933), which established the FDIC itself and prohibited banks from engaging in the kind of monkey business they have perpetuated in the housing bubble.  Those rules were put there for a damn good reason and we let greaseballs like Phil Gramm got their greasy fingers in the pie, and see what happens nine years later, we narrowly escaped another Great Depression, well, at least we still have the FDIC, but that won't do much good when the dollar is worth less than Monopoly money!
::)

I always thought that the biggest difference is when we wanted to kill people.

After all, both Conservative and Democrats want to kill people.  We just can't agree on when we should do it.

Conservatives think they should be killed if convicted of a horrible crime.

Liberals want to kill them before they are born.

Now all we have to do is create a time machine, so we can see who will kill in the future.  We then go back and have them aborted.

Results:  Both sides happy.

((Do not take this as any kind of pro-abortion - anti-abortion remark.  It is simply intended to be satirical))

ah, satire.

ah, satire.

Sounds like something you'd see on a bumper sticker at a gun show in the church basement!
:P :P

In Canada The real difference between liberals and conservatives......
is the liberals are thieves & the conservatives are self destructive (edited word)- A$$holes

In Canada The real difference between liberals and conservatives......
is the liberals are thieves & the conservatives are self destructive (edited word)- A$$holes
here in the US it's the other way around

Conservative bumper sticker: 

"They'll get my gun when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers!"

Liberal bumper sticker:

"They'll get my organic carrot when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers!"

:-\\

Gotta go, my nurse is here with my meds.

Nowadays in politics liberals and conservatives are the same bloated sheep grazing in a barren pasture. The only difference is in their waste, and what side of the fence the sheep ate from. Continuing that thought...

conservative sheep nurse their young but toss them out on their own just as quickly. Result: a field full of sheep that no one cares about, never learns, never improves upon itself and never changes. conservative sheep occasionally invade other sheep fields and try to take their resources, putting the entire farm in jeopardy of collapse.

liberal sheep accept as many other sheep onto the field as possible. Result: no sheep get anything, there's no incentive to achieve, but at least they are all equally starving and miserable. changes come too rapidly. Mentioning black sheep is considered a no-no.

the wolves are extinct and the farmer is asleep at the wheel, but both libsheep and consheep eventually and willingly find their way to the same slaughterhouse.

To semi-quote Megadeth: "The (two party) system has failed."

Ant

Not even Peggy Noonan offers praise to Dubya nowadays.  She told Jon Stewart Dubya sounds more like a commentator than a leader.  She wrote Reagan's speeches and she always made him sound like leader (even in his second term when he was mad at Casper Weinberger for stealing his tricycle!)
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/07/partytime.gif

So we're pretty much united on something here!

I don't like either or, I'd rather be a moderate.

And no...I won't be President because Moderate Presidents get ridiculed!

I don't like either or, I'd rather be a moderate.

And no...I won't be President because Moderate Presidents get ridiculed!


All presidents & all world leaders get ridiculed.  If there is no significant public ridicule of the leader of your country, you probably live in a totalitarian dictatorship.

All presidents & all world leaders get ridiculed.  If there is no significant public ridicule of the leader of your country, you probably live in a totalitarian dictatorship.


True.

Also the recent president (any president) gets called 'Worst President Ever'. Look at my comment under the Beatles on the left-hand side!

True.

Also the recent president (any president) gets called 'Worst President Ever'. Look at my comment under the Beatles on the left-hand side!



All powerful people have their detractors, but some more than others and for better reasons than others. Some people will probably say that ford is the worst president ever for pardoning nixon because some people are idiots. Lincoln's main policy was extremely controversial but also completely necessary to get America out of the 18th century - Bush is trying to send is back into the 19th, and the argument can definitely be made that Bush has caused more damage than Nixon, Harding and Carter combined.

All powerful people have their detractors, but some more than others and for better reasons than others. Some people will probably say that ford is the worst president ever for pardoning nixon because some people are idiots. Lincoln's main policy was extremely controversial but also completely necessary to get America out of the 18th century - Bush is trying to send is back into the 19th, and the argument can definitely be made that Bush has caused more damage than Nixon, Harding and Carter combined.


So I might as well face it, Bush is the worst president ever, even Buchanan can't hold a candle to that.

If that's the case, I hope he goes back to the booze! >:(

If that's the case, I hope he goes back to the booze! >:(
it'd be fun if he had a britney-style meltdown. he's gonna be a hell of an interesting ex-president to watch. I'm predicting no nobel prize, in all likelihood, and no habitat for humanity. probably more like mel gibson-style meltdowns and DWI arrests.

it'd be fun if he had a britney-style meltdown. he's gonna be a hell of an interesting ex-president to watch. I'm predicting no nobel prize, in all likelihood, and no habitat for humanity. probably more like mel gibson-style meltdowns and DWI arrests.


The machine that put him in power will not need him any longer.  He will know what a disappointment he is to his parents, his brothers will be able to give some nice sideways comments at family gatherings.  He doesn't seem to have the depth of character that someone like Jimmy Carter has to be able to remake himself.  Unless he has an epiphany it isn't going to be pretty.