Chess Master Kasparov To Retire

fembots writes "Former world champion Gary Kasparov has announced that he is to retire from competitive chess. The chess grandmaster, a leading critic of Mr. Putin, heads a group of top Russian liberals who have joined forces to keep Vladimir Putin from staying in the Kremlin after 2008."

Comments

Please Note

[XanC]

"Liberal" here refers to the classical liberals opposing monarchies and arbitrary power. Not the socialist version of the word "liberal" we have in the US.

Re:Please Note

[DarKry]

No i think liberal means the same thing pretty much everywhere..

1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.

2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

try here.

And we "socialist" fit #1 fairly well if I do say so myself.

Re:Please Note

[mc6809e]

1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.

2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

[snip]

And we "socialist" fit #1 fairly well if I do say so myself.

Hmmm.

What happens when the socialist philosophy itself becomes orthodox or dogmatic?

Maybe you're confusing "liberal" with "leftist". They're not the same thing.

Re:Please Note

[Aqua OS X]

Because "liberals" in the US are socialists? please.

Liberal typically refers to people in favor of progressive reform, not reverting back to antiquated practices, ideologies, or institutions of the past.

Re:Please Note

[bigsteve@dstc]

The problem is that many people don't distinguish between socialism, communism and "Stalinism" or "Maoism". They are all "manifestations of the Evil Empire".

Re:Please Note

[iamacat]

Socialism is an economic system. Democracy is a political system. Liberalism is a way of individual's thinking. The three have little to do with each other. You can have a liberal king in a socialist country who advocates free market reform because he doesn't want to arrest people who just sell stuff they made.

Re:Please Note

[10Ghz]

No i think liberal means the same thing pretty much everywhere..

In Finland (and pretty much rest of Europe) "Liberals" usually refer to people who support individual freedoms and responsibilities, low taxation, free-market economy and the like. I wasn't aware that socialists support those things as well!

Re:Please Note

[nnnneedles]

Liberal comes from liber which means freedom.

Liberal here in europe means someone who wants to deregulate markets and strongly embraces freedom of choice and a small state.

It seems to me that liberal in the US has a different meaning, because the perspective used is from the far-right (i.e. conservatives), while in most of europe the perspective on liberals comes from socialists.

Re:Please Note

[Skye16]

Absolutely not. You're thinking of people as a static and 2-dimensional. Liberals think longer-term - especially when it comes to the offspring. Let me elaborate, for you, since you seem to be completely ignorant on what a liberal is.

John A is a smart, hard working, intelligent man who has amassed himself quite a hefty estate through his own two hands (and brain!). Good for him!

John B is a plain ol' joe, but also hard working, and hasn't put together an estate, per se, but he has a house and he isn't begging for food. Obviously he would like more money, but, he doesn't need it.

John C is also a plain ol' joe, he also worked hard, but he didn't get to save up much money, just like the majority of people in America.

Jack A is a dumbass who also refuses to put in hard work. He spends every cent he has on beer and lives with his family in a trailer. He can't hold down a job, so he lives on welfare.

Now, according to you, no one should help Jack A, John C, John B, or John A. Let them live for themselves. And, truthfully, I would agree with you. However, once you apply ofspring to the picture, everything changes.

John A, John B, John C, and Jack A all have children. John A can afford to send his children to a good private school, and then to a good college. They always have new clothes and they always have food in their stomaches. Hooray!

John B sends his kids to a public school, which aren't terrible (though, perhaps not as good as a private school) and then to a state funded college, heavily banking on federal financial aid. His kids always have clean, newish clothes and they always have food in their stomaches. Still hooray.

John C dies in a horrible car wreck, leaving behind 3 of his own chillens. Now with only one person working (assuming his wife does), they can barely pay the bills and put food on the table. The kids do without clean, newish clothes and start shopping at Goodwill (let's just hope they're indie hipsters!). If they're lucky, they go to college, but chances are, unless they have a rich aunt or uncle, they aren't going to be able to afford it (unless, of course, it's a community college).

Jack A's kids end up getting jobs around the age of 15 just to buy their own clothes and their own food. Jack A does nothing and the kids pay for everything. They don't go to college because there is no way they could afford it. A few drop out.

According to many libertarians, social programs are bad. As such, there goes federal funding for public schools (which may even cease to exist), federal funding for college (which makes it impossible for John B, John C, and Jack A's kids from ever setting foot in college), or even foodstamps/welfare, which may keep Jack A's kids alive, or, less dramatically, from dropping out of highschool or missing college.

A liberal says "Hey, John A, we're going to take a little more of your millions of dollars and make sure that Jack A and John C's kids get some food and can make it to college". Why? Not just because we feel bad (and, really, making a law just because you feel bad for someone is pretty pathetic, so if that were the only reason, I wouldn't be a liberal either). It's because we know that having 6 kids go to college and become engineers or doctors or lawyers is going to be more beneficial to society, as a whole, than having 6 kids who pack groceries at the local supermarket. More income = more tax revenue, which means better roads, better schools, and, overall, more money throughout the entire country. We also know that by taxing more heavily on top, for the people with 3 BMWs and a Mercedes, instead of taxing the people who don't have enough money to put food on the table, much less pay for roads and schools and college (yes, they use them too, but, frankly, if you can't afford to feed yourself, that's it, game over). We also know that, even though we're going to make sure all these kids have the same opportunities at schooling (grade school and college

Celebrities and Elections

[porp]

If his main point is to retire to promote his politics and ensure a head of state does not get re-elected (as the linked, BBC news blurb suggests), shouldn't he realize, just by looking at last year's U.S. elections, that a dissenting, political group spearheaded by a celebrity is a big fucking waste of time.

I mean, this dude only played chess. He never did stand up comedy or married Susan Sarandon. Come on Gary, at least make a documentary where Putin plays Chess instead of going after terrorists.

porp

Re: He's not dead.... he's just resting...

[WARM3CH]

Yes, he's just resting but yet he has the top rating in the chess and many consider him as the greatest player in the world. He is in a good shape and although he has lost his last game in the Linares tournament, but has won the tournament.
Chess like any other game/sport needs sponsors, fans and supporters and Kasparov has been a great name attracting many. His mere presense in a tournament would mean big support and big moneys for Chess. Other active Grandmasters, though not very far from him in theory, could not yet attract so much publicity, support and money to Chess. So I think to the Chess world, his retirement is a very sad news.

Re:More stuff

[Scarblac]

Wouldn't it make more sense to title it "How Chess Imitates Life"?

Not to chess players. Chess is a sort of mathematical construct, it's an idea that was discovered. Life has a starting date.

As I understand, he's trying to explain how you can turn a chess obsessed mind towards other things, something that he claims to have done. Personally the games in my dreams are about as bad as the ones I play, so I'd rather put the programming obsessed part of my brain to work, but he is Kasparov...

Re:The difference

[Scarblac]

Unfortunately, Kasparov in real life is also into history, and rather close to crackpot science. For instance, he doesn't believe there was 1000 years between the Roman empire and Newton, he thinks history has been artificially expanded by 1000 years.

See e.g. http://www.world-mysteries.com/garrykasparov.htm.

I also vaguely remember that he tried to form a political party after the fall of the USSR, and was voted down as chairman on the first day of his own party! Add to that all the political problems that always surrounded him in the chess world (PCA, FIDE, etc), and I think he's not all that much better than them at politics.

Re:The difference

[be-fan]

Heh. You don't see marxist liberals in America. The "fringe" is people like Nader, who don't advocate getting rid of corporations, just regulating them. There is an enormous leap from that to "dictatorship of the proletariat". The thing that pisses me off most about American politics is that certain people have managed to replace the rich and varied sphere of political ideologies with a few token carictitures, and have engaged in such a war on names that we are left without any vocabulary with which to intelligently discuss politics.