Can you be a right winger or a left winger

Labeling itself is not an act of malice. Labelling a certain view as coming from a certain school (e.g. socialist, or libertarian) is a shorthand way of asserting that the view originates from, is coloured by, or is biased by, a given set of proposals or ideas (noting in passing Goethe's view that there was no such thing as a liberal idea, only a liberal sentiment.) In many instances labelling may well be a statement of fact depending on the view put out for comment. If I assert my adherence to the belief that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," I don't see that it's unfair to label my view as Marxist, since indeed it was a view Karl Marx espoused. Labelling's also all but required in the Informationless Age when nobody has an attention span left (or the time) to go through the key assumptions and foundations of a social/economic/political/ideological viewpoint. But for those very reasons, there are ultimately only two legitimate rules of debate: debate the facts or debate the logic. Anything else is intellectually dishonest.

 

Yeah, I should have clarified. I view labeling your opponent(s) in a debate as disingenuous and malicious, because in so doing you're attempting to steer the conversation on to the opponent himself and his ideological biases. Which is cheap, because if his points are well reasoned, they remain so in spite of whatever ideological biases may have led him to making them. Likewise, if his argument is weak, it will continue to be weak regardless of what belief led him to make that argument. Attempting to compromise your opponent on account of his beliefs, I view as cowardly.

I should add that I didn't think my previous post entirely through and am kind of embarrassed by it in hindsight. I would delete it if I could. For instance, pointing out your opponent's biases, not to mention vested interests, when questioning the veracity of the facts presented, I view as entirely legitimate. But not to question his arguments and logic, because logic is just logic. Either it is sound or it is not. Bias doesn't enter into it.

 

I don't think it's dismissive at all to take someone who, say, argues that negro brains are smaller than caucasian brains and that therefore black education funding is a waste of time, and apply the label "racist" to them. Quite the contrary, it's an entirely fitting label to put on them. And it's perfectly fine to write people off as stupid or immoral. Some people are precisely that. And I've seen plenty of evidence on this forum alone, let alone the rest of the Great Collective Id that is the Internet at large, of people who practice passive-aggressive argument in the manner you've pointed out -- if not just plain aggressive.

 

By objectively true, I'm referring to something which applies to all people in all times or places, without exception. In my experience, very few people with a leftist worldview are even willing to admit such a thing, because it means some things are inherently better and worse than their counterparts.

 

If your experience is limited to the US, then be frank - you have no experience.

 

Everyone has a core ideology within their worldview, that influences everything they do and say. For example, if a person believes that there's no truth beyond human opinion, then they have no inherent basis for explaining why anything's completely right or wrong. They can claim things are unjust or unfair, but those words lose their meaning without an unchanging source of justice and fairness.

 

The whole angle is absurd. In any discussion, labeling the person presenting a view is wholly unnecessary. Either they can back up their claim or they can't. Trying to assign labels is not, I don't think, malicious, but it is fallacious and more of a situation of either poisoning the well or ad hominem, depending on the labels. It's totally irrelevant and is a huge problem in politics as a whole in the US when someone's idea is discounted because of their party with no further consideration.

 

An ad hominem attack would be resorting to name-calling or deliberate insults; pointing out flaws in the opponent's worldview doesn't equal condemning them personally.

It all comes down to one issue anyway: does an objective moral standard exist beyond humanity, which applies to us all regardless of place or time? If so, then an explanation is needed for the source of that standard. If not, then another explanation is needed for how biology alone can result in a morality both rejected and accepted on a near-equal level.

 

No, there I'd have to disagree. The commonly understood definition of an ad hominem attack is that a characteristic of the opposing party is used to buttress a proof that the opposing party's argument is invalid, for example, "You are black, therefore your assertion that black people have the same sized brain as caucasians is invalid because you are biased towards that view." Labelling used in that sense is an ad hominem attack because it's an irrelevant fact to the argument being put forward.

On the other hand, ad hominem is not always a fallacious argument, particularly if a conflict of interest exists on the part of the person making the argument: "You assert climate change is happening, but you are also a majority shareholder in a number of renewable energy industries which stand to profit greatly if a number of people are persuaded by your claim, and you are buying up coastal land that would be inundated if your claims are correct, so your assertion of climate change must be viewed in that context."

 

he's the victim here, cant you see?

 

I wasn't aware we were discussing any specific example. The worldview a person holds in their heart influences every other relational aspect of their lives, so all it takes is one proverbial "wrench in the works" to throw everything off.

 

I already answered that question with my statement that opposition isn't inherently sourced from hate or fear. Also, there's a difference between condemning a person's behavior, and doing the same to them personally. For example, its perfectly possible to despise theft, and still show love and compassion to a thief.

 

Except, the labeling is not coming from self-identification or a thorough assessment. If one issue is being discussed, then that person's views on other issues may well have no relevance. That's just being presumed to be the case here, though. Liberal, conservative, etc are not axiomic positions that give any insight into, necessarily, what they believe.

 

In the end, a person's core worldview - what they truly believe about life in their heart - affects every other part of their being. Generally, conservatives operate out of a mentality which allows for the possibility of the supernatural, while naturalists exclude it from the start. That's why most conservatives are religious, and most Democrats are atheists.

 

I think "conservative" and "liberal" are mostly fake distinctions cooked up by the political, economic and media elite to obscure the real issues that divide us, rich-poor, urban-suburban-rural, educated-ignorant, religious-secular, and the undercurrent of ethnic/racial inequality that permeates all these divides.

 

That is absurd, and not true. Looking at some polling on this, around 10% of liberals are atheists, and a majority of liberals consider religious faith to be very important. Harris Interactive polling shows that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe in reincarnation, ghosts, and UFOs, and really are pretty close to Republicans in astrology and witches, with majorities of both groups (although fewer Democrats) believing in God, miracles, Heaven, angels, souls, Hell, and the Devil.

Conservatism, especially political conservatism, does not necessarily represent a belief in the supernatural, and liberal does not at all equate to naturalist with the certainty that you seem to want it to.

 

Well, conservatism is rooted in the word "conserve", meaning to protect or retain. As such, most conservatives simply want to keep the government in alliance with the actual text of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, rather than a court's interpretation of it. For example, the word "establish" meant something significantly different 200 years ago, but many today equate it with "influence".

In contrast, liberalism has its roots in the word "liberate", meaning to free or loosen...but in my experience, the main thing modern liberals seek to free the government from is religious influence, because they're not content with the original meaning of tolerance. Instead, they want to completely erase all connections between the church and the collective states, which goes against what most Founders believed when they first drafted our core documents.

 

None of that responds to Lowie's proposition that your description of conservatives and liberals in your previous post is absurd and nonsense. I think you'll find that people generally only turn their minds to the separation between church and state when religious organisations try and impose religion where it does not belong, such as in the public school system, dressed up dishonestly as 'science' or 'science related'. Yes I am talking about intelligent design. If you read the transcript in the Dover case you'll be amazed at the lengths these so-called 'christians' went to to deceive the court. Other than that, there has been many a debate about what your "Founding Fathers" intended and believed and the answers to those questions are far from settled.

 

Well, as the Declaration of Independence was written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, who also wrote " contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state" I'm not sure I follow your claim. There is also James Madison writing, "The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State." Did separation also somehow mean 'not separated' in the past?

What is it, exactly, you think that the Founding Fathers clearly thought on this matter? For that matter, what is it you think tolerance actually is?