Jaicee said:
sundin13 said:
Oh, I certainly don't think this applies to you personally. I also don't really think "moderate" applies to you either.
I disagree with you in a lot of ways, but disagreeing with people on the left doesn't mean you aren't on the left. I've regularly disagreed with people on the left too but I wouldn't call myself a moderate because it just doesn't make sense. While a lot of people seem to see it as a weakness, and it certainly can be at times, I think there is a lot of good within the fact that the left regularly and vehemently disagrees with itself. Diversity is our strength, and that includes diversity of opinion. That doesn't make it suck any less when some of the more vociferous lefties go for the throat, but personally, I take solace in the fact that I genuinely believe these disagreements come from a good place. Even when I think about how strongly I disagree with some of your opinions, and how harmful I believe some of your opinions can be, I do think they come from a good place.
But just generally, I think one should stay away from defining themselves through someone else's perspective...
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I get what you're saying. There was another of our members here at VGC who late last year made a similar contention about not letting others define me when I mused about embracing the term moderate and it resonated with me at the time. The label "progressive" has just become a burden to me at this point though. It's not worth calling myself a progressive only to inevitably have to spend the rest of a given conversation defending my legitimacy as one. It subtracts from my ability to talk about issues at this point rather than adding clarity to where I stand.
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I think that is fair too, but it begs the question, why are you searching for a label in the first place? I think in some ways I'm probably more "progressive" than you, but I don't think I've ever called myself a progressive. Labels can be a valuable shorthand for expressing your opinions, but if they don't fit, you don't really need to go on a vision quest to find a new one.
