Re: [lojban] New to Lojban and a question

[Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>]

Ryan Gray wrote:
> Hi! I am new to Lojban and find it a fascinating
> concept.  This is my first time posting to this group.
> I have also have a question. What are the Lojban
> translation  for various political terms. The reason I
> ask is that "conservative" in Russia means a very
> different thing from "conservative" in the United
> States. Likewise, Thomas Jefferson was considered a
> "liberal" in his day even though his views would be
> VERY different those of from someone like Teddy
> Kennedy. Today, many would say Thomas Jefferson would
> be closer to being libertarian than either
> conservative or liberal. I would think that a logical
> language such as Lojban would have more precise words
> for these ideas. 

Whatever the words are for political beliefs, Lojban should probably 
have a lot more of them, allowing for conveying distinction between 
positions.

There is no reason to believe that the same word would be used for all 
usages of English "conservative" or even English "libertarian" (since 
I've gathered there is a distinction between Ayn Rand's positions, those 
of the Libertarian Party, and the positions of Thomas Jefferson (who 
probably could not correctly be classified using ANY modern terms, 
especially since his positions changed on some issues over his lifetime).

In expressing in Lojban, my advice is to not make much of an attempt to 
fit the categorizations present in other languages, and indeed to avoid 
categorization at all.  X1 takes political position X2 under conditions 
X3 seems like the basic predicate, and X2 is probably best kept specific 
to issues.  Another basic predicate might be X1's position on issues is 
informed by ideology/political philosophy(ies) X2 under conditions X3, 
and then you have a basis for coining predicates to describe specific 
ideological or philosophical positions using whatever traits seem most 
significant to you.  "smallest-government-belief" seems like one 
possibility applicable to libertarians, "free-market-decide-belief" is 
another.  By decomposing the concepts individually, you can deal with 
issues where one concept conflicts with another, leading to differences 
in political position.

lojbab



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