spin

Amaleq13

Apparently so but not, evidently, for any rational reason. You have it in your head that people who believe different things but call themselves by the same group name should be considered part of the same movement regardless of how absurd the notion clearly is.

If I call myself a Democrat but support everything Republican, of which movement am I really a part?

Only if they represent the same core beliefs/policies upon which the respective parties were founded.

That you do not already know my answer to this question suggests you either haven't read or haven't understood any of my recent posts. I really have no idea how to make my explanation more clear so neither of those two possibilities is encouraging. I've already said, in a couple different ways, that movements are defined by a set of accepted, shared, core beliefs. New movements = new core beliefs. That should be enough for you to answer your own question.

Yes and a careful review of the thread would, I hope, have sufficed to disabuse you of your confusion. You chose, however, not to engage in this rather simple activity and asked me to do it for you. At the very least, you the review to request specific clarification rather than a request to have yourself spoonfed a review of a discussion in which you were allegedly participating. There really is no excuse for such a blatant lack of effort on your part. I understand the desire to distance yourself from a clueless statement but this is just silly.

J-D

It's not simply a question of what people call themselves. Somebody who is registered as a Democrat, votes in Democratic primaries, and participates in other activities of the Democratic party organisation, is a Democrat. In Congress, somebody who was elected with Democratic endorsement, participates in the Democratic caucus, and votes with that caucus on the organisation of Congress is a Democrat, however often they vote with the Republicans on other issues. That's the way everybody uses the terminology. Except you, apparently.The core beliefs and policies on which the Republican Party was founded in the 1850s are irrelevant to the modern Republican Party, which has developed new core beliefs and policies. Is it therefore a different party? Not according to the historians. Not according to the political scientists. Not according to the law. Not according to popular understanding. Only according to you, apparently.On careful review, I can still only suppose that your analysis, which I still can't parse properly, was intended to show that somehow my question really counted as a statement. It wasn't meant as a statement. It was meant as a question. They were my words. I know how they were meant. If you understood them to imply a statement, then I apologise for the lack of clarity in my expression.

Amaleq13

That has been my point.

All you are doing is highlighting the flaws in trying to create an analogy between US political parties and Paul/Jerusalem group.

Would you say that a person who attended Church, enacted all the rituals of the Church, and engaged in all the same behaviors of the Church was a Christian even if that person did not accept the core beliefs of the Church?

If, as you stated, it is not simply a question of what people call themselves, then you must answer "No" and, whether you understand it or not, you means agree with me.

If you bother to watch any political commentary programs, you would know this is simply wrong. That sort of simplistic dichotomy becomes blatantly meaningless at an individual level. Politicians are constantly being questioned on whether they truly represent the core beliefs of the party to which they belong.

You hear them state this all the time!!!! This is not your father's party. You hear the fundamental and dramatic changes that have taken place "under" the same party name being referenced all the time by historians.

I'm afraid you are under-informed on this issue, amigo.

Please find a single historian or political scientist who will contend that today's Republican party is the same party as when it started in anything but name.

It clearly implies a statement. When you ask for an alternative to an offered explanation, you are implying that the proffered explanation is viable, if not currently preferred.

Here is another way to think of it. You don't ask for an alternative to something if you don't think the something is viable. I just pointed out that the "something" wasn't actually viable.

Amaleq13

Examples of what I'm saying can be found below:

From the Claremont Institute:
Not Your Father's Republican Party

The Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Victor Gold

While the name has stayed the same, it is clear that what defines the name has changed and what defines the name are the core beliefs of the leadership.

WVIncagold

I am still laughing that was great!:notworthy:

Chris Weimer

Legally, the organization is the same. The movement may be different, but some modern neo-cons see themselves as the true heirs to Republicanism. Surely no one is denying that no one thought that Paul preached a different religion (ebionim come to mind), but that the churches in Galatia thought so I don't see any evidence for.

Amaleq13

That isn't really relevant to this discussion. What it means to be a Republican now as opposed to in the past is what is relevant.

The current movement is different and that is the point. Keeping the same name is a superficial irrelevancy. A movement is defined by the beliefs it promotes and not by the name by which it calls itself.

If you promote beliefs that are denied by a movement, it is misleading and inaccurate to say you are part of that movement even if your beliefs are variations of those promoted by that movement.

J-D

You can read my mind now, can you?

The example you gave does not just involve what the person calls herself/himself, it involves a whole pattern of behaviour. If a person attends a church, enacts all the rituals of that church, and engages in all the behaviours of the church, I would assume that person was a member of the church (unless I found out that the church had explicit rules defining membership and distinguishing 'full members' from other categories of participant). Whether being a member of a church is the same thing as 'really' being a Christian could be a loaded question, given the way some people use the expression 'real Christian'. However, I personally would definitely describe somebody as a Christian if that person is a member of a church which describes itself as Christian and is recognised as Christian by other Christian churches and if that person also self-describes as Christian and is considered by other Christians to be a Christian. In real life, this the sort of information that leads to people being described as Christian: we don't normally subject people to cross-examination about their beliefs before we are prepared to call them Christians. (If somebody said to me: 'Sure, I go to church, but I don't believe in all that stuff they teach', I might ask 'So, do you consider yourself a Christian'--but I would be inclined to accept whatever answer they gave.)Look at what you just said. Of course politicians are questioned about whether they represent the core beliefs of the party to which they belong. But asking such a question explicitly presupposes that they do belong to the party! Asking 'Do you really represent the core beliefs of your party?' or 'How can you belong to your party while believing X?' makes sense. Asking ''Do you really belong to the party you belong to?' or 'How can you belong to the party when you don't belong to it?' doesn't.I'm afraid you are confusing polemical rhetoric with sober literally-intended social-scientific reference-book-style description.

If you like, when I get the chance I will go and look up some standard texts in the library and I'm confident of what I'll find. But in the meantime, let's just look at the page you yourself linked to from the Claremont Institute.

'Today's Republican Party is not, as the saying goes, your father's Republican Party.' What is the phrase 'as the saying goes' doing in the middle of that sentence? It is telling us that this language is figurative, not literal. When the article proceeds to trace the history of the Republican Party in a strictly factual and literal way, it starts from the founding of the party in the time of Lincoln, and then traces the evolution of the party from that point. At no point does it say: 'At X date the Republican Party founded in 1854 ceased to exist and was replaced by a newly founded party which had nothing in common with it but the name'--and rightly so, because that never happened. Indeed, the argument there is partly that the Republican Party now is more like the party of Lincoln's time than it has been for decades. If we accepted your analysis, we would have to say that the original Republican Party disappeared to be replaced by a new one, which was then itself replaced by a reappearance of the original party. But that's not what happened. What happened is that the party has progressively changed while still being itself, just as an individual human progressively changes without losing identity.I can see why you might think that the offered explanation is not the preferred one. But since it's the plain meaning of the text, I don't see how you can say it's not a viable one. Asking somebody for an explanation of a text as an alternative to its plain meaning seems reasonable enough to me. Sometimes plain meanings are wrong, I accept that, which is why I asked for an alternative rather than insisting that only the plain meaning was acceptable. But to suggest that there's something wrong about even referencing the plain meaning in the context of such a question seems odd to me.

J-D

Of course the identity of an organisation is not defined solely by a name. But it also isn't defined solely by beliefs. It's defined by organisational continuity. In my own country's history there have been two different parties called the Liberal Party, at two different times. Having the same name doesn't make them the same party, and nor does having the same political positions (which they did, pretty much). What makes them different is the absence of organisational continuity. On the other hand, the present-day National Party is the same party as the former Country Party, not because they have the same name (obviously they don't) and not because they have the same political position (which they do--arguably, but not everybody would agree), but because of organisational continuity. The present-day National Party is simply the former Country Party renamed. The present-day Liberal Party, on the other hand, is not simply a renaming of the former United Australia Party (UAP), despite their many similarities and historical links, because the people who founded the Liberal Party (the bulk of whom came from the UAP) made a deliberate, explicit, and formal choice for a new organisational foundation. They weren't (on the whole) rejecting the principles of the UAP, they were rejecting its structure and its history.

If I had to demonstrate to a court my membership of the political party to which I belong, I would get out my wallet and produce my membership card. The way to refute the evidence of my membership card would be to produce something like a documentary record of a decision by a properly empowered party committee to expel me. Any attempt by an opposing barrister to demonstrate that I didn't really belong to the party by cross-examining me about my beliefs would, I am sure, be stopped, and rightly so, as irrelevant.