US labour watchdog halts Apple cases after group’s lawyer picked for top job

Classical liberal and conservative ideologies have danced around between two poles for hundreds of years: force is right (might makes right) and one's ability to assert dominance in market/politics determines whether one is good/right/just... or.... principles determine justice, and the limits to power are key and important, constitutions, institutions, etc are there to enforce that.

Guess which pole is winning. Again. Predictably.

If you listen to his strongest supporters and those in his administration, they speak openly of it: the President is Right because the president is a Winner. Losers don't get to define what is Right. The President "won" not just the election, but "as a businessman" and an entertainer. So he is Right. Elon is Right because Elon is richest. America is Right because America is Most Powerful. Everyone else is a leech, a cuck, a sub, a beta, whatever. You either get on side, or you're a loser. And wrong.

It's pointless to argue with these people on abstract principles. American liberals are so caught off guard by this because they've been assured their whole life that constitutions and courts are the foundation of stability and that those guard rails protect society.

They don't. They're pieces of paper.

> Losers don't get to define what is Right

I mean, is this wrong? This is the literal reason we have elections, so the losers can’t tell us what to do.

Again, it comes down to how you define "Right" doesn't it?

Clearly Christian theology and other strains of thought think otherwise... that there's an ethical/moral "rightness" which can be judged independent of what the powerful say.

To be clear, I'm not arguing for that position. I just am pointing out in part why the Democrats and liberals are so pathetically unable to confront this situation. They thought they were part of a gentleman's club, and they could all take turns ruling according to a set of rules.

The liberal philosophy is just the mirror opposite, isn't it? "This poor, marginalized group is suffering, that's wrong! We need regulation to stop it. Oh look, we found another over here, this is injustice! Let's all take action to rid this wrong from the world".

I mean, I'm personally a kind of Marxian. I won't defend liberalism, though I'd prefer not to live in an illberal society.

To me the present-day "left" liberal is not just profound hypocrisy but also a refusal to confront the reality of class conflict in capitalist society. The kind of liberal you're talking about will do "everything" to rectify injustice against every identifiable group except the largest group in society, the working class whose labour feeds the whole machine.

There was a slogan in the 20s and 30s when the socialist movement was confronted by (and lost to) the rise of the authoritarian right. "Socialism or barbarism" [and no, peanut gallery, the "left" in North America is not "socialism"]. Guess which part you're getting now.

I think it's a mischaracterization of liberalism as a blind, bleeding heart that can't see past any local injustice.

Honest conservative and progressive policy can also both value and seek to expand justice.

IME the liberal philosophy is "today should be pretty much like yesterday was and tomorrow like today".

That's quite... conservative.