What does being a "Liberal" mean? (US)

[lookout123]

Well, I'm a conservative so my values are hate and intolerance. or so I've been told.

[Fair&Balanced]

Originally Posted by lookout123

Well, I'm a conservative so my values are hate and intolerance. or so I've been told.

If you dont want your church to conduct gay marriages, that is between you and your church and not intolerant. If you want the government to prohibit the right of a gay couple to marry or have the same rights as married couples, that is imposing your religious values on the broader society; values that dont have consensus support, and IMO, intolerant.

The same does not apply to supporting a flat tax. Different issues and different meaning of extreme.

added:

I think the intolerance shows up in the social issues where, more often than not, they are defined by religious doctrine. But then again, I think most organized religions are intolerant to some degree.

Fiscal issues (tax policy, regulatory policy, etc) are defined more by political ideology rather than religious doctrine.

[Griff]

We happen to agree on these issues as framed, but a generation of voters has to die off before complete gay rights are the consensus. You appear to be basing your belief of what constitutes consensus on agreement with yourself and like-minded people. I forget whose sock puppet I'm addressing, (if you are a one label poster I apologize) but I'm going to guess that you are middle-aged urbanite, since your "consensus" ideas reflect that background. Where I live, the consensus positions are gun rights, low tax rates, and individual responsibility. If I only talked to locals I'd never suspect that 1/2 the country doesn't buy it.

[Fair&Balanced]

Originally Posted by Griff

We happen to agree on these issues as framed, but a generation of voters has to die off before complete gay rights are the consensus. You appear to be basing your belief of what constitutes consensus on agreement with yourself and like-minded people. I forget whose sock puppet I'm addressing, (if you are a one label poster I apologize) but I'm going to guess that you are middle-aged urbanite, since your "consensus" ideas reflect that background. Where I live, the consensus positions are gun rights, low tax rates, and individual responsibility. If I only talked to locals I'd never suspect that 1/2 the country doesn't buy it.

No, I am not basing consensus on myself and like-minded people. I thought I was clear that I am basing it on broad national public opinion (not any one selected community) and/or widely held and long-term policies and practices.

I dont see a need to address the sock pocket comment.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Fair&Balanced

I dont see a need to address the sock pocket comment.

I must be crankier today than I thought.

What percentage would you put on consensus? I'd say it has to be broad enough to encompass about 68% of the population so you can drop the nutters off each end of the bell curve.

[Fair&Balanced]

Originally Posted by Griff

I must be crankier today than I thought.

What percentage would you put on consensus? I'd say it has to be broad enough to encompass about 68% of the population so you can drop the nutters off each end of the bell curve.

I would put the percentage as somewhere between one half and two thirds.

But, I'll use your nutters on the end of the bell curve as an example.

You posted earlier that Frank Gafney is an extremist and I agree. But I would suggest that when the conservative Republican presidential candidates espouse his position that Sharia law threatens the American lifestyle because they believe such a position will help raise their credibility with conservative voters, then the nutter end of the bell curve on the conservative side is wider than just the most extreme nutters.

On the issues of abortion and gay marriage, I would never suggest that opposing those issues is extremist, given that nearly half the country probably hold that view. Counseling young women against abortions is not extreme unless it crosses over to intimidation and spreading misinformation. And I said earlier that if one does not want to have his church sanction gay marriage, I dont think that is extreme or intolerant.

The extremism is the idea of legislating that moral position through a Constitutional amendment denying rights to a segment of society. This has significantly less support, yet is the official platform of the Republican party. Again, that extreme end of the bell curve on the conservative side is wider than just the nutters.

On the issue of lower taxes that you raised, particularly for the middle class, who doesnt support that?

But when all of the Republican candidates support a flat tax or flatter tax (like lookout's), they are not support lower taxes. They are support equalizing the tax rates (or coming closer) among all taxpayers in the form of tax simplification. As I pointed out in another thread, the flatter tax would raise taxes on those current paying no tax by 10% (lookout's proposal) and raise taxes on the middle class (who currently benefit from lots of deductions) by 15%. The only taxpayers not paying significantly more under his proposal are the wealthy.

IMO a tax policy that is so drastically altered, not to lower taxes, but to make the working poor and middle class pay a higher percentage or a "fairer" share, not to mention the adverse affect it would have on the economy (middle class paying 15% more are not likely to have much more disposal income to spend), that is extreme.

[Griff]

You are right on the structure of taxes. The GOP candidates are being deceptive about the level of taxation people would face and the nature of the cuts in services they'd need to balance a budget. I don't want to see the top tax rate go much over 1/3 because I think that does have the effect of suppressing economic activity. That said, we have to end all those deductions out there so people do pay their share. We do face what is essentially a national debt emergency so a temporary higher rate may be necessary.