What does it mean to be "liberal"

I at least am not surprised you approve of schools presenting the Devil as existing as long as g*d isn't brought up.
 
Faust doesn't present the devil as an actual existant being, Faust is a fictional story and doesn't claim to be factual.
 
That depends a great number of hidden assumptions, including how the question is asked, and who is asked the question. See the problem, yet? :)
 
hammegk said:
That depends a great number of hidden assumptions, including how the question is asked, and who is asked the question. See the problem, yet? :)
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Wrong. Faust is written for entertainment and, maybe, a "moral" message. It's not written as a hymnal to a deity.
 
Please, the word is "hymn". A hymnal is a book that contains hymns.

Like Justice Stewart with obscenity, Ken can't define religious art, but he knows it when he sees it.

The problem with this is that people see different things. Any attempt to ban exactly that which is offensive inevitably leads to one of two things. Either a great deal is banned that you do not wish to be banned, or you set yourself up as final arbitrer of what is acceptable and what is not, and then impose your views on society.

Sadly, in this case "liberals" don't mind doing the latter.

I think a far better, and more liberal, approach, is to not exclude any art based on its religious content.


P.S. Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is, quite specifically, a religious hymn. Please, Ken, I would love to hear you say that its performance should be banned from public schools. I just would love to hear anyone trying to take your side on the subject.
 
Meadmaker said:
P.S. Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" is, quite specifically, a religious hymn. Please, Ken, I would love to hear you say that its performance should be banned from public schools. I just would love to hear anyone trying to take your side on the subject.
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A non-issue. I've never met a public school with the musical talent to pull Beethoven's 9th off. I've never known a public school music director stupid enough to try.
 
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Over in the conservative thread, they're (we're) talking about welfare. So, is welfare "liberal".

My personal view is that it can be. There are circumstances where some people for some reason can't manage to get money, and I think freedom is enhanced when you don't let them starve or, also in my humble opinion, if you let them go without medical care.

But you can take this sort of thing too far. If you think that all of their problems are the fault of (fill in the blank) and it's just not fair that they're poor, so rich people ought to give them money, that isn't very tolerant, or open minded, or freedom enhancing. I accept the conservative line on this that saying someone is incapable of supporting himself is a putdown and is offensive. Saying someone is incapable of taking care of himself isn't supporting him, it's enabling bad behavior.

So, I generally support welfare reform of the type introduced in the Clinton years, and I think it's liberal.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Really? What words?
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I called it Beethoven's "ode to Joy", but of course he just set it to music. The poem was written by Schiller. Here's part of the English translation:


Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.

Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.

Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.


It's definitely neo-classical though, because joy is called a "daughter of elysium", and there are references to gods.

We played it in junior high school band. I guess the director had no sense of shame. We've sung a hymn set to the tune in church choir. "Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee".
 
thaiboxerken said:
So you admit that the piece doesn't have words to it. Thanks.
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Of course "Ode to Joy" has words. More specifically, the piece commonly called "Ode to Joy" is the fourth movement of Beethoven's 9th "Choral" Symphony in D minor (Op. 125) and is scored for orchestra, chorus, and various soloists. Not only that, but Beethoven heavily edited the words of Schiller's "De Freude" to fit the theme better.

If you want to hear the words, I recommend the Deutche Grammofon recording. Walter Carlos did also a very good -- or at least, innovative and interesting -- version (with Rachel Elkind singing the lyrics) as part of the Clockwork Orange soundtrack.
 
Well then, if it is sung with words of worship to a god, then it shouldn't be required for kids to sing it.
 
Leftist parties are defined by the leadership and participation of revolutionaries who believe in hardcore communism.

Rightist parties are similarly infested with plutocrats, theocrats, and..... me.

Curtailing the extreme elements within both parties is key to moderate gain and electoral victory. (Note that "moderate gain" and "electoral victory" are directly opposing interests to a party's leadership.)


This is all pragmatic, of course. I am so bored with idealist definitions, which have no value or consequence.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Well then, if it is sung with words of worship to a god, then it shouldn't be required for kids to sing it.
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And of course, in America it's never required. It's offered as an option.

You ducked the question about which should be allowed and which should not. I can't say I blame you, but all of them posed different issues, and the question had a point.

For example, you are against a school chorus playing "Silent Night". Fair enough. What about a school band? No words, just a tune. In that case, any religious association is clearly in the mind of the players and/or audience, but almost everyone hearing it would recognize it as a Christmas song. That's why my next example was "What Child is This?". The key feature of that song is, just like Silent Night, that everyone playing and hearing the song, as an instrumental, would recognize it as a Christmas song in praise of Jesus. However, it isn't really. You could just as easily put "Greensleeves" in the program, which is a secular song. The band would be playing "Greensleeves", but the audience, and the band itself, would be hearing "What Child is This?"

Play Beethoven't Ninth (or the theme therefrom, which is what we played in 8th grade) and most people will hear an instrumental. Some would know it as a hymn. Does it matter if it's played or sung? If it's sung, does it matter in German or English? Is it a religious song if the people singing it don't understand the words they are singing?

What it comes down to is a song is a religious song if and only if the people singing and/or hearing it think it's a religious song. I'm perfectly capable of listening to or singing Silent Night and thinking of it as a quaint folk custom to which some people attach religious significance.



And so, with all these questions swimming in our heads, we are back to a problem. There's no way we can come up with a policy that accurately describes what performances are acceptable, and what are not. If you try to cover all religious performance, and you exclude Beethoven's Ninth and
Faust. Do anything less, and some people will be offended. No matter what you do, once you ban something, the people offended by the ban will try and sneak around it and daring you to enforce it. If you declared absolutely no Christmas Songs of any sort, band directors will play "Greensleeves", and dare you to turn out the lights.

Better, in my humble opinion, they should just give up trying to set policies, and let people sing. If the director only includes Christmas songs, then complain that he needs to let everyone else in who wants to be in as well. It's just not liberal to pick and choose music based on government policy.
 
A word about welfare:

In America, welfare is closely associated with liberalism. I've wondered why.

I think it's because the welfare state arose out of egalitarian concerns. Clearly, in America, there is a huge gap between the haves and have nots. Some people began asking why. Among those people, one group said that all people were equal, and so the only explanation was that society must be treating some people differently than others, and they were going to fix the problem.

The premise was wrong. Not all people are equal, and giving someone money won't make them more like the rich people. I'm for welfare in its current, dramatically scaled back form, but the welfare state as it existed from the '60s to the '90s was really awful, and wasn't a triumph of liberal thinking.
 
Meadmaker said:
A word about welfare:

In America, welfare is closely associated with liberalism. I've wondered why.

I think it's because the welfare state arose out of egalitarian concerns.
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I disagree. The first instance (that I am aware of) of the "welfare state" was the public dole in Imperial Rome. That was instituted to control the mob. The poor houses of the 19th century were similarly a supposed antidote to the creation of a starving rebellious underclass.

Personally I think "welfare" is probably the "tax" for having a large, unemployable class of people. Welfare doesn't do anything to change the conditions and, in fact, it helps perpetuate them.

I think it is paternalistic - not egalitarian.
 
Meadmaker said:
Better, in my humble opinion, they should just give up trying to set policies, and let people sing.
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That's exactly the problem, though. I don't know who "they" are, in this imaginary world of yours,... and I don't know who "people" are, but the problem is ....

If the director only includes Christmas songs, then complain that he needs to let everyone else in who wants to be in as well.
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... to whom do you complain? To the music director? To the principal; of the school who employs the music director? To the superintendent of schools who employs the prinicipal? To the local school board? To the state Secretary of Education? To the governor?

And assuming that talking to the music director doesn't satisfactorially resolve the issue, to whom do you complain then? Because ultimately, it's an elected (government) official who makes the decision -- and the decision must be made in keeping with the law.

.... which, in turn, means that the ultimate avenue of complaint for public school misconduct is the court system. Even the governor is ultimately answerable to what the Constitution says.

All of the ACLU legal actions originated in complaints by local residents that could not be resolved by simple discussion with the people involved. Without exception. There's a very good reason for that -- the courts won't hear cases that don't involve genuine complaints that could not be resolved by discussion. So if "the ACLU" is sueing a local school district about the performance of a Christmas carol, then there's a genuine member of the community whose name appears somewhere on the paperwork -- a person who complained, was rebuffed, and, secure in the knowledge that s/he was actually correct, would not take "no" for an answer.

And the only reason that the ACLU wins cases is because the people they support are actually correct, and do have the law on their side.
 
Deus Ex Machina said:
I disagree. The first instance (that I am aware of) of the "welfare state" was the public dole in Imperial Rome. That was instituted to control the mob. The poor houses of the 19th century were similarly a supposed antidote to the creation of a starving rebellious underclass.
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I would be interested to see any writings from any reputable historian that supports this particular motivation.
 
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