Quote:
Originally Posted by Lune
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As someone who grew up in a wealthy, Republican (fiscal conservative) household and community, and became more left-leaning after university, I've become increasingly disappointed with the character of liberalism and progressives.
While, economically, I'll always seek a healthy balance between laissez-faire and interventionism, things like:
-Covering up the mass-sexual-assault incidents
-Flooding Europe and the US with third world immigrants
-Multiculturalism
-Completely misunderstanding the extent to which politics and religion are intertwined for most Muslims
-Faulting Charlie Hebdo for drawing Muhammad instead of terrorists for being animals
-Radical feminism, safe space, white cis-male privilege, etc etc
-Irrational gun hate
... have so thoroughly ruined progressivism for me that I'm not even sure I identify that way anymore. A lot of these things aren't just championed by 'radicals' or 'extremists' either. I just got hired to tutor college students in Anatomy, Chemistry, Physics, etc, and I have to do a fucking training seminar on safe spaces as part of my employment. I think people like Bill Maher capture progressivism as it should be, reasonably, but sadly the whole thing seems to be evolving away from that, going down the toilet just like conservatism has since Reagan.
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Well I started out that way as well, but I eventually faced a paradigm shift in my life. Although too young to vote, I was around to see Carter at work, and I supported him, even to the point of debating pro Carter in my classroom while 90% of my fellow gen-X'ers there thought I was crazy for doing so. It wasn't until late-term Reagan I started to really shift, though I considered myself a "Reagan Democrat" through most of his administration.
As I look back from now to then, and in observation of the Democrat party to which it has become, I see less and less traditional Democrats, more leftist that really have hijacked that party (though much of the same in the Rep party as well). Even CPUSA endorsed Obama. Now waiting for slurs and tags to be thrown, but neither am I a "Republican", though I do vote for them if the voting is good. I've had wonderful debates with Republicans, really good stuff, but yet not really anything rational with anyone with the little "democrat" tag next to their name. I think most of the rational ones get scared off from the hijackers so thus keep silent. Agree on your points btw.