Democracy = Socialism? Conservative Movement endgame in sight.

[Cain]

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14797234?source=rss

Some Utah County parents are calling on the Alpine School District to stop spreading "false educational ideas." First and foremost, the parents say, the district needs to clamp down on its use of the D-word: "democracy."

This week, a spokeswoman for Utah's Republic, a group that advocates for a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, asked the Alpine Board of Education to scrap its democracy-centered mission statement. The issue has sparked a dust-up over the past month, garnering petition signatures from hundreds of Alpine parents and a rebuke of the school board by the Provo Daily Herald's editorial board.

Alpine's mission statement is "Educating all students to ensure the future of our democracy."

But this nation is a republic, not a democracy, said Oak Norton, a Highland father of five and the founder of Utah's Republic. The Constitution guarantees every state a "republican form of government." "Karl Marx said, 'Democracy is the road to socialism,' " Norton said. A true democracy, he said, relies solely on majority rule and inevitably devolves into anarchy, which then sprouts socialist dictators.

The term "democracy" is commonly used to refer to American society and the power of the people to participate in government, including through votes on ballot measures and representatives, said Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics..

"Technically the United States is a constitutional republic," he said. "However, leaders from both [political] parties have often referred to us as a democracy."

Jowers said he received some of the same criticism about the D-word as chairman of the Governor's Commission on Strengthening Utah's Democracy.

"There seems to be a segment of the population who is worried not just about being technically precise on these words ... but somehow interprets a move to democracy as some type of a progressive movement that needs to be stopped," Jowers said. "For the most part, when people talk about strengthening democracy, they're talking about getting more people in the United States involved in our politics and government and more nations in the world being subject to elections instead of dictators."

Two things to note:

Yes, the USA is a constitutional republic on paper, but one with a distinct democratic flavour.  A democratic republic is not a contradiction in terms.

Democracy is now socialism, apparently.  While socialism in theory certainly seems to support democratic ideals (though of course there are, as always, exceptions), it is entirely possible to have forms of democracy without appeal to socialist ideology.

This is exactly what the Siftung Leo Strauss is talking about when he mentioned the anti-Enlightenment agenda that the current crop of Republicans and Tea-baggers have.  

Priorities are to control the zeitgeist, frame 'acceptable' discourse, expand its perceived existential comfort zone from challenge. This state of being is true both for movements in the Old World after 1789 and ours in the New....The Continent's rejectionist horror at liberté, égalité, fraternité from the 1790s onwards is reflected in many examples of similar socio-political phenomena. Like everything else, almost all of the American Movement's animating impulses are imports. Albeit, often unknowingly. Often misunderstood. Americans today can learn alot from the Continent's experience....The Movement doesn't even bother masking disavowal of liberal democracy. It's not a bug, it's a feature! Divorce from consensual American politics, once a private matter, is now a public court filing. They will still play the liberal democratic game to retake power eventually, but as always as a means, not an end. And the morons and dupes that comprise the media and Democratic Party will — like a poorly scripted battered spouse — ignore the divorce and agree to re-marry. Everyone knows it makes good ratings.

So watch as the democracy = socialism meme is picked up and used to destroy what little say you have left over your government.

[Requia ☣]

There's got to be a way to leverage this to convince the wackjobs that voting makes them communists, and to stay home on election day.

[Doktor Howl]

Utah.   

Arizona's next.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

The pedant in me has to agree somewhat with these guys. I've had long arguments with people who insist that 'democracy' and 'republic' are synonymous terms (this is the result, I think, of an educational system that largely conflates them). I have never heard the democracy <--> socialism angle, but given the move to conflate socialism with facism (alarmingly common, unfortunately), this might be quite unfortunate. That said, in order to make such conflations one must be almost entirely unaware of the distinctions -- which means that it won't be democracy that's conflated with socialism but 'democracy' that's conflated with 'socialism' -- in practice, the usage has no bearing on otherwise accepted meanings in these situations, otherwise it wouldn't work.

[Doktor Howl]

The pedant in me has to agree somewhat with these guys.

We know, Enki.  AND THAT IS NOT A POSITIVE THING.

Jesus fucking H Christ, do you know what a colloquialism is?  Goddammit, Enki, this is why nobody takes you any more seriously than the fucktards on the Utah school board.

IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU LOOK SMART, ENKI.  IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE.  A STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLE.

[Faust]

Well its about time someone said it.
If democracy = socialism then
Forgetting it is vote day because you were too high/lazy = libertarianism

[Doktor Howl]

Well its about time someone said it.
If democracy = socialism then
Forgetting it is vote day because you were too high/lazy = libertarianism

THIS.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Forgive me if this has been said before. Being cavalier about language has great repercussions, particularly when the new colloquial usages are coherent enough to constitute a fundamentally new accepted meaning, and particularly when such a new meaning would change the typical reading of already existent documents. Someone reading about ancient rome may not be aware that roman slavery was fundamentally different from the type of slavery that existed in the americas, and this warps their idea of rome. Likewise, someone who has internal models of the meanings of words like "democracy", "republic", "socialism", and "facism" that are modeled after colloquial usage moreso than the proper technical meanings in the context of politics will fundamentally misunderstand any given history. The management of colloquial meanings can be used to change the perception of historical documents without changing their contents -- rewriting history by editing the dictionary rather than the history book. The standard example of this is presumably more accidental: the ceiling of the sistine chapel was lauded as "awful and artificial" -- but we today would phrase the same meaning as "awesome and artistic". The other standard cited example is the misuse of the term 'theory' in evolution vs creationism debates.

There is an upside to having pedants, since it puts an upper limit on the speed at which language can be forced to mutate. For this to be effective, one must be aware of the colloquial usage and of the 'proper' usage (technical meaning in the context, older meanings, denotation, social ramifications of the word in the setting in which it was written rather than the setting in which it is read, etc.). This is not a skill to be useful in propaganda, persuasion, or poetry -- those domains benefit from creative use of language and their effects are often lessened by an appeal to rationality or effective communication. However, in the analysis of the above, it is indispensible -- if you don't know the difference between socialism and naziism, you can't analyze the purpose behind any piece of material that conflates them.

[Requia ☣]

Utah.   

I should start collecting the idiocy that comes out of PTA meetings here.  This one might actually top the woman who was convinced that letting high schoolers give blood was evil, because they had to answer questions about sex to do so.

[Cain]

For fucks sake Enki, I wrote those 6 sentences in my OP precisely so I wouldn't have to put up with pedantry from idiots looking to score cheap points by going "BUT TEH TEABAGGERS R TECHNICALLY CORRECT!"  Yes, I know they are, but they're using their technically correct viewpoint to push a dangerous fallacy as part of a deeply authoritarian agenda.

And that is what we should be concerned about.  I mean, unless you're only posting ITT in order to look smart and show off your awesome vocab, in which case you should just probably fuck off.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

For fucks sake Enki, I wrote those 6 sentences in my OP precisely so I wouldn't have to put up with pedantry from idiots looking to score cheap points by going "BUT TEH TEABAGGERS R TECHNICALLY CORRECT!"  Yes, I know they are, but they're using their technically correct viewpoint to push a dangerous fallacy as part of a deeply authoritarian agenda.

One that only functions by association with another totally incorrect conflation. If the proper denotations were used all around, there wouldn't be much of a problem, would there?

[Doktor Howl]

For fucks sake Enki, I wrote those 6 sentences in my OP precisely so I wouldn't have to put up with pedantry from idiots looking to score cheap points by going "BUT TEH TEABAGGERS R TECHNICALLY CORRECT!"  Yes, I know they are, but they're using their technically correct viewpoint to push a dangerous fallacy as part of a deeply authoritarian agenda.

One that only functions by association with another totally incorrect conflation. If the proper denotations were used all around, there wouldn't be much of a problem, would there?

You are a fucking retard.  Thanks for fucking the thread up to show how smart you think you are.  Asshole.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

Utah.   

I should start collecting the idiocy that comes out of PTA meetings here.  This one might actually top the woman who was convinced that letting high schoolers give blood was evil, because they had to answer questions about sex to do so.

Nothing can beat Gayle Ruzicka's entire career.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

For fucks sake Enki, I wrote those 6 sentences in my OP precisely so I wouldn't have to put up with pedantry from idiots looking to score cheap points by going "BUT TEH TEABAGGERS R TECHNICALLY CORRECT!"  Yes, I know they are, but they're using their technically correct viewpoint to push a dangerous fallacy as part of a deeply authoritarian agenda.

One that only functions by association with another totally incorrect conflation. If the proper denotations were used all around, there wouldn't be much of a problem, would there?

Jesus christ is your aspbergers flaring up especially badly today or what.

[Doktor Howl]

There is an upside to having pedants,

Yes, there is.  It gives me someone to hate, guilt-free.  That would be you.

This is why nobody likes you.  You can't stop being an asshole, and you don't even try.