Soggy Liberal

[hypatia_66]

Watching the presidential campaigns from across the water is fascinating. Calling someone a Liberal (or Socialist for that matter) clearly has a very different connotation in our respective countries. The adjectives 'dangerous' and 'extremist' attached oxymoronically to 'Liberal' provoke hilarity in the UK because the most often applied adjective

Comments

[threecee]

Attila the Hun was way more liberal than the Trump party.

"Weird" is one of those British understatement things, isn't it?

[hypatia_66]

Right on both counts. Attila was a model of democratic leadership in comparison. It's difficult to defend any country's political system, including my own, but if you'd like me to be less British, the political system in the USA is grotesque. Its grotesquely politicised judicial system is worse. What happened the idea of separation of powers?

[threecee]

Weird, grotesque, bizarre, ludicrous, batshit crazy, totally f-ed up. All reasonable descriptions of recent politics.

The Supreme Court used to the the most respected branch of government. The "for life" appointment was designed to protect them from political influence and allow them to be independent of party ideology. The procedure we have for lower court judges is for them to not be [publicly] connected to any party and for the people to vote on retention every few years. May be time to do that for the Supreme Court too.

[hypatia_66]

And breathe...

But you're quite right.

[duche55]

Even stranger - the Liberal Party in Australia is a right wing organisation, claiming to be centre-right, but also espousing the far right. The Labor Party (in power at the moment) is centre-left.

[hypatia_66]

Must be something do with being at opposite ends of the world. Would it change, I wonder, if the Earth's magnetic field flipped and the poles reversed (as, alarmingly, may be happening).

[duche55]

I’d love to see some of our arch-Liberals suddenly turn socialist! It would be worth reversing the poles just to see that.

[hypatia_66]

And Farage here. Hah!

But extremists are always untrustworthy...