Reddit mentions: The best political ideologies books

Other people have addressed the EU question, so I'll focus more on politics in general. There's some decent BBC media which covers current politics, it can sometimes be a bit tedious, some shows are better than others, and I certainly wouldn't recommend rigorously following all of them, but it's pretty good for familiarising yourself with the current state of affairs. Some TV and radio shows to follow -

Daily Politics - daily show analysing politics, which often gets high profile politicians on.

This Week - weekly show, airing after Question time, with a slightly comedic approach to political analysis.

Andrew Marr Show - weekly show, the one which senior ministers (the prime minister, the chancellor, the home secretary, etc) are most likely to appear on.

Question Time - weekly topical debate program, with questions from the audience directed towards politicians.

Any Questions - radio version of Question Time. Often not quite as annoying as Question time.

Today in Parliament - daily radio show covering news from parliament.

 

Parliament.uk and gov.uk are both great resources for learning how parliament and government functions, and learning about legislation. If you'd prefer a less fragmented read, such as a book, then Exploring British Politics by Garnett and Lynch seems like a good introductory source, though I will add the disclaimer that I've only used it occasionally as a reference book, and it is fairly pricey.

 

It can sometimes be difficult to understand the significance of things in politics without a basic grounding in the historical context, so I will recommend some more books to help with that (although much of the info can be found online). Two of the most important figures in recent British political history are Thatcher, and Blair. Charles Moore's Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One is a good book for starting to understand the political context of the Thatcher era, although it is obviously quite biographical too, and being the first volume it only covers roughly the first third of her time in government. The comprehensive tome on Blair and his wide-ranging effect on the functioning of british politics is surely Seldon's Blair's Britain, 1997-2007, although I will warn you that is it most definitely a tome - incredibly thorough and a bit of a slog. The best way to approach this is probably to read the sections on things you are interested in, like the NHS, and leave the rest until you feel you want to learn about them. Sections of Seldon's Cameron at 10 are definitely worth a read if you want some more insight into the first Cameron ministry, and the coalition years.

 

I can't really recommend any comprehensive histories on the political parties (although what I've read of Tim Bale's The Conservatives Since 1945 is pretty good). One I would recommend is Goodwin's Revolt on the Right, which offers a fairly original analysis of the phenomenon that is UKIP. There's a more up-to-date follow-up to that, (UKIP: Inside the Campaign to Redraw the Map of British Politics), which I imagine is also pretty good, but I haven't read it. Familiarising yourself with general political ideologies (to rattle off an incomplete list: one nation conservatism, high toryism, classical liberalism, social liberalism, libertarianism, social democracy, democratic socialism, etc), how these relate to each other, and how they have manifested in the various 3 main parties over time is a must for understanding the parties and the political tensions within them. Wikipedia should suffice in filling in the details there (and in other places), for now.

I'm familiar with this popular understanding of what nationalism is but I'm saying it doesn't really line up with scholarship on the ideology and it's history. Read Nationalism by Anthony D. Smith or Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson in order to get a basic introduction to the subject as they're usually among the standard college textbooks used in relevant courses. I've said this elsewhere in the thread but nationalism at it's most base level is a belief in the existence of nations, nation states and the concept of self-determination. A nation is an amorphous political concept that can be based on a large number of things from a perception of shared ethnicity to shared geography to shared history. The basis for the creation of a nation is known as national identity. Practically every country in the 21st century , professes a national identity and when a country does this it is known as a nation state (the wikipedia article for this concept is fairly narrow as it focuses on states that tie national identity to ethnicity and all but ignores civic nationalism and to some extent left wing nationalism )

The United States is a nation state as, like most every other modern country, it has a national identity. The key however is in defining what American national identity is. Trump and many of his followers likely understand American national identity to be rooted in whiteness and Christianity while most other Americans understand American national identity as being rooted in a form of civic (not ethnic) nationalism which embodies a shared sense of republican (not the political party but the system of government) ideals and essential freedoms. This is bolstered by a shared national culture that manifests itself in things like Thanksgiving which is based on and celebrates a national myth and was established with the express purpose of fostering a common national culture. Celebrating Thanksgiving is literally participation in American national identity and therefore an expression of American nationalism.

Nationalism is further reinforced by national symbols for example flags and national anthems. The concept of every nation (not only nation-states but stateless nations like the Ainu as well) having a flag is something something that emerged concurrently with the notion of nationalism because the newly emerging nations needed symbols to tie their identities to. Thus displaying any kind of flag associated with a nation (state or otherwise) is a display of nationalist sentiment.

With that out of the way let's go back to the Olympics. I stated that the modern Olympic games themselves were founded upon nationalism and the belief that athletic competition offered a healthy outlet for duking out national rivalries as an alternative to conflict. That is why the Olympics themselves are an orgy of national symbolism from the Parade of Nations, the fact that athletes represent their nations at all instead of themselves, the playing of national anthems at medal ceremonies, etc. etc. With all that in mind rooting for your nation's athletes at the Olympics is an expression of nationalist sentiment. But don't take my word for it! Here's a couple of articles I was able to find on the subject after a two second Google search since I don't feel like digging up old academic articles. Hell, here's the perspective of a Communist (i.e. someone who actually rejects nationalism since they believe in the dismantling of all states and national identities).

Nationalism in and of itself has absolutely nothing to do with blind loyalty to a particular government although chauvinistic nationalism does indeed manifest itself that way. In fact nationalism isn't contingent on the existence of a nation-state or government and doesn't even necessarily advocate for one. Just look at the history of Black nationalism in the USA of which only a few strands (known as Black Separatism) advocated the creation of an African American state.

As far as patriotism goes it's a tricky question but while not every display of patriotism is nationalism the vast majority are as they acknowledge the existence of or loyalty to a nation or nation-state and more often than not incorporate national symbols such as flags. Remember that a nation is not solely the government but the amorphous political body of individuals who share some common identity so when professing to "love a nation" someone could just as easily be talking about the people as opposed to the government.

Hi there. This post has a little reading but please feel free to skip to the recommendations closer to the bottom. While I do waffle a bit, it's just because I get ridiculously excited about bringing peopleinto politics because democracy is a passion of mine. Don't be intimidated by politics. Everyone, even experienced professors like Waleed Aly wander in the dark a lot when it comes to some issues.

I have a degree in politics and international relations and have been active in the Liberals before.

Having declared by colours let me tell you straight up that you are on the right track by both committing to learn and rejecting whaty ou are fed offhand. If you wanna really get into the meat of politics it's really handy to have an understanding of ideology -that's the groupings of belief systems in politics.

In short; politics is the study of power and how to justly manage it. Understanding the basic ideas behind liberalism, conservatism, and socialism which are the three really dominant ideas in the modern era will really help you understand the news in a whole new light.

So I would suggest you invest in a text book that first year politics students might end up studying and reading it. These kinds of books usually spend a fair bit of time explaining how the system works, and also what ideologies are what, their sub-groups (and there are many) and try and really make the whole thing less confusing.

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Reccomendations If you want to learn more about politics I highly recommend Andrew Heywoods "Political Ideologies" -this is a first year book that was given to me at the beginning of my degree and is a fantastic, easy to understand book all about how the world works. Here is its amazon page.

Now it is a text book, it can seem a bit bland, but you don't have to read it cover to cover. It's more like a little bible you can refer to when you want to understand something. If you hear words you don't get, or have an inclination to look into something specific, you can check it for more information.

I'll add, in terms of learning about current issues and opinions specifically you need to 'equip' yourself. What does that mean? It means that you are a very vulnerable person at first. You are vulnerable to pre-packaged soundbytes, to partisan tribalism, to deceptive or disingenuous or misleading arguments and to being lead to an opinion without experiencing the alternative points of view. You don't need to avoid the media but do keep your distrust healthy. Read or listen to high quality news sources, and from a few sources instead of one.

I can recommend several that I use that I don't think will try and lure you into any kind of agenda or ideology and let you approach it for yourself. Grattan Institute is a public policy think tank and you can always trust them to be very in depth. Monocle is an International publication and if you read them you will learn a lot about more than just Australia, and they also have a 24/7 radio station which churns out some awesome programs. I listen to their Asia podcast at least once or twice a week, it's fantastic but region focused not Australia, so depends on what you want. Lastly, watch ABC24 or SBS News programs. ABC is a little bit pro-labor, unfortunately, but if you stay aware of that it's not a problem. Their news is higher quality, is less plastic and sold-out, and very much in depth.

Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America is a good book. In summary he looks at the history of partisan politics and the roots of current political ideology in America and points out that traditionally parties were not ideologically based but typically determined by your social network and community-- simply a coalition to elect candidates. He shows that contemporary political ideology started to solidify in the 50s and 60s, which later shifted parties as people began to "sort" themselves into the two major parties based on ideology.

In the 50s American political scientists were actually complaining that the party platforms were too similar. Anthony Downs Economic Theory of Democracy stated that two-party systems would lead to nearly identical party platforms in their attempts to appeal to the largest number of voters. This thesis also tended to assume that the effect would skew the platforms to be more centrist, which national elections tend to do.

Also in Anthony Down's analysis though was a cost-benefit equation for voting. He argued the impact and thus benefit of voting was exceptionally low and the cost of voting--informing yourself about candidate's platforms and physically going to vote was high. Ideologically distinct parties help to address this paradox of voting by reducing the cost of voting as you have a pretty good idea of general policy stance based on party affiliation alone. Also, individual candidates then have more of an opportunity to point out the flaws/risks of their opponents, as well as highlighting the benefits of their own policies--helping the other side of the equation as well.

Also, while I'm not very knowledgeable about the UK government, your parliament is many times the size of our legislative branch while simultaneously representing a smaller populace. This could allow for more distinct parties and platforms to form and get enough backing to impact government.

> This is the point - it is a rational decision, not something that does not matter.

You still don't understand. It has nothing to do with whether you think it "matters". That is entirely subjective. But from an individual utility payoff standpoint, an individual faces a choice in which they bear an immediate cost (the time and effort of voting) in the face of no payoff (the end result is the same regardless of an individual's actions). That has important implications in political science.

At which number precisely do votes stop mattering? There's no number, there are only probabilities that your vote will effect the election. As the election includes more and more people or more complex systems of choosing a winner, the probability that any individual voter will affect the outcome goes down. For the presidential election, this number is infinitesimally small, for all practical decision making and statistical purposes 0%.

Posted here is an excerpt from this blog.

"In a game-theory sense, your vote matters only when it is pivotal. The proof follows from a thought experiment. If the election was hypothetically decided by two or more votes, then you could have safely abstained from voting without affecting the majority rule. In other words, your vote was not needed.

How often will your vote be pivotal? A mathematical approach is to calculate the odds that all the other voters will be tied. The approach treats each voter as having some probability of voting for one candidate or the other. The odds of a tie are maximized when each voter is equally likely to vote for one candidate or the other. Here are some estimates from this methodology. At 1,000 voters, the optimistic odds of a tie, making you pivotal, are less than 3 percent. At 100 million voters, the optimistic odds are less than 0.01 percent (roughly 1 in 10,000).

In fact, the true odds are lower because candidates are not equally favored. Small preferences among voters can lead to margins of victory that make your vote irrelevant. The odds can be estimated in an empirical approach that examines at the history of elections. This exercise was done by economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, and here are their results as summarized in the New York Times:

Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly 1 billion votes, only 7 elections were decided by a single vote, with 2 others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past 100 years – a 1910 race in Buffalo – was decided by a single vote. (source)

The conclusion is that your vote is very, very unlikely to affect the outcome. An economic argument extends the logic to say “voting doesn’t pay.” This is because voting has little expected benefit but costs time and effort. This view holds voting in the same light as buying a lottery ticket: a losing bet."


I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but it's a decent cursory explanation.

> Do the votes of the individual senators in the house of representatives matter?

It depends what you mean. For the most part, votes in the house do not impact the outcome. This is why congressmen from both the senate and the house skip an enormous amount of votes. For most congressmen, votes are important for two reasons. Firstly, on a small select array of hot button issues, constituents pay attention to the votes of their elected officials. Congressmen fear 'bad' votes will be seized upon by their opponents and result in trouble back home for them. Secondly, most of a congressman's job is not casting a vote. It's working with their party and other members of congress to push legislation onto the agenda and garner support for it. If you've ever seen any television, movies or documentaries about Congress you might notice that the characters or politicians often work far harder for votes in the Senate than in the House. For instance, during one of the biggest legislative fights in recent history, Obama heavily lobbied Senator Ben Nelson and made several concessions JUST to get his one vote. In contrast, Obama conducted his political operations in the house largely through Nancy Pelosi. Devoting resources to individuals in the House is much less effective -- each vote in the House is worth much less than a vote in the Senate. Controlling House votes is better left to the Speaker of the House and other leadership who can work to get large numbers of their members to support their agenda.

(by the way, individuals in the house of representatives are called congressmen)

> If we believe that "Your vote will not impact the election" holds true for each individual in a voting body, aren't we suggesting that voting itself has no use or merit as a decision-making system?

That's a fair question, and its answer is subjective. Clearly, it is impossible to create a system in which each individual vote can matter in a country of over 300 million people. It's not that the government is necessarily "unrepresentative" though, at least not for this reason -- after all, the election is decided by votes whether each individual changes the outcome or not. It may be that you decide that this fact delegitimizes the government -- and again, that's a subjective opinion. There are some people who hold that view, though as I stated this is a simply a reality of large democracies. I would also tell you that in my opinion, voting isn't what makes democracies special. It's the free exchange of ideas, the independent watchdog press and the constant debate over values & policy that makes democracy what it is.

Whether or not you think it 'matters', the fact is that no individual will change the outcome of an election through their vote alone. Again, what conclusions you draw from that reality are your own. And by the way, people make irrational decisions all the time. When you buy a lottery ticket, you're making an irrational decision. And your chances of winning are still better than the chances of your vote deciding an election (your chance of deciding a state is roughly 1 in 10 million, which is incredibly low but the chance of that state deciding an election adds a whole different layer and makes it much more unlikely than it already is)

If you're looking for further reading, I would direct you to any of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Theory-Democracy-Anthony-Downs/dp/0060417501?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing-appendix/dp/0674537513?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/196farber.pdf

http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/03/your-vote-doesnt-count

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory

I would highly recommend Anthony Downs and Olson, the two books off of Amazon

We need a trust circle in which the party, activists, and the average voter can engage in dialog and support. A philosophical stalemate between activists and the Idaho Democratic Party has led to a total communication breakdown. The average citizen has given up completely as they know the Democratic Party serves only millionaires and up. The activist resent the IDP for their greed, ineptitude, and frank reluctance to show any support for FDR's values.

The IDP refuses to acknowledge that neoliberalism has failed utterly and completely. The party base continues on roaring into the void while the IDP declines to support what might have been their best field organizers. Unfortunately the IDP has been hooked on the D.C. money funnel for so long they fail to see they have lost all credibility by supporting the DNC. If the IDP were to turn off the tap and start having faith in the citizens to provide for their economic well being they might turn things around. They dare not become accountable to the majority. The simple math determines that pleasing a wealthy minority easier and more profitable then attempting to solicit funding from the cash strapped average citizens. Politics have become a safe career to leach money from the upper crust, see Sally Boyton Brown skipping town.

The enthusiasm among the citizens for the IDP has bottomed out due to the radical differences in finical desires. Idaho's majority individuals lives in poverty or near poverty.. The average the median per capita income for Idaho was $24,273 in 2015. You need at least 30k to stop living pay check to pay check per person. The citizens want healthcare, green jobs, education and social security. The IDP waits in vain for a Idaho millionaire/billionaire to help build the "collation of the ascendant" that will never come to Idaho and what little was here has begun to crumble.

The Democrats for the past 40 years have been slowly dismantling the FDR values that brought them easy votes for multiple generations. They have become lazy and spoiled expecting the working class to keep blindly heaving them over the finish line. The working class well has finally run dry, see the 2016 Presidential elections. Now we face an impasse, do we burn down the crooked orchard and start again or do we try to prune down the twisted roots put down by the neoliberal elite?

The answer is neither. The IDP needs radical restructuring so as to knock out the hierarchical leadership. All party decision should return to directly to precinct captains. As in precinct captains act as a virtual house of representatives that elect a virtual senate made of the district leadership. The senate elects a party leader. Why add all this crazy complication to the political machine?

1. The average citizen can have a direct impact on the Idaho democratic party without leaving their home precinct. It gives the power back to the people.
   
2. It forces the democratic authoritarians running the party to face democratic libertarians in a honest political discussion for once.
   
3. It democratizes how the donations get distributed.
   
4. It gives potential candidates opportunity to practice politics in a sandbox.
   
5. It limits the center-right brow beating the hierarchical structure delivers.
   
6. It pushes the career political wonks away from the money and levers of power.
   

I never said socialism was cancer or that I thought it was bad. I said that due to Communism in the past (and conseevative media + that book that "explains" why socialism works only to have pages saying that "it doesn't), socialism will always be a hard sell and is much better to rebrand and aim for the nordic economic system instead of trying to sell "democratic socialism". Hell, i have some outspoken conservatives hammer in the point to others that Socialism is literally communism(and i know that's not the case) and there's a good majority that support that belief (it's why Ontario has a Conservative goverment that is.... controversual). Hell, the Fightback Socialist club at our school gets roasted in the gossip pages daily and one year, my school had a pro-corpration political club at our club festival.

The book in question: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218 And I see that as an example of anti-socialist marketing being successful.

I know that capitalism is about the free market controlling the economy but we've known time and time that the free market could care less than the people that work and the people that buy goods (Fucking lootboxes). I know that Capitalism will always exist and be regulgated but people differ on the diffirent meanings of regulgation. I am sure that there are socialists who hate CEOs but companies will still be run by a board of people for top managment who take care of the long-run choices like a democracy. The people would be chosen by their merits and knowledge of the external and internal enviroment like any other company.

I hate that there's no clear black and white answer for politics and I want there to be. I want it to be one choice. That is, a system where one party rules all. If Tories win, they win all seats in the house. If Grits win, same story. I want there to be as little conflict as possible in politics so that I do not find myself at odds with others. I want there to be one outlet that I can listen to and not worry about being wrong. Democracy gives idiots a voice and that needs to change. I also want the goverment to have a plan for everyone that is best suited to people's capabilities so that I dont feel like I picked the wrong job or company or anything of that sort.

By my appraisal, in the US, it's largely


a) Jingoism trussed up as international policy.


US Americans are, culturally, one of the most nationalist and patriotic people. Because it is cultural, many Americans are unaware of it and assume that citizens of other countries are just as nation-focused.


Something that's important to understand is that the jigsaw puzzle of sovereign nation-states is largely a modern invention. It was pushed by land-owners and empiricists to further the strength of existing "nations" (like the UK) and give them justification for colonial holdings/future cultural imperialism (like Japan).


So, this is generally where fear of "Globalists wanting one world government, etc etc" comes from. People have been conditioned to believe in a competitive, invidious world state that really only came about in the last couple centuries and that, I might add, runs counter to the idea of a nation-state (which is a unity of people based on economic, territorial pragmatism, regardless of cultural differences, etc.). "Suppression of traditional cultural identities" refers to things like gay marriage, the non-denominational holiday greetings, etc. which are all White Christian culture finally being forced to give up its top position (which is why many non-discriminatory modern nationalists call for "White America").


b) An inherent feature of modern economies being blamed on the scapegoat of globalism


Basic, academic consensus economic theory teaches us that it is better to participate in a global market - allowing certain countries to produce or trade goods for which they are better equipped (i.e. bananas coming from tropical regions).


However (and this is the same fear as the one of automation), in the US, those benefits go to private businesses and then the government is supposed to tax those businesses and distribute those taxes as benefits to the people (oversimplification, I'm sure). Since businesses at that scale seemingly exist solely for profit, their structure requires them to try to avoid taxes and maximize income. Large businesses will continue to pour resources into successfully finding/squeezing through tax loopholes (because they're basically in a spending race against the US government) and smaller businesses might see modest expansion tethered by increased taxation.


In Western economies, that's basically the existing plutocracy increasing its capital aka "the rich get richer". Which is a natural consequence of the US economy in which the more capital you have, the more capital you can get. It's as true domestically as it is internationally - wealth disparity in the US was worse in the early 20th century, when isolationism was popular.


Reading this comic might give you a clearer picture on the rationale behind US populism. You'll notice the fear of international influence (China), the lack of belief in international regulatory or diplomatic solutions to exploitative business practice (moving of labor/production), and the mindset that any benefit to the existing hegemony is taboo. Not to say that there weren't/aren't legitimate grievances with this specific trade agreement, but they're muddled by omen.


It's Manichean us vs them, the USA vs other countries, the poor vs the rich - which pretty much defines populism. You can only have a group by defining who is and isn't part of the group - and if you make it "common sense" to act in the "group's best interests", then everyone who acts against your group must be acting against your best interest (rather than acting in their own interests, or to prevent negative consequences of your group's actions). Never stopping to ask if your group is actually acting in its own best interest or if those interests were even rationally defined in the first place.


Of course, that's also how things like FDA and EPA regulation got implemented. I'm not sure exactly where the line is between "slaughterhouse sanitation policies reduce risk of disease" and "the Chinese are coming to take my land and the Muslims are coming to kill us all". I think it's to do with significant, measurable risk vs nebulous potentiality.

> Republicans unfairly benefit from it,

They really don't. In fact, you will normally find the pre-election pump-up-the-democrats news stories to say the opposite - that it favors the DNC because they start with 240 or so EC votes every election for the last few decades... I'll find you an example of that article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-2016-race-an-electoral-college-edge-for-democrats/2015/03/15/855f2792-cb3c-11e4-a2a7-9517a3a70506_story.html

>In 2016 race, an electoral college edge for Democrats

Ok that one says 212. I guess they slippin.

We also saw that story in 2012 and 2008 and 2004 and 2000... And it was the backbone of that "We are now permanently in charge" narrative that started in 2008 when Democrats won in such a landslide.

>It doesn't make the EC good

The EC is good because it takes into account both the state's locality as important (Giving it 2 EC votes for just being a state) and it takes into account the state's population. (Giving one or more for every 720,000 per person on average, although it varies from state to state.)

That's just like we do it in congress, 2 senators and one or more representatives based on pop.

So yes - that small state that gets 3 EC votes is getting 2 for just being a state, and one for their small population. That is still only 3/270 EC votes or 1/90th the number needed to be president. And there are other small states with a million+ populations that also only get 1 extra EC vote. And so all those small states average somewhere around the same 720,000 per as CA and the big states do.

It's not a dramatic advantage over CA's 55 EC votes.

Whatsmore - the EC is over-weighted in it's ratios. It needs to do that to have a total pool of EC votes to draw from that is 1 less than 270 doubled. EDIT: 2 less - 538 total.

For example, California has 55/270 EC votes or a little more than 1/5th the EC votes needed to win.

With a population of 40 million/320million - or 1/8th of the population... the 20% of votes needed to win the EC is a lot more than their 12% of population. That doesn't even account for the fact that only 9 million in CA voted Hillary, not 40 million.

The EC makes sure the suburban areas have some say, not an unfair amount.

The first one I read was Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, which was a great introduction. It's short and very easy to get into. You can read it in an afternoon. It's actually from a speech he gave, so you can probably find the audio online for free and listen to it instead if you prefer.

But his best book, in my opinion, is Understanding Power. It's more of a collection of essays, speeches and interviews, but it really shaped my understanding of the world better than any other book I have read. I can't recommend this book enough.

If you're more interested in libertarian socialism, in addition to Understanding Power, read Chomsky on Anarchism. He presents the theories in very clear language, instead of being overly theoretical.

If you're more interested in his writings on US foreign policy, also read either Failed States or Hegemony or Survival.

Enjoy!

I'll ignore the "insult" part and just focus on the label.

Liberals isn't just used by people talking about those who are "too far left". They are people who believe in or advocate for one of the liberal ideologies. Why do you think it's "toxic" to have a label we can use to refer to those who believe in and advocate for a specific ideology (or family of closely related ideologies)?

Now, I'm not going to disagree it's not misused, but that's a thing that's always going to happen with words, especially ideologies. It's a useful rhetorical tool and, let's be honest, most people aren't gonna have, want, or need a nuanced understandings of the features that differentiate their perceived enemies. Euphemisms happen. Ignorance is a fact of life. I understand people are going to call me a liberal sometimes because they don't know what I am, and that's okay - I'm sure I've done the same to others in other situations!

And yeah, it's gonna get misused as a symbol for the purpose of virtue signaling, but anything could be.

That doesn't mean the word isn't useful, and it is (often) used in a way that is perfectly descriptive. To a certain extent, I sort of feel like this post is an attempt to deny that the ideology even exists, or that it's particularly common - but it is an ideology, a fairly coherent one, and it is a common (often outright dominant) ideology on college campuses, in news rooms, in the entertainment industry and the halls of politics on the Democratic side. How else will you better describe those ideologies and their advocates if not using the word that literally means that?

I think it's also important we have the word, so we can differentiate between the different flavours of leftist thought - between the liberals, the neoliberals (who really aren't particularly liberal despite the name), the socialists (of various flavours) and those who identify as none of the three.

What exactly do you think "Listen, Liberal" should have been called instead? Who exactly would we say the book was trying to address?
https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

I listen to his shows all the time and overall I like him. He is pushing a very important conversation in a very public way.

His positions are similar or parallel with [Anarcho_Capitalism] (http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/) or [volunteerism] (http://www.reddit.com/r/voluntarism/).

These lines of thought are the blistering center of libertarian thought. If you want to take a serious study of libertarianism this area must be explored.

These books are great and will change the way you look at the world forever. I consider these to be the Red pill. I know it sounds corny but I am serious.

• For a New Liberty
  
  • [Free PDF] (http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp)
    
    
  • [Physical Book] (http://www.amazon.com/For-New-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/1610162641/ref=sr_1_3? s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331654993&sr=1-3)
    
    
• The Ethics of Liberty
  
  • [Free PDF] (http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp)
    
    
  • [Physicall Book] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Ethics-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/0814775594/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331654832&sr=8-1-spell)
    
    Read Rothbard it took me down a deep rabbit hole. There is so much to read and learn and most of it is out there either free or affordable.
    
    It seems that Ron Paul has drawn a lot of his ideology from this line of thought. So If you are a RP fan it will give you better context.
    

Not totally accurate, but if you’re looking for popular science/entertainment that’s somewhat anthropology related.... Kathy Reichs is a board certified forensic anthropologist and has written a lot of books. They (she) are what the TV show Bones was based on.

Stiff by Mary Roach is a good one

For nonfiction, and if you’re interested in things highly relevant politically now, these are some incredible works on immigration.

Becoming Legal
They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields

I’m pretty sure this author is a sociologist, but still a great book. imagined communities

The first and hardest concept to grasp is that socialism is only an economic system. It is often conflated with the political system, communism, but both are very broad. Wikipedia's article is actually very good for an overview.

The question that neturally arises from an overview of socialism is, "well, how would we implement this so we can enjoy [insert level of quality of life]?" And that is a very involved discussion.

I've also found that Michael Harrington's Socialism: Past and Future to be a good read, but I'm sure there are others here that could recommend better books.

Yeah definitely, social choice theory shows that all electoral systems are pretty terrible and prone to manipulation (though some are better than others obviously). I tend to side with William Riker on this, particularly his book Liberalism Against Populism. The thrust of Riker's argument is that we should get rid of the idea that 'the will of the people' (this is what he means by populism in his title) confers any moral legitimacy because, as I said in the earlier comment, there really is no such thing as 'the will of the people'. Riker still thinks (and so do I) that electoral democracy is the least worst method of choosing a government because it allows for the provision of kicking them out on a regular basis and choosing a new one, but much like classical liberals, he thinks we need pretty strong restrictions on what they're actually allowed to do.

Direct democracy is more prone to some of the problems of social choice precisely because it separates issues out. Representative democracy on the other hand has to bundle lots of issues together, which creates political parties, which creates stability in voting patterns within legislatures (which overcomes the problem of vote cycling in practice - see things like Tullock's 'Why so much stability?' for this sort of thing).

Not to be a stickler, but you could easily argue that abstaining from voting is as sensible as going vegan, since it's all about supporting the status quo of a system that's based on unscientific nonsense. I've taken quiet an interest in democracy the past few years and the more I learn about it, the dumber it seems, kinda like animal agriculture.


If you're curious about the subject I'd highly recommend both Against Elections and Against Democracy. Democracy For Realists is pretty enlightening so far as well, but I'm not done with it yet.

> effective blocksize increase

"Effective blocksize increase" isn't too bad. Presuming that "blocksize increase" is the same thing as "effective blocksize increase" is what I'm objecting to. Perhaps you were just misreading Bitcoinopoly, or perhaps you were just abruptly disagreeing with his terminology, I don't know.

> before you started proposing "capacity increase"

I'm just following Greg Maxwell's terminology on that. I think he was being very careful in how he worded things in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion, and I appreciate his effort.

> cut-through transactions like Lightning

Interesting term. That's an improvement, thanks.

> You seem remarkably paranoid and quick to jump to negative conclusions.

Sorry, it maybe comes from being American. Politics in the USA are full of calculated use of [language and framing in order to direct debates] (http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-The-Progressives/dp/1931498717). I took enough classes as an undergrad to know how important these kinds of effects can be, and my cognitive science background makes it hard for me to not notice when these kinds of effects are occurring and potentially becoming significant. In this case it was probably unintentional.

How much time do you have? If you have enough time, I’d recommend this book. It’s a little older but it’s the only one by Lakoff that I’ve personally read. It’s a very quick read and great help. There’s a book on a essentially the same topic by Frank Luntz and the thought of my money going to Luntz kinda makes me wanna puke but there’s no denying he’s effective at messaging. At the end of the day (and also sadly) facts won’t effect influence unless you can effect emotion from your message. That’s what the book is about.

Edit 1: Best of luck buddy!

Edit 2: If you don’t have enough time, or if you want a second pair of eyes, feel free to send me what you’re planning to say and I’ll use my experience with this to help. Just PM and we can work out the deets

He wishes to help regulate, that's part of his job. He would likely want to pay more taxes as well, but that doesn't mean he's going to donate to the government before legislation is passed. It's reasonable for legislators to patronize companies they wish to regulate. His Senate office isn't involved in the Amazon book deals. Good for him for standing up for what's right even though the company helps him sell books.

Here's what you can do:
Step 1: Go to your local library's contact page (now is a good time).
Step 2: Contact them and ask them to order copies of:

> Where Do We Go From Here ISBN 978-1250163264 [to be released Nov 13^th]
> An Outsider in the White House ISBN 978-1784784188
> [Our Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Revolution_(book) ISBN 978-1250132925
> The Speech: On Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class ISBN 978-1568585536
> * Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution ISBN 978-1250138903

Step 3: Smile that public funds are supporting the political revolution and disseminating our message.
Step 4: Pass on the idea if you think it worthwhile.
Step 5: Lean into standing up, exercising your voice, and fighting for what you believe in.

The two books i've read are The Political Mind and Don't Think of an Elephant. He is a congitive linguist who wrote a lot about metaphor and framing, and how the Right has effectively framed every major issue in their own terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

His ideas aren't radical or world changing, but the Dems really shun him (i think over some personal spats... like, he disagreed with Rahm Emmanuel once (a plus in my book) and also with Steven Pinker (more plus), so they don't like him). Not that if they listened to him they'd win all elections, but maybe they'd do a little better?

I'm interested in him because, so far as i've read, his explanation for why Republicans voters vote for Republicans is the only one that makes sense. "Why do they vote against their interests" leaves out that they are voting for their values, even when those values are against their interests.

But, i dunno, maybe he's way off base and that's why no one listens to him. Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts.

Continued support for the military industrial complex
Bold and expressed support for the war in Iraq
Pushing for the war In Syria
Continued support for more wars abroad, even adding 4 more major conflicts under the Obama presidency
Continued support for the war on drugs
Continued support for the prison industrial complex
Continued support for predatory lending industries
refusal to support a living wage
refusal to support single payer / medicare for all / universal healthcare
refusal to support extending public education beyond k-12
growing support within the party to move towards greater and greater privatization of public services
Enactment of the ACA, a healthcare proposal initially concocted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
refusal to break up the big banks
refusal to support or truly fight for a carbon tax
a continual decline of support for unionized labor
The continued and increasing acceptance of legalized bribery / money in politics
A general abandonment of leftist economic policy


The democrats do pander very frequently to leftist ideals, but they are either extremely ineffective at governing toward their ideals or are disingenuous. In my view I lean toward the latter, mostly due to the blatant and transparent acceptance of enormous sums of money from special interest groups. It makes them look like they are paid to lose/throw the fight - but still pander to the left and win votes.


This criticism of the Democratic party as moving rightward by no means excused the disgusting sprint toward facism of the Republican party, but the Democrats have been trying for years to run away from being branded with associations to FDR or New Deal style politics. For a very thorough analysis, check out this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

> I'm familiar with this popular understanding of what nationalism is but I'm saying it doesn't really line up with scholarship on the ideology and it's history. Read Nationalism by Anthony D. Smith or Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson in order to get a basic introduction to the subject as they're usually among the standard college textbooks used in relevant courses. I've said this elsewhere in the thread but nationalism at it's most base level is a belief in the existence of nations, nation states and the concept of self-determination. A nation is an amorphous political concept that can be based on a large number of things from a perception of shared ethnicity to shared geography to shared history. The basis for the creation of a nation is known as national identity. Practically every country in the 21st century , professes a national identity and when a country does this it is known as a nation state (the wikipedia article for this concept is fairly narrow as it focuses on states that tie national identity to ethnicity and all but ignores civic nationalism and to some extent left wing nationalism )

None of this is about how the word is used in a socio-political sense though. And there is a very good argument that the popular view is the current correct view of the word's meaning.

> The United States is a nation state as...

I agree with most of your 2nd paragraph, but I would argue that for most people it's an expression of American Patriotism.

> Nationalism is further reinforced by national symbols ... ...Thus displaying any kind of flag associated with a nation (state or otherwise) is a display of nationalist sentiment.

Or patriotic sentiment.

> With that out of the way let's go back to the Olympics. I stated that the modern Olympic games themselves were founded upon nationalism and the belief that athletic competition offered a healthy outlet for duking out national rivalries as an alternative to conflict.

Agree.

> hat is why the Olympics themselves are an orgy of national symbolism from the Parade of Nations, the fact that athletes represent their nations at all instead of themselves, the playing of national anthems at medal ceremonies, etc. etc.

Agree

> With all that in mind rooting for your nation's athletes at the Olympics is an expression of nationalist sentiment.

Disagree. Most people who participate in and watch the Olympics are more than ready to acknowledge when their country isn't the best at something, and when other countries do well. That's Patriotism when they root for their team under those circumstances.

> Here's a couple of articles I was able to find on the subject after a two second Google search since I don't feel like digging up old academic articles. Hell, here's the perspective of a Communist (i.e. someone who actually rejects nationalism since they believe in the dismantling of all states and national identities).

All three are opinion pieces. The Vox one is actually talking about patriotism, but has fallen into the Nationalism/patriotism 'synonym trap'. Communist countries officially reject nationalism, but in practice are just as nationalistic as every other country.

> Nationalism in and of itself has absolutely nothing to do with blind loyalty to a particular government although chauvinistic nationalism does indeed manifest itself that way.

Not completely blind, but it does encourage unhealthy behaviors towards others. That behavior isn't implied in patriotism.

> In fact nationalism isn't contingent on the existence of a nation-state

Correct. Post WWI there was a lot of nationalism from ethnic and cultural groups that hadn't had their own country in centuries. However, gaining a country was their goal. A good example actually is post-colonial Africa.

> government and doesn't even necessarily advocate for one.

Actually, they always do eventually.

> Just look at the history of Black nationalism in the USA of which only a few strands (known as Black Separatism) advocated the creation of an African American state.

One would argue that the factions not advocating for separate statehood were actually patriots.

​

To be fair, he's hardly the only one.

In 1969 someone wrote a book called The Emerging Republican Majority that correctly predicted coming Republican dominance due to demographic changes. And the book was quite right when you look at presidential contests. From 1968 to 1988 Republicans won 5 out of 6 presidential elections. And the 1 they lost (Carter, 1976) they only narrowly lost.

In 2004 someone wrote a book called The Emerging Democratic Majority, making much the same prediction based on demographic changes. Sure Bush later won reelection that year, but the exit poll numbers only reinforced the author's point about how the GOP was losing in growing demographic groups, and hence likely to struggle more at winning elections.

These kinds of demographic changes DO NOT mean it's impossible for one party to win the white house however. Only that until demographics or voting behavior starts changing significantly that one party will struggle more at winning national elections.

To say that demographics mean Democrats will control the government for the next 4 or however many decades goes too far.

This is a very good description and understanding of political movements.

Here is a book about conservatism by an American. It's definitely much more negative in outlook towards conservatism than you but it looks at the history of conservatism and what is the common thread and is a very interesting read.

>The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin

>
> Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is "boring," said the founding father of the American right. "Devoting your life to it," as conservatives do, "is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." With this unlikely conversation began Robin's decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what's truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them?
>
> Tracing conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution, Robin argues that the right is fundamentally inspired by a hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market, others oppose it. Some criticize the state, others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality.
>
> Despite their opposition to these movements, conservatives favor a dynamic conception of politics and society--one that involves self-transformation, violence, and war. They are also highly adaptive to new challenges and circumstances. This partiality to violence and capacity for reinvention has been critical to their success.
>
> Written by a keen, highly regarded observer of the contemporary political scene, The Reactionary Mind ranges widely, from Edmund Burke to Antonin Scalia, from John C. Calhoun to Ayn Rand. It advances the notion that all rightwing ideologies, from the eighteenth century through today, are historical improvisations on a theme: the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.

What was so good here was watching Bernie be super respectful and thorough when deal with people who clearly had opposite opinions of him.

For anyone who doesn't know - Bernie was a weekly guest for 10 years on Thom Hartmann's radio show. Thom has a book on how to win over peoples hearts and minds. Its called Cracking the Code. I highly recommend.

https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Code-Restore-Americas-Original/dp/1576756270

>Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.

>With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.

From the publisher's description of Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal. Sounds like I gotta read this book!

lol. no way I could do it justice... thanks!

I like bobswern's comment where he politely suggests kos take a sabbatical and give all this some more thought. Im tempted to pile on and tell markos to log off DKOS, turn off MSNBC for a week or two and go read a few good books. Go hole up or have a few drinks with Meteor Blades maybe, heh.

start with this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

Im sure we collectively could come up with a pretty good reading list for him lol

This is pretty much the "strict father" version of conservatism that George Lakoff lays out in "Don't Think of an Elephant." It's contrasted by a "nurturing parents" metaphor for the left.

I think it's a useful metaphor for some conservative ideologues - particularly what I call the 'big government' conservatives who see a moral role for government. Here you'll find many on the religious right as well as the neo-cons who supported Bush's freedom-by-force foreign policy.

But there is a significant faction of the conservative movement that is more interested in restraining the size and power of government to protect individual liberty. These are what might be called classical liberals or conservative libertarians. For these conservatives, it's not as much about "everyone getting what they deserve," since that result seems to beg for a strong authority figure to enforce it.

Instead and here's the CMV payload it's about preventing the creation of an authority that would enforce equal consequences. The philosophical justification is that an authority strong enough to enforce justice is also strong enough to enforce injustice. Therefore, this branch of conservatism opposes efforts to protect people from the consequences of their actions which may seem like they are hoping people get what they deserve... but that's only a byproduct of their actual intent.

Could you link the original studies here? I'd love to take a look since I spent a ton of my undergrad researching this exact topic. One variable I noticed that was interesting was education (I.e. eurosceptic in France for example were overwhelmingly the most educated (Masters/Phd's by in large. I also would reccomend these two books, i've read both and while they are focused primarily on Britain and UKIP the first is a good primer while the second is riddled with data, graphs, number sets, trends, and scatter graphs!

1)Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain (Extremism and Democracy)Mar 18, 2014
by Robert Ford and Matthew J Goodwin

http://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Right-Explaining-Extremism-Democracy/dp/0415661501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462988605&sr=8-1&keywords=revolt+on+the+right

2) UKIP: Inside the Campaign to Redraw the Map of British Politics 1st Edition
by Matthew Goodwin (Author), Caitlin Milazzo (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/UKIP-Inside-Campaign-British-Politics/dp/0198736118/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462988668&sr=8-1&keywords=ukip

I'm being down-voted, but seriously. This isn't just once in a lifetime. We can repeat this. We have to. Electing Bernie once won't do much this first point . We need to sustain. We need a new generation of politicians like Bernie. That is the only way the liberal vision will survive.

George Lakoff has some great ideas on liberal language that people should read! Language is important! I'll post some links to his works. Incorporate them into your daily life. PM me and I might buy you the books. We need an awaking of liberal frames.

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-The-Progressives/dp/1931498717

http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Blue-Book-Democratic-ebook/dp/B007WT31BM

Little blue book annotations:

http://www.nowforourturn.org/Reframing/The%20Little%20Blue%20Book.pdf

Seriously. The language of the debate is important. I'll be releasing a paper on language of Bernie vs Hillary soon. I'm not respected or good at writing, but I think it has a good few points on the language we use. It's more important that people think.

Over the course of the last year I have had 3 morbid examples of bad living situations. I think the universe is telling me something.... like clean up your credit and apply for the IT job you are avoiding because you don't like working with IT guys.... yes I have a degree and the employment background which is why I am avoiding getting back to that career path.

I am considering writing a small saga of bad living situations.

After leaving my mother's house (she had major surgery, recovered, went back to work, then as I was just starting a job) she took her boyfriend's advice to "tinker" with the electrical wiring in the kitchen and massively injured herself ended up in rehab after 2 weeks recovering from burns/being electrocuted and the house had to be partially rebuilt. Mind you this is the second time she has done this.

So I move into a friend's place I have known for 5 years. He's an open-minded free spirited and spiritual air line pilot. He's into shamanic drumming, reiki and what I didn't understand what it actually was "orgasmic massage". I kid you not.

https://www.amazon.com/Mindfuckers-Fascism-Including-Material-Followers/dp/0879320389

One of the main cult leaders chronicaled in the book is Victor Baranco, he taught the 4 hour extended female orgasm to Nicole Deadone. She in turn knew this friend of mine in the 80s when he was stationed in Hawaii as an airforce pilot. Search "Clit cult" on gawker.com

Naturally the friend of mine who is a pilot spent 5 of 7 months pressuring me to move to Sanfrancisco to live at the "One Taste" commune so he can visit regularly. I think he's banned from the place. Needless to say I haven't spoke to him again except to inform him I am blocking his number and to not contact me again.

Next was a house owned by a woman who claimed to be a social worker, a licensed social worker with a bachelors degree.

Neither which was true, she didn't actually live in the house and renting out rooms when she doesn't live there is illegal. I also checked with 8 states if she was licensed as a social worker, then the university she claims to attend isn't offering a masters degree in the field she claimed, so its obvious she is working on her undergrad degree. She mostly rented to people in substance abuse rehab on social security and was looking to get away from that.

Problem was the guy she left in charge of the place was on parole from federal prison who regularly relapses from meth. Methodone by the way is a hell of a drug to help people get their meth addiction under control. It makes them psychotic, and their bowel movements smell like a 4 month old rotting corpse. My bedroom was next to the bathroom and shared a vent. I nearly died from the stench.

The meth head threatened to make my life miserable living there, I recorded it sent it to the landlord and she told me it wasn't legal to record. Well this is a single party consent state, its legal. The meth head also hated the landlord yet wanted to fuck her. The meth head hated all women. Yet the landlord defended the meth head because he was in a large rehab and she volunteered there, hoping that if this guy 13 years into 15 years of parole turned himself around she'd get the credit thus an actual job within the state. Landlord worked in a different stated because she had looked for work for almost 2 years in this state, thus had to actually take any work she could.

I didn't mention there was a Nigerian living there as well who was an investment sales person who wanted me to believe he was the most buff, handsome and richest person I could know. Yet he took public transit like me and rented a room in a house just like me. I know the work he did, its pure commission and that's why his girlfriend and brother was paying his bills.

At least at the last house the landlord demanded neither roommate speak to me because she didn't want to risk me recording more audio of threats.

Now this place. I won't describe it in detail but its all audio recorded and I have photos of the immense shitload of mess the DANCOroommates made all summer long.

I also have court in 2 weeks because the girlfriend of the DANCOroommate is contesting the HRO I have against her. And some fucker applied for a discover card in my former married name (I got a divorce a decade ago) with the current address I live at.

The DANCOroommate had this nuts idea that my ex husband would testify against me at the HRO hearing so they are trying to find him.

Its pretty obvious both of the DANCOroommates are using skip tracing and applying for credit cards in my former married name to commit identity theft/bank fraud (which is the very first criminal conviction for the guy) to ruin me and to find out everything about me.

Not going into detail about the roommate/landlord who is running around bitching at me, because he's just a spoiled brat who won't pay child support even if he has told his father he needs more money to pay that child support, and he gets the money. It just never makes it to the county. I've tried to certified mail my rent payments to him, he won't pick up the certified mail (possibly because he's afraid it might be related to his child support case) and in the last couple days that certified mail was supposed to be returned to me at the house.... The certified mail with the rent hasn't shown up. I think the landlord took it. He has bizarre idea that money orders are like german barabonds and that they cannot be traced nor proven when the money order was purchased/made. So that's going to make him look crazy when I take him to small claims court.

I think I am at the point in my life that it can't get much worse. My divorce was bittersweet, this is absurd.

after I get a my own apartment, change jobs, clean up credit (possibly freeze my credit for a while), I will work on getting a federal job and move out of the mid west entirely. I've been told by a friend who is an attorney from DC (he travels for work, non-profit legal advocacy) that most of what have been through this last few months would be swiftly taken care of by law enforcement and courts. That either one of them would be in jail right now because enforcement is so much better outside of this Midwest hell hole.

The state I live in has to get better about providing affordable housing and enforcing laws. And yeah I am writing a book on this. Fuck it enough of its audio recorded.

On a positive note. I have good friends. I have repaired my relationship with my ex husband, my first fiancée (he's a shrink in the prison system, yeah he's had a good laugh at this), I am ready to move forward do some growing up and take steps careerwise and financially. Eventhough I am very good at my job, it doesn't pay well and its been rocky business as my bosses close an unproductive side venture; I was very angry at my bosses for their unfulfilled promises. It drained me, now that I have so much other stuff to be angry with my focus is much more in front of me, not fighting to make right on promises broken. I am much more able to leave things behind me.

I'm glad Jimmy didn't let Thomas Frank off the hook for voting for Clinton. Jimmy obviously loves Frank's book, Listen, Liberal, but seriously, how do write that masterpiece and still remain loyal to the Democratic Party?

One book I'd recommend that you check out is William Riker's Liberalism Against Populism. It uses public choice theory (but isn't too technical by any means) to show how popular democracy can actively work against liberal democratic values, and why democracy should be seen as a system of rewards and incentives to constrain power, not as a means of implementing popular majority will.

Incidentally, the book also tipped the scales for me regarding electoral reform (I used to advocate PR, now I'm quite skeptical).

>For some reason they went absolutely insane when he won.

I can't speak to why the base lost their minds in such a drastic fashion (outside of just regurgitating the hysteria they get from the media), but the party leadership is losing it because Trump winning put a pretty big dent in the whole Demographic Destiny idea that they've been building up for the last 15 years. They honestly thought by now they'd be ruling a 1 party state in all but name, at least at the federal level.

You can track the Democrat strategy of silent approval of increasing illegal immigration and doing everything they can to appeal to ethnic minorities to riiiight around the time this trash was published.

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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has a $158 billion question for the wealthiest person in the world. “Jeff Bezos and his company, Amazon, make huge profits by paying their employees wages that are so inadequate that many of them need public assistance just to get by,” the senator says. “How absurd is that?” But try to ask Sanders why he’s set to sell his upcoming book, “Where We Go from Here,” on Amazon and you won’t get an answer.

What a terrible article. So because Bernie wants Amazon and other companies like them to pay their employees a fair wage and not rely on public assistance, he's not allowed to use their platform? He never said Amazon should not exist. This is absurd.

It's like saying Democrats or Republicans want to change the minimum wage - yet they still eat at restaurants paying their servers a different minimum than their proposal? Gotcha!!!! Checkmate for the low effort thinkers.

Michael Harrington's Socialism: Past and Future is an excellent primer (though it assumes some familiarity with the topic and players at hand). I don't know that there can be a "best" book on socialism, but that's generally what I recommend to friends.

Harrington isn't primarily concerned with picking apart capitalism here, and it won't serve as a refutation of Friedman if that's what you're looking for -- it stays basically within the bounds of what the title suggests -- but it's a well-written, valuable read nevertheless.

This NYT piece explores that question pretty thoroughly, and includes a lot of outside links

This section is a decent summary:

>In other words, upscale voters were just as important to the Obama coalition as downscale voters. One consequence of the increased importance of the affluent to Democrats, according to Bonica and the three co-authors on the inequality paper, is that the Democratic Party has in many respects become the party of deregulated markets.

>“The Democratic Party pushed through the financial regulation of the 1930s, while the Democratic party of the 1990s undid much of this regulation in its embrace of unregulated financial capitalism,” the four authors write.

> They cite the crucial role of congressional Democrats in enacting the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which eliminated past restrictions on interstate banking; the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act separating commercial banking from other financial services; and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which restricted government oversight of most over-the-counter derivative contracts, including credit default swaps — all of which played a role in the financial crisis of 2007-2009.

>The critique of the increased Democratic dependency on the rich by Bonica and his co-authors is modest in comparison to that of Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, political scientists at Princeton and Northwestern. In a 2014 essay, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” they analyze congressional voting patterns and conclude that

> >"The majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose."

> >“These findings may be disappointing to those who look to the Democratic Party as the ally of the disadvantaged,” Gilens wrote in a 2012 essay published by the Boston Review:

It's going to be more slanted, but the Thomas Frank book Listen, Liberal charts the road the Democrats traveled from focusing on common welfare to catering to the needs of the upper-middle professional class.

Trying to figure that out. I'm going back over "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and checking out new books like "Cracking the Code" to refresh and challenge myself. Man audio books are great.

I do think you're romanticizing and overestimating the extent to which other countries have a coherent 'natural' ingrained ethnic/national identity by so rashly describing
> Nowhere else in the world is your identity conferred through bureaucracy

I mean, read a book like The Discovery of France that talks about the mapping of France and construction of the French national identity by the government. Up to WWI, the majority of the population wasn't even fluent in French, all the little villages had their own dialects. Spain still has smoldering independence movements and unique languages besides Spanish, from in Catalonia to the Basque region. Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson is another great book that talks more broadly about the beginnings of the concept of nationhood, tying it in Europe to the rise of the printing press which enabled a national language for the first time.

And you mention India, which probably wouldn't even be a unified country if it weren't for the conquest under the British empire and subsequent independence. India is culturally and ethnically divided in the extreme, up to and including their caste system.


Not to mention the great success and relative stability of very divided multi-ethnic societies in countries such as Switzerland or Singapore in the first world. Many of these peoples have a longer shared history than the ethnic groups in the United States do, but I don't see why that makes a huge difference in terms of the strength of identity. In either case, the memory of that shared history has to be constructed anew for each generation. Our shared history up to this point is more than enough to serve as a basis to construct national identity on; these days few Italians or Irish descendants of immigrants have any other primary identity than 'American'. Imagining a shared national community such that it is a primary identity isn't easy but the American government has played a large part with mandatory public schools and other measures. Bureaucracy is a large part of forging national identity, no doubt, your mistake is thinking that this is isolated to America.


So your description of America as

> not a serious country

on these grounds says more about your unique antagonism to it than anything else. If America is particularly notable on these grounds it is that as a relatively young nation compared to many of these older countries, our national identity ambiguities and contradictions stand out more. You're doing a negative version of American exceptionalism, which I think is just as incorrect.

Schweikart's "After Capitalism" offers a critique of capitalism, arguments why socialism would do better, and a practical vision of how we might take concrete steps toward socialism. It is written with activists in mind and doesn't require alot of background knowledge.

http://www.amazon.com/After-Capitalism-New-Critical-Theory/dp/0742513009

Harrington's "Socialism Past and Future" is an outstanding historical and theoretical discussion of how socialists have interpreted 'socialism' and what the future of 'socialism' might be.

http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Past-Future-Michael-Harrington/dp/1611453356

This piece by Bakunin is a pretty good introduction to what the First International socialists believed in and were trying to bring into fruition. This was the ideology of the Commanards, prior to the division of socialism into anarchist and state socialist camps. Other pieces by Bakunin, including "God and the State", are classics and can be found in the archive below.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1866/catechism.htm

Well, yeah. He could have done it for free, but he didn’t. Nothing wrong with that. I like his ideas. Let’s just acknowledge he’s wealthy and that’s fine

Here is Bernie enriching Bezos https://www.amazon.com/Where-We-Go-Here-Resistance/dp/1250163269

I actually agree with you about Bugliosi . . . that he's a stooge . . . especially in the case of Manson.

I just thought he summarized the facts in a good way and his skepticism may be warranted in this one instance.

Btw, a good source on Manson that questions Bugliosi's claims is "Mindfuckers" -- that also discusses Mel Lyman and Victor Baranco. It's a great book expanding on original Rolling Stone articles.

Grandest_Inquisitor: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

I actually agree with you about Bugliosi . . . that he's a stooge . . . especially in the case of Manson.

I just thought he summarized the facts in a good way and his skepticism may be warranted in this one instance.

Btw, a good source on Manson that questions Bugliosi's claims is "Mindfuckers" -- that also discusses Mel Lyman and Victor Baranco. It's a great book expanding on original Rolling Stone articles.

>It seems to me that the gist of conservatism relies on two things, (1) mistrust of a priori (utopian) reasoning and revolutions, (2) and trust in incremental changes by past experiences and wisdom.

If you one day feel like challenging this conception of yours, i recommend taking a look at the book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin by Corey Robin.

WOW... I think /r/conservative really might be the actual closest thing to an actual circlejerk as reddit has ever seen. The entire GOP suffers from extreme confirmation bias to the most extreme levels it's absolutely astounding. Since FOX took serious steps to go extremely right wing (I am talking about 2006'ish, to the point of extreme hyperbole) that party has drifted further and further from reality. The so called "Republican base" has shifted off a cliff to the right, so far that right that they refuse to consider people like McCain and Romney true conservatives. They force their candidates to pander to the "conservative base" meaning they have to pick up people like Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin, people with views so far from reality independent voters are scared off. They continue to pigeon hole themselves into smaller and smaller corners with more narrowly defined extreme views while including less and less Americans under their umbrella. They probably didn't stand much of chance of winning in 2008 but given the state of the country right now and the electorate's complete lack of ability to actually follow issues, it shouldn't have been too hard to trot up any candidate against Obama and win. But yet again, republicans are tripping all over themselves to point out all Romney's flaws and say he's not a "true conservative" .......

I'ts looking like another blood bath is headed our way in early November and I am beginning to believe in James Carville's 40 More Years prophecy.

That is an excellent question. I think it requires diligence, pointing out the lie each and every time you hear it, and being fearless in doing so. The liar will profess instant indignation and threaten legal action, so courage is required.

Being careful of what is being said is also important. "Tax relief", for example, is a loaded term, making taxes sound like a sort of punishment, when in reality they are the necessary fees that keep society running, like the membership fees of a gym. You pay your fees, you get something useful in return, like a stable society.

George Lakoff called this "framing the debate" and wrote an interesting book called Don't Think of an Elephant! about this.

The Democratic Party hasn't been liberal for 35 years. It is astounding that liberals still believe the DNC represents them.

Thomas Frank explains it way better than I can, and it is worth a read or listen:
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627795391

I recommend throwing 'clash of civilizations' in the trash lol :P

The thing is selectorate theory is a way of defining the structure of power. It's focus is on 'how things are', not 'how things should be', that makes it logical and not ideological. Obviously once you understand 'how things are' you can form ideas about how things can be organised to make the world better, which the book does touch on, and that would be ideological.

Acedemically you can start here. Then move onto here . then you can move onto here.

but the dictator's handbook is by far the best political science book I've ever read.

How is that a "straw man"? For it to be a straw man fallacy, 123 would have to be involved in some kind of debate, which he is not. 123 has only made a simple statement, distorted slightly by sarcasm but still easily interpretable.

A straw man takes the form of "well you people think A, which is absurd because XYZ", when in fact nobody has been claiming A. That's a straw man.

Absolutely nothing about what 123 did is a straw man fallacy. Absolutely nothing about what 123 did is any type of fallacy. He called out Noam Chomsky, who is in fact an humanist, for not having spoken up on the situation.

> In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.

-- Noam Chomsky


> The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself

-- Noam Chomsky


> Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

-- Noam Chomsky

> The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

-- Noam Chomsky, ibid

Cracking the Code is a great read. It goes over the various communication modalities sighting many examples of powerful speeches and as a bonus, breaks down the philosophical differences between progressive and conservative mindsets.

If you read Revolt on the right (which is the best book about UKIP right now) they suggest that the BNP hindered UKIP's success in the north when they were prominent and that up to 2010 one of UKIPs main aims was to squeeze them out iirc.

"With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank's Listen, Liberal lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals-the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America." https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

And the Dems are not listening to us. On the contrary, the money of the privileged class is speaking.

cool. Thanks for acknowledging my point and stating your disagreement in a diplomatic way. I think we are getting to a real discourse here.

My first disagreement with your statement is I don't think fighting republicans and making democrats better is either or first or second type of situation. In fact, considering how the democrats are always chasing the republicans rightward often losing big in election seasons, I think that making the democratic party a stronger one that better represents and inspires its people will stop the rightward shift of both parties.

Because policy polling shows the democratic platform is way more popular than the republican one and actually on most polices, the majority of American's are left of the democratic party but the constant losing of ground on policy, the appearance of elitism and corruption, the focus on identity politics which doesn't resonate compared to economic issues, and the fact that economically the middle and working classes have been devastated by republicans AND Democrats are some of the reasons why Democrats keep losing. That and the Democrats constant shift rightward, because when voters are presented with the options of republican and republican light, they'll go with the real thing.

I do agree the republicans are worse and we should fight and obstruct their agenda I also don't think investing energy in trying to change the republicans is the most prudent strategy.

There is a cogent argument made by Thomas Frank in his book Listen Liberal that the democratic party abandoning the working class in favor of the professional class is what led to them losing the majority of legislatures over the last 40 some years. So the way I see it, if the democratic party can take on the role of being the party of the people again, in a meaningful not rhetorical, way they will win seats and if the republicans want to stand a chance as a party they'll have to follow the democrats lead.

When you say "Radicalized" do you mean, like UKIP, because if so I highly recomend Revolt on the Right.

I assumed you meant non-fiction, but if you meant fiction, perhaps you'd like House of Cards.

Other than that, books are usually released at the end of a particular era in politics such as Tony Blair's Premiership, although I haven't read it. One of the political memoirs of either himself or Alastair Campbell.

Hope this helps.

> Conservatives tend to value hierarchy

They don't just value it — hierarchy is the common factor between all conservative movements since the French Revolution.

Read the Reactionary Mind. The author goes through hundreds of years of conservatism, comparing & contrasting different movements. Many of them wouldn't get along, especially in terms of economics, social politics, governance, etc. And yet they all agree on one thing:

> Hierarchy is the natural state of society.

Now, exactly who is on top, and why they're up there... well, the different movements would argue about that too.

EDIT: clarification, thanks to u/RicketyFrigate

That's why they call it the Reactionary Party.

Have you read The Reactionary Mind? It tracks conservatism from the French Revolution onward, and finds that the only common factors are:

1. Hierarchy is good
   
2. Change (away from hierarchy) is bad
   
   Hierarchy = any kind structure that says some people deserve more than others. Whether they be rich, or white, or male, or landowners, or family, or citydwellers, or religious, or sectarian, or educated... different brands of conservatism prefer different kinds of hierarchy
   
   But they all want some people on top and, more importantly, some people below. And they will fight fight fight to stop any change from happening.
   
   It's a fascinating read!
   
   
   
   

I'm sure you are aware of the public choice literature on this subject, so I will skip that. But on the issue of jurisprudence, there is very little.

The classic text in political science is Riker's "Liberalism Against Populism." Also, if you want to spring for the law text book, there is this one. But I cannot attest to its quality.

A good article on the implications of Arrow, which it seems you want, is "Congress Is a 'They,' Not an 'It': Legislative Intent as Oxymoron."

I was researching this topic a couple months back in the context of public interest, the animating theory behind a number of government agencies. So, if you find anything else, do let me know.

No worries! In a very general sense a libertarian is a person who is fiscally responsible and socially liberal. There are quite a few good books out there on libertariansim... one that comes to mind is Libertarianism Today by Jacob H.Huebert. It's written rather well and is easy to understand - great for beginners and a great review of the basics for those who are familiar with libertarianism.

Edit: If you want to read it but don't want to spend the $40 check out your local library. Mine didn't have a copy, but I requested they purchase it. They did (actually purchased 2 copies) and I was reading it about a month later.

Yes, a smart Democratic party would exploit it. But its one of the things they can't actually push because it might work.

Democrats are operating of this book and have for some time. Hence, they dream of flipping Texas using the Hispanic vote and locking in a permanent majority.

https://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/the-coming-democratic-majority-might-be-coming-a-lot-slower-than-you-think.html

His book, liberty defined would be a great starting place.

http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Defined-Essential-Issues-Freedom/dp/1455501441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333121760&sr=8-1

for opposition, maybe any books written by the other candidates.

this fantastic and short book is a great primer on the cognitive science that underlies political leanings


In short -- conservativism and liberalism constitute holistic world views.


The conservative world view is one in which the following exist: good, evil, weak, strong, work, and sloth. The strong and good must protect the weak from evil. people show their nature through their actions. ultimately this means they get what they deserve. it is evil to interfere with that process because it hampers justice.

The liberal world view is one in which these categorical divisions blur due to complex causality. Behavior that looks like evil can be protective and result from previously received trauma. A good work ethic can be the result of a good and safe upbringing. A bad one can be the result of hampered development. Ultimately we are all the same and deserving of nurturance.

sure thing. where are you from?
i recommend this book: https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/1847924220/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅZÕÑ&qid=1495112323&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=david+van+reybrouck&dpPl=1&dpID=41Q2zt5ze9L&ref=plSrch

i'm just reading it now :)

Aggression for self-defense is acceptable whenever someone fears their life or safety is in danger. Someone pulling a gun on you certainly fits that bill. If a man draws down on you you can only assume that he intends to harm you physically and you are perfectly within your rights to respond appropriately. Verbal threats are much of an excuse for attacking someone. Now, verbal threats such as "I'm going to kill you" and menacing movements towards you are entirely different. It just depends on the context of the situation.

As for homesteading you'll see different opinions on this, but my take on it is whenever you've put the land to some use. I don't think clearing a bunch of rocks is enough to justify ownership of it, but it does show intent to occupy. Now, say you were to build a house and till up a section of land for planting crops I could safely say that what you have appropriated is justly yours (provided no one else holds a legitimate claim to said property).

If you want to get more information on these topics I'd suggest reading [The Ethics of Liberty] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Ethics-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/0814775594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369188520&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ethics+of+liberty) and [For a New Liberty] (http://www.amazon.com/For-New-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/1610162641/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369188520&sr=8-2&keywords=the+ethics+of+liberty) by Murray Rothbard. Those are great starting points and should keep you busy for a little while. You can also find these two books for free on Mises.org [here] (http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp) and [here.] (http://mises.org/document/1010/For-a-New-Liberty-The-Libertarian-Manifesto)

>So where did nationalism come from? Most historians view nations as “imagined communities” and that many of their traditions were “invented”

Yeah, they're called that because of the book written in 1983 by Benedict Anderson called Imagined Communities, which coincidentally is where essentially all of the ideas outlined in this post come from without any form of citation.

The book is actually quite good. You all should just read that if you're interested.

Here is his new one , another home run imo

[Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?]
(https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)

>From the bestselling author of What's the Matter With Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics -- a book that asks: what's the matter with Democrats?

>It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course.

>But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.

Seriously, if you are curious to learn what libertarianism is, I highly recommend Libertarianism Today by Jacob Huebert. Cheers.

>Also Clinton supporters being right wing? I don't see it, like Trump supporters most Clinton supporters are coming straight from Obama and I don't see how they're right wing.

From a modern American perspective, no. But from a global perspective yes. It used to be very different, in FDR's time for example. People did fight against his social-democrat policies, but they were adopted and widely popular. I mentioned how the John Birch Society shifted the Republicans to the right, and that's where things started to change. After McGovern's loss and, later, 12 years of Reagan and his VP being massively popular somehow, Democratic leaders assumed that they couldn't win by appealing to the left (which ignored the other circumstances surrounding McGovern's loss and Reagan's win). When they got back into power it was with Bill Clinton, who explicitly pursued a centrist agenda (he called it "triangulation") that included dismantling/privatizing the welfare state (welfare reform), expanding the police state and deregulating the financial industry (Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000). And these are all positions which were considered right-wing in the pre-Bill Clinton era. Now fast-forward to Obama, who has basically pursued the same foreign policy as Bush II, and whose central accomplishment is a bill which is an altered form of a healthcare-reform idea proposed by the far-right Heritage Foundation, and he is basically being attacked as a secret communist by Republicans. Frankly, it's rather insulting to the communists to group Obama with them.

(The book Listen, Liberal discusses in more detail how the Democratic Party moved to the right, if you're curious in reading further into this.)

>the real problem that we both should be against is the current corrupt people in power which is why a lot of people support Trump's promises to get rid of the people dividing us further for their own gain.

His proposals for lobbying reform and term limits aren't bad actually. But his proposed cabinet is, well, it's certainly a change from Democratic corruption but not the good kind. The people he's proposing are mostly distinguished by loyalty rather than actually fitting their position (lol Ben Carson), most of them have conflicts of interest based on their business histories, and most of them are big donors to the Trump campaign. Is any of this unusual for a Presidential cabinet? Well, not really, but it doesn't inspire hope about Trump actually wanting to address corruption more than nominally. And maybe he won't appoint any people with connections to the right-wing's favorite boogeymen such as Soros (though Mnuchin is a close Soros associate so... lol) but for every Dem-aligned billionaire rigging the system in their favor there's a Republican one doing the same thing. There's the Kochs, ALEC, and so on. Corruption isn't a Dem-only thing. When businesses spend billions to elect their stooges, that's an assault to democracy, doesn't matter which party's doing it (as I've said, the two parties are not too different in their goals at this point). But I never see Trump supporters worry about the Kochs or ALEC, oddly. I think that they're using anti-corruption as a cover for partisanship, ultimately.

If anti-corruption reform does happen, it's not going to occur thanks to politicians and businesspeople who've benefited from it. You can't use the system to change the system. Big money is the problem. And capitalism more broadly is the problem. Electing someone who'll just put the big businesses in power directly, rather than having them go through middlemen, isn't a solution in my opinion. If you want to get shit done, you do it through a mass movement and direct action. The civil rights and women's rights movements didn't succeed because they elected the right people, they succeeded because they essentially used sheer manpower (or, womanpower in the latter case) to make the government change shit. That's real democracy, IMO.

Socialism/Communism

A People's History of the World

Main Currents of Marxism

The Socialist System

The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)

Marx for our Times

Essential Works of Socialism

Soviet Century

Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)

The Meaning of Marxism

The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)

Of the People, by the People

Why Not Socialism

Socialism Betrayed

Democracy at Work

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)

The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)

The American Socialist Movement

Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)

It Didn't Happen Here

Eugene V. Debs

The Enigma of Capital

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)

After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action

Capitalism

The Conservative Nanny State

The United States Since 1980

The End of Loser Liberalism

Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)

Economics: A New Introduction (must read)

U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)

Kicking Away the Ladder

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Traders, Guns and Money

Corporation Nation

Debunking Economics

How Rich Countries Got Rich

Super Imperialism

The Bubble and Beyond

Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents

Trade, Development and Foreign Debt

America's Protectionist Takeoff

How the Economy was Lost

Labor and Monopoly Capital

We Are Better Than This

Ancap/Libertarian

Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)

Man, State and Economy

The Machinery of Freedom

Currently Reading

This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)

I didn't downvote you, and never downvote what I consider sincere and well-meaning posts by people trying to contribute new ideas, after all, that's how new ideas get going...but I have to say that I don't think more Orwellian double-speak bumper-stickers is necessarily what the Dems need. What we really need is for the American public to finally get their heads out of their asses. A book recommendation for you: Don't Think of an Elephant! Also, a little reminder: it doesn't get much more simple, catchy, and benevolent than "Hope" and "Change."

This is not about the Guardian and 'what it believes'. If we can be mature for a moment, this is another fascinating article by the irrepressible Matt Goodwin and Robert Ford, professors at Manchester University and regular columnists to the Guardian, who have spent 10 years surveying UKIP support and have a greater understanding of their support-base than anybody else right now.

Their credentials are indisputable. If you don't like well researched observations (rather than bigotry and arrogance)... you can always lump it and bury your head in the sand.

If you give a shit (and I have a feeling you don't), read, their widely acclaimed book on this subject

Is this a Warren Meme? It's pretty clever, tbh. Reminds me of this book on socialism.

The two books Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer and Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank pair extremely well and are required reading for anyone that wishes to understand how US politics has been shifted so far to the right these past decades. Dark Money, while extremely informative regarding the propaganda of billionaires, largely gives a pass to the Democratic party which Listen, Liberal reveals as being undeserved.

No one else has mentioned it. "Don't Think of an Elephant" by George Lakoff talked greatly about how James Dobson and Focus on the Family moved Evangelical Christianity into a wealth=moral fortitude type of mentality. The idea that God only allows the people who are upright Christians to be successful and wealthy is one they capitalized upon and were able to use that value-speak to cause a lot of people who often voted with the Democrats (particularly the blue-collar labor class in the South and Midwest) to side with the Republicans.

The Law - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936594315/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1936594315

Economics in one lesson - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517548232/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0517548232

That which is seen and is not seen - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453857508/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1453857508

Our enemy, the state - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001E28SUM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001E28SUM

How capitalism save america - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400083311/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1400083311

New Deal or Raw Deal - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416592377/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1416592377

Lessons for the Young Economist - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550880/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1933550880

For a New Liberty - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1610162641/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1610162641

What Has Government Done to Our Money? - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146997178X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=146997178X

America's Great Depression - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146793481X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=146793481X

Defending the Undefendable - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933550171/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1933550171

Metldown - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596985879/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1596985879

The Real Lincoln - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761526463/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0761526463

The Road to Serfdom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226320553/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226320553

Capitalism and Freedom - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226264211/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226264211

Radicals for Capitalism - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586485725/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1586485725

Production Versus Plunder - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979987717/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0979987717

Atlas Shrugged - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452011876/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452011876

The Myth of the Rational Voter - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0691138737/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thmariwi-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0691138737

Foutainhead - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452273331/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452273331&linkCode=as2&tag=thmariwi-20

Anthem - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452281253/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0452281253&linkCode=as2&tag=thmariwi-20

There are of course more books, but this should last you a few years!

>Link me to that strawman political behavior research please

Ok let's start with Downs once you've digested that we can move on to a more fruitful discussion of the median voter theorem and all the work on this since 1956.

Assuming you understand game theory and can compute an equilibrium outcome otherwise we've got a lot more work to do.

> oh totally well-educated and adjusted political expert.

You might want to make sure when trying to use this as sarcasm the person you're talking to is not indeed a political expert with a PhD in political science.

Also - I'd really take the time to figure out what the term strawman means before misusing it again.

I've read many books on socialism.

The evidence is very clear. I highly recommend read this book.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=socialism&qid=1555585874&s=gateway&sr=8-5

I can't tell if this a bot response, or someone throwing their hands up in the air before even making an effort to have a discussion. If I'm not worth the time that's fine, but I do recommend that book. Here's a link. There are also plenty of interviews on Youtube where the author talks about details from the book. I promise it's all more worthwhile than talking to random dudes online for fake internet points.

Great! I'd start with this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Manifesto-Ron-Paul/dp/0446537527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480350675&sr=8-1&keywords=ron+paul+the+revolution

and then follow up with this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Defined-Essential-Issues-Freedom/dp/1455501441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480350707&sr=8-1&keywords=ron+paul+liberty+defined

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy this would be a good place to start.

​

The idea that mob mentality and a tyranny of the majority would occur under direct democracy is incompatible with how the system actually works and did work in places like ancient Athens.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Elections-David-Van-Reybrouck/dp/1847924220 If you want a more thorough resource on what direct democracy is and why it's much more democratic than representative democracy.

> It always sets off alarm bells to see Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Prof. Weinstein, and Hirsi Ali get lumped in with conservatives - even though all of these people are liberal, and most are very liberal.

Conservatism by definition is the defense of hierarchy against leftist movements. The main political split in Western societies is between those who think hierarchical domination should be minimized or abolished, and those who believe it is natural, inevitable, and glorious. If they are defending an ethnic, gendered, or economic hierarchy of any kind, then they are doing conservative politics.

Andrew Heywood's "Politics" and "Ideologies" are great introductions.

Well check this book out.

http://www.amazon.com/For-New-Liberty-Murray-Rothbard/dp/1610162641/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375981593&sr=8-1&keywords=for+a+new+liberty

It's available online for free, too. This should fix the last vestiges of statism in your head.

>1. The Democratic party, for some insane reason, followed the Republican party to the right. I dunno what the strategy behind that was, but if they had not, they would likely have control of most State governments + Congress.


Read or listen to Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank

This is a bit of a personal conspiracy theory, but may be related to the degree that Russia interferes with Latvia:

I have Latvian friend who speaks glowingly of Latvian mythology and culture, and out of curiosity I browsed to the Latvian mythology Wikipedia page following a chat with her. I read through it, and was struck by how much it focused on the idea that Latvia's national myths are a very recent phenomena. Like, I'm somewhat familiar with the work of Benedict Anderson, but this was a Wikipedia page with a tone that was just out of keeping with what I usually come across.

I have the oddest suspicion that the page has been edited by pro-Russian agents.

JtO's response seems to me the sort of emotion-laden bombast that you'd find from many political commentators. I don't think he has the reach of impact of a Glenn Beck or Andrew Sullivan, but the tactics aren't dissimilar and they do seem to work by shifting the Overton window.

I sometimes think that the most useful information many people here could learn is standard political issue framing. Pick up George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant and give it a read (don't panic if Lakoff doesn't mesh with your personal political stripe - the tactics are agnostic and the book examines which ones tend to be used by which side in a pretty even-handed way).

This is a political fight, and in political fights, words matter. Learning how to use them effectively forges your metaphorical linguistic sword and shield for that battle.

To me, the best was "why socialism works" https://www.amazon.com/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218

The Median Voter Theorem is the principal concept. You can find a primer on Wikipedia or a variety of books on the concept.

Pretty much the only situations in which moving to the middle wouldn't be better would be:

Voters on the edges of the political spectrum are irrational. If they are unable to realize--Bernie bros who would rather vote for Trump than Clinton, for example. The issue is that actual voting behavior studies have found that this is more of a threat than an,actual observed behavior.

The edge voters decide they would rather not vote at all than support a moderate. Again, this is usually a threat. Most of the fringe voters are hyper-involved in politics and do not follow through on this threat.

The voting spectrum is not single peaked, but double peaked--as in voters cannot be accurately relented by a bell curve. The problem here is that it's very hard to actually determine when there genuinely are multiple peaks, and there's plenty of reason to suspect that it will not actually happen in a given population. Either way, you'd need an awful lot of confidence in a double peaked voter distribution before you start making political decisions based off of that.

EDIT: Here you can buy the original work that first proposed the Median Voter Theorem. It's obviously the best start and from here you can surely find plenty of more recent works that discuss the concept in more depth.

https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Theory-Democracy-Anthony-Downs/dp/0060417501

Holy shit.. can we PLEASE start a "shitty book drive" for Kuhn??


How to Send Books and Magazines to Pennsylvania Inmates

Friends and family members of Pennsylvania inmates can send books, magazines, and newspapers to an inmate. All publications must be ordered directly from a reputable vendor like Amazon.com. No books, or magazines may contain nudity, maps, or describe the manufacture of drugs, alcohol, or weapons. All books should be new and paperback editions, hardcover books are prohibited. When ordering from Amazon be sure to mail to the inmate's name and ID number and send to the inmate's institutional mailing address. If you want to learn more about sending these items to an inmate read about it here.

Starting with this one because it's literal: https://www.amazon.com/Crash-Burn-Artie-Lange/dp/1476765596

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Phillip/dp/B000F3T9BS/

https://www.amazon.com/He-Talk-Like-White-Boy/dp/B000MKYKVI/

https://www.amazon.com/Darkest-Child-Novel-Delores-Phillips/dp/1569473455/

https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Your-Guts-Jim-Norton/dp/1416587853/

https://www.amazon.com/Happy-Endings-Tales-Meaty-Breasted-Zilch/dp/1416961054

https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Awful-Except-Jim-Florentine/dp/0306825635

https://www.amazon.com/Wanna-Bet-Degenerate-Gamblers-Living/dp/1250121175

https://www.amazon.com/Too-Fat-Fish-Artie-Lange/dp/0385526571/

and somehow, searching for "Opie and Anthony" yields this... https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Theory-Democracy-Anthony-Downs/dp/0060417501/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522171298&sr=1-4&keywords=opie+and+anthony

You might be thinking of George Lakoff's Don't Think of An Elephant (2004). I searched the wiki of episode guests from 1999 - 2006, but Lakoff doesn't appear. He has written many books over 40 years, has lots of interviews on youtube; plenty of material to sink your teeth into.

If Lakoff wasn't what you were searching, maybe he'll be a good substitute.

Stalinism (an authoritarian form of socialism) is the most well known, and reviled, because of Cold War propaganda, but it worked pretty well. It's really the only form of socialism people know to have been fully implemented (Mao too but I don't know enough to comment on that) and since it was pretty evil in the beginning, people assume every form of socialism is inherently evil. Cuba has done pretty damn well despite being under intense embargos. Give Michael Harrington's book a read for a good recap of the history of socialism.

Then there's capitialism, which is a precursor to socialism, as it was a necessary evil (Industrial Revolution, for instance) to get us to be able to produce goods at a massive clip. I think in the beginning capitalism was fine for what needed to be done but it always ends in monopoly and incredible disparity because it relies on wealthy people being "well meaning" and "good" when we know they're not. Capitalism keeps people ruled by elites and allows us to...elect fascists like we have now. Nothing is perfect but I'm just asking you to challenge your preconceived notions of capitalism.

Apologize if this was hastily written, I'm about to drive somewhere.

Liberty Defined by Ron Paul https://smile.amazon.com/Liberty-Defined-Essential-Issues-Freedom/dp/1455501441/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1VT8J25TDUGQM&keywords=liberty+defined+ron+paul&qid=1555784579&s=gateway&sprefix=liberty+defined%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-1

It’s a very real possibility that in a 4 year election cycle we will have gone from a Democratic supermajority and presidency to Republican control of the White House, Senate, and House.

This book by James Carville, which was written only 2 years ago, seems like a joke today.

Two books related to upbringing and politics that you might enjoy: George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant and Thomas Franks' What's the Matter with Kansas?

Lakoff also has some youtube videos of his lectures.

Just order off of Amazon. Here's a good book. Why Socialism Works https://www.amazon.com/dp/1521531218/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_3VKYAbCJQKFAK

The Dems did abandon the white working class, or at the very least were in the process of doing so. I will give no specific policy evidence for this but will give an underlying truth. We had the emerging Democratic majority. We had "the jobs arent coming back mantra", we had the deplorables, we had record immigration(both legal and illegal), we had proposed amnesties for illegals, we had identity politics coming out of our ears, we had race and ethnic baiting. All this with an eye on the electoral advantage to the Democrats. All this to ensure the soon to be Dem Majority. Even if you disagree with the above I think you have to admit the emerging Democratic Majority had some influence on how Dems had been playing politics recently.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783

Same way they made the word “Liberal” a pejorative term.

This book by George Lakoff outlines just how Republicans have hijacked the political discourse in this country and explains how to undo the bunk framing and take it back to reality. Quick and fascinating read. Check it out.

> This is rationalism?

Reading people who have object- and meta-level views you may disagree with? Yes. I wouldn't hesitate to read The Emerging Democratic Majority if I were interested in their methodology as opposed to just a couple of soundbites that I heard repeated elsewhere in the blogosphere when the book first came out.

He wrote a whole book (or, well, a collection of essays and other stuff chronicling his lifelong anarchy support): http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208

He's one of the most well known anarchist thinkers.

>What books on politics do you recommend?

• The Republic by Plato.
  
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
  
• Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Daron Acemoglu and Jim Robinson
  
• The Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson.
  
• The Calculus of Consent by Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan.
  
• The Strategy of Conflict by Tom Schelling.
  
• Principled Agents? by Timothy Besley.
  
• Social Choice and Individual Values by Ken Arrow. (Free, legal pdf here).
  
• Liberalism Against Populism by William Riker.
  
• Duck for President by Doreen Cronin.

Don't Think of an Elephant is by a cognitive scientist and psycholinguist named George Lakoff. Whether or not you agree with his politics, I've found it incredibly useful to know how to bait audiences into making assumptions.

The general thesis is that people organize their concepts into "frames," or categories that help us make sense of complicated ideas. But many of these ideas can exist in more than one frame, so when people evoke a specific frame instead of another, they can subtly guide your thinking by introducing a new semantic context and perspective.

So much of Act One requires the audience to simultaneously 1) know that the protagonist has a flaw, 2) secretly agree with the misguided belief behind that protagonist's flaw, 3) not know how to defeat that belief, and 4) be enticed into learning how to defeat the wrong belief. Though #1 an #2 seem mutually exclusive, knowing how to lure audiences into adopting incorrect frames can allow you to highlight cognitive dissonance in the audience, which you then correct over the course of the protagonist's adventure.

Further, knowing when leaders or organizations are trying to manipulate you into accepting incorrect frames can be a big indicator that other people are being misled also. So you can be "Mr. prescient hot-button writer guy" when you write a movie about the issue that "says all the things I was thinking, but didn't quite know how to say."

A great book that discusses why some don't want taxes on the rich, are against abortion but for the death penalty. Don't think of an elephant!. Summary: some believe in the nurturing parent theory, others believe in the strong father theory.

that's one way to understand nationalism. here's the most influential book ever written on nationalism: https://www.amazon.com/Imagined-Communities-Reflections-Origin-Nationalism/dp/1784786756

I also wanted to add that Chomsky is a very good contemporary reference also:

On Anarchism:

https://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208

Notes:

https://chomsky.info/state01/

haha, instead of asking us, read what he was to say on anarchism

Pick up a copy of Liberty Defined, Ron Paul has a great short summary in the book.

The basic problem is how government encourages employer based health care through tax incentives. But government even created the employer based health care mess when they had wage caps on labor from FDR through Nixon, so employers started offing healthcare to subsidize for the lower wages government mandated through those years. So there is no real option currently with healthcare, you get the healthcare your employer provides you and that's it. You rarely hear people complaining about their house or car insurance because if their premiums go up to much, they change provider, change their deductible, or change their coverage amounts. This puts the customer in charge of their insurance. But we don't have those options now.

Also, back in the day when Ron Paul was practicing, all the doctor students would sign the Hippocratic Oath which basically stated it was their duty to provide for the poor. They did this in various ways, sometimes discounts, some times payment plans, some times they did work pro bono. But once medicare/medicaid were introduced, this whole practice disappeared.

Another problem is price transparency. There is one surgery clinic in Oklahoma that no longer takes medicare/medicaid patients and is a free market only practice. Since they don't loose money because of government underpaying them for work at the medicare/medicaid pricing, they don't have to jack up the cost for the other patients. The result is costs that are 1/5 to 1/10 of the prices insurance would pay in other hospitals. Almost every surgery they offer is less than $12K, the most expensive is some penis surgery that is 15k.

I kind of lost my train of thought, but what America has now is no where near the Free Market system and hasn't been for many many decades. Probably the last time it was free market was the last time no one was complaining about the system and before government got involved.

A good explainer. http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462717848&sr=1-1&keywords=listen+liberal

I've always suggested Andrew Heywood's: political ideologies because it gives a nice overview of all political ideologies.

Those two quotations are from the front matter of Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, the new book from Thomas Frank.
http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

Here's the link to the book if anyone is interested.

You might be interested in a short read called "Don't Think of an Elephant". The author is a linguist and he looks at how Republicans manipulate language as a means to an end. He addresses your question to some extent.

I have noticed that when existing moral or cognitive categories/structures are challenged, people tend to regress to more basic ones. So even as many people have embraced liberal human rights ideas, such as gender equality and dignity for QUILTBAG (LGBTQIA+), many others are in a backlash as they pull back to try to find something that they can understand and rely on, and that tends to be more simplified power and authority structures where big/loud=strong.

George Lakoff described some of this thinking in Don't Think of an Elephant.

>It is that and worse! I as of now woukd like to stop buying anything from Amazon... I usually buy a fair amount of stuff every month. Bezos should be stoned at his next public appearance. I have already canceled Netflix just due to their unwarented price increases.


https://www.amazon.com/Where-We-Go-Here-Resistance/dp/1250163269

lol

Everyone please read this book https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717

We can take back our country!

Wikipedia is decent enough for an overview. Have a look at that and you could come back with any more specific questions. You could also check out a book like Political Ideologies: An Introduction by Andrew Heywood.

Read Lakoff's, Dont think of an elephant. It talks about how politicians like Lamar frame their debates around issues similar to SOPA. You can learn a lot from the book on running a productive campaign against politicians who try misrepresenting an issue.

The book that originated the theory.

This should be mandatory reading for any aspiring political analyst. Too many people read the book and concluded that since demographics would allow democrats to win no matter what, they could abandon the center and push whatever the base wanted without consequence. Trump unfortunately is the consequence of not reading the book more closely.

Most of the suggestions in this thread are specifically socialism from a marxist perspective. I think you might find Socialism: Past and Future by Michael Harrington an engaging and insightful read on socialism from another perspective.

For those curious: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218

Read "Don't think about an elephant" (https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717) for an excellent rundown of how the GOP has used language to shape the thinking (when people bother to think) over the last 30+ years.

Someone's basically already done that.

He sold a book entitled "why socialism works" and every page just reads "it doesn't". Check out the triggered customer reviews.

For all those on the left I have the "Perfect" book for you, it's #1 in the Political Ideologies section of Amazon! Why Socialism Works

https://www.amazon.com/Where-We-Go-Here-Resistance/dp/1250163269


It came from selling this.


More utterly transparent Republican projection. "We don't steal, THEY steal!"

There's also a collection of some of his writings/interviews on libertarian socialism: Chomsky on Anarchism.

And his essay: Notes on Anarchsim

An important book everyone thinking about joining these groups should read: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218

I see you have never owned the libs by selling a book on Amazon called "Why Socialism Works" that actually only has the words "It doesn't" on every page

They have an incentive to. It seems to be working.

Also, this passage, I'm told, got a standing ovation at the end of it:

> But now we are being tested again by a new wave of immigration larger than any in a century, far more diverse than any in our history. Each year, nearly a million people come legally to America. Today, nearly one in 10 people in America was born in another country; one in 5 schoolchildren are from immigrant families. Today, largely because of immigration, there is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. Within 5 years, there will be no majority race in our largest State, California. In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States.

> I've met plenty of conservatives who don't see anyone as inferior.

It's not usually explicit, that specific people are inferior. But the ideology believes that the "better" people should control the lessers in various spheres in society. Great related book here: https://www.amazon.com/Reactionary-Mind-Conservatism-Edmund-Burke/dp/0199959110

> nowadays you won't see anyone on National Review or so implying someone is less worth.

https://newrepublic.com/article/131583/national-reviews-revolt-masses

You should read this -

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717

words matter.

> this is the mindset of conservatives since inherently you are being steadfast against a changing world. The idea already has conflict set and the world is crumbling around you as you get older and wish for whatever idea of right you had.

Totally. Corey Robin has been pushing (in his book and elsewhere) the thesis that conservatism has always essentially been about preserving the hierarchy of the past. And this is necessarily a project of oppression and occasional violence. Nice New Yorker writeup here.

The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin

https://www.amazon.com/Reactionary-Mind-Conservatism-Edmund-Burke/dp/0199959110

Political Ideologies: An Introduction https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0230367259/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Ws35CbX9JGGMT

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

Here is the mobile version of your link

Vote for us you insufferable bigots, and by the way here’s a guide to your future: https://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783

Intersectionality forever!!!!

I've heard that before.

https://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=democratic+majority&qid=1566270263&s=gateway&sr=8-1

I'll read it if you read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Where-We-Go-Here-Resistance/dp/1250163269

Where We Go from Here by Bernie Sanders https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250163269/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_NCGIBbTZ3T60A via @amazon


Edit: at least you can get a look at the cover.

"40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation" - James Carville, 2009

http://www.amazon.com/40-More-Years-Democrats-Generation/dp/1416569898

https://www.amazon.com/40-More-Years-Democrats-Generation/dp/1416569898

I seem to recall similar claims four years ago. James Carville talked about a permanent majority. I'll believe it when I see it.

http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Defined-Essential-Issues-Freedom/dp/1455501441

Educate yourself

For $10 you can get Liberty Defined which is everything you're looking for and more.

• Films:
  
  — "The Obama Deception"
  
  — "War by Deception" (Israeli connection to 9/11)
  
  — "International Law?" (a critique of globalism)
  
  — "David Icke Live at Oxford Union"
  
  — On Blowback and Interventionism (short; highly recommend)
  
  — On the Prussian Education model: (first short), (second short), (third short)
  
  
• Books:
  
  — "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" by Thomas Woods (essay summary: here)
  
  — "Liberty Defined" by Ron Paul (online PDF version: here)
  
  — "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins (online PDF version: here and here)

Relevant book:

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1498567671&sr=1-1&keywords=why+socialism+works

Why Socialism Works https://www.amazon.com/dp/1521531218/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_MRaRBbEVFXRBD

And you should read this: (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218)

Sim. Um óbvio plágio deste livro.
E provavelmente foi inspirado [neste] (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504059913&sr=8-1&keywords=why+socialism+works).

Archives for the links in comments:

• By hga_another (status451.com): http://archive.is/ow4sj
  
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Why Socialism Works by Harrison Lievesley

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Socialism-Works-Harrison-Lievesley/dp/1521531218

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Past-Future-Michael-Harrington/dp/1611453356

Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank

Read Listen Liberal if you really believe Dems aren't neoliberal.

https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

Read this book and it will make sense

https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1627795391

This interview is transcribed in the book Chomsky on Anarchism.

http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208

The link will take you to a book of his. The book is about his personal anarchist views.

I thought you were talking about this book, which I refer to as "my Bible."

If you found this article interesting, checkout "Don't think of the elephant" by George Lakoff. He goes in much deeper into the whole Horatio Alger myth and how it affects US politics.

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717

I second this.

Lakoff is a linguist. Don't think of an elephant should be required reading for every progressive.

You ever read any George Lakoff? Check out: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717

george lakoffs book "dont think of an elephant" is an inexpensive, short, easy-to-read book that explains how language has been hijacked by the neo-cons, and what liberals can do about it.

A++++ would read again.

Reddit should read more George Lakoff. He said the same thing years ago.

Don't Think of An Elephant

>The only way to counter this is to use "fox news" tactics. Step one: Give this law a catchy nickname that will make people oppose it.

There's actually a best-selling book about those tactics:
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-The-Progressives/dp/1931498717

>. Clinton could have just written fuck trump for 500 pages and I'd probably find a way to justify it being my favorite book of the year.

reminds me of this

Ironic, since Noam Chomsky apparently considers himself an anarchist, and wrote a book called, "Chomsky on Anarchism."

http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324305240&sr=8-1

Uberto Eco's Ur-Fascism is a popular piece on fascism if you haven't read it already.

With regard to nationalism, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is a major book on the subject and has often been translated into new languages because of the threat of rising nationalism there as was the case with it's Hebrew translation.

Others might be able to give some more suggestions.

If you are interested in a deeper dive at how Fox uses all sorts of dirty psychological tricks to manipulate the masses, check out Thom Hartmann's book: Cracking the code:

http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Code-Restore-Americas-Original/dp/1576756270/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332710778&sr=1-1-fkmr1

Everyone still puzzled by right-wing tactics in the US should read George Lakoff's Don't Think Of An Elephant.


Chapter 1 is especially relevant:

http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/dont_think_of_an_elephant:paperback/chapter_1

Check out "The Reactionary Mind" by Corey Robin. All this hate and lawlessness are completely in line with conservatism throughout history. They will stop at nothing to preserve their status in the hierarchy. https://www.amazon.com/Reactionary-Mind-Conservatism-Edmund-Burke/dp/0199959110

It isn't just right-wing talking heads, though. In the book "Socialism: Past and Future," by Michael Harrington, there is an extensive analysis of all the different kinds of Socialism, and Michael Harrington himself acknowledges that even Socialists have difficulty defining exactly what Socialism is, and he was a Socialist.

http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Past-Future-Michael-Harrington/dp/1611453356