guns...private health insurance...education that I can afford. All that. Equality, however, wants everyone to enjoy the rights I have...vote, education, health, job opportunity, mortgage availability. Looking out for others must, by definition, prompt gun lovers to consider all the damage to others that guns do, therefore to favor serious gun limitations.

On the philosophical level, personal freedom is craved by ego. The desire for equality is from the soul.

OK?

a liberal focus on the group?

Everyone, even those who look different or have a different religion or are in a different wealth class, should have the same, equal benefits. America has evolved towards egalitarianism. Every time SCOTUS finds a loophole for race or sexuality or equal voting, they are siding with selfishness. It's funny...the Christians should be the most liberal of those judges, but no.

A society can have equality without liberty, but cannot have liberty without equality.

I can explain/defend that if you like, but to me it seems self-evident.

Be it a king or class. Haven't lots of societies had liberty without equality...slave America, Rome, Greece?

Thanks for not replying all snooty and I promise to check my posts quicker than usual!

I should clarify, because you have a point. I meant that liberty can't be realized as a universal social value within a community without egalitarianism. Like you say, there have been plenty of situations with liberty reserved for some.

Usually that only comes from republicans, I am not sure why that has come up in DU. Being a Democrat puts you on the left by default, I don't understand why some people are starting to bring it up, as if that was bad...Next they will start labeling candidates as "Liberal" as if that too was bad?

Left good, Liberal good...

I am for single payer. Does that make me left, progressive, or liberal?

In my opinion, using the term too left implies that the person is out of that supposed mainstream.

The other day I came across statistics from the American Conservative Union. They base the scores on votes on key measures of importance to conservatives and release them every year. In 2007 and 2008, his last two years in the Senate, Joe Biden was at 0% conservative, but his lifetime score is 12.67%.

Tim Ryan 11.48%
President Obama 10%
Hillary Clinton 8.3%
Bernie Sanders 6.78%
Swalwell, Delany, Booker, Bennet, Harris, Gillibrand, Klobuchar, Warren are lowest.

According to some people, apparently the line that one crosses to be Left is 6.78%. Anything above that (or below it) and one is likely to be called establishment/corporatist/neoliberal/conservative/centrist/moderate/Republican Lite.

I don't know why there is supposedly an enormous ideological, moral gulf between 6.78 and 8.3 and 10 and even 12.67. It's like a huge talking rabbit only some people can see.

And who is doing the survey determines where that ideological line is. In my view, calling anyone too left is generally far too vague to be of use.