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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28318 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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I mean this is the same guy who believes that John Wilkes Booth was a progressive

No, I called him a "democrat" though to be fair those terms are becoming increasingly interchangeable.

And then in this comment you explicitly said that you were suggesting that he was also a left-winger. I don’t know how much more clear you could have been in this conversation.

Again, i called him a leftist and a democrat. You're drawing your own associations

[I] called him a leftist and a [D]emocrat

In 1865, the Democrats were the right-wing party.

Is that supposed to be a disagreement of some sort?

A War-of-Southern-Treason-era Unitedstatesian being both a leftist and a Democrat would be as incongruous an as a current-year Unitedstatesian being both a leftist and a Republican. (Also, Booth was a Know-Nothing, not a Democrat. The Know-Nothings were right-wing on their loudest issue (immigration) but also had some left-wing positions.)

Its not incongruous at all.

You're forgetting that the past is a foriegn country, and that the current left/right bifurcation of the parties is a relatively recent phenomenon (within the last 50 years or so).

The man widely regarded as the founder of the modern Republican party, Abraham Lincoln, was "A War-of-Southern-Treason-era Unitedstatesian" and is still recognizably a Republican within the current framework.

What do you think is the difference between a leftist and a progressive?

I think the thing that makes a progressive "progressive" is an axiomatic belief in "Progress". Ie a belief that current year is special and need not be beholden to the rules and realities of prior years.

I think that while not all leftists are progressive, almost all progressives are leftists. There are conversations and compromises that a sincere conservative can have with a sincere leftist that cant be had with a sincere progressive and that is the benefit to drawing the distinction.

Once upon a time there was a progressive faction in both the Republican and Democratic parties just as there was an explicitly Christian/Social conservative faction in both parties but as the Democrats became more explicitly progressive the realities of a two-party system encouraged the Republicans to become more explicitly conservative to pick up newly alienated conservative democrats.

And what do you think any of that has to do with John Wilkes Booth?

Very little.

I called Booth a "Democrat" which he was, and a "leftist" which is admittedly more of a stretch but him being a theater person from a family of theater people coupled with the "Sic semper tyrannis" shtick is surely a gesture in that direction.

im being a theater person from a family of theater people coupled with the "Sic semper tyrannis" shtick is surely a gesture in that direction.

This is the flimsiest straw I have ever seen anybody attempt to grasp at.

The "Sic semper tyrannis" shtick is not a flimsy straw, its a 2x4.

The idea that building utopia is a simple matter of breaking down barriers and killing the right people is arguably the sine qua non of leftism.

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