Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Liberal/conservative misnaming

Ross Douthat gave a long selection of books for “liberals” to read given that Donald Trump “won” the election.

Boy!  Did readers take him on, including the false dichotomy of liberal vs. conservative, or even it the labels are accurate.

My own contribution was:

The problem is not the division between "liberalism" and "conservatism". They are both misleading labels. For example, "liberals" can be very conservative about reigning in corporate power and "conservatives" can be very liberal about increasing corporate power. The real problem is the disinterest of too many people in voting at all. Lost in all the hoopla of Trump's "victory" is that he came in third to a de facto "none of the above”.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/books-for-the-trump-era.html?comments&_r=0#permid=20874252.