Charlie_(Colorado)
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Charlie_(Colorado) has not written any posts yet.
Charlie_(Colorado) has not written any posts yet.
tcpkac, the first problem is coming up with a definition of "right wing" that has any operational value. If "hard core libertarian" meant "right wing", then you'd be including both the free-trade, free-love, cheap-drugs libertarian like me (and Heinlein, I think) with a Pat Buchanan nationalist, isolationist, Christian-privileging paleoconservative, a Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell racialist isolationist paleolibertarian, and, arguably, a Mussolini Italian Fascist into one category --- which seems to reduce "right wing" to vacuity. It happens that Philosoblog extends this discussion just today, while critiquing Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. It would seem that "right wing" primarily means "I think I'm left wing and I don't like it."
Elizer, I don't... (read more)
When one got past pre-adolescence, one realised that Heinlein's writing skills, such as they were, were in the service of a political philosophy somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun. Whatever floats your boat.
Then one got past pre-adolescence by becoming an uninformed dolt. In fact, Heinlein's political views ranged from Upton Sinclair socialist and New Deal Democrat in the 30's, to hard-core libertarian later in life, but never corresponded to anything "right wing" except to those people who use "right wing" as a synonym for "I don't like it."
Leo, Heinlein praised math to the very stars, but I'm not sure he was actually good at math. It's been a long... (read more)
Well, one aspect of this that I find amusing in a mildly infuriating way is the common sort of understanding of "atheism" that seems to be largely based on a rejection of what someone learned in their fifth grade Sunday School classes. Kathryn above makes exactly this point (although I'd claim that Buddhism makes specifically scientific claims: that following certain practices based on a certain understanding of the Nature of Things, leads to greater peace of mind and less suffering.) But then she nails it by noting that the claim that "religion" is invariably incompatible with tolerance of homosexuality is simply untrue, even among adherents of a religion in the... (read more)
By a further semantic slide, it came, for some, to mean any authoritarian power structure with power concentrated in the hands of the few, hence the lumping together of the various 20thC dictatorships as right wing.
You've just argued that the Communist dictatorships of the 20th century, the USSR, China, Cuba. are "right wing", which seems to establish the vacuity of the term far better than anything I could have written.