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Countries That Use Tor Most Are Either Highly Repressive or Highly Liberal
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: You might assume that people in the most oppressive regimes wouldn't use the Tor anonymity network because of severe restrictions on technology or communication. On the other hand, you might think that people in the most liberal settings would have no immediate need for Tor. A new paper shows that Tor usage is, in fact, highest at both these tips of the political spectrum, peaking in the most oppressed and the most-free countries around the world. "There is evidence to suggest that at extreme levels of repression, Tor does provide a useful tool to people in those circumstances to do things that they otherwise would not be able to do," Eric Jardine, research fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a Canadian think-tank, told Motherboard in a phone call.
Why?
what it was used for would be nice to know, I suspect there are different uses...but that defeat the purpose of tor eh?
nothing to see here - move along
It always amuses me that people think they can win arguments by freely redefining words.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
People who live in oppressive regimes need anonymity. People who live in free countries know the value of their liberty and anonymity because they see the threats to it.
I'm afraid I don't see this as particularly shocking.
People who live in places like the UK where they've already said "you don't really get privacy or anonymity because we said so" have likely just accepted that as a fact, because they already don't have it.
People who have more freedom, and people who have less freedom, have a much more immediate sense of what they have, stand to lose, or don't have.
Especially since increasingly the governments of those "liberal" countries are trying to assert that, no, you don't get to have privacy and anonymity, because they'd really prefer if they had 100% access to your life.
If the national police forces of most Western countries had their way, we'd all give up these freedoms so that assholes could pretend they're protecting our freedoms.
Sorry, telling me I no longer have those freedoms isn't protecting them. It's the fucking opposite.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
For shizzle. "Liberal" changed definition when the progressivistas and feminazis got their grubby mitts on it. Liberalism has never been the same... Pity.
Well, there is a slight difference: the Prophet (whatever religious belief you're relying on to accept being a mortal thinking animal) is either non existant or dead. Humans being insulted because of their skin are well alive, and might suffer from it for real.
Modern app appers know that ONLY apps can app apps, so they should be using appy app apps to app other apps, NOT LUDDITE SOFTWARE like Tor!
Apps!
A horrible example of countries that are both liberal and, I suppose, repressive. Of course you can make your point without using offensive terms in most of those places and probably just get ejected from whatever venue you were haunting so my heart does not personally bleed for thee, but the point exists that one can be both liberal and authoritarian, witness Hillary Clinton.
I didn't know Liberal vs. Repressive was a political spectrum.
Maybe they mean Libertarian vs. Authoritarian? Or maybe they mean Tor use tends to cluster around the two independent variables Liberal and Repressive? Or maybe whoever wrote the summary or article is merely showing their bias, either intentionally or unintentionally, by calling this a "political spectrum"?
So, when you read something like The Federalist Papers (assuming you can, it's difficult for most people today), do you consider it liberal or conservative?
Do you actually know the definition of those words except as they pertain to US politics and how you think they work?
In many places, "conservatism" is the authoritarian central regime. ISIS and the Taliban are "conservative".
And if you think American conservatives around about centralized power, look at it from the perspective of not being a Christian. "Conservative" in the US means "entrenching Christianity as being the highest authority with the ability to control the lives of others according to that".
Sorry, but you are so clueless it isn't funny. And the fact that you think "conservatism" in the US means any of that shit says you have no real understanding of it, just the fiction "conservatives" in the US like to tell themselves.
The people who want to overturn the right of women to have abortions, or entrench the right of religious people to be assholes ... they only are interested in protecting the rights of a specific group of people, but they actually wish to control the rights of others.
Most highly liberal governments are also highly oppressive? You haven't got a fucking clue what that word means.
The US Constitution is the most liberal document you can imagine.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"Liberal" is indeed a word that has several meanings.
In this case, the use of the word in the headline is clarified in the text: it is used as the opposite of "repressive", in its meaning of "most free."
(Definition 3: "of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism, especially the freedom of the individual and governmental guarantees of individual rights and liberties.")
(The phrase used in the actual article is "liberal democracies." This does not mean "democracies that elect governments from the Liberal party."):
This might run counter to some people's intuition; wouldn’t liberal democracies have little need for Tor? “But because it's dual-use, you start to see a different pattern,” Jardine said, meaning that Tor is not just used to circumvent censorship in oppressive regimes, for example. Instead, the technology could be to protect privacy, or for criminal purposes. (It's worth remembering that the study looked at data largely before the fallout of Edward Snowden's June 2013 revelations).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In order to maintain a highly liberal society, the government has to become more and more authoritative. This means in practice there is very little difference between a liberal and repressive government, the difference is the perceived freedoms. Just take a look at any socialist country if you don't believe me.
How do we know which countries use Tor?
Isn't it meant to be anonymous?
Sure, you can map the end nodes, but that doesn't get you anywhere, does it?
Since "Highly Liberal" is a subset of "Highly Repressive", the story title is somewhat repetitive.
The thing is, there is a tendency to think that a government that forces everyone to do things the way you think it should be done is not repressive. As long as one can do what one wants, one may be surprised and offended to discover others believe they are being oppressed.
Over and over again a movement starts to deal with real problems and then overshoots into creating other problems whether or not their methods are still consistent with fixing the original problem. And most of society smugly blames the people pointing out the other problems for the original problem at about the same time they accept that the original problem is a bad thing- because it lets them blame someone besides themselves.
Many will be annoyed that I'm picking "Liberal" specifically and not some other adjectives that lead to represssion here- I'm responding to the particular title. The principle, while it certainly fits here, is more general.
Countries with the most negative gradients of "liberty" over time are the highest users of Tor.
The most liberal countries tend to be full of whites (aka crackers). Does this mean that there is something endemic about crackerhood that forces them to be all squirley and secretive. Are the all using the extra privacy to exploit children.
Also we must ask ourselves why crakervilles tend to be liberal. Is it because the crackers feel quilty about being a cracker and therefore turn to liberalism so they can help those poor disadvantaged trangendered latino african americans be just as smart and capable as a cracker such as themselves. Or possibly because they live around a bunch of crackers and do not realize that most disadvantaged transgedered Latino African Americans are in fact as racists as David Duke ever was and really don't like their crackery white ass.
Or maybe there is somehing to being a band of crackers where they can work together and not use the freedoms that liberalism gives them to rob the larger liberal society as a whole.
This really is not an all inclusive analysis because White Russia was and is full of crackers, yet they turned their brand of liberalism to evil. Maybe it is just something about the scandanavian are that allows crackers to live in their liberal utopia.
Why does noone else ever give these hard hitting analysis and discussions such as I do.
-Vote me for Captain of the World Wide Media Complex in 2016.
Today will be partly sunny or partly cloudy. That's been Perspective Weather with Captain Obvious. Have as good a day as you feel like having!
The political universe, much like the physical universe, is in fact curved. Go far enough in either direction and you'll find yourself on the other side. ;)
Just the fact that someone is able to get numbers, makes TOR or any other anonymization irrelevant in the larger scale of things.
You mean the hijacked meaning of Liberal, not a true Liberal.
The political meaning of Liberal in the US designates the left wing in politics because Socialist is contaminated. In Europe Liberal can apply to the right wing instead and the socialists despise them.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
"Conservative" in the US means "entrenching Christianity as being the highest authority with the ability to control the lives of others according to that".
So why do people call Milton Friedman "conservative"?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
convservatism on the other hand is about keeping power decentralized and in the hands of the individual and ensuring that nobody can ever be a slave to an authoritarian central regime.
No, that is what conservatives *CLAIM* they believe. Meanwhile, they continually do the exact opposite.
Passing or attempting to pass laws prohibiting abortion
Passing or attempting to pass laws prohibiting same sex marriage
Passing or attempting to pass laws prohibiting collective bargaining by workers
Creating massive new bureaucracies (Dept of Homeland Security, TSA, ICE, etc....) and all sorts of new laws to enforce (PATRIOT Act, etc.....)
Creating new laws to prohibit and prosecute activities that were previous legal (DMCA, etc.....)
All enforced by the federal government, ie, an authoritarian central regime.
None of these would exist if conservatives actually believed what they claim to believe.
Time for you to realize that what is designated in the US as Liberal is a "truespeak" word for Socialist.
Conservatism doesn't have anything to do with decentralized either, there are a lot of governments around the world that are conservative and centralized.
Libertarians are most like the definition of a true Liberal, but still far from. A true liberal is like an Unicorn.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
In case people have forgotten: TOR was created by the US government - it exists to fuck with China, Russia, etc... all the small-time 'evils' it enables are irrelevant which is why it continues to exist. btw, look who banned Bitcoin: China and Russia...
Because when he was active, conservative meant something different than what it means today in the US? Today "conservative" in the US is pretty synonymous with "irrational religious wingnut that adheres to the republican party's most out there points" and conservatives as the rest of the world knows them pretty much have to be defined as fiscal conservatives, which is an entirely different thing that a US conservative. In fact, I'd argue that the majority of democrats and whatever moderate republicans remain are fiscal conservatives. Of course the entire concept of "Republican" may optimistically be laid to rest within 8 months.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
He was an fiscal conservative., not necessarily a social conservative. A big issue with the current US "conservatism" is that the economic conservatism is tied to social conservatism, which don't need to go hand in hand. The rhetoric of most US "conservatives" today is social and economic BUT its been many years since they have broadly enacted policies that are fiscally conservative.
Most highly liberal governments are also highly oppressive. Liberalism is all about centralizing power in a large government structure and keeping a very short leash on all citizens, convservatism on the other hand is about keeping power decentralized and in the hands of the individual and ensuring that nobody can ever be a slave to an authoritarian central regime.
Spoken like a true Republican, and completely upside down and backwards from the truth. Well done!
To get at the research paper itself would cost me a minimum of $36.
It's not clear to me how you build meaningful global stats for a service that is usually promoted here as anonymous. It is also not clear to me how these states relate to the population as a whole.
The ultimate test of a "secret messaging" system is whether people generally feel safe and comfortable using it. The old-time spy hated the gadget or the code book that his handlers claimed could be easily hidden or disguised or disposed of in a pinch. It never quite worked out that way.
I'm an atheist libertarian and I get called conservative all the time.
Right-wing and conservative are synonymous to many people.
Right-wing is a meaningless term - it simply means not left. That's why Patrick Buchanan, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are all lumped together.
Conservative may mean something but it does not cross national boundaries. A conservative is Russia is not a conservative in Saudi Arabia and is not a conservative in the US. However a socialist means roughly the same in all places.
I think the proper term for the US is "social conservative" to describe a desire to use the law to stick to traditional moral codes.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Political repression isn't such a good measure by itself. Many countries that seem politically non-repressive are socially very repressive; that is, legally, little is going to happen to you if you state an unpopular opinion, but you may greatly hurt your job or career chances. Many European nations fall into that category, and the US is increasingly moving in that direction as well. Just look at the current Title IX witch hunts and the wild accusations of racism against anybody who doesn't toe the progressive party line.
All I found was a chart and an abstract. At no time did I see the actual countries listed.
Also how liberal a nation is can be up for debate.
For example some nations in the EU have hate speech laws but almost no restriction on sexual content.
In the US you will often see age restriction on sexual content but no restriction on political speech. Which is more free or liberal?
I would like to to have seen a list of the nations and how they ranked them before I draw any conclusion.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
In the US the term liberal is just as perverted as conservative... I don't think either term is appropriate for the context of the story.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Right wing is the same as conservative in the USA as the Republican Party has been a collation of values that were mostly similar. However. In the last 7 years in the USA that collation has been fracturing. The extremists (tea party) are pushing one direction while the religious are pulling and the fiscally moderates have to vote democrat as the other two side scare them.
Trump is just the latest group of tea party. He is the end result of a political group that was voted in to do nothing to stop Obama at all costs and a group of voters who are fed up with politicians doing nothing even though that is what they were elected to do. In another 8 years the Republican Party as it existed will be gone. The GOP is turning into grumpy old people and they can't form a solid collation to argue against everyone else.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Would those liberal countries include those with all-encompassing network monitoring programs, with trigger word detection? That kind of "liberal" is not my kind of liberal.
liberalism on the other hand is about keeping power decentralized and in the hands of the individual and ensuring that nobody can ever be a slave to an authoritarian central regime.
No, that is what liberals *CLAIM* they believe. Meanwhile, they continually do the exact opposite.
Passing or attempting to pass laws prohibiting gun ownership
Passing or attempting to pass laws prohibiting free speech and free association (luckily overturned by the Supreme Court)
Passing or attempting to pass laws promoting collective bargaining by workers who work for the government, meaning their organizing against the people, buying the Democratic party with over a BILLION dollars in campaign contributions funded from mandated dues payment, and creating a government for the government by the government that's entirely overweening
Creating massive new bureaucracies (Dept of Education, etc....) and all sorts of new laws to enforce (Obamacare [hard to get BIGGER and more overweening than THAT!], etc.....)
Creating new laws to prohibit and prosecute activities that were previous legal (DMCA, etc.....) (DMCA was pushed by Democrats you ignorant twit)
All enforced by the federal government, ie, an authoritarian central regime.
None of these would exist if liberals actually believed what they claim to believe.
FTFY
And I left out the parts about eliminating free speech by making up things like "hate speech".
Oh, and wasn't it a LIBERAL who tried to outlaw large sodas?
as an atheist, libertarian, Tea Party person I can tell you that Trump is so NOT tea party by any stretch of the imagination EXCEPT by people who lump everyone together who disagrees with them. The only tea party people who back trump are those that want to take down the republican establishment at any cause.
that's like the media saying Todd Akin was a tea party candidate. He was not. He was a social conservative darling.
Interestingly enough the Todd Akin candidacy is one of the reasons many tea party people want to take out the republican establishment. The republican establishment funded a candidate with no chance for winning simply to split the vote and allow Akin to win. They preferred to lose the Senate seat rather than have a tea party candidate win.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Interesting thought, there. I agree in current U.S. political nomenclature neither "liberal" nor "conservative" means what they should mean, but I'm not sure I agree about libertarian - except that the definition of libertarian is also changing as more so-called conservatives who claim to want economic freedom (but are clueless about personal liberties and freedoms) butcher it's use, too.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
'Liberal' means 'free' or 'generous'. Check a dictionary.
The opposite of 'liberal' is 'authoritarian' aka 'social conservative' in the US.
One can be liberal and conservative (eg. Libertarian) or liberal and radical (eg. democratic socialist, green, anarchist).
Historically, Liberals favoured mercantilism or capitalism over the more socially rigid feudalism.
I consider the Federalist Papers to be conservative because 1) they're pretty much the commentary and documentation from the founders of the USA about how all this is supposed to work, 2) I'm a citizen of the USA. Therefore to conserve the culture, values, and laws of the USA one would adhere to the philosophies of the Federalist Papers.
Contrariwise, a "progressive" (i.e. a leftist or what Americans call "liberal") arrogantly assumes that what has worked very well to transform a colony into the superpower on the planet in only a hundred and fifty years (and brought the accompanying increase in living standards and wealth) should be replaced with a combination of a society and form of government that has been proven to result in disaster every single time it has ever been tried.
I think the proper term for the US is "social conservative" to describe a desire to use the law to stick to traditional moral codes.
Traditional moral codes? So, polygyny is back on the table? Including to under-aged girls who are given no choice in the matter?
"Traditional" does not mean what most people think. Most people only want to use the last hundred years or so as "traditional" and ignore that fact that if we use a larger time frame then we end up with a lot of things that modern people don't like.
Except for the fact that applying "liberal" principles is largely how we got there. You seem to be ignoring the formation of unions and building codes lead to a much more productive workforce that was able to keep up with increased manufacturing demand.
You seem to forget the "liberal" principle of social security leading to abolishment of asylums where a great many people were tortured instead of becoming useful citizens.
You also forget about the "liberal" EPA cleaned up a great many lakes and rivers which were so polluted they caught on fire leading to enormous health concerns along with manufacturing issues. We can talk about thalidomide babies and Polio too which were hurting productivity enormously.
That is the problem with your perspective. The reason they are called progressive is because they selfishly follow a philosophy that says we should always strive to do better which is how you compete. If you aren't always trying to make life better for everyone then what is the point of spending all that money on government? Why do we need senators and congress critters if all of the laws are perfect already? Because they aren't perfect, we were handed a solid foundation and it is up to we the people to build from it.
You might also notice that when wealth finally came to the middle class the robber barons of old didn't become poor, they became even more rich. There are so many issues with trickle down economics that I have no idea why anyone that isn't already obscenely rich would go along with it.
Conservative may mean something but it does not cross national boundaries. A conservative is Russia is not a conservative in Saudi Arabia and is not a conservative in the US.
'Conservative' simply means 'resistant to (social) change' so it is the same in different countries, even though the social arrangements they want to preserve may be very different.
However a socialist means roughly the same in all places.
Yeah, it means 'a scumbag who wants to change things'. In fact if you look up 'socialism' on wikipedia it names at least a dozen different kinds, and 'socialist economic system' has seven kinds.
I'm not a social conservative so I'll let them define traditional. But "traditional," as you well know is term that means "expected" norms, and it's a very subjective. And, as you pointed out, only goes back so far.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
There are variations on a theme - but socialism has the means of production under government control and promotes (to various degrees) a collectivist social order in which individual freedom is subordinated to state needs.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Traditional moral codes? So, polygyny is back on the table? Including to under-aged girls who are given no choice in the matter?
"Traditional" does not mean what most people think. Most people only want to use the last hundred years or so as "traditional" and ignore that fact that if we use a larger time frame then we end up with a lot of things that modern people don't like.
Jerry Lee Lewis.
Not even the last 100 years, in the US, with well-known people.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
There are variations on a theme - but socialism has the means of production under government control and promotes (to various degrees) a collectivist social order in which individual freedom is subordinated to state needs.
Stalinist centrally planned command economy is only one of the seven systems listed by wikipedia, which also notes that many socialists regard it as state capitalism and not a form of socialism at all.
> the right of women to have abortions
Yes, because only Christian bigots abhor killing babies?
Wake up call: a lot of people of different extractions are not ok with that.
Abortion is not somebody's right, it's the privation of somebody else's else right to live. (Also called homicide in other contexts.)
Same sex marriage (with children) is not somebody's right, it's the privation of somebody else's right to have a mother and a father.
Shall I go on?
Yeah nah modern liberalism is still synonymous with fascism around the word. You're too retarded to see it.
A horrible example of countries that are both liberal and, I suppose, repressive. Of course you can make your point without using offensive terms in most of those places and probably just get ejected from whatever venue you were haunting so my heart does not personally bleed for thee, but the point exists that one can be both liberal and authoritarian, witness Hillary Clinton.
One can be liberal and authoritarian? Nope, if you're authoritarian it is fundamentally impossible to be a liberal. We're talking hard civics lessons and real definitions here, not the made up nonsense on TV, or from uneducated idiots in society and surely not your pundits. Leaving this here:
liberal
[lib-er-uh l, lib-ruh l]
Synonyms
Examples
Word Origin
See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com
adjective
1. favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.
2. (often initial capital letter) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform.
3. of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism, especially the freedom of the individual and governmental guarantees of individual rights and liberties.
4. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
5. favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression:
a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.
6. of or relating to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
7. free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant:
a liberal attitude toward foreigners.
8. open-minded or tolerant, especially free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.
That's from dictionary.com, and in fact any objective English dictionary will have the same definitions (written a bit differently, but you can go Oxford, American Heritage, and they are all the same).
Hillary an authoritarian? Sure. Hillary a liberal? Not by any remote chance in this universe, and she'll never be one. One can claim, but reality (along with a splash of knowledge and awareness, and no wordplay) is the real deal.
Interestingly enough the Todd Akin candidacy is one of the reasons many tea party people want to take out the republican establishment. The republican establishment funded a candidate with no chance for winning simply to split the vote and allow Akin to win. They preferred to lose the Senate seat rather than have a tea party candidate win.
And this is why the current party system needs to be disbanded. Both parties.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Here's a question:
1) A Gay couple goes to a bakery to buy a wedding cake
2) Bakery owner refuses to sell them a cake on his religious grounds
3) Gay couple complains to government
Would a Liberal government recognize the couple's right to buy a cake, or the baker's right to his religion?
I think GP's point was that "liberals" would want to force the baker to sell the cake
A classic liberal understands that your rights cannot include compelling others to work on your behalf (though they often include preventing others from doing something to you, that's not the same category).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Can I have the right to abort you now? What I do with my body is my right to privately have you aborted.
The fetus magically becomes a human by coming through a vagina.
The end goal of socialism and communism, at least according to the marxist idea which I adhere to, is the complete withering of the state, as it will no longer be needed.
So decrying socialists as "statists" and the like, as often done by libertarians and anarcho capitalists is highly misinformed.
Eat the rich.
So liberal that anything not liberal is being repressed.
There seems to be nothing involved in Marxist theory that calls for the removal of centralized planning and thought control. There will always be people who think differently (counter-revolutionaries) who will need to suppressed and culled from the herd if necessary.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Nice strawman. Marxism says nothing about thought control.
RE: the withering away of the state and the abolishment of central planning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course it is a utopic ideal, similar to the mythical free market.
Eat the rich.
Does nobody realize that the Left = Total Control. Socialism and Communism...
Liberal is staunchly on the left.
Therefore, using logic:
Countries that use Tor are Highly Repressive would have been a sufficient title to this post.
I don't think it's a straw man. I've read many marxist and underdevelopment writers and I saw no respect for individual rights. No respect for freedom of speech. Furthermore take a look at leftists of all stripes and see how willing there are to shut down the speech of those who differ from them.
Shouting down opponents is an attempt at thought-control.
In addition we all know how caring the Stalin, Mao, and Che were to individual rights.
I belong to food coops and when I say that I don't like any of the organic chocolates I've found - people whisper to me that they agree. But these avowed leftists are too brow-beatened to dare say it openly.
No. It's not a straw man. The left (as a whole) has contempt for any speech, any thought that contradicts its sacred cows. In this fashion leftists are no different than religious fanatics. And as there are members of a faith who are not irrational fanatics there are members of the marxist faith who are not irrational fanatics. You may, or may not be among them.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Some countries do have free speech and don't ban hate speech. This doesn't mean you're immune to social consequences, or even that what you say can't be taken into account in sentencing for crimes. However, in the US, as long as you stay on the right side of the law in other ways, hate speech is completely legal.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I hate to disappoint you, but I haven't seen significant numbers of people who call themselves liberals and match your definition, or who call themselves conservatives and match your definition of that. The self-described conservatives seem to be as happy to centralize power as the self-described liberals, although they typically want to use the power in different ways.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So you'd be just fine with the old "no blacks" policies? Allowing public businesses to discriminate against certain groups disadvantages the individuals in those groups considerably. If you're willing to provide a service to random people with no connection to you, you're basically allowing yourself to be compelled to work for others anyway.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yeah. I miss the sort of conservatives we had when I was a kid. I rarely agreed with them, but I could learn from them and respect them.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The sort of election system we have leads to a two-party system, which has been the norm for the history of the US (not always the same two parties, and parties have changed values without changing names). The Republican party currently is really struggling to hold together some diverse constituencies, and missing out on some (Muslims tend to be religious conservatives, and would be much more Republican if the Republicans accepted them freely - as it is, the first Muslim elected to Congress is a very liberal Democrat). Destroy the current two parties and, after some transition years, we'd wind up with two parties with various constituencies that were roughly equally powerful.
To get viable third parties, we need to change things more fundamentally. Ranked-choice voting of some sort would help considerably, or proportional representation by party.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Lots of conservatives seem to have little regard for individual rights. In particular, many of them want to force my beliefs and actions to conform with whatever religion they like, and another large group want to subordinate my rights to corporate rights.
In addition we all know how caring Hitler and the militarist Japanese government were to individual rights.
Fundamentally, lots of people are authoritarian conformists who want to impose their values on everything, and this is not limited to any political leaning.
Marx did a good job of pointing out some of the evils of capitalism, and some of the goals in the Communist Manifesto look quite reasonable nowadays (particularly public education). His solutions were idealistic claptrap, and the unfortunate thing is that they attracted enough people to gain power.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I doubt you understand what "socialist" means, either
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I currently live under a semi-socialist government. "Everyone shall be equal" but some are more equal than others...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
What is conservative? Is conservative free market? or social conservatives?
Patrick Buchanan was a conservative who was greatly opposed to free markets.
Ayn Rand is considered a "right-wing conservative" and she was an atheist.
Milton Friedman is also considered a right-wing conservative and he was for free markets
The term "right-wing" or conservative does not make sense if it encompasses the above three individuals. And the term makes even less sense if it includes Hitler.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I'm well aware of why we have a 2 party system. It is an easy system to fix, actually, but it will never happen: only allow names under the positions in the ballots. No parties listed and especially no party line votes. If the order of names on ballots need to be randomized to prevent bias then putting party affiliation on the ballot should also be removed, as it leads to bias as well. Know your candidates.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
convservatism on the other hand is about keeping power decentralized
And I thought the idea of decentralizing is mostly in the party program of the center and agricultural parties, driving that vibrancy to the places far away from the capital.
"Right-wing" makes as much sense as "left-wing", considering that that includes Che Guevara, Bernie Sanders, Karl Marx, and me. Politics is a lot more complicated than that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
None of that will stop people from getting sample ballots from party organizations. The city elections where I live have been nominally non-partisan, but everybody interested knows who's affiliated with Democrats and who with Republicans. In other elections, the order is randomized, which means I can't just fill in ovals across the sheet in a line anyway.
Ranked-choice voting (or some similar system) would make it safer to vote third-party since one could also effectively vote against the Democrat or Republican, to taste. There's been times when I liked a third-party candidate, knew that candidate wasn't going to win, and voted for my next favorite. If I could vote for two people, my preferred one and the one of my preferred party, I wouldn't have to worry about tactical voting.
A proportional representation system would allow a third party to get someone into the Legislature or Congress even if its support was fairly thinly spread out. It would also reduce the difference between a major and a minor party. It wouldn't allow voters to vote for individual candidates, but that's as big a loss as it might be, since it usually winds up as a choice between who the parties support anyway.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There is a lot in common between people who think that :
1. individuals cannot produce or trade items without government consent.
(The means of production are owned entirely by the government. No individual can hire another in a private endeavor.) The more progressive you are the less you believe that private entity has legitamcy; the more you feel that profit is theft; and the more justified you feel that proponents of such an endeavor are evil and lackies of the "rich."
2. That wealth is bad. That wealth is the result of theft. That taxation ought to be punitive in addition to providing basic services.
3. I have never seen (and I could be mistaken) but I have never seen any socialist, communist, or progressive philosophy which advocated a restriction on government.
4. I have never seen (and could be mistaken) any socialist, communist or progressive literature that extolled the virtue of dissent. Oh, progressives are fine with dissent when it comes to contradictory views but dissent to basic progressive values? NO.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Who thinks that people should have government consent to make things? That wasn't true in the Soviet Union, and people could make their livings by making things. They couldn't have employees, because that would be exploitation.
There are a lot of leftists, including me, who don't think wealth is bad. It appears to me that "wealth is bad" is the province of a few crackpots that many in the upper classes like to showcase to cover up the fact that they're winning the class war.
Marxism talked about the withering away of the state. Since the endgame was the destruction of government, I'd consider that a proposed limitation. It would never work with humans, of course, but that's what he wrote. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of leftists don't make a point of limitations on government because they just assume it. Someone advocating a stronger government is usually saying how he or she wants it stronger, not that it should assume all power.
The fanatic types anywhere on the political spectrum are going to want to can dissent. You can easily find examples on the left and right.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're missing the point, if the ballot is both randomized and parties are removed, then people will only vote for those they know, and no one else, or they will choose randomly. Either outcome is preferred over party based voting if you're interested in informed and fair elections.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.