You'll have to take that up with the public at large. We use "internet" to refer to the world wide web. Try to sell someone a computer that has "the internet", but won't do tcp/IP, you'll get punched.
As for the infrastructure, that's a rather more esoteric concern. It needs a distinguishing term.
I ran into this recently on a video chat with my brother, he was trying to pin a mustache on his face but the algorithm couldn't see him. Fortunately, he didn't know why. I don't know how I would've reacted had he understood.
There is a lot of confusion -- no doubt. This has to do with the new usage of the term "liberal" to describe Democrats or people on the left, when historically, liberal meant people on the right, like Libertarians or Republicans. As a result, we now describe free-market liberalism as "classical liberalism", to distinguish it from modern "social liberalism".
To further complicate things, pundits on the left have attempted to associate the uglier side of left politics (namely, fascism) with the right, so you have a lot of people calling neo-nazis "far-right", when in reality, National Socialism was a leftist movement. Hitler was a "liberal", in terms of being a believer in large-scale government intervention in the markets.
Conversely, the USSR was and China is "conservative" in the classical sense. That is, they believe in government intervention in markets, which was called conservatism 100 years ago, and is called liberal today.
They mean nothing in practice because of bizarre narratives like that.
Before taking power, the Nazis caucused with the National Conservatives, the Free Conservative Party, and the German Conservative Party.
German leftists were first to the concentration camps under the Enabling Act of 1933. Under the Röhm Putsch, the Nazis killed and outlawed the left-leaning faction of their party. Under the Commissar Order, Hitler prioritized the death of leftists in conquered land. Socialists, leftists, liberals and communists got their own special badges at the death camps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge#...)
The USSR and China are autocratic state-run corporatists. They are conservative in that they are effectively industrialized reactionary feudalism with integrated propaganda to prevent populist revolution.
And finally, some may enjoy calling an intentionally plutocratic state liberal, but it's essentially autocracy without coronation ceremonies.
The confusion here isn't that the ideas themselves are confusing. The historical record is abundantly unambiguous. However some don't like it so they do revisionism and taxonomy hand-waving to try to confuse people. But that's the nature of power.
That's because they were reactionary monarchists. The nationalising was a throwback to 18th century imperialism. That's a rather extreme form of "conservative". Its not like we're talking worker self directed cooperatives regulated by government for the public good.
Marxist in first international was about extending democratic principles to the organization of labor. When you have a single party dictator snatching up enterprise, you don't have first international.
Besides, the terms are for camps more than anything. It's an affinity, not a taxonomy.
Monarchism is a sort of leftism. It's still about having the state own and manage industry, rather than spreading its ownership out among many people. In the end, leftism always ends up looking like Monarchism anyway, to go to your 'affinity not taxonomy' claim.
No again. It's about syndicalism. Modern monarchism is structurally capital enterprise. Always has been. Antiquity talks to this. You have hierarchy, autocracy, authoritarian systems... that's capitalism - combining it with statecraft and religion, you get monarchism
Calling Nazism, democracies, socialism, and monarchism the same thing is about as useful a classification as calling them nouns.
It sounds like you think a system free from government would be free from coercion.
As if places in actual war, without government, is free from coercion or as if the natural animal kingdom with its dog eats dog nature is free from coercion.
Almost as if you're making the fanciful objectivist argument where everyone is pathological and greedy, but also upstanding and moral...
Monarchism and capital enterprise may be similar in their internal hierarchy, outside of some corporate structures, but they are rather unlike monarchies in one very important way.
A capitalist enterprise (outside of a handful of extremely inelastic markets, like defense, catastrophic healthcare and public safety) require that people choose to purchase their product. That is Democratic in nature.
Anarchy is not free of coercion. Fortunately, free markets are not anarchic. Ballot and autocratic are not the only forms of government. Capitalism is itself a form of government -- the left intuits this, but are clouded on the internal forces.
The nature of ballot-organized government, even direct democracy, is less democratic than that of dollar-voting markets.
Ballot government has much more in common with monarchy. Generally -- you're choosing a single person,and that person makes choices ostensibly on your behalf for a number of years. Additionally -- you may get to choose on some issues once in a while, and watch as your choices are undone by the courts and legislature.
Conversely, in dollar voting, everyone is making all of the choices all of the time.
As a result, unencumbered capitalism is a purer form of direct democracy, which measurably produces a more responsive form of government.
It allows the public to vote directly for specific desires, producing an organizing impetus which is more respondent to the will of the public than any other form of government, even direct democracy.
What the left intuits as misrule by business, is actually the result of the votes of their fellow dollar-voters. It is the wisdom, or folly, of the people.
Thanks for the thoughts. Social Sciences are so indeterminable. I appreciate the civility. I need to disengage from this now however. Plenty to think about.
There are examples of more difficult media which don't get mass-media popular, not because of their quality, but because of their difficulty. These types of works make up part of the 'secret handshake' of the upper class -- it is how they identify each other.
France has the noble, but mistaken, idea that they can force lower and middle class people to take in high culture, and in so doing, will be able to make their country more egalitarian.
Sorry guys, cultural class isn't something you can just legislate away.
The upper classes (culturally, not economically) have spent generations training themselves to be very critical connoisseurs -- you're not going to undo that with some government-funded arthouse flicks and a Netflix tax.
At least in Germany there is a lot of suspicion against US companies in particular since the Snowden documents. Surveillance is a very critical topic in Germany since in the 20th century there were two dictatorial regimes on German terrain that used surveillance methods. One of them only ceased to exist for little more than 25 years.
That's not just a funny coincidence -- the American left has for decades been slowly allying themselves against the West.
That's why no one on the left batted an eye when Google chose Yuri Kochiyama for their Google Doodle, despite that she said in 2003:
"...I consider Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro.... I thank Islam for bin Laden. America's greed, aggressiveness, and self-righteous arrogance must be stopped."
Progressives move forever more to the left, and then accuse the right of "moving right" because we didn't move to your new definition of center fast enough. Excuse me, conservatives have not actually managed to get signed any major conservative initiative in the US in 50 years, because of that line.
Our government is bigger than it has ever been:
-we haven't privatized schools or gotten vouchers,
-we haven't abolished any major departments of governments,
-we haven't been able to abolish any major social program,
-we haven't been able to cut costs in the welfare state,
-we haven't abolished government marriage,
-we haven't opened immigration to wealthy foreigners,
-we have only lost ground on gun rights and religious rights,
-we have not been able to slow the judicial activism of the courts,
-we have only gotten passed minor deregulation efforts,
-we have not limited the unions,
-abolished the minimum wage, ended zoning laws, and so on.
To a conservative of the Goldwater years the Republican party of today would look like a bunch of socialist fascists. The closest Republicans get to doing anything conservative these days is to slow your guys roll.
So you list a number of hyper-extremist radical points, many of which even HAVE happened (vouchers and charter schools are everywhere, immigration is open to wealthy foreigners, unions have been devastated and barely exist, gun control barely exists, the welfare state has been cut enormously, by Bill Clinton in fact! because the left has shifted so far to the right the Democrats are accomplishing your radical tasks for you!), all of which almost no other country in the world even considers, most of which were at no time in American history even close to politically viable, and then when you don't get your insane libertarian wish list fulfilled you complain the country is leftist?
>"So you list a number of hyper-extremist radical points [...] then you complain the country is leftist?"
No. I listed a bunch of things which were not extreme positions 50 years ago to show that politics is indeed becoming more leftist. The fact that you see these as very extreme positions is exactly my point -- the center has moved left, not right.
Removing the minimum wage is so extreme it's barely even under consideration anywhere outside libertarian-only econ conferences. And it always has been. Your positions (the few that have not already been enacted, because of how far right our system has shifted) are hyper extreme, they have always been hyper extreme, they always will be hyper extreme, even in conservative circles because the vast majority of people simply do not want them to happen and have never wanted them to happen because they would be awful for almost everyone.
The only items on your list you have NOT gotten because of our extreme rightward shift in the last 60 years have been the points about removing pieces of the government wholesale (and removing government-recognized marriage, which near zero percent of the population has ever wanted, which isn't even a conservative position). Because government agencies were created for a reason, to meet a need and those needs have not ceased to exist.
Gun and religious laws have not really changed much. Deregulation has happened massively and destroyed huge sectors of the economy. The only point there that withstands even casual scrutiny is judicial activism.
>"Removing the minimum wage is so extreme it's barely even under consideration [...] And it always has been."
Then you disagree with Eleanor Roosevelt on history, who, speaking of the Republican party's desire to end the minimum wage in 1959 gave the congressional testimony:
"The arguments raised against establishing any legal minimum wage were the same as those which have been used by employers over the past 50 years."
And liberal think-tank The National Employment Law Project, who writes:
"The criticisms raised by minimum wage opponents display a remarkable consistency over the past 100 years"
Source: "100 Years of Broken-Record Opposition to the Minimum Wage"
You can disagree with these positions, but at least have your facts right about basic points of history. Points of history that your party doesn't even disagree with.
> Progressives move forever farther and farther to the left, and then accuse the right of "moving right" because we didn't move to your new definition of center fast enough.
The individual mandate for purchase of private insurance + subsidy system adopted as "Obamacare" was first proposed by the Republicans and insurance industry lobbyists in opposition to healthcare reform efforts under the Clinton administration.
Today, its a Democratic achievement seen as socialism by the Right.
> -we haven't privatized schools or gotten vouchers,
Both traditional public schools and traditional private schools are losing enrollment to homeschooling and public-funded, privately-operated charters -- both of which are things that have been pushed by the right.
(The right's also unsuccessfully pushed vouchers and drastically cutting public school funding, but when your pushing for multiple and mutually-exclusive things, you can't really characterize it as your opponents winning when you get some of the things that your side is pushing for instead of the others.)
> -we haven't been able to abolish any major social program,
Well, in the 1990s you got to abolish AFDC, one of the biggest social programs in the country, and replace it with the more-restrictive TANF.
> -we have only lost ground on gun rights and religious rights,
Actually, the federal "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" and state laws modeled on it have advanced religious rights to discriminate which had previously been found to violate laws which existed prior to those.
And, on 2nd amendment rights, major advances were made by the right in the Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller (2008) -- holding that the 2nd Amendment created a personal right in federal enclaves -- and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) -- holding that the 2nd Amendment created a personal right incorporated against state restrictions by the 14th Amendment.
> -we have not been able to slow the judicial activism of the courts,
And the left really wishes you would slow the judicial activism of your courts, such as the bizarre ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius that Congress can't set the terms for State participation in a program (Medicaid) which is otherwise within Congress power to establish.
> To a conservative of the Goldwater years the Republican party of today would look like a bunch of Socialists.
Well, we could ask a conservative of the Goldwater years about that, like the one that's the odds-on favorite to the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States in 2016. Well, except someone did, back in 1996 (on NPR, 1/13/1996):
"SCOTT SIMON: I mean, did you ever back in the ’60s, between when — I believe you were a Goldwater girl —
HILLARY CLINTON: That’s right.
SCOTT SIMON: — and whenever you became politically –
HILLARY CLINTON: That’s right. And I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."
>"The individual mandate for purchase of private insurance + subsidy system adopted as "Obamacare" was first proposed by the Republicans and insurance industry lobbyists in opposition to healthcare reform efforts under the Clinton administration. [...] I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. "
That's exactly right.
The Republican party of today has found itself only reacting to liberal policies. We're basically forced to put forward alternative, smaller, liberal policies to stave off the big ones. Rather than arguing to draw down Medicare, we're sitting here talking about establishing alternative socialist policies.
>"The right's also unsuccessfully pushed vouchers and drastically cutting public school funding, but when your pushing for multiple and mutually-exclusive things, "
Vouchers are in many cases cheaper than public schools -- they are not mutually exclusive.
>" you got to abolish AFDC, one of the biggest social programs in the country, and replace it with the more-restrictive TANF."
Taking a $22b/yr (out of ~$240b in social welfare programs), and replacing it with a $17b/yr program doesn't seem the big win to me that you make it out to be.
>"Religious Freedom Restoration Act"
That law limited religious freedom. It says that if you can prove a compelling interest, and can prove a law is the least restrictive way to do something, you can do it even though it steps on a person's constitutional right to free exercise.
The pro-religious freedoms version of that law, which would have been supported by a liberal reading of the constitution, would have read "The government may not limit a person's free exercise of religion, unless that freedom kills or maims another human being, or severely damages their personal property."
That was yet another example of a statist law put in place with the hope that it would stop additional statist laws from coming down the pike (of course, to no avail).
>"NFIB v. Sebelius "
Medicaid and Obamacare are not legal programs to begin with in a strictly constitutional sense. Their constitutionality was predicated on a very strange, and wishy-washy reinterpretation of the Commerce clause. (Albeit a popular one, for obvious reasons.)
Commerce, as written, was clearly denoting treaties of trade between governmental bodies (read tariffs and trade restrictions), not saying that the Federal government has a right to establish any new laws they desire, so long as they relate to money -- even requiring someone to purchase something they don't want:
[Congress has the right...] "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." That's all.
Well, sure, in that it allowed powerful private entities to engage in religious discrimination adversely affecting the practical religious freedom of less powerful entities and individuals, but in terms of government power, it limited government action more than it was prior to the law (which is why the right pushed it).
> It says that if you can prove a compelling interest, and can prove a law is the least restrictive way to do something, you can do it even though it steps on a person's constitutional right to free exercise
No, it didn't. It said that if you couldn't do that, you couldn't enforce a law affecting religious exercise; it didn't allow government anything that was previously prohibited. (This, in practice, tightened the standards on government from what had been established in case law.
> Medicaid and Obamacare are not legal programs to begin with in a strictly constitutional sense.
Ruling that either the ACA as a whole or Medicaid was unconstitutional would be, while both radically inconsistent with generations of case law and hard to justify textually, at least coherent. Ruling that it was constitutional for Congress to establish Medicaid, initially set standards for participation, fund it by annual appropriations, and set new standards and funding, but not apply the new standards to states that wanted to continue operating under the old standards and only take the share of funding that was attributed to the caseload which would be covered by the old standards was completely incoherent from any perspective related to applying any kind of Constitutional principal, and clear and unmistakeable arbitrary legislation from the bench.
It, in no unclear terms, says that you can limit free exercise, so long as you live up to two pretty low standards:
--------
"b. Government may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—
(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest;
and
(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."
--------
This is much less binding than the first amendment:
"Congress _shall make no law_ respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
The constitution provided no exceptions whatsoever. By definition, a law which adds exceptions has moved the bar textually. It is, by definition, unconstitutional.
Again, it was a bad move by conservatives using liberal laws to protect themselves, rather than just pushing for conservative laws.
"only if" is restrictive, not permissive, "if" is permissive, and "if and only if" is both permissive and restrictive.
> This is much less binding than the first amendment:
I understand you view it that way, however, the author's of the bill did it because it was more restrictive on government than the first amendment had been applied by the courts, as it applies to neutral and generally applicable laws with incidental impacts on religious practice.
> The constitution provided no exceptions whatsoever.
OTOH, the constitution provides no qualifications whatsoever on various grants of power to government that it provides, either. The various scrutiny levels (strict, intermediate, and rational basis) serve, at least as regards federal action, to resolve conflicts between unqualified restrictions and unqualified grants of power (its true that other modes of legal interpretation are conceivable -- a strict "newest wins" rule, say, could be applied, in which case the first amendment grants would trump all powers in the "base" Constitution, but all powers granted by later amendments would completely ignore restrictions imposed by the First Amendment. So, say, commerce clause action would be completely prohibited from any impact on religious exercise, but income tax could be deliberately constructed to suppress a given religion with no Constitutional difficulty.)
Bin Laden killed many fewer innocent people than were killed and continue to be killed in the American middle eastern wars. Do you feel that Google should deny the doodle to anyone who says anything good about Gerorge W Bush or Barack Obama?
As for the infrastructure, that's a rather more esoteric concern. It needs a distinguishing term.