ninefruits asked: To quote from your recent post about Ron Paul and the GOP field - "On fiscal and monetary policy, he toes it way too much, and I suspect other Republicans resent him for making them look much less conservative by comparison." Why do you refer to free-market ideas as "conservative" when their outcomes are progressive (ie: create progress)?
A glance at your tumblr suggests you’re from Australia, which I think may be the source of the confusion.
Obviously political labels mean different things in different places. What’s left-wing in America is centrist in much of Europe, for instance. Likewise, here to support the free market and want to restrict government spending and pay back debt is to be a “fiscal conservative.” “Progressive” here refers to philosophies which believe in the possibility of human progress through benevolent government action, historically in the form of regulations.
Regardless of what the actual result of the policy may be, I’m not going to be as clear to the vast majority of my audience if I try to use terms other than what is accepted use by pretty much everyone. I’ll spend so much time explaining that no one will ever get my actual point.
If I call “fiscal conservatism” “progressivism,” no one will have a clue what I’m talking about.
