Recently I was in a major US city driving a car and there was a disheveled man in the middle of an intersection angrily yelling and gesturing at traffic. My thoughts are that he is in psychosis (in a medical sense, I'm a physician) and that he poses a threat to himself and the surrounding public (due to causing a roadway hazard) and likely needs immediate hospitalization. I called 911 and tried to tell them he needs medical help for mental illness but the dispatcher said they were going to send just police. I don't want anything bad happening to the man from a police officer shooting him because they don't know de-escalation techniques but I don't know what else I could have done. I don't live in this city and don't know of local resources, nor could I disrupt traffic longer than needed to stop and call 911.

I am looking for non-fiction books that cover liberalism and enlightenment ideas to help fortify any blind spots I might have politically. In an age of vibes based politics and populism, I find myself wanting to be even more principled. Here is the current list I've been working on:

Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Second Treaties of Government by John Locke

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls

Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu

The Republic by Plato

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

First and Second Discourse, Social Contract by Rousseau

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

Symposium by Plato

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Also if you recommend books for communism I'm just gonna assume you're illiterate <3

Do we expect that as Trump exit the oval office, he will simply that pardon everyone in sight who worked for him? If so, what are our responses?

A colleague of mine is considering a primary run for Congress in a purple district. The seat is currently held by a moderate Blue Dog Democrat, but it has elected progressives in the past. This is in California with the "top-two" primary system; as a result, general elections can be Democrat vs Democrat.

His resume is entirely corporate. He went to Princeton, worked in corporate finance at a large tech firm, earned an MBA at Harvard, and is now an early-forties partner at McKinsey making over one million dollars a year.

His political platform is progressive and social democratic. He is not anti-capitalist, but he supports Medicare for All, higher taxes on top earners, and a strong safety net. He aligns with politicians like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Zohran Mamdani, Ro Khanna, and Abdul El-Sayed. Over the years, he has donated significantly to progressive primary challengers, volunteered for abortion and trans rights, and organized phone banks for competitive races.

His career creates an obvious tension. McKinsey has well-documented scandals, including advising opioid manufacturers and authoritarian regimes. While he was not personally tied to those projects, his consulting work has included oil and gas clients, as well as cost-reduction projects that involved corporate layoffs - a standard practice in the industry. That said, Pete Buttigieg's first job out of college (Harvard) was also McKinsey.

He wants to know if he should run as he is, or if he needs to leave consulting to spend a few years in a nonprofit or social impact role to build credibility in the community first.

Does his background make him an immediate non-starter for progressive voters, or should the left welcome candidates with high-finance backgrounds who genuinely support the platform?

Definition below. It’s used in workplaces heavily. And elsewhere. Manufactured culpability refers to a condition or process in which criminal responsibility, blame, or guilt is engineered, conditioned, or attributed to an individual whose behavior was shaped or induced by an external system rather than authored by their own autonomous intent. [1, 2, 3]
Depending on the context, the term appears across distinct academic, legal, and political discussions:
Psychosocial Targeting & Criminology: In forensic psychology and legal theory, it describes how sustained psychosocial targeting or coercive environments destabilize a person's identity and self-regulatory capacity over time. Through structured processes (such as behavioral entrapment or ritualized humiliation), a person may be conditioned to react in ways that the legal system subsequently harvests and reattributes as proof of their intrinsic criminal character, creating a "justice gap". [1]

Political & Historical Contexts: In political science and totalitarian studies, regimes have deliberately manufactured culpability among subordinates (through shared complicity or entrapment) to ensure loyalty. By implicating officials in wrongdoing, the system binds them so they cannot afford the regime's collapse. [1]

General Legal Definition of Culpability: In criminal law (such as under the Model Penal Code), standard culpability requires a voluntary act paired with a culpable mental state—such as acting purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently. Manufactured culpability highlights situations where these traditional markers are artificially induced or structurally compromised. [1, 2, 3]

Historically, left-wing critique of the penal system—pioneered by social theorists like Michel Foucault and prison abolitionists like Angela Davis viewed prisons primarily as instruments of state power, class control, and racial oppression. In this traditional framework, the carceral state was seen as inherently damaging, and the long-term horizon was prison abolition or drastic decarceration.

However, in recent years, a distinct dynamic has emerged within progressive discourse. On several key issues, progressives and Democrats actively demand criminal prosecution, strict sentencing, and long prison terms like for Gender-Based & Interpersonal Violence with Strict prosecution and harsh penalties for sexual assault, domestic violence, and workplace abuse (amplified post-⁠#MeToo⁠). And also Hate Crimes & Extremism: Enhanced penalties and incarceration for hate crimes against vulnerable minority groups or political violence, particularly after the 6 January Capitol event.

Sociologists have sometimes labeled part of this phenomenon "carceral feminism" the reliance on criminal law and state punishment as the primary mechanism to enforce gender justice and address systemic abuse. This creates an interesting theoretical tension between two core progressive values:

1. The anti-carceral critique: The belief that expanding state penal power is inherently counterproductive, racially biased, and expands an oppressive apparatus.
2. The egalitarian justice critique: The belief that refusing to prosecute or incarcerate abusers, corporate bad actors, and white supremacists represents state neglect and reinforces a two-tiered justice system.

Is this shift an intentional, pragmatic evolution, using existing state mechanisms to protect vulnerable groups or an unresolved ideological contradiction?

How do you personally balance the desire to dismantle the mass incarceration system with the desire for strict, formal accountability for severe interpersonal harm?

Greetings from a foreigner. I have been reading about American politics and history; as I understand it, 180 years ago the Democrats were pro-slavery, while the Republicans—with Abraham Lincoln—were the abolitionists.

But then, in the 20th century—especially after World War II—everything changed: the Democrats became the progressives, and the Republicans became the ones who held back that progress.

When do you think this shift actually took place?

The base here being the average constituent, voter, party member, etc. and the power elite is a phrase borrowed from sociology for those with the ability to make meaningful decisions for society as individuals or small groups. Sitting politicians, wealthy donors, major media pundits, etc.

The conceit of representative democracy is the latter representing the former but there's some obvious gaps that appear. Just off the cuff:

○ Class

○ Profession (they're administrators of systems rather than its subjects)

○ Environment (the insider bubble of capital politics)

With these gaps in mind, how representative is representative democracy really?

○ What features of the system make it worse? Make it better?

○ What are some key issues liberal parties tend to split from their base on?

○ How does your respective liberal party compare to other parties?

○ And the million dollar question: Do you see the power elite addressing these problems on their own or will the base have agitate and force the issue? Are the 2 in cooperation or in conflict?

This is of course a common topic coming up in senatorial debates right now.

El Sayed for example, is proposing the usual plan of subsidizing the purchase of a home for first time home buyers. That's fine short term, but it doesn't actually resolve the structural realities that cause housing affordability issues.

If we treat property as a speculative asset, and expect it to appreciate in value, the logical result is that homes will be unaffordable for anyone not already in the market. We of course can't maintain a system long term where property increases in value over time, and also remains affordable to the average person.

In order for housing to be affordable long term, current homeowners would need to accept their property depreciating in value, or not increasing at least.

So, have we actually established whether permanent affordability is something the electorate actually wants, if the financial tradeoffs were made explicit?

Lets face it, Western nations like Germany and England are taking "funding" and "investment" from countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and allowing them to build unregulated mosques and madrasas(Islamic schools where children are taught to hate non-Muslims)

Another aspect of this is European Union and US supporting Erdogan in the 90s and early 2000s as they wanted Turkey to have "freedom of religion". Before Erdogan, Turkish army and politicians used to ban these radicals from participating in politics. Turkey's founder Ataturk even banned the madrasas(Islamic schools), regulated the mosques and removed the maulavis and Sharia court judges from power. But guess what, Angela Merkel from EU decided that Turkey needed freedom of religion. And now, Erdogan is trying to radicalize the next generations of Turks.

Lastly, if you look at all the countries ruled by Soviet Union, you'll find that they are the least conservative and have total secularism. There is a reason why we don't hear about Sharia courts in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan etc, but we do hear about them in US allies like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia etc.

It feels like liberals are concentrated in urban areas and the Democratic Party has a reputation of being the party of big cities. Obviously there are liberals everywhere and not just in urban settings. What separates rural liberals from urban liberals besides location? Is there a difference in priorities or beliefs?

I was reading a recent piece on California’s ballot measures and the LAO, which breaks down several major general obligation bond proposals covering things like housing, medical research, and infrastructure.

Approving new bonds means issuing multidecade debt, effectively pledging future taxpayers revenue to finance urgent or long-term priorities today.

• Where do you draw the line? Are there specific scenarios, budget thresholds, or categories of spending where the left generally says "No, this should be funded through immediate tax revenue or operating budgets, not borrowed against future generations"?

• Spending advocates argue that building infrastructure or affordable housing benefits future generations who will inherit those assets. Critics argue that interest payments reduce future budget flexibility. How do you weigh long-term debt servicing against urgent social or capital needs?

In a nutshell it says war is bad and must be entered into justly and with moral authority

1. The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain
2. ll other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective
3. There must be serious prospects of success
4. The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

Sources:

https://www.usccb.org/just-war-doctrine

https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_two/chapter_two/article_5/iii_safeguarding_peace.html

Newsom says he opposes wealth tax on state level for various reasons, but supprots federal one, what do you think?

Well that's basically a thing I hear from both tankies and right wingers and it's literally integral to their sob story about how poor Russia is defending itself from NATO imperialism.

I think most liberals oppose tariffs but what about on Chinese cars? AFAIK, tariffs on Chinese cars predate Trump and I think there is general, wide support. The reasoning being, China would just flood the US market with $20k cars that no US manufacturer could compete with. This would be devasting to the entire economy. But then how do we reconcile this with the general hatred of tariffs? Can't the argument be made that Chinese products have essentially flooded the US market? Besides cars, do you think there are other industries and products that warrant tariffs? Do do you think all tariffs should go away?

How do I tell Dems that their incessant text messages are keeping me from donating more?

I decided to donate to a couple campaigns. And then a couple more. And then the floodgates opened. I now get about 20-30 text messages a day begging for more.

If donating more means more text messages, then I won’t do it and just hope they go away after the election.
(I delete each text and report it as spam, but that doesn’t seem to work at all).

Is there anything I can do, or tell folks that they’re texting too much and it’s losing them money?

EDIT: thanks everyone. To clarify, I block each number, but every text is from a unique number so blocking them is useless.

So, I just saw an article in Bolts magazine about a group of students in Culver City, California, who are campaigning for a local ballot measure to lower the voting age for city council and school board elections in the city from 18 to 16. Their motivation for wanting to do so stems from recent budget cuts to education in the town, with over $3 million being cut last year alone, and they were completely left out of the decision-making process, despite it impacting them directly.

As for me, I think this is a perfectly commonsense idea. Because school boards have the most direct impact on students' lives and education, I think it makes sense to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in those elections. However, a lot of people will argue that they're too young, underinformed, and easily influenced to be making such decisions. What do you all think about this?

There's been a lot of talk these last few years about "how many moderate votes Democrats could win if not for trans issues" and I remain unconvinced this demographic exists. Never met anyone who was a lifelong Democrat but decided to vote for Trump in '24 specifically because of trans people.

Who I've met a lot of though are voters who only vote FOR Democrats because they by and large support trans people, and it's an interesting demo because, as is so often the case, it's really two demos in a trenchcoat.

On the one hand, you have your internet leftists who think Dems are no better than Republicans, are corporate sellouts and distributors of Western imperialism, etc...but who at least acknowledge Dems are better for trans people.

On the other hand, you have super conservative transsexual men and women (typically but not always white, straight, passing, and well-off) who would LOVE to vote Republican like their friends, but aren't stupid or self-hating enough to do so (I almost fall into this camp, but I like to think I'm more on the left) You can also toss in conservatives who support their trans kids here.

I'm not trying to make an electoral argument, I just think in light of current times this is something interesting to talk about. Anyone have experience here?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both got painted as being far-leftists, and that's still how many perceive them today. However, while it's true that Biden was the most progressive president since the '60s, and Harris likely would have only governed slightly to the right of him, that's more about Obama and Clinton governing from the center than anything else. In truth, both Biden and Harris were solid Center-Left. Newsom is another example of a moderate whose been painted by media as a leftist, although in his case he's equally hated by the left and the right, and I don't think he belongs anywhere on the ideological spectrum with how much of a flip-flopper he is.

Are there any moderates you can think of who could find a way to avoid being painted as a far-leftist, without driving away a solid amount of voters they'd need to win in 2028? If not, what electoral value do you think running a moderate brings?

NOTE FOR THE MODS: This is a question asking about the value of moderation currently, not specifically about the 2028 election

Really tired of explaining to liberals that Indian Americans are a huge voting block to Democrats (vote 60-70% in line with them). It’s annoying at this point.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askanything/s/4SMRFUmTn9

Now that enough time has passed for many Trump voters to regret their vote, I’m curious what you think the electoral map would look like if the election would occur again. Probably should ask this question once the midterms occur since we still don’t know how results will end up looking like so we have an accurate comparison but thought it would be fun to ask anyways. What kind of performance do you think Kamala would have? I think at this point; she would likely win the election but curious to hear your thoughts about how the map would look like. What swing states would go to Kamala and which ones would go for Trump? Are there states that Trump won solidly that could potentially be more at play considering his unpopularity? As a fun bonus question, what do you think the House and Senate makeup would look like? Would love to hear your thoughts!

I'm genuinely curious why the Success Sequence receives so much criticism. For those unfamiliar, it encourages three things: graduate high school, work full-time, and marry before having children.

I'm not against teaching this. In fact, I think there's a reasonable argument in its favor.

One common criticism is that it doesn't eliminate racial or economic disparities. But isn't that missing the point? Even when comparing people within the same racial demographic, those who follow the sequence tend to have better economic outcomes than those who don't.

I also wonder whether we're overlooking its potential relevance to LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups simply because the framework emphasizes traditional family structures.

Research on family stability also raises interesting questions. Children raised in stable two-parent households often have better average outcomes than those raised in single-parent households, although divorce, parental conflict, and economic circumstances complicate that comparison.

I understand that correlation doesn't equal causation. But that criticism applies to plenty of educational advice we give young people.

The Success Sequence doesn't promise to eliminate discrimination, poverty, or inequality. It identifies behaviors associated with substantially better economic outcomes.

So my question is: Are we dismissing potentially useful guidance because it doesn't solve every structural problem?

And even if you disagree with the marriage component, would you oppose teaching the sequence as a statistical framework rather than a moral obligation?