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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   21434 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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

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.

So when Thomas Jefferson wrote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” he was expressing his deeply-felt leftism?

Well he wasn't not doing so.

...and when you look at Jefferson in context he certainly "leaned left" relative to other founding fathers like Adams, Hamilton, and Madison.

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