Comments on: I would be a Republican

By: ingiltere dil okulu

ingiltere dil okulu — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:35:33 +0000

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By: Thomas Jollans

Thomas Jollans — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:22:55 +0000

Bob, the Nolan chart seams interesting, but is inherently flawed: “Conservative” means something else depending on where you are and thus what one might want to conserve or re-introduce.

The Political Compass is, IMHO, a much better approach at political categorization. The actual approach is very similar, it just isn’t flawed in that way.

By: Bob Robertson

Bob Robertson — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:15:30 +0000

Sadly, from the very beginning, “Republican” has meant big government, regulation, spending, “government as country”, things like that.

The documentary is completely wrong. Left and Right are merely artificial creations to polarize the electorate by taking particular issues to “one side or the other”, by something approximating “economic freedom” vs. “personal freedom”.

The Nolan Chart is a much better representation, because it allows for Control vs. Liberty.

I think you’ll find that the Jeffersonian Democratic party is what you really mean, and I can recommend “Martin van Buren: What Greatness Really Means” or the text version entitled, “The American Gladstone”, both available on Mises.org

To understand that the murdering tyrant Lincoln was the pinnacle of Republican party values is to realize that there is no love of actual liberty in the Republican party at all.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:41:20 +0000

I agree political classification is hard and universal classification practically impossible. All we can do is clearly define the terms we’re using before we present our viewpoints or the premise of the discussion. Then it doesn’t necessarily matter where you live and what does the audience usually consider “right” or “left”, “republican” or “conservative” to be, so long as they understand and concede to the definitions offered for the given discourse.

But I’m repeating myself.

Croatian politics is heavily influenced by european politics so the left-right scale probably resembles that of EU, Germany included. But as you can tell I don’t have much interest in them to care. If there was a libertarian or similar party here I’d probably know about it and probably support it in spirit (if not politically), so I’m pretty homeless overhere.

And yeah, I like the clarity of “voluntaryist” too. It’s not that dreadful even once you get used to it, but that’s probably a subjective thing.

Regards

By: Thomas Jollans

Thomas Jollans — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:41:02 +0000

Alas, it’s not that simple. You could say that, if you were American, you would rather support the GOP than any other party.

Political classification is a very difficult subject as it stands, and using simple terms in an international context while retaining a clear meaning is nigh impossible. The parties that call themselves “republican”, in the US and in Germany (a small party), are highly conservative. In Germany, this means they are rather far-right, meaning they are nationalists. In the US, they are rather far-right, meaning they have a neo-liberal economical stance. That and a lot of conservativism, which means something else everywhere. Do you see where the problem is ?

Now, you, of course, do not leave such an ambiguity, you quote a source about the US, after all, but I thought it better to say this, nonetheless, since I know you to be European, though I don’t know anything about political categories/parties in Croatia—I don’t know how unlikely you making an unintended political reference is.

“Voluntaryist” may be a dreadful word, (from an æsthetic-linguistic perspective) but at least it only means one thing.