Can you be socially progressive and fiscally conservative?

Sometimes literalism is the best response

Insurance company pushing into every aspect of health care made it unaffordable to many well before Obama came into office.

Bit of a mixed bag, tbh. We've already got fat too many states as it is pushing creationism in school, even with the current oversight..But there's also been the push to connect funding to better performing school instead of directing more funds to underperforming schools. We had a discussion on this in another thread about how once Germany put more resources into the underperforming schools, they saw more children from such school enter into the Gymnasium college track there.

It's not government oversight so much as how the oversight is working.

[/quote]
Fix your quote Dayton.

The Bible doesn't mention Jesus' middle name

Nor has there been a worsening. You expecting utopia?

Yes. What do you consider heavy?

Actually, if the lowest the poverty rate was in 1973, then, yes, there has been a worsening.

In any event, the Great Society wasn't marketed as a program to more-or-less freeze the poverty rate. "Let's keep the poverty rate from getting any lower!"

Medicare. SCHIP. The ACA. A great many state laws, especially those that restrict competition from out-of-state companies.

Quantify worsening.

That isn't heavy. Heavy is single payer, single provider, or both. Works well in the civilized world.

So you want to do away with state laws? Children's insurance. Insurance for the elderly? You're such a wonderful person.

The TL;DR version is leave people the fuck alone to do what they want, so long as they're not hurting anyone.

And anyone with any experience in fundraising knows how asinine this argument is.

Crisis fundraising is easy: you can move a lot of people to give in the very short term because they're mad about an issue in the news, or because an earthquake just hit Haiti 48 hours ago, or because a school in their neighborhood is in immediate danger of closing.

But it's not sustainable. The issue loses its place in the news cycle, or Haiti needs unsexy things like electrical infrastructure instead of blankets people can knit, or the school is in danger of closing for the fifth time instead of the first ... and donations peter out.

Charity is fickle and heavily reliant on emotion. That's where government can come in really handy -- with stable funding, and with the ability to fund that which is necessary, whether it makes for a sexy fundraising pitch or not.

Yes, exactly.

Some issues exist almost entirely in the social realm -- gay rights, abortion -- but for others, it's hard to say where social ends and fiscal begins. Health care and education being a few.

Then there's the question of whether you're really socially liberal if you're not willing to see government do anything to secure the rights you theoretically favor. If a person's position is "I don't have a problem with desegregation personally, but I also think the Supreme Court was wrong in Brown v. Board of Education because federalism," is that really a progressive view?

Why not ask "If a person's position is 'I don't have a problem with desegregation, but I also think we shouldn't have a dictator and police state to decree and enforce it because Constitution,' is that really a progressive view?" instead?

One of the central premises of liberal constitutional republicanism is that the process is an essential part of liberty, because otherwise rights are easy-come-easy-go. You can see this with a modern example of Trump undoing all of Obama's executive orders that progressives liked so much.

ETA: To answer my version of the question, I would argue it's not a progressive view either. I've seen very little from self-described progressives to indicate that they care about accumulation of power (executive or otherwise) except when it's by someone who isn't progressive. This is evidence that my thinking that progressivism (distinct from liberalism) is wrong and dangerous, is probably not far wrong.

On the other hand, I rather like being able to call myself liberal, so I'm grateful to progressives for abandoning that word, even if it was because conservatives used it as a slur. "Liberal" is a lot less awkward than "libertarian", and the word has a better history.

I like that better than the initial question - while I hold some liberal opinions, I really don't like the stigma "progressive" has accumulated.

No. Heineken sucks.

I look at the type of minds that have stigmatized it, and I'm pretty okay with it.

I mean, look at this moron who thinks he's clever calling folks "regressives" when anyone with an eighth grade vocabulary will recognize he's being disingenuous. I suspect he doesn't really know as many definitions as he does words...

Meh. The whole clever-nickname thing is pretty sad. I have more than one guy on FB that says "Repugnicans" and thinks it's clever. The whole thing has become childish.

Except that regressive is more accurate based on what they actually do. Their form of politics is divisive to say the least, not to mention highly bigoted.

Pointing out divisions that already exist, and trying to address them, is not the same as creating divisions, no matter how much conservative pundits try to pretend otherwise.

Except that they are creating the divisions. At times out of nothing.

What divisions would those be?

They make white boys' peepees feel small

They make people see racism, sexism (and whatever other -ism) where it does not exist, and make them into useful idiots for people who simply want more power over the lives of others. For the "greater good," or course.

:ironymeter:

Says the racist.

The word is appropriate to you because of your actions here, racist. You can deny it all you want, but your hypocrisy is here for all to see.

No -- they point out racism, sexism and other -isms that you don't see because they don't really affect you, and that many conservatives refuse to believe exist because acknowledging the advantages they were born with would hurt their egos.

I think it's possible to be socially progressive, and fiscally conservative. It's a tightrope to walk, but I think it's possible.

Is it racist to ask why black people love fruit punch soda so much? Just wondering...

It is, because it is derived from the same racial stereotype that says black people love fried chicken and watermelon, which itself is rooted in the abomination that is slavery.

I used to think so but came to a view that they're often at counter purposes. Inevitably, the table tilts too far in one direction or the other...

That is a fair point. I think one can be socially progressive, while also trying to keep the government from having to always foot the bill. In theory, private industries, charity organizations, and personal donations would be enough, if enough people cared, or didn't see profit as the largest motivating factor. Unfortunately, most humans really like making as much money as possible, our society endorses is it as the right thing to do™. They don't have to be diametrically opposed, but they often are. For example, I don't doubt @Lanzman works to be socially progressive, and fiscally conservative. I believe he works very hard at it. If the world were made of Lanzmans, no one would go hungry, and you would have the right to do whatever you wished in the privacy of your own home without people trying to put you in jail for it. Unfortunately, for every Lanzman, there's TheLonelySquire, and that puts the number back to square one.