Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Liberal vs. Conservative

This has been true a long time.

I have often wondered why it is that the conservatives are called the
"right" and the liberals are called the "left." By chance stumbled upon
this verse in the Bible: Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV) "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."

excellent work.

Most Liberals don�t call themselves that anymore as they prefer the �progressive� label. I think �progressive� is more descriptive of their political philosophy in that most fatal diseases are progressive.

That�s not just a yuk yuk statement, but an accurate description. By definition, progressive political philosophy is about changing the current system to something else. If a system of government allows for political freedom, progressivism seeks to change that system to one that�s restrictive. This can be seen on college campuses where politically incorrect speech and actions are restricted. Progressive politics destroys any political system it thrives in, just as a progressive disease destroys the host it lives in, and thus, brings about its own death.

Throughout history we see nations rise on sound time proven principles only to die as progressive ideas become dominant. The US is heavily infected and the disease process is well along.

It's funny you posted this....my Dad read that very thing to me this morning. Cool!

And yet you defend one of the progressives biggest triumphs in this country, the establishment of the Federal Reserve. Oh the irony.

biggest triumph of which century?.....the national bank is more than two hundred years old....we were without one for a while....then thought better of it. And Alexander Hamilton was hardly a progressive. Nor was George II, in whose reign the Bank of England was founded.

not the bogeyman of TRH mythology, nor the tool of the Jew bankers of Bristoe's nightmares.

The difference between a liberal and a conservative is the liberal hasn't been mugged yet.

The difference is that the previous CB's did not issue the currency, the Treasury did. I point out again that the time we did not have a CB was the most productive and had the most stability in prices and currency in our history. I also point out that one of the 10 steps to Revolution outlined by Marx in his manifesto was a central issuer of money and credit, i.e. the Fed.

Hamilton was enamored of the BofE, and actually preferred a monarchy and aristocracy, in which of course he would be one of the gentry. Most who prefer an oligarchy, monarchy and central control of the populace desire to control the issuance of money and credit, as it is the lifeblood of the economy. They are the ones who benefit most from the policies of the central bank, while the rest of us have to live with the loss of stability in our currency.

edited to add, this has absolutely nothing to do with Jewish bankers, and everything to do with liberty and stability of money. You always seem to throw that out to try and discredit anyone who opposes the idea of a central bank, and never acknowledge that it is one of the tenets of Marxism.

A demo liberal is one who used to be a repub conservative until his/her 1st arrest.

The creation of the Fed has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of money because the US dollar was still based on gold or silver of various conversion rates long after the Federal Reserve was established. It was President Richard Nixon who unilaterally ordered the cancellation of the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold in 1971.

There really was no choice of getting off the gold standard as gold is just another commodity and like any other commodity the price of gold changes greatly over time. These market forces required the U.S. to suspend the gold standard several times in its history and eventually to abandon it. That has nothing to do with the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The creation of the Fed was provoked by the panic of 1907. Anyone who thinks all was well up to creation of the Fed is ignorant or trying to sell something.

There is only 5.3 billion troy ounces of gold that have been mined in human history. Even at today�s price of nearly $1,250 an ounce the total value of all known gold is just 6.625 trillion dollars. The world�s GDP is 57.9 trillion with the U.S. alone producing 14.2 trillion. As the world�s economies rapidly expand its impossible to use any hard to obtain commodity as a storage of value.

This is why the libs hate the Bible- the truth hurts sometimes

This is what you are looking for:

History of the terms
The terms "left" and "right" appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left. (The seating may have been influenced by the tradition of the English parliament, where the monarch's ministers sit to the speaker's right, while the opposition sit to his or her left.) One deputy, the Baron de Gauville explained, "We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp". However the Right opposed the seating arrangement because they believed that deputies should support private or general interests but should not form factions or political parties. The contemporary press occasionally used the terms "left" and "right" to refer to the opposing sides.[11]

When the National Assembly was replaced in 1791 by a Legislative Assembly composed of entirely new members the divisions continued. "Innovators" sat on the left, "moderates" gathered in the center, while the "conscientous defenders of the constitution" found themselves sitting on the right, where the defenders of the ancien regime had previously gathered. When the succeeding National Convention met in 1792, the seating arrangement continued, but following the coup d'�tat of June 2, 1793, and the arrest of the Girondins, the right side of the assembly was deserted, and any remaining members who had sat there moved to the center. However following the Thermidorian Reaction of 1794 the members of the far left were excluded and the method of seating was abolished. The new constitution included rules for the assembly that would "break up the party groups".[12]

However following the Restoration in 1814-1815 political clubs were again formed. The majority ultraroyalists chose to sit on the right. The "constitutionals" sat in the center while independents sat on the left. The terms extreme right and extreme left, center-right and center left came to be used to describe the nuances of ideology of different sections of the assembly.[13]

The terms left and right were not used to refer to political ideology but only to seating in the legislature. After 1848, the main opposing camps were the "democratic-socialists" and the "reactionaries" who used red and white flags to identify their party affiliation.[14]

With the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, the terms were adopted by political parties: the Republican Left, the Center Right, and the Center Left (1871) and the Extreme Left (1876) and Radical Left (1881). Beginning in the early twentieth century the terms left and right came to be associated with specific political ideologies and were used to describe citizens' political beliefs, gradually replacing the terms "reds" and "the reaction" or "republicans" and "conservatives". By 1914 the left half of the legislature was composed of Unified Socialists, Republican Socialists and Socialist Radicals, while the parties that were called "left" now sat on the right side.[15]

There was asymmetry in the use of the terms left and right by the opposing sides. The right mostly denied that the left-right spectrum was meaningful because they saw it as artificial and damaging to unity. The left, however, seeking to change society, promoted the distinction. As Alain observed in 1931, "When people ask me if the division between parties of the right and parties of the left, men of the right and men of the left, still makes sense, the first thing that comes to mind is that the person asking the question is certainly not a man of the left"[16]

The terms left and right came to be applied to British politics during the 1906 general election, which saw the Labour Party emerge as a third force.[17]

The sociologist Robert M. MacIver noted in The Web of Government (1947):

The right is always the party sector associated with the interests of the upper or dominant classes, the left the sector expressive of the lower economic or social classes, and the center that of the middle classes. Historically this criterion seems acceptable. The conservative right has defended entrenched prerogatives, privileges and powers; the left has attacked them. The right has been more favorable to the aristocratic position, to the hierarchy of birth or of wealth; the left has fought for the equalization of advantage or of opportunity, for the claims of the less advantaged. Defense and attack have met, under democratic conditions, not in the name of class but in the name of principle; but the opposing principles have broadly corresponded to the interests of the different classes.[18]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics

That's laughable on its face. I might agree with you up until 1933, and the fact that the Fed didn't start OM activities until 1924, but since FDR confiscated gold from US citizens, and then devalued the US$ to increase the money supply at the behest of the Fed and his Treasury secretary, the Fed has been merrily increasing the supply of money and credit, which has steadily eroded the purchasing power of the US$.

BTW, we were not on a gold standard after 1933, but instead it was a gold exchange standard, which is an entirely different thing.



Yes, indeed it was Nixon who was responsible for the first default on US bond and currency obligations, and we see the result of that right now, as this is the end game of the FRN$ fiat currency regime. The question one has to ask is why? Because there were no good delivery bars left to settle our debts is one likely reason. Since there has never been a formal audit of the supposed deposits at Ft. Knox or the FRBNY, no one knows if we have any left. Is this important? It will be if we have to try and rebuild our currency system after either a hard default or a hyperinflation.



Sure there's a choice. The government can live within its means and only expand the base money supply at the rate new reserves are added, and only loan money at a market rate based on available deposits in the banking system. Gold isn't "just another commodity", gold is money. That's why central banks hold it in their reserves.



Yes, they have, but only once during the War Between the States. Again why? It had nothing to do with "market forces" and everything to do with government spending. They couldn't finance war without printing money and forcing people through legal tender laws to accept it as such. They eventually abandoned the gold standard permanently for the same reason. That's the beauty of the metals standard, it forces politicians to actually live within their ability to tax for their spending desires. Much more difficult than creating money out of nothing.



The gold standard in and of itself had nothing to do with the establishment of the Fed. The desire of politicians and bankers to control the issue of money and the cost of it were the proximate causes. The gold standard was an impediment to the expansion of both, so it had to be eliminated. Since the Constitution in Article I, Sections Eight and Ten specifically states what can be used for legal tender, a private bank had to be established to do so, as amending the Constitution would take entirely too long and would probably be resisted by most people in the states. The Fed was a "workaround" to avoid the amendment process.

I realize that everything wasn't peaches and cream before the Fed was established, but the one thing that we did have was stability in our money, something that we certainly do not have now, and haven't since the Fed started OM activities.

I'm not selling anything either, except the idea of honest money, something that our founders thought important enough to include in our founding document, and most, including you, don't seem to appreciate-at least until your paper fantasies don't turn out so well.



Just because the value of things has been inflated beyond all reason by unlimited creation of money and credit in no way disallows gold as money. It will hold its value and purchasing power better than anything paper. The amounts of gold to purchase things hasn't changed one iota, it's the value of the paper currencies in which it is "valued" that have suffered from debasement. There are numerous examples of this, including oil, gasoline, food-most anything actually.

When an economy expands for the right reasons, which means that there is real demand for products and supply is increased to meet it, not false stimuli from bubbles created by the cost of capital being artificially suppressed, then the purchasing power of gold as money increases to reflect this. The only people who don't like this are debtors and those who peddle debt, such as bankers and politicians.

The only one trying to sell something here is you, and that is the idea that you believe in free market capitalism, but support a centrally planned banking and monetary system. The two are incompatible, and we are living in the time when this incompatibility is revealing itself.

we've been through this before but the economic instability your characterize as the most productive and stable was in fact a series of booms and busts...including the ever popular Long Depression (which may have to change its name if Obama stretches this one out far enough.

yes the economy grew, as did all the European economies. it would have grown faster and with less disruption with a national bank controlling the money supply. the milions of people ruined in the various financial catastrophes of the nineteenth century would probably agree.

As soon as the public catches on that progressive is just another word for liberal, look for a new name to rise.

What�s laughable on its face is that I said �The creation of the Fed . . .�, which occurred in 1913 and you say �I might agree with you up until 1933 . .�. Well if you agree with me up to 1933 then you agree that in 1913 the creation of the Fed has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of money.



Wrong. The gold standard was also suspended twice during World War I, once fully and then for foreign exchange.



Sorry to bust your bubble, but money is and always has been whatever people agree it is. It has been rocks, buttons, and sea shells in the past as well as gold, silver, and even copper. In the free market money itself is a commodity that�s traded every day. There is no scientific standard for �value�, and thus, no universal means of storing something that can�t be quantified. You can claim gold is the most historical representation of value, but a far better representation is the standard of living.



What disallows gold as money is the real growth in the world�s economies. As population grows so too must economies in order to maintain the same standard of living. As the standard of living increases for a given nation so too must that nation�s economy increase. Given the fixed supply of gold each ounce must represent more and more value and that means prices must drop relative to gold. You may think dropping prices are good, but it�s the death of any modern economy.

Dropping prices allow people to sit on their money (gold) while its value increases at the growth rate of the economy. That slows spending and investing which brings about a shrinking economy. The shrinking economy results in less goods and services being produced until there�s parity with the gold supply and prices stabilize. Once again the naive think stable prices are good, but the fixed amount of gold locks in a stagnate economy because as the economy tries to grow prices must drop which removes any incentive to start or expand businesses.

Inflation has just the opposite effect. It rightly rewards those who invest and expand the economy while punishing those who just sit on their money. The result is a higher standard of living and by that measure people in the U.S. have greatly prospered since we abandoned the gold standard.

Economic instability? Hmm. We go from a third world economy in 1836 to one of the leading world economies by 1900, and that's not productive? Booms and busts are a part of the natural business cycle, and cannot be avoided, only made worse when they are dragged out by central bank intervention. Fractional reserve banking and government subsidization of railroads played a very large part in the boom/bust severity in the 1870's and 80's, but these panics and busts didn't destroy the purchasing power and stability of money, rather the purchasing power of money was increased. The people most affected by the busts in the latter 19th were debtors and bankers, as the increasing value of money made their debts harder to service. We have had just as many and more severe depressions since the Fed was able to "intervene" than we ever had in the 19th Century, and the currency has been debased at every turn. The Fed has destroyed the most important function of money, and that is to be a store of value through time.

This destruction of purchasing power has forced most to become speculators in markets that they are ill equipped to understand, and as such, can lose their life savings and not know why. The public has now been coerced into either "investing" in what is increasingly a rigged game in the stock and bond markets, or have the value of their money debased through inflation of the money supply if they choose to save in traditional savings accounts, or even in their matress. Nice options these benevolent institutions of central banks have left to the public. That's in addition to using their taxes to bail out the banks or GSE's when they have made bad decisions.



And you know this how? Hard to prove your case when there was no CB to intervene. But the "Long Depression" of the 20th Century, where we had a CB to "help" us lasted from 1929 to 1946, and if that's not long, I don't know what is. Guess what? The currency was debased and purchasing power lost, and it has continued to do so since at an ever increasing rate since then.

Face it Steve, no matter how you slice it, the Fed and other CB's around the world have been disasters for the general public. They have stolen the citizens birthright just as Jefferson said that they would, and enslaved their progeny with debts that they had no hand in creating. A central clearing house for money and credit is described by Marx in Section 2 of the Communist Manifesto as one of the necessary steps to revolution, and from everything that I see, is living up to that role quite well. By any measure, the Fed is a failure and needs to be eliminated. I think that it will be, but unfortunately, it will take out the economy and possibly the country with it.

Only in a Keynesian world.

Decreasing the stability of prices and the value of money/savings through inflation of the money supply is theft, pure and simple. One of the three functions of money is to hold its value through time. This is so that the average Joe, who might not have the time, desire, or intelligence to "invest wisely" and be rewarded for his efforts can also put money aside for rainy days and retirement, without having to risk losing it in the stock and bond markets, which he more than likely does not understand.

You must be a banker, as your defense of inflation and debt fit in well with that subset of parasite.

Yep.

The problem with that argument is that there is no intrinsic unit of value. The concept of value is a human invention that has no basis in the natural world. Money (whatever it is) serves as a medium of exchange and it's the market and the market alone that establishes exchange rates for every physical commodity (including gold), every product, and every service known to humankind. Markets fluctuate based on the simple law of supply and demand. The problem is that both supply and demand are subject to nearly infinite forces including human emotions.

Yes there are people who hold on to the idea of gold being somehow apart from market forces, but such a world only exists in their dreams.



Sorry, the world is run by movers and shakers, not this Joe guy who wants to sit on his ass and do nothing with whatever money he has saved. Even so, the government offers Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) for the Joes of the world so that they can preserve the market value of their money. Unlike investing in gold there's no risk in buying TIPS.



I didn't say anything about debt, so your claim is a lie. Inflation is better than deflation and anyone who doesn't know that is of the flat Earth mentality.