Understanding the Liberal Mindset

[dudalb]

Let's differentiate between Liberal and Radical, please.

 

[dudalb]

I have read The Prince, and I didn't find it satire, or controversal at all, but sound advice for a ruthless dictator who wants to survive in a world where he has to look out for internal, and external enemies. As far as I remember, there is nothing about making conditions better for the subjects, but there is some advice of how to keep the subjects docile. Real princes only see their subjects as the providers of their riches and as potential soldiers.

I have just finished reading a book on the Nordic Seven Years war 1563-1570, and the suffering of the people in the afflicted areas is of course marked, but also their loyalty, when having their farms burned, and live-stock killed, they still cough up with extra supplies for the army if they have anything left. There is of course also some physical persuasion. The subjects are press-ganged, forbidden to travel, and need special permission to even go to the market with goods to sell. This is how effective monarchies can be. These measures would surely have taken longer in a democracy. The nobility in Denmark is only taxed (horror!) at the end of the war when things are really bad, in Sweden never. Thus, the wealth of the most important part of society is untouched, if not torched by the enemy.

This is against a backdrop of treason, killings, and corruption that Machiavelli knows intimately.

You think that was bad, read about the 30 years war sometime.

 

[dudalb]

And as the horseshoe theory tells us, the extreme left easily embraces rightist authoritarianism too. I just read a history of Denmark in the 1920'es where a well-known communist, and feminist icon switched allegiance to (one of) the Nazi parties.

Then you had the Communist fools in Germany who supported Hitler on the grounds of "the quicker we have Fascism the Quicker we have the Revolution".

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Then you had the Communist fools in Germany who supported Hitler on the grounds of "the quicker we have Fascism the Quicker we have the Revolution".

yeah, didn't happen.

 

[jimbob]

yeah, didn't happen.

I have seen Trotskyists saying that to mend the system you have to break it. And working towards that by sabotaging moderate fixes

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The moderates all sided with the Fascists, most Communists fought bloody battles with the Fascists.
I guess some decided to wait it out - probably didn't work for them.

 

[steenkh]

You think that was bad, read about the 30 years war sometime.

I have read several books about the 30-years war, but the Machiavellian aspect has never struck me as important.

 

[dann]

Carney on the left? You can't be serious. And he's effing great.

Michael Nabert on bsky, July 1, 2026
My Canada Day Mark Carney terrible policies BINGO card is completely full. What are we going to do about it?
Let’s go square by square together through the whole card to look at evidence together. I wouldn't call this the very worst government we've ever had without evidence to back me up. 1/

Michael Nabert on bsky, May 26,2026
Prime minister Mark Carney showed us all that he was here for the oligarchs and not for the rest of us well before he even drafted his first budget.
Let's take a look at ten billion dollars he gave the rich while vulnerable millions suffer in the greatest cost of living crisis in generations. 1/

 

[dann]

And as the horseshoe theory tells us, the extreme left easily embraces rightist authoritarianism too. I just read a history of Denmark in the 1920'es where a well-known communist, and feminist icon switched allegiance to (one of) the Nazi parties.

The extreme left? Embraces rightist authoritarianism easily?
One communist and feminist as your example?
Isn't this 'the exception proves the rule'?

I know very little about politics in Denmark in the 1920s, but I do remember more recent examples:
The feminist Ulla Dahlerup (Danish Wikipedia) became a right-wing Islamophobe.
There was also the guy who came down with the 'Pittelkow syndrome' (Kristeligt Dagblad), but Dahlerup and Pittelkow (and his wife) were atypical. They're outliers.
That's why they're so easy to remember.
In Germany, there were Horst Mahler and Bernd Rabehl (German Wikipedia)

They were all immediately embraced by right-wing politicians and other racists, but it's not as if they were joined by a huge following of former feminists or socialists. I can think of only one left-wing organization that joined right-wing populism: Preben Møller Hansen's Fælles Kurs (Danish Wikipedia).
And they shedded a lot of members in the process.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think you don't understand how laws work.
It's the Courts, not the government, that applies laws, reasonably or not.

And I agree - we need a lot more Courts and Judges to deal with all the cases. Just by population growth, the US should have about double the size of the Judiciary, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Glad you are coming around to the "We Need Big Government" Tent.

Effective government <> more and bigger government

 

[Emily's Cat]

Let's differentiate between Liberal and Radical, please.

Meh. These days run-of-the-mill liberals get called nazis and fascists on the reg.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Effective government <> more and bigger government

A government must be able to enforce its will - agree or not?

 

[Emily's Cat]

A government must be able to enforce its will - agree or not?

That doesn’t necessarily require more bureaucracy, more paper pushers, and more intermediaries. It requires well written legislation, appropriate regulations, and clear, consistently applied consequences for violation.

More politicians with more lackeys sucking up more of the tax revenue doesn’t make for a better government.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

So you agree.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

How is "more efficiency" going to enforce the will of the Government against a Mercenary company with tens of thousands of " private contractos" ?

You are living in a fantasy world where companies just need to be sent a letter to comply with the laws.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Also, Mr.Cat:
By every measure, the US administration is one of the most efficient in the World, as demonstrated by the facts that everyone constantly cuts their budgets and increases their workload, and it still functions.
The US is spending very little on bureaucracy.
You are just repeating lies you have been told to sell more privatizations - which are less effective and more expensive.

 

[Emily's Cat]

How is "more efficiency" going to enforce the will of the Government against a Mercenary company with tens of thousands of " private contractos" ?

How do governments enforce regulations right now? Required filings, audits, fines, etc. Criminal proceedings, revocation of business licenses, etc. if noncompliance continues too long.

That doesn’t necessarily require more employees though. Cleaning out regulations and making them clearer and stronger would help. Using fraud/waste/abuse software for prelim evaluation and prioritizing investigation and audits based on exposure would help. There are any number of things that could likely be done that would modernize and streamline processes without requiring more people.

Every mid to large sized company out there is constantly trying to figure out how to be more efficient, how to leverage technology to accomplish more with less. But for some reason, some people think governments are unable to do the same thing, and that the only possible way to address problems is to take more money away from citizens and constantly grow and expand the existing inefficient and archaic processes.

For example… PPACA original legislation was over 900 pages of nearly unreadable legislation, which then required thousands of lawyers to read and interpret it, and create thousands of summaries, and hire additional legal assistance to comb through every line to make sure it’s implemented properly, thousands of compliance employees to keep an eye on things, thousands of internal auditors, etc. And that’s only on the private side. There are just as many on the government side because every single year they produce 500 pages of draft updates, sent out for comment, followed by 500 pages of final updates… even though only a relitively small portion of things change. Every single year, more pages of regulatory mambo-jumbo in an outdated, inaccessible, nearly unreadable format are generated regarding the health insurance side of ACA than were in the original legislation. It’s absurdly complicated and inefficient, and there’s no good reason for it. It requires tons of government employees whose sole purpose seems to be to prove their value by generating ridiculous volumes of paperwork instead of creating value.

You are living in a fantasy world where companies just need to be sent a letter to comply with the laws.

I think you’re living in a fantasy world where “give the government more money” is a magical solution that fixes things.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Also, Mr.Cat:
By every measure, the US administration is one of the most efficient in the World, as demonstrated by the facts that everyone constantly cuts their budgets and increases their workload, and it still functions.
The US is spending very little on bureaucracy.
You are just repeating lies you have been told to sell more privatizations - which are less effective and more expensive.

I don’t want more privatization, you really shouldn’t make baseless assumptions. And no, we’re not constantly cutting budgets - it’s been a shell game other than a very few times in the last half a century. Sure, on paper some department cuts their budget… but some other area puts in a new requisition and gets more money, and at the end of the day very little is actually reduced.

Pointing out that the US is less inefficient than other countries isn’t the flex you seem to think it is.

 

[Trausti]

You are living in a fantasy world where companies just need to be sent a letter to comply with the laws.

Have you met the plaintiff's bar?

 

[d4m10n]

Then you had the Communist fools in Germany who supported Hitler on the grounds of "the quicker we have Fascism the Quicker we have the Revolution".

They didn't support the future Fuhrer so much as focus their opposition on the Social Democrats, e.g. pushing for the 1931 Prussian Landtag referendum^WP along with far right parties like the NSDAP. Both the Communists and the Fascists were looking forward to unseating the democratic establishment in order to implement their own ideas.