Liberal is not a political ideology
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
The Philippines is in such political turmoil that it’s hard to write into it. I had to scrap a blog that would make no sense if Senator Sotto is not able to hold the Senate in the hands of the honest.
So this article is impromptu, for discussion until there’s more clarity on the Senate.
I wrote a Facebook post consigning the late Charlie Kirk to hell but withdrew it because it upset a lot of kind people who believe the dead Kirk should be treated respectfully even if he treated the living disrespectfully. while he was alive. Go figure. In the FB discussion I was labeled a hater and carrier of the woke virus and liberal . . . by intelligent people who have followed me for years.
The hostility these days, and the simplistic reasoning based on beliefs, is intense.
I did have a straightforward, respectful intellectual discussion absent of angst with a follower who said that the Philippines is conservative, not liberal, so Charlie Kirk would naturally be well received and US liberal views would not be. I argued that Pinks and Yellows are liberal, and so are laws, which is why women are equal and the press, speech, and religion are well-entrenched freedoms. He responded that the Filipino mind and heart are conservative due to Catholicism. Good points. I chose not to debate further and we parted amicably.
Today, “liberal” is a swear word to many. Liberals are the enemy of Trump and his MAGA base of white christian nationalists. “Woke” is an adjective attached to liberalism that is similar to calling liberals idiots or assholes.
Let’s consider a case study.
To MAGA, affirmative action laws that give minorities an edge in college enrollments and hiring are discriminatory against whites. They are “woke” laws that need to be thrown out. Trump and his merry band of ignorant bullies are busy throwing them out. Laws, processes, people. Gone.
What they never address is the science behind “woke” laws and processes, like affirmative action or vaccinations or transgenders in the military. MAGA is an anti-science, anti-intelligence, movement. It’s a power movement.
I was a business executive when affirmative action laws were introduce as an outgrowth of civil rights actions in the 1960s. The science behind them goes something like this:
- The US has been a racist country since inception and once allowed citizens to own people.
- Racism is based on wrong premises that some races are inherently inferior to others. Given equal circumstances, people are all the same.
- Two centuries of racism has punished minorities and left them outside the realm of equal opportunity because (a) they get bad educations, and (b) discriminatory views block their equal opportunity to get jobs.
- Laws are needed to break down the barriers minorities face and to build a society in which race is a non-factor for education and hiring. Scientific studies pointed to this solution.
- The laws worked, but not at 100%. They were unable to break down racist stereotypes held by many white Americans.
- MAGA would be fine with whites owning other races.
I go through this elaboration to craft an understanding of my use of the term liberalism.
It isn’t political at all. It is principle. It is a way of life.
A liberal applies the reasoning of social science to the caretaking of citizen opportunities.
A conservative applies the beliefs of religion or desires for enrichment to the caretaking of citizen opportunities.
I like being liberal, and woke. I think it’s kinder, harder to do, and more fulfilling than belonging to cults or trampling capitalistically over others to get obscenely rich.
There are other definitions, sure. In fact, when someone uses the term, it can be useful . . . or hilarious . . . to ask for a definition.
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Cover photo of the Statue of Liberty from ThoughtCo.com article “What Is Liberalism in Politics?”
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
No comments yet? Good morning Joe!
This is a bit in the rough but liberalism was indeed born in the same era as the Enlightenment, which emphasized Reason over Belief, and yes that was the time when English had nouns capitalized like German.
The Englishman John Locke and his Two Treatises of Government, his support of the Constitutional Monarchy of King William and Queen Mary, as opposed to the ideas of absolutism and the Divine Right of Kings. A man named Thomas Jefferson studied his writings in what later became the USA.
Conservatives in the European Continent were in France after Revolution and Napoleon the Royalists who said “see we told you so, your ideas of Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood wouldn’t work, all we got was guillotines and finally a military dictator”.
Conservatism broadly about doing things traditionally, whatever that tradition is. In Spain, Conservatives resisted the Liberals who wanted rule of law and rationality over the ancient rule of the Catholic Church. Rizal who is conservative by modern standards was influenced by Spanish liberals.
European liberals tend to be pro free-market (economic liberals) and anti-big-goverment (political liberals) while both Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in Germany tend to be pro-state and Social Democrats will tend to want more state intervention in labor markets, more welfare etc.
In the USA liberal often means Left. Bernie Sanders would be called a Socialist in Europe, not a Liberal.
Old school Philippine yellows might even disagree with Spanish 19th century Liberals on the role of the Church. Modern Filipino Pinks will tend to be woke, including being pro-RH and pro-abortion.
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Let’s take divorce, RH, and abortion as an example of how conservatives and liberals disagree.
1. Divorce, conservatives think, will cause the old cultural institution of the family to be destroyed. Liberals will say one can’t imprison people in wrong choices or abusive relationships. Conservatives will say divorce will encourage people to treat marriage as something temporary, “like Liz Taylor”.
(the German compromise on divorce is that a year of mandatory separation is needed before divorce is issued. As the country especially before was neatly divided not only into Catholics and Protestants, but also into countryside conservatives and city liberals, and even that is oversimplified)
(MLQ3 mentioned that divorce in the Philippines would make inheritance EVEN MORE COMPLICATED and alimony would be hard to enforce in a country with an already weak legal system. I suspect that there would be even worse scenarios than teleserye plots of today regarding inheritance)
2. RH is not an issue even for conservatives anymore over here. Though older school conservatives in the Philippines will say it encourages promiscuity and discourages founding families. In Germany, even some conservatives will say better for people to use contraceptives than to abort.
(And strain the medical insurance system that is already struggling with costs. I am sure there would be similar discussions in the Philippines, what will everyone just screw around and PhilHealth will pay?)
3. Abortion in Germany has a compromise solution between two major camps from the 1970s. Yes, BUT with mandatory counseling to make sure the woman reflects on whether to keep the baby, give it up for adoption etc. – a typically German compromise, though Filipino conservatives might call it Solomonic?
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In short, liberals trust in the human capacity for reason, while conservatives prefer tradition as they don’t fully trust human nature and its follies. Both do have a point, as one sees more of the world one tends to trust the human capacity for reason less, unfortunately.
The topic and headline are of little interest to most. They want scandal or political angst. Also I’ve pissed off a lot of Yellows so there is that. You’ve provided an excellent brief on liberalism vs capitalism, and excellent case studies.
We live in backward times, or Americans do for sure. The Trump Administration is about to declare liberal groups as threats, akin to terrorists. It’s the work of Stephen Miller, architect of immigrant hate and the most evil man on the planet if you exclude religious terrorists who also have no humanity, only beliefs and swords, missiles, and bombs.
psst! I’m just whispering here, hoping no one would notice. I think we may have a wannabe religious terrorist in our midst, closer than any of us would care to think! nah, terrorist is more like a religious zealot. so out of place, that one. wala sa lugar, we locals would say. finger pointing at the assembly, 1st time seen. wannabe zealot was there at the president’s sona, yet finger did not do the deed!
but finger did the deed at the recent assembly, to show kuno that zealot is religious! like we did not know! finger must be summat senile, could not tell the difference between a religious meet and a govt meet, and acted on its own volition.
You can shout because I don’t know who that zealot is. Cayetano is the nuttiest I know.
stupid zealot, nag-finger ng national anthem. though you are correct about cayetano being nuttiest. even cayetano’s younger brother could not see eye to eye with nuttiest cayetano normalising corruption.
Greetings from the UK today.
Classical liberalism is defined as emphasizing:
1.) Rights of the individual
2.) Liberty (freedom from oppressive government)
3.) Consent of the governed
4.) Political equality of the electorate
5.) Right to own private property
6.) Equality before the law
Classical conservatism (as a reaction to liberalism) is defined as emphasizing:
1.) Preservation of “traditional” institutions, customs, and values
2.) Often exhibits a call to “go back” to a more “pure” past, which might be based on race, ethnicity, religion, or the nation-state
As we can see here, those who label themselves conservatives such as British Tories are also liberals. Whereas the Australian Liberals are conservative. Liberalism encompasses both the center-left and the center-right, best illustrated in the UK by the Labour and Conservative parties in that country which believe in practically the same thing, just in slightly different flavor.
In the US both the Republican and Democratic parties had for a long time liberal, conservative, reactionary and radical factions. Clearly the Republican Party kicked out their reactionaries (Buckley in the 1960s), liberal Republicans were kicked out in the 1970s (Rockefeller Republicans), while Trumpism kicked out the conservative Republicans. Thus the current Republican Party is not “conservative,” but rather RADICAL. The Democratic Party remains a big tent party with liberal, conservative, progressive, even radical factions.
Political labels have become epithets in the US. As I have observed before, the Philippines is often a Filipino-flavored copy of the US that adopts culture, norms and yes, politics from the US (including adopting specific American culture wars that have little to do with the Philippines, like “woke” vs “anti-woke;” culture wars which were all manufactured btw by the right). People gravitate to simplified teams and tribes when they did not learn civics, and no one has explained things to them.
Speaking of explaining things, the Philippine RADICALS explain stuff very well to the common Filipino, just like the American RADICALS explain stuff well to common Americans. The Dutertes are radicals through and through. Charlie Kirk was a reprehensible person, but he was able to play the social media algorithm expertly in ways many American political operatives still don’t understand (but is obvious). His tactic was video clipping, 15, 30 second videos pushed across social media. Many Americans genuinely think Charlie Kirk was a passionate Christian influencer who happened to be conservative, to no fault of their own. The more bombastic and inflammatory clips are pushed only to his ardent supporters, which is why most people did not know the extent of Kirk’s views. By this way, many Filipinos also love Charlie Kirk for the former reason. We are silo’d by the algorithm unless we know how to break out, and I’d say the vast majority of people do not know. Even less people understand the Turning Point USA (Charlie Kirk) vs Groyper Army (neo-nazi Nick Fuentes) war that’s been going on for nearly 10 years. The Kirk killer exhibits all signifiers of a “groyper,” and I recognized the groyper memes he used right away. Apparently even the Trump administration does not understand, as they are still trying to twist the narrative into some sort of “trans crime.
If I were to give political advice to a Filipino politician, I would say to focus on the issues of commonality: jobs, family security, opportunity, making peoples’ lives better. There is no need to use labels at all.
I saw an alarming video the other day on FB that is very well made. The video’s subject was anti-corruption, a comparison of other country’s resources and how those countries became great while lacking resources while the Philippines has all but fails. Powerful imagery, short captions in simple English any Filipino can understand, with the punchline of Filipino Elites (implied to be controlled by Marcos Jr.) are leeching the blood of the Filipino people while buying luxury cars and mansions. It was only until the end when I realized the video was made by a DDS influencer. The Dutertes are shamelessly exploiting the corruption crisis (mostly originating during Duterte’s term), with no meaningful pushback or return message from their opponents. No matter that the Dutertes fly around in private jets and helicopters. The Dutertes have legions of young GenZ video editors and meme makers who make great videos that are compelling. And I fear they are winning.
BTW, there IS a recent ABS-CBN documentary on corruption in flood control projects:
Gave this a watch earlier. Thanks.
It’s true that climate change has contributed to making flooding worse, but so has government inaction on flood control and enforcing policy against building home too close to the riverbed. I’m not that familiar with NCR flood infrastructure, but I am familiar with Cebu — a lot of similarities, and terrible all around.
In the US, city governments take care of their local public works (water and gas supply, sewage, trash haulage, city streets, flood control). County governments (similar to a German landkreis/kreisfreie stadt) take care of connecting city public works to the regional level, as well as major highways within the county territory. Same with the state, but at a higher level with freeways/tollways, major bridges, water management, and so on. The US federal government pretty much takes cares of “mega” projects and fills in for local governments that may be overwhelmed, providing resources and training to go along with the initial help.
Here’s the glaring problem in the Philippines, which is that most municipalities don’t have an engineering and public works department, and DPWH is quite far away. By law, DPWH is responsible for all the above of what I described about the US public works system, yet the the 1987 Revised Administrative Code explicitly states “However, the exercise of this responsibility shall be decentralized to the fullest extent feasible.” Unaccountability was built into the system from the very start, with most DPWH officials being little more than petty managers who may not even have SME knowledge in their field, choosing third party contractor bids, while being susceptible to bribery. The US Department of Transportation and US Army Corps of Engineers are all engineering experts who both advise on policy, have their own engineering teams, and provide strict oversight to contractors when contractors are called upon.
The Erie Canal was built in 8 years (finished 1825) entirely by shovels and mules by amateur engineers, connecting the American Midwest to the Eastern Seaboard. The Erie Canal was the result of local government taking initiative as at the time the early US national government was still weak. Here’s the gut-punch: the original Erie Canal was 584 km (363 miles); compare that to the Philippines which is 1,130 km (700 miles) north to south. All built by hand.
The endemic condition of the Filipino is he waits until someone far away (a mayor, a governor, a president, even a foreign benefactor) to address his immediate problem. I mean come on, these sorts of engineering problems have been solved thousands of years ago, with pure manual labor before mechanized earthmovers. The Philippines needs to wake up from the culture of excuses and making reasons. One cannot have accountability when everyone is making excuses for everything, all the time!
I was reading about all the “missing” flood control projects in Quezon City yesterday. DPWH never sought local permits and most of the projects disappeared. I have a feeling Senator Mark Villar is going to catch a lot of heat in the corruption probes. He headed DPWH under Duterte. We had a major bridge wiped out in Biliran. He came out to visit it. It took years to rebuild and I’m sure money got sidetracked.
The Philippines shares the same type of public corruption as the PRC: bribery of public officials who take a cut. Why is that? The PRC also has an infamously byzantine system of red tape, though I’d argue that having experienced both, red tape in the Philippines is worst. At least in the PRC some bigger official can swoop in to cut the red tape (with the attendant bribes and favors of course) so he can demonstrate sufficient good works in order to rise up on the ladder of the Communist Party. In the Philippines? Let’s just say that Philippine corruption is on the level of Sierre Leone, a country still devastated by a decade-long civil war.
I keep stressing that Filipinos who do not get out of the enclaves often don’t truly know the extent of the suffering of ordinary Filipinos. For far too long the elites have engineered a system which keeps the Filipino near the edge of survival, distracted by frivolity and misplaced anger. A camel’s back can only withstand so many strands of straw. The Dutertes will certainly take advantage of this to rise again from their political near death experience, even if they contributed greatly to the more recent corruption, because there is no meaningful counternarrative taken directly to the 93%.
The DDS force is substantial, no doubt. Wishing and hoping is not a good opposition to it.
so true, dds really is very substantial force, they even have hefty representation in the senate! quick to bring down other senators to a level of malcontent. for every step good senators take towards honesty and integrity, dds senators take several bickering steps back towards level of malcontent, causing friction.
sometimes, you are misdirecting, joey nguyen. really! philippines shares the same type of public corruption as prc. when china does not share its dirty linens with us, nor dry clean them right before our collective eyes. we really dont know what is what in china, whether made up or what, we dont really care! their problem is xi’s to solve and I hope xi drowns in them! without resorting to powerful chinese AI that puts end to all that is human.
we have enough headache caused by our own problems. too big problems that all the yuans in china cannot buy! and here we still are, grappling with water cannons and dwindling territory, with china already establishing a park in the shoal. and if we eventually sold out to china, I’ll blame united states for paying lippy to our treaties.
Misdirecting from what? I have lived and worked in HK and China, while also have extensively traveled the Philippines. My observations are first hand and measured. Even in the very corrupt PRC, corruption does not eat up the majority of a project’s budget. Otherwise the PRC would have not been able to rise economically and militarily, from a state of things I might add was of quite desperate poverty worse than that of even E Filipinos. There was a time when pre-market reform PRC Chinese peasants did not even have sorghum millet (batad) to eat, and leftover broken rice was a luxury, and that was after 15% of the Chinese population died in the Great Famine. Even if I use the example of Korean samgyupsal, during my time working in SK samgyupsal (grilled pork belly) was considered a luxury food even though at the time pork belly was “scrap meat” as Koreans could not afford meat-based protein and every Korean I met was thin as a rail. Now certain younger socmed-pilled Filipinos hambog samgyup (in actual Filipino use, gogigui, or “Korean BBQ) like it’s an ordinary thing. Korean BBQ until the recent decade was considered a very high class food, fit for a king, being part of Korean royal cuisine. I agree with you KB on almost everything, but I do not agree here. The Philippines has always had things quite good, comparatively, from pre-colonial food bounty to post-colonial American support. The problem is striving for the final step of modernization before trying to even go through some of the earlier steps, then wondering why stuff fails all the time.
I saw a video about parts of Seoul recently which looked like Filipino urban poor settlements in the 1950s, nearly exactly the same as 1970s Cubao in the 1970s, like Virra Mall Greenhills of the 90’s by the 1990s and modern by today.
Of course the Philippines has hypermodern BGC, which even has the best flood control measures such a deep retarding basin (state of the art similar to the “underground cathedrals” of Munich’s sewer system) under Burgos Circle.
Rich places in Metro Manila might have more German luxury cars than Munich, richest city in Germany where they are unlikely to be vandalized like they used to be in Berlin just a decade ago – creating jobs for people over here, basically.
Corruption that doesn’t stifle things getting done is a common story among places that rise up, South Korea had similar issues that put their former dictator in jail IIRC, even as I recall there was clemency due to his having industrialized Sokor.
The Philippines fails to truly modernize as it prefers the appearance of modernity, a bit like Dubai is said to be modern on the surface. It wants to look like Singapore without understanding what Singapore did right.
P.S. American oldtimers are a thing among rich Munich boomers. Might be they dreamed of owning such cars in their youth when they saw American military drive in them, postwar period, while they had very basic BMW Isettas.
P.P.S. pictures of Manila of the 1960s show flashy American cars of that period while Singapore still looked squalid – proving once again that not wanting all the outward stuff at once usually pays off.
Perhaps one of the big mental blocks that Filipinos have generally is the mentality of “all or nothing at all,” and its close corollary “perfection above all.” Of course if one does not take the first step, one cannot get to the destination. If one demands perfection, one must first scrutinize one’s own faults.
South Korea did not start meaningful modernization until the 1990s, though the first steps were placed under martial rule in the 1980s. By the time I got there in the 2000s, South Korea did seem still a quite poor country. In the early 2010s, South Korean cars were pieces of crap and so were their electronics.
What changed? South Koreans are receptive to (respectful) criticism and strive to iron out mistakes. Plod on, quietly, deliberately and without boasting, especially before even doing the thing. Now even the Big Three American auto companies depend on South Korean tooling. As it is said there is no need for boasting as the results speak for themselves.
That’s certainly true, the labeling of people by politics in a hostile manner. And the idea to just stop using and assigning labels is excellent. Just go with platforms and programs and acts.
DDS are truly despicable, as are MAGAs. Manipulators, and good at it. Malicious. Without guilt or reservation. It’s a sickness much worse than covid.
When labels have been weaponized, a label is no longer useful. There was a time when the Democratic Party was the party of slavery and anti-Catholic sentiment. The Republic Party was in former times the party of emphatic progressivism and the expansion of liberal rights. Just as people can change, parties which are made up of people also change. But what doesn’t change is leaving a better life for one’s children will always be popular. Everything should boil down to that cardinal rule, including better jobs, better schools, better infrastructure, better opportunities, which open up access to possibility.
The superpower of shameless politicians like Trump or Duterte and their ersatz imitators is that despite scandal and difficulty, they barrel ahead, always attacking. What was it that Reagan, an exceptional retail politician, once said? “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” The sad reality is liberalism which is subconsciously believed by the vast majority of Americans and Filipinos has been conflated as “socialist” or “communist” over the decades. Liberals who started to be enamored with the educated and cultural elite as symbols of their values, subsequently lost the common person and the actual values that liberalism is based on. Adopting an unabashed and aggressive rhetoric backed by action of the same kind, with no apologies given for the values of *goodness* and *freedom* would go a long way. But first, liberals need to fight for increasing the welfare and opportunity of the common person, because after all that is what liberty, which is the eponym behind liberal literally means.
That makes good sense. Jefferies is catching head for his ineffectual leadership.
Jeffries and Schumer have done great things, and are great parliamentarians. However to play by parliamentary rules assumes that those rules still exist. They are clinging to rules that are no longer valid. Rules that are self-made by each house of Congress to begin with, and can be changed by simple majority. They must choose if their love for the rules is greater than preservation of the Constitution.
Well put.
I was raised by two working parents who did their best to move up the “ladder of life” to reach middle class status in Queens, NY, who shielded their children from the horrors of racism until the civil rights marches in the south shown on our black and white 5 channel television set were broadcast by Walter Cronkite every night. Thus, I had no response to the event where a white classmate spit on me in our integrated public school other than the disgust of the whole thing. When I graduated high school and got a job at Chase Manhattan bank, I found it difficult to understand why several of my co-workers were upset of me trying to save time by answering their ringing phones because they were off somewhere else doing who knew what. “Don’t touch my phone!” Was shouted at me several times. Because we were responsible for all the posters and flyers shown in the bank, when one flyer showed a distressed looking African child with the headline “What Can You Do About The Starving Children of Biafra?”, I was finally annoyed enough to report one woman’s response which was – and I quote it because it is unforgettable – “I can’t do anything for them except send them back to where they came from.” This woman would be today’s leader of MAGA or perhaps a close relative of the now departed Kirk. This was 1969.
I tell you this story because shortly afterwards I enlisted in the Air Force and wound up in Vietnam anyway, where continuing exposure to episodes of racism (because we were stationed on an air base with little else to do between rocket attacks and the occasional probing of the lines except practice that crap) turned me into a monster that my father – a WWII vet – feared upon my discharge. It took me nearly 10 years before I realized that I could not eliminate every white person I saw because there was “just too many”, and settled into a life of concern for fairness and rule of law, but calling out institutional racism when I saw it. And after 40 years of employment, I chose to end my career in magazine publishing and move here.
Watching the world from here is hard. It is tiring and sometimes I want to crawl into a ball to hide or numb myself with drink or drugs (but drugs are illegal here). I don’t know where the U.S. will end up nor do I believe that the Philippines will remain as a country of crabs. BBM is surprising me, as I am thinking that he is surprising a lot of people. Fuck Charlie Kirk and his family – if he wanted nice things to be said about him he should’ve said nice things in his speeches. His wife is going to continue in his footsteps and as far as his kids are concerned, well, even Hitler was once a baby.
The protests starting here that may finally give some relief from all the blatant corruption in government (ghost flood projects) may be the start of a turning point for the Philippines in making it once again the “something” of Asia. I hope to live long enough to see it become the hopeful place I once envisioned it when I first moved here.
I can only drink so many beers…
What a ride, eh Stephen? Congratulations on using it to develop the ability to reflect rather than hate? I find myself able to hate these days with evil cretins like Charlie Kirk and Stephen Miller getting the most of it. Thump just makes me sick. He’s too stupid to hate. I was on Tan Son Nhut for my year in Viet Nam. Army job, air force location and benefits. I recall even playing basketball there and getting my name in the newspaper for my accomplishments. Flew in and out via Ben Hoa.
kirk’s prove me wrong! nah, too indulgent for the likes of me. too tedious. odious as well. simpler things work for poor people like me, issues that affect us little people. we have complaining, that’s our default. and plenty did listen. if flood is liberal, then it is flavor of the month. it will be more flavorsome come september 21, when even the president canceled his attendance at the united nations general assembly, in order to stay home and monitor the current situation.
massive rallies and marches on september 21, the masses against systematic corruption so sustainable, it must be stopped. and what must be stopped are nitwits joining the rallies, keen to push their own agenda, the mob of nitwits urging for destruction and destroying infras. urging the crowd to be like indonesians and nepalis, enjoying and getting high from the conflagration they would cause.
I suppose there will be drones, monitoring the masses. watchful. kapolisan will be in attendance, showing maximum tolerance, but only up to a point.
I hope the protests actually fuel public votes rather than suck off the anger and soften follow-up.
While the Makabayan-aligned Anakbayan, cringey as usual, is throwing mud and vandalizing the gates of the alleged thieves aka contractors, DDS is organizing online with memetic warfare reaching tens of millions of Filipinos via social media priming them to overwhelm protesters for good governance. I wonder which tactic is more effective? I’d say the latter.
This whole flood control corruption episode of the National Teleserye seems like a turning point for the Philippines, and not in a good way. I see Marcos Jr. out there trying his best, but I wonder if it will be enough. The main DDS organizers should’ve been charged with racketeering and conspiracy last year, squeezed until they squawk as to who are their financiers really are. Instead we got a slow drip of arrests, which seemed to stop at Quiboloy. All roads lead to the PRC.
We’ll find out if the Independent Commission has any teeth. It has good people on it but there are heady forces trying to divert attention.
justice in our country is always a slow process, unless you are a drug suspect related to doj chief remulla, haha. suspect being remulla’s son was able to jump highest of hoops and got quickly acquitted.
first things first, we are patient and know that justice will take its course, evidence need to be gathered and verified. only when ducks line can justice take a pot shoot. we are not yet what is fast emerging in america, shoot first and ask questions later, as the late kirk found out too late.
all roads lead to prc. where’s the clear and irrevocable evidence! alice guo is languishing in jail, the chinese who pretended to be filipino and acted as coastguard volunteer has been strip of filipino citizenship. as well, chinese spies and chinese illegals have been deported.
billions of pesos, not in yuan, in the flood scam is taken from filipino taxpayers, abated by govt officials and laundered by our casinos. loose regulations of banks, finance sec recto pls take note! made it highly possible to move big amount of cash anywhere in our country. the players are all filipinos, aside from having hefty bank accounts, they also have mansions and too many luxurious cars to their credit.
inadvertently, the financier of anomalous flood scam is our own govt! the bulk of the money, legally budgeted, signed, and approved by our then unknowing president, the highly anomalous and non existent flood projects duly signed off as finish and complete and satisfactory by our very corrupt dpwh officials.
MAGA …Woke both bastardized and weaponized
For my further understanding.
Got it — you’re asking for a clear breakdown of:1. Woke vs. MAGA (what they mean, how they contrast).2. Liberalism and its analogs (what liberalism really is, since it’s often misunderstood, and how related ideologies compare).Here’s a straightforward, demystified take:—1. Woke vs. MAGAWokeOrigin: From African-American slang meaning “awake” or socially aware.Core idea: Heightened awareness of injustice, especially regarding race, gender, sexuality, environment, and inequality.Values:Social justice and equality.Recognition of systemic racism, sexism, and privilege.Inclusive language, diversity, climate activism.Criticism:Sometimes seen as moral policing, cancel culture, or overly rigid.Accused of being elitist or detached from working-class concerns.MAGA (“Make America Great Again”)Origin: Donald Trump’s 2016 slogan, now shorthand for his populist-nationalist movement.Core idea: Restoring a perceived “lost greatness” of America (often identified with strong borders, traditional values, and economic nationalism).Values:Nationalism and patriotism.Strong borders, immigration restrictions.Deregulation, economic protectionism, skepticism of globalization.Traditional cultural and religious norms.Criticism:Accused of racism, xenophobia, authoritarian tendencies.Nostalgic for an America that marginalized minorities and women.👉 In short: Woke is about progressive change (fixing systemic injustices); MAGA is about restoring tradition (resisting rapid social change). They’re mirror opposites in culture wars.—2. Demystifying Liberalism and AnalogsLiberalism (Classical Liberalism)Origin: 17th–18th century Enlightenment thought.Core principles:Individual rights and freedoms.Rule of law and limited government.Free markets (economic liberalism).Representative democracy.Examples: John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill.Modern adaptation: Still emphasizes personal liberty, but split into left and right versions.—Analogs and Related Ideologies1. Social Liberalism (Progressive Liberalism)Emphasizes individual rights plus state action to reduce inequality.Supports welfare state, civil rights, regulated capitalism.Example: Modern Democrats in the U.S., many European center-left parties.2. NeoliberalismMarket-oriented liberalism of the late 20th century.Deregulation, privatization, free trade, reduced welfare.Popular under Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, Blair.Criticized for deepening inequality and globalization issues.3. Conservative Liberalism (or Right Liberalism)Focuses on free markets, limited government, and individual responsibility.Economically liberal but socially conservative.Example: U.S. libertarians, some Republican factions.4. LibertarianismRadical extension of classical liberalism.Almost absolute individual freedom, minimal state intervention (both economic and personal life).Example: Ron Paul, Cato Institute.5. Illiberalism (the foil)Rejects liberal democracy, even if it uses elections.Strongman rule, nationalism, limited civil liberties.Examples: Orbán in Hungary, Erdoğan in Turkey.—✅ Simplified map:Woke = progressive activism (identity, justice, climate).MAGA = conservative populism (nation, tradition, sovereignty).Liberalism = the Enlightenment root of democracy, rights, markets.Social liberalism = freedom + equality.Neoliberalism = markets first.Libertarianism = max individual liberty.Illiberalism = strong state over liberal rights.—Would you like me to put this into a visual spectrum/map (left–right vs. liberal–illiberal) so you can see where “woke,” “MAGA,” and “liberalism” sit relative to each other?
Any human say rot in hell to a hated figure real or bandwagon and the like.
Here I hated Marcos when I was b4 my twenties or teens until I mellowed down and turned my anger towards the Dutertes even when I got relatives or sisters of my mom in Davao who are DDS.
But my belief should not be forced onto others a little sharing of opinion and feelings and emotiond and what happens next is not up to me.
Racism undoubtedly needs to be countered, and Black Americans and Canadians (though the latter nation likely somewhat less so) have suffered most of the ugliness, not to mention Indigenous peoples. Nonetheless, especially over the last half-decade, I’ve noticed there are injustices and victimizations that get mis-reported or ignored as though those injustices/victimizations are ideologically and therefore socially/politically acceptable.
The media (i.e. news, literary, social and entertainment), though especially the mainstream news outlets, can be largely credited for the creation and maintenance of current societal/institutional racial standards and even hypocrisies in Western society. Anti-Caucasian racism or violence, as a timely example, can be expected to not receive objective coverage, if any at all, by the neo-liberal news media, quite unlike when the racial makeup is reversed. It’s likely they deem such occurrences, however newsworthy, as not being a social/societal problem and therefore un-worthy of proper coverage.
Over my decades of news consumption, I’ve heard this justification more than once, although it’s not even their professional/objective prerogative to do so in the first place. Such reporters/editors also appear to feel they can be both journalistically activistic AND truly objective/professional. They, however, cannot. On the contrary, they’re placing the profession and themselves in disrepute, to put it mildly.
According to my journalism instructor approximately three decades ago, the probable rarity of such an assault (in this case, anti-Caucasian racism or violence) would make it newsworthy; and the opposite would apply to the common or usual occurrence, such as that resulting from a recurring social/societal problem.
And, all the more disturbing and concerning about that news media’s failure to condemn or even properly cover such racist assaults is that it encourages the justice system to not objectively/fully charge and prosecute those responsible.
Not only can the racists (of color) not be held properly criminally accountable, they may also notice the news outlets downplaying or omitting the racial motivation behind such serious crimes, perhaps leaving the impression that the inexcusably vicious acts were somehow morally justified. It’s in our flawed, if not corrupted, human nature (especially as children) to observe such societal cues and take advantage of them.
… On such matters, the media are far beyond just being biased.
Interesting take, that journalists are not reporting on anti-white racism. That sounds a bit strained to me. If the oppressed rebel against the oppressor are they racist? Is affirmative action anti-white racism, or an effort to help the oppressed? What are journalists to report?