EU Catch-All |German Election

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Was watching CNN and just saw that Germany had an election. And the right won.

They want them a little bit of that, just like we do here, apparently.

And, just like us, they'll find out.

Maybe they'll have more sense though to realize their mistake, unlike us. We'll always blame it on someone else.

Just degenerate, spoiled children.
 
Bobfripp said:
Men, always men. I'm curious to see a map of where the AfD won. I suspect the former East Germany, particularly the south.
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East Germany is the AfD stronghold. There are a lot of reasons for that. But the main one is demographic. It is older and whiter than the rest of Germany. The acceptance of autocratic rule is another part of the equation, but I tend to prefer demographic explanations -- especially ones that are consistent across all elections. The olds, the majority demographic (typically the whites) and the males vote for the racists, nativists and autocrats. In every single election.

Here is a DW English report on AfD in East Germany
www.dw.com

Why is the far-right AfD so powerful in eastern Germany? – DW – 08/13/2024

The far-right Alternative for Germany is heading for electoral success in eastern Germany. If current polls hold true, the AfD will take the most votes in two eastern states on September 1. Why is the AfD so attractive in the east?
www.dw.com www.dw.com
 
Conservatism is never a force for good.

Some of its principles are needed, yes. I would be stupid and disingenuous to state otherwise.

All sort of people and ideas needed to make a truly good society.

But, as a stand alone, conservatism is awful. It's merely about keeping rich people in power. Duping the dummies in the process.

Will never happen, but if the people could see conservatism as it is - stripped to the bone - they'd riot.

Regarding American conservatism, you will understand it finally when you realize it's about the deep sense of loss of slavery.

And that's it.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
Fox News (of course) is treating the German election as a huge victory for Trump and Trumpism. And of course their viewers will absolutely believe it.
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Because a party with "conservative" in the name won. But those conservatives would be the far left progressives in America.

This election is just one more example of the anti-incumbency wave post-Covid. Pretty much every incumbent party has lost since 2022. Fox just likes this one because the incumbent party in Germany was liberal (ish).
 
MendotoManteo said:
Conservatism is never a force for good.

Some of its principles are needed, yes. I would be stupid and disingenuous to state otherwise.

All sort of people and ideas needed to make a truly good society.

But, as a stand alone, conservatism is awful. It's merely about keeping rich people in power. Duping the dummies in the process.

Will never happen, but if the people could see conservatism as it is - stripped to the bone - they'd riot.

Regarding American conservatism, you will understand it finally when you realize it's about the deep sense of loss of slavery.

And that's it.
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Without trying to get into the whole of German politics, suffice it to say that the CDU/CSU is rather closer to the center than the GOP.
 
Those of you who know better than me: how does our GOP compare with the AfD?

Honestly, my impression is that it's nearly the same, at least in terms of identity politics.

I've always hated that term. Identity politics! Because we associate it with minorities and their interests in politics, obviously. Truth is that has always been the case. Our politics have always been identity. About white people, particularly white men.

It's only because it somehow became about people otherwise that we felt we had to give it a label and consider it as an object of study.

Like the term "political correctness."

Political correctness was my ex wife getting rocks thrown at her as a little girl, because the other children knew she was an atheist.

I don't respect any of those terms, and anyone who uses them seriously is a fool.
 
Geisterfahrer said:
Without trying to get into the whole of German politics, suffice it to say that the CDU/CSU is rather closer to the center than the GOP.
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That wouldn't be hard, as the GOP has moved to the extreme right since the 80s. It's hard to believe that up until the 70s the GOP actually had a sizable centrist/mildly liberal minority wing, led by people like Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas E. Dewey, Harold Stassen, Henry Cabot Lodge, Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, etc. Of course they're totally extinct now, and even hard-right conservatives that won't bow to Trump are being called RINOs and purged from the party. If the GOP was in Europe, Australia, NZ, Canada, or any other democracy they would be regarded as a fringe Orban-style authoritarian, white supremacist, anti-democracy party. But here they're actually the party that dominates the government. Lucky us.
 
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Mulberry Heel said:
That wouldn't be hard, as the GOP has moved to the extreme right since the 80s. It's hard to believe that up until the 70s the GOP actually had a sizable centrist/mildly liberal minority wing, led by people like Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas E. Dewey, Harold Stassen, Henry Cabot Lodge, Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, etc. Of course they're totally extinct now, and even hard-right conservatives that won't bow to Trump are being called RINOs and purged from the party. If the GOP was in Europe, Australia, NZ, Canada, or any other democracy they would be regarded as a fringe Orban-style authoritarian, white supremacist, anti-democracy party. But here they're actually the party that dominates the government.
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Teddy Roosevelt was not a liberal, neither in today's terms or in his own era.
 
AlbionAmerican said:
Teddy Roosevelt was not a liberal, neither in today's terms or in his own era.
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I disagree with that, especially when it came to the economy. In his time he was regarded as a progressive (he was the Progressive Party candidate in 1912) and in the 1912 campaign he supported a system that would allow for federal judges to be "recalled" by voters if they disagreed with their decisions, and for voters to overturn judicial decisions. The Progressive Party platform he campaigned on included restrictions on campaign finance contributions, a reduction of the tariff and the establishment of a social welfare system, an eight-hour workday and giving women the right to vote, among other things. Roosevelt also believed in using the federal government more aggressively than in the past to move away from the laissez-faire capitalism of the Gilded Age (which Trump supports) to a more mixed economy like we have today. From everything I've read he was widely regarded in the 1912 campaign by most conservatives as not only progressive but radical (including his former friend and the GOP candidate, President Taft).
 
1moretimeagain said:
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Sad to hear him say that, but he's absolutely right. The USA is about to lose nearly all of our historically closest allies so we can be buddies with the likes of Putin and Orban. It's literally insane, yet here we are. And even when Trump leaves office I think the damage will be permanent this time, because no other nation is going to risk trusting the USA when someone like Trump could just get elected again in four or eight or twelve years. Had Trump just been a one time deal then I think the damage would have been limited and temporary, but not now. Trump is going to turn the USA into a kind of pariah state before he's done, and we're already an international laughing stock.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
I disagree with that, especially when it came to the economy. In his time he was regarded as a progressive (he was the Progressive Party candidate in 1912) and in the 1912 campaign he supported a system that would allow for federal judges to be "recalled" by voters if they disagreed with their decisions, and for voters to overturn judicial decisions. The Progressive Party platform he campaigned on included restrictions on campaign finance contributions, a reduction of the tariff and the establishment of a social welfare system, an eight-hour workday and giving women the right to vote, among other things. Roosevelt also believed in using the federal government more aggressively than in the past to move away from the laissez-faire capitalism of the Gilded Age (which Trump supports) to a more mixed economy like we have today. From everything I've read he was widely regarded in the 1912 campaign by most conservatives as not only progressive but radical (including his former friend and the GOP candidate, President Taft).
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You are conflating Progressivism and Liberalism. These two things are not the same.

Also Teddy Roosevelt never advocated for a social welfare system, he was interested in REFORMING the system of the day, which was going from literally total exploitation of the working class and zero protection for consumers to some minimal government involvement. Just go read about the Coal Wars in West Virginia to see the borderline slave-like conditions that were going on during this time.

I don't see how you get social welfare from that. He was also a very strong advocate for personal responsibility. He was more like a GOP way to contain the massive populism coming from William Jennings Bryan and the Democrats at that time, which also worked for the Democrats because they could guarantee the entire Southern vote. The politics were completely backwards because of this. For instance, South Carolina voted for a Catholic New Yorker in 1928 over Herbert Hoover with 90% of the vote, Mississippi voted 82% for him. If anything, Southerners should have voted for Teddy R, he was the closest thing to an Andrew Jackson like president. Although, I've always thought there are a lot of strange parallels between Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ. Both kind of two sides of the same coin.
 
AlbionAmerican said:
You are conflating Progressivism and Liberalism. These two things are not the same.

Also Teddy Roosevelt never advocated for a social welfare system, he was interested in REFORMING the system of the day, which was going from literally total exploitation of the working class and zero protection for consumers to some minimal government involvement. Just go read about the Coal Wars in West Virginia to see the borderline slave-like conditions that were going on during this time.

I don't see how you get social welfare from that. He was also a very strong advocate for personal responsibility. He was more like a GOP way to contain the massive populism coming from William Jennings Bryan and the Democrats at that time, which also worked for the Democrats because they could guarantee the entire Southern vote. The politics were completely backwards because of this. For instance, South Carolina voted for a Catholic New Yorker in 1928 over Herbert Hoover with 90% of the vote, Mississippi voted 82% for him. If anything, Southerners should have voted for Teddy R, he was the closest thing to an Andrew Jackson like president. Although, I've always thought there are a lot of strange parallels between Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ. Both kind of two sides of the same coin.
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Teddy Roosevelt helped start the basis for much of what we now call liberalism. Read the Progressive platform of 1912 - it called for a national health service to include all existing government medical agencies, social insurance (security) for the elderly, the unemployed, and disabled, a minimum wage law for women, an eight-hour workday, government relief for farmers, a federal securities commission, an inheritance tax, workers compensation, and an eight-hour workday. Those are all things that liberals have pushed for and then tried to protect for the past 120 or so years. And Roosevelt promoted all of those things in his 1912 campaign, and was ostracized by conservatives because of it. Of course he was viewed at the time as a liberal and even radical, unless you're conflating "liberalism" with classical liberalism.

And of course Roosevelt was responding to the populist movement, and so were Democrats and other Progressive Republicans. That doesn't mean that he wasn't liberal. Roosevelt helped to initiate liberalism in terms of having a more aggressive and active federal government that helped to regulate corporations and played a larger role in providing at least minimal social services for working people. It was hardly the welfare state we have today, but it was definitely a start. And the entire South didn't vote for Catholic Al Smith in 1928 - North Carolina voted for Hoover, as did Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee.

Also, I'm curious as to how you would separate liberal and progressive, especially at the time he served as president.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
Teddy Roosevelt helped start the basis for much of what we now call liberalism. Read the Progressive platform of 1912 - it called for a national health service to include all existing government medical agencies, social insurance (security) for the elderly, the unemployed, and disabled, a minimum wage law for women, an eight-hour workday, government relief for farmers, a federal securities commission, an inheritance tax, workers compensation, and an eight-hour workday. Those are all things that liberals have pushed for and then tried to protect for the past 120 or so years. And Roosevelt promoted all of those things in his 1912 campaign, and was ostracized by conservatives because of it. Of course he was viewed at the time as a liberal and even radical, unless you're conflating "liberalism" with classical liberalism.

And of course Roosevelt was responding to the populist movement, and so were Democrats and other Progressive Republicans. That doesn't mean that he wasn't liberal. Roosevelt helped to initiate liberalism in terms of having a more aggressive and active federal government that helped to regulate corporations and played a larger role in providing at least minimal social services for working people. It was hardly the welfare state we have today, but it was definitely a start. And the entire South didn't vote for Catholic Al Smith in 1928 - North Carolina voted for Hoover, as did Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee.

Also, I'm curious as to how you would separate liberal and progressive, especially at the time he served as president.
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Classical liberalism is the literal foundational philosophy of America and its entire basis of law so these ideas and principles are fundamentally different to progressivism, which was more or less a reactionary movement to the economic and social trends of the turn of the century. America is itself devoted to classical liberalism, we can't untangle that, even though its interpretation of what this means does get twisted and turned over time. Progressivism fundamentally changed this country though away from its previous idealism. I think these things are complex though because America was responding to many things around the turn of the 20th century. Enormous technological changes, global instability (the British Empire was firmly in decline while it appeared Germany, America and Russia would rule the future of the world). Plus there were massive waves of immigrants coming in, many of whom were Catholic and Jewish, which was just totally at odds to the far more Anglo Protestant origins of the country.

Perhaps Progressivism as a reactionary movement by the American elite (and a containment to the more mob like threat coming from the populist Democrats) was liberalism in the sense of preserving things against the challenges that came from also managing to integrate all these new immigrants (who were not steeped in American idealism at all). Perhaps Teddy Roosevelt too would have been a bit more "Bismarckian" lets call it to contain a more imperial and darker streak in America had he won in 1912, but what Progressivism turned into (or if you want to call it co-opted) under Woodrow Wilson essentially was political fascism. Mussolini and later Hitler adopted much of what Wilson himself implemented, who was a proud "liberal", I mean he literally created the "liberal international order", although I may also argue that Wilson was a captured pawn of British imperial interests who were infiltrating America during this time.

I mentioned it before but TR was basically the exact same as LBJ, both basically were manics to one extent or another, LBJ obviously much more of a manic depressive and TR maybe just more pure manic a lot of the time. Another strange thing about TR and LBJ is that the two presidents they worked for died in their home state. McKinley gets shot in Buffalo, NY (Roosevelt was governor of New York and born there) while JFK gets killed in Dallas, LBJ's state. Another strange thing, McKinley's killer was a Polish anarchist, JFK's killer (as the story goes) was a communist with his Soviet sympathis, both also supposively acted alone. Both VPs were radically different to their predecessors too, TR launched the Progressive Era and early stage American imperial aims, LBJ aggressively pursues civil rights, welfare expansion and Vietnam escalation. So both replacements took the country in radically different directions. Which is why its hard to parse out these liberal vs. progressive type of things. There are different versions of history depending on how you look at it, let's say McKinley doesn't get shot, how might history have been different? If you also see the comparisons between the two as I do, would you consider LBJ a liberal just because he did some liberal things, whilst also many not-so-liberal things?
 
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