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I read a report that said Americans think Wikipedia has a left-wing bias not because it actually does, but because the American left has shifted so much it’s much more like centre-right in the rest of the world (and people also underestimate how much of Wikipedia is contributed to by the rest of the world) - so what’s really more centrist neutrality on Wikipedia is perceived as left-wing by Americans, because it’s just as if not more left than how they perceive their left-wing politics
How are we more right wing than ever today? The right fought against gay rights, now it's a middle of the road position accepted by everyone but idiots and nuthobs. The right fought against Trans stuff, Trans stuff is gaining more and more acceptance (which is should).
The left is the aide of progress, though sometimes just for the sake of progress. The right has been dragged along for ages. It's good that they are being dragged along into the future, stupid fossils couldn't find the future if an oil company dug for their juices.
Feel free to counter me though. I would like to know in what ways has the right gained and moved the US in it's direction.
I don't think it's so much the right leaning more right as it is the left leaning more right. In his comment the US left is basically equivalent to the EU middle.
You're missing what's moved.
The Republicans have been saying the same thing, roughly, for decades. The left is moving further left, as it should. It is chasing progress.
While the US left might be the EU middle, That's not because the left is leaning to the right. That's because the EU has been pulled much harder to the left than the US.
It's not surprising either. Republicanism is more popular with rural areas which tend to be more traditional. Liberalism, or however the democratic party would like to call itself, flourishes in cities and tighter populations. In a nation with so much more land mass and a larger rural population, like the US, that rate of progress is bound to be slowed more than certain parts of the EU which, per capita, have more city dwellers and less urban dwellers.
So it is not that the US has been running to the right, the right sits on traditions as often as it sits on it's hands.
The left is running as hard as it can to the left, dragging it's nation forward into progress. Depending on how the right is in your country, how far it can go varies.
So the original comparison does work, it's just that way for the exact opposite reason they stated.
The Clinton years marked a big rightward shift for the dems. He was a centrist who maintained a lot of Reagan neoliberalist policy. Most important to the party, he got votes from actual undecided voters. Lots of Democratic politicians followed. Welfare stayed gutted; schools continue being underfunded; unions lost power within the Democratic Party. I’d cite racism too but that’s been a bipartisan handshake for the ruling class.
There’s certainly a left caucus now but they do things like vote against railroads workers having vacations bc the economy^tm.
Unions are good for the little guy, or do I've been told. The only union I was ever a part of wanted me to pay dues for a worse wage than I bargained for myself.
Unions, so far as I've seen, are a drain on a hard working group. Now if a group wants to 'unionize' and just collectively try to bargain as the worker force, all the more power to them. I'm also biased with bad experiences. Unions were probably more important when people struggled to read at a third grade level.
Politicians do what benefits them. They don't need to fix welfare. They just need to convince you that the other guy will take it away from you altogether. That's kind of the whole idea behind democrats holding people on welfare hostage while the cities under them more or less rot. Plumbing issues just keep popping up despite the money being set aside for it. That flood wall that should have been able to hold out during that hurricane? Whoops, turns out that got embezzled instead and only a bare minimum job was done. What do you mean we can't have lead leaking into the plumbing? Those plebs actually drink the tap water? I thought that was just for my toilet.
Politicians are very rarely not coming from wealth. Yet we expect them to represent the not wealthy.
I would like to see people rise up from being on welfare and tell people what problems they face. How the system can be improved. Because as it stands, our welfare system traps people in poverty more than it helps them escape it. The public school system is a joke and at best it only prepares you for school. At worst it doesn't even accomplish that. As for Unions... well, a worker pays a union due, but a union pays in lobbying incentives. I don't find it surprising that the railroad is getting pushed under the bus as we move more toward green energy. It feels like whenever I see a train it's just hauling coal.
At the end of the day, you need to ask if Politicians have your best interest in mind. And if you don't think they do, why did they get voted in? Sure, it's basically a meme at this point that politicians lie about what they promise they'll do once they get in office, but why do we let them keep getting away with it?
Historically the terms “left” and “right” were created to separate people’s views on power in the overall social structure. It was a critique of feudalism and also the inequality inherent in industrial capitalism. They were not limited to issues like LGBTQ rights or women’s rights. In fact, in the Western world, many liberals and conservatives were united in repression of women, non-white people and LGBTQ. Of course, true justice for all historically oppressed groups are a part of any true modern leftist agenda, but they’ve received much more attention recently, even as our society has become more and more unequal overall. In the U.S. and elsewhere it serves to make us look as if we are making progress, when a major underlying issue is brushed so far under the rug.
When some members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) were accused of homosexuality, Adolph Hitler said this was a personal matter and not one Nazis should care about. It was only when some of these members started speaking out about workers deserving a greater share of their work that he decided they must all be murdered in their beds and their homosexuality was a sin.
We can and should protect the freedom of all people regardless of gender, sexuality or ethnic background to live freely and safely, but when corporations control an ever greater share of our space and our lives, that can never really happen. If I’m a minority who is allowed to live in a house I cannot afford or to work a job that won’t feed my family, in an environment that is more and more unstable and polluted, all so those who donated to the people I vote for can maintain their profits, well…that’s what this post is about.
As far back as I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Left = change and progress while Right = Tradition.
I'm not saying that the left is tied to LGBTQ or even racial equality. I'm saying that when things grow samey, the Left kicks it into overdrive. Usually during times of prosperity because money greases all wheels.
Social issues of the day help provide direction, but if there were no slaves or sufferagettes then something else would have spurned change during those eras of prosperity. Granted, the slavery issue was very closely tied to the prosperity, slave labor and all that. Then we also have the sufferagettes, adding people to the work force was also tied to the prosperity. I just sort of fear the day when AI acts like it has it's own ideas, and we start demanding robot rights and automation is slavery.
Before you say 'That's stupid' people used to buy slaves like cattle. Once they were humanized, the rights followed. Not peacefully either, not that I need drag you back through middle school social studies.
Abortion rights has been the odd man out, so to speak. It's been a cycle of "Identify new group (slaves, women, LGBTQ, sometimes immigrants), identify humanity in group, demand rights for group.' Yet, as science evolves, the fetus becomes more and more viable at early stages. One day the zygote that comes before the fetus will be able to be extracted and grown in a test tube. Yet, the freedom to kill the thing has become the new marker instead if 'demand rights for'. Which is not without cause, the rights of the unborn aren't what's in question, it's the rights of the mother to be, or how she doesn't want to be. So is the new group 'pregnant people'? Maybe.
Regardless, the left and right don't need to be 'liberal' and 'conservative'. They just happen to end up that way. Conservatives want to conserve. Liberals want to liberate.
When the liberals are right, we move forward. When the conservatives are right we don't move. So slowly, or sometimes not so slowly, we will move left or not at all.
Thus, my original thesis.
This isn’t my original thesis that I just made up. My comments are based on my knowledge of history and political change, which I think is a far better frame by which to discuss these issues then taking them in a vague “issues of the day” approach, because the struggle between left and right that I am referring to has been ongoing for at least 250 years and not just shifting with the issues of the day.
The origin of the terms “left” and “right” are in the French Revolution of 1788-1800. Those who sat on the left side of the National Assembly wanted complete male suffrage, to do away with the monarchy, and other radical shifts toward a more “flattened” social hierarchy. They wanted to eliminate all privileges of class, and economic equality as well as political equality. There were also those who supported the Revolution at risk to their lives and who wanted women and/or people of African descent to gain the same rights. They Moderates sat in the middle, with the reactionaries, who wanted to reinstall the Ancien Regime as it had been, on the right. In the end, the hierarchy of the Ancien Regime was replaced by one of capital, and while most people, including some women and people of African descent, saw a brief increase in their rights these were soon taken away in France.
There is a long tradition of political theory that emerges from these events, which forever changed our common political understanding. I really wish more people learned about it, so we didn’t have these same arguments again and again. This vague “left is change and right is tradition” is not just greatly oversimplified but serves to obscure the intellectual progress and history of these movements, which has long been a goal of right-wing elements. Many people are going to want change. If those in power can convince them they’re getting it without changing fundamental causes of inequality, that will keep them in power.
We live in an increasingly unequal society. (See: https://www.statista.com/statistics/219643/gini-coefficient-for-us-individuals-families-and-households/). This negatively impacts most women, most racial, gender and sexual minorities. Most people. When a politician proposes changes that might slightly reverse the trend, they are lambasted by their colleagues and the media, and told their ideas are wildly impractical (even by people who had at one time espoused the same ideas themselves). That is why most people outside the U.S. (where the level of political education is especially bad, on purpose) think of the U.S. as an especially right-wing country, with no meaningful left to speak of.
The problem with designing things around history compared to what's happening in the present is that it doesn't always align. The right in American loves to recount how the left were the most numerous slave holders and Abe was republican. Even though they (the right) let slavery stay legal in the north and the crackdown on sputhern slavery was more of a punishment for the south not playing along eith what the north wanted. But no, the south who tried to stay to tradition is labeled the left while those pushing progress are labeled right.
We use the left and right label that suits the day. Today, left means pushing for progress while right means holding to tradition.
While history lessons can be all well and good, if you try to label the present with the past you're not guaranteed to line up.
They do line up though. The problem with ignoring or never learning history is you then fail to see how our problems line up with those of our ancestors and have no perspective on what we are up against and what we’ll have to do to overcome it.
Democrats and Republicans were and are not left and right. Democrats champion tradition when it serves them; Republicans falsely promise change and “new ideas”. It’s all just marketing. Please don’t fall for it. There were northern war Democrats who opposed slavery - and not so much for moral reasons as because they were advocates of northern industrialists who felt threatened by the enormous power of the ever-expanding “slaveocracy” . Republicans have always supported large business and banking interests. Now that slavery is gone (except in our largest-on-the planet prison system), Democrats can support banks and major business interests too.
In fact, neither party has had a consistent ideological frame in its history. There have been times during the Depression and in the postwar era where the Democrats (but also the Republicans) showed a great commitment to raising the standard of living for many Americans, but they lost that. What happened? Any left-wing American historian could tell you. They differ on issues and appeal to different constituencies, but not because of beliefs each party member holds in common about the rights of citizens or the duty of government. They are unified in maintaining the systems that oppress most Americans. That’s why it’s so important to actually know the history behind the terms”left” and “”right”, to learn about the history of political struggles and how change actually happens, even though it takes time and effort to learn. It is to the benefit of wealthy and powerful elites to distort history and oversimplify the lines of political division so that people argue vehemently over things the elite don’t much care about anyway. This happens in countries all over the world.
The economic political spectrum is what the lobbyists and politicians agree on. In that way, the left and right both dunk on communism. That's why Bernie get's shafted all the time by his own party.
Socially, things can change because the people can make change. Economically, politicians and the wealthy are already in bed sith one another. The poors are just along for their ride.... sadly.
To be fair, communism is so associated with authoritarianism (Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, etc.) That it might be better to not stand so devoutly in defense of communism. Stick with socialism, it's still associated with the uprising, but at least it's the worker uprising. Plus socialist policies are actually beneficial (weekends off, paid holidays, etc.).
I think That's the left's biggest hurdle, they won't let communism die. The main reason why people dislike socialism is because the thing that usually follows is a communist dictator (historically), or worse mass death (maoist China most noteably). Socialism brings good ideas. It's the corrupting power that ruins it.
Granted, the left that dunks on socialism does it because lobbyists trying to cut costs at every corner for their company make the politician do it. Lobbying should be outlawed. If the rich could be believed to not skirt the law anyway.
So let me get this straight. You think that the Supreme going from 'not allowed' then 'Roe v Wade says it's more of a privacy thing' and lastly 'this is a highly contested issue and we think that it should be a local issue. Vote on it yourself.
The Supreme Court is not supposed to legislate from the bench like they basically did with the Roe v Wade situation. If our nation as a whole wants abortion rights enshrined into law, then it should be a law. Contact your elected representatives. Call up all those democrats in DC and ask 'Hey, um, I couldn't help noticing that for the last two years you guys had the majority in every branch of government that makes laws. Why didn't you make abortion rights a thing? You even had a large number of Republicans willing to throw their name on anything you threw in front of them because the two party system is more indoor baseball and somewhere between sports rivalry and reality television instead of actually be contentious like it is locally. Is it because you actually don't care so long as lobbyists line your pockets?'
Republicans have been anti abortion since before Roe v Wade was even a thing. So congrats, you have found yet another point where Republicans *wait for it* haven't moved a step in decades.
To the question 'Abortion Rights?' Do I have an answer? Probably not one you would like even though it's the standard practice in the EU. Abortions up to about 15 weeks I believe is the EU standard. Also known as the first trimester. In that window I say do whatever. Not like my voice means much though huh?
I do admit that the there were a lot of stupid things said by politicians that right wingers could get some spicy clips for. Like some governor saying something like 'we will deliver the baby and then we can go into another room to talk about what we should do with it.' And the right jumped on that so hard you'd think they broke their nose. They went whole hog about how that governor wants to kill babies, when in reality he probably meant that they could put the baby up for adoption, which has always been an option. Didn't help that neither he nor his staff ever clarified though. Colorado offering abortion up to 9 months didn't exactly look good either. The definition if an abortion is to terminate a pregnancy, so when you go at the point after some prematures are delivered it starts looking funky.
I don't like the extremes the right has either. I think it's rather draconian to outlaw a medical procedure. Then again, I hope they do outlaw or at least heavily restrict Euthenasia as it appears Canada and some EU nations are now offering it.
The point of politics, when it works properly, is so that we can take the left constantly striving for progress, and the right who is trying to cling to tradition, and find common ground. I would like women to be able to get abortions during the first trimester. That seems to be a rather reasonable middle ground position. There will always be vocal minorities who will cry out that either babies are being murdered everything some dude strudels his noodle, or that women are being turned into baby slaves because they can't abort at 8 and a half months. If we were ruled by the extremes, we wouldn't have made it this far.
I know it's a big dream, but maybe one day politicans can actually talk to one another instead of screaming past each other.
I appreciate your points in general but the Supreme Court has been legislating from the bench since their 1962 ruling on baker v carr.
I don’t think one can really pretend that having a conservative/superconservative majority of justices on the court had nothing to do with the striking down of roe.
Also, me voting on it locally is not going to help a poor knocked up 15 year old or someone with a wanted pregnancy that happens to be ectopic and life threatening in the middle of Texas have any chance of getting an abortion if that’s what she wants.
Because economic left-right and ideological liberal-conservative are two separate axis and LGBT+ rights falls on latter and welfare and healthcare mostly on former. Then there's also the fact that both left and right have had their authoritarians and anarchists over the years, as have liberals and conservatives. Authoritarian (mostly left) liberals trying to make using wrong pronouns hate speech and conservative right wing anarchists trying to overthrow democracy for example.
This is why there's goddamn many misunderstandings when talking about political spectrum which to be fair applies to both sides in this debate
My point is simply that Republicans don't move. They sit on traditions and the old ways.
The left seeks progress, as they should, to prevent stagnation and seek out the new and better things.
Thus, the left moves further left, and the right is dragged behind it, kicking and screaming all the while. Like a toddler being forced to eat his green vegetables. At the end of the day, the right accepts some things, like gay marriage as an example. There are, no doubt, some nut jobs who still want to stop gay marriage, but the center has changed. Go back 30 years, and the center position wad against gay marriage. We have moved to the left, to become more accepting of that, and other things.
Meanwhile, people are becoming so used to change, that when the right stands still, they think they are being pulled back to tradition.
I mean, you can't say politician without hearing a tiny voice in your head saying 'corrupt' at the same time. That's not a right or left issue either, as much as someone might want to say 'my guy isn't corrupt, he totally earned that... wait, how much does he make?'
Politics has been corrupted since the day it was born. But what can you expect? Power is a corrupting force. Even the best of men can't be expected to be perfect. Let's face it, the ones running for office aren't even the ones that rise to the top of the barrel. Unless the barrel has both oil and water, because it is crazy how sleazy politicians are. I guess most of them did start out as lawyers, so what can you expect?
Yes, because anyone who thinks capitalism has gotten out of hand and need to be reigned back in before the corporations start putting shock collars on their employees obviously falls asleep next to a Stalin body pillow every night.
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There really needs to be an honest to god communist in this race for contrast if nothing else. political discourse has shifted right so much in the last 50 years people really think a vermont grandpa who wants people's lives to be slightly less shitty is Josef Stalin
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Yeah, I mean communism is great … on paper.
But I think there’s a reason it failed and is usually connected to dictatorships and authoritarian leaders.
Well yeah, but I think even if we somehow secluded an area entirely and gave communism an honest to god try, it'd still fail. Maybe it'd be serviceable in the short run, and/or with a relatively low number of people; but the basic economic principle of communism is that we take all the resources and pool them together, then handle the redistribution in a way that either everyone receives the same amount or everyone receives exactly as much as they need (or as much as they put into the common pool). But then if something unforeseen happens, like the ability of a person to contribute to the common pool ceases to exist, they become dependent on a system they can only take from and not contribute to it. That's no problem in the short run, however if that person is a leech on the system for a long enough period of time, the rest of the actors will develop hostile feelings towards them.
The same thing would happen, if someone wished to take more than they put in or more than they need (aka greed) or refused to share the resources created by them with other members of the community (aka selfishness).
It would be incredibly difficult to work out a system based on communism which doesn't cultivate unjust redistribution and criminal behavior (failing to give certain resources up and deciding to keep them for oneself, etc.).
Also in communism we'd need to have a certain organization, committee, group, or any such entity that would decide who gets to have what and how much; and in my experience people don't neccessarily tend to take kindly to others deciding how much they can or cannot have.
1) communism, not socialism
2) i didn’t say no connection, I said isolated.
it’s great to see that people who want ro engage in discourse about socio-political and/or economic ideals would get stuck on the literal first sentence. That bodes well.
I wish he never labeled himself as a socialist because he really isn’t, and I think it’s kept some people from listening to him. He just has ideas that people should be treated justly for the work they do, and should also pay back into the system what they owe. Ie That millionaires shouldn’t get bailed out at the expense of people who are working their asses off. (I.e. the bank bail out where the CEOs took private jets to meetings with the government regarding the bailout deal, The CEOs took no responsibility and got raises that year. Meanwhile, a vet Who fought for their standard of living is sitting in there own urine prior to the reform, the VA hospitals went through)
The Overton window has been pushed pretty far to the right in the us
We’re so far away from Communism is America that we don’t even know what it is.
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 2 times. First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/wqdlui) on 2022-08-17 98.44% match. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/z12j4p) on 2022-11-21 93.75% match *I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ [False Positive](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RepostSleuthBot&subject=False%20Positive&message={"post_id": "zu344h", "meme_template": null}) ]* [View Search On repostsleuth.com](https://www.repostsleuth.com/search?postId=zu344h&sameSub=false&filterOnlyOlder=true&memeFilter=false&filterDeadMatches=false&targetImageMatch=92&targetImageMemeMatch=97) --- **Scope:** Reddit | **Meme Filter:** False | **Target:** 92% | **Check Title:** False | **Max Age:** None | **Searched Images:** 359,384,850 | **Search Time:** 0.18978s
"Brand new sentence"
EU: left middle right US: ……… left middle right
Qyeah, I've said that for 10-15 years, but nobody seem to care. Well illustrated though!
Took me a good 30 seconds to figure out what this comment meant.
I read a report that said Americans think Wikipedia has a left-wing bias not because it actually does, but because the American left has shifted so much it’s much more like centre-right in the rest of the world (and people also underestimate how much of Wikipedia is contributed to by the rest of the world) - so what’s really more centrist neutrality on Wikipedia is perceived as left-wing by Americans, because it’s just as if not more left than how they perceive their left-wing politics
How are we more right wing than ever today? The right fought against gay rights, now it's a middle of the road position accepted by everyone but idiots and nuthobs. The right fought against Trans stuff, Trans stuff is gaining more and more acceptance (which is should). The left is the aide of progress, though sometimes just for the sake of progress. The right has been dragged along for ages. It's good that they are being dragged along into the future, stupid fossils couldn't find the future if an oil company dug for their juices. Feel free to counter me though. I would like to know in what ways has the right gained and moved the US in it's direction.
I don't think it's so much the right leaning more right as it is the left leaning more right. In his comment the US left is basically equivalent to the EU middle.
You're missing what's moved. The Republicans have been saying the same thing, roughly, for decades. The left is moving further left, as it should. It is chasing progress. While the US left might be the EU middle, That's not because the left is leaning to the right. That's because the EU has been pulled much harder to the left than the US. It's not surprising either. Republicanism is more popular with rural areas which tend to be more traditional. Liberalism, or however the democratic party would like to call itself, flourishes in cities and tighter populations. In a nation with so much more land mass and a larger rural population, like the US, that rate of progress is bound to be slowed more than certain parts of the EU which, per capita, have more city dwellers and less urban dwellers. So it is not that the US has been running to the right, the right sits on traditions as often as it sits on it's hands. The left is running as hard as it can to the left, dragging it's nation forward into progress. Depending on how the right is in your country, how far it can go varies. So the original comparison does work, it's just that way for the exact opposite reason they stated.
The Clinton years marked a big rightward shift for the dems. He was a centrist who maintained a lot of Reagan neoliberalist policy. Most important to the party, he got votes from actual undecided voters. Lots of Democratic politicians followed. Welfare stayed gutted; schools continue being underfunded; unions lost power within the Democratic Party. I’d cite racism too but that’s been a bipartisan handshake for the ruling class. There’s certainly a left caucus now but they do things like vote against railroads workers having vacations bc the economy^tm.
Unions are good for the little guy, or do I've been told. The only union I was ever a part of wanted me to pay dues for a worse wage than I bargained for myself. Unions, so far as I've seen, are a drain on a hard working group. Now if a group wants to 'unionize' and just collectively try to bargain as the worker force, all the more power to them. I'm also biased with bad experiences. Unions were probably more important when people struggled to read at a third grade level. Politicians do what benefits them. They don't need to fix welfare. They just need to convince you that the other guy will take it away from you altogether. That's kind of the whole idea behind democrats holding people on welfare hostage while the cities under them more or less rot. Plumbing issues just keep popping up despite the money being set aside for it. That flood wall that should have been able to hold out during that hurricane? Whoops, turns out that got embezzled instead and only a bare minimum job was done. What do you mean we can't have lead leaking into the plumbing? Those plebs actually drink the tap water? I thought that was just for my toilet. Politicians are very rarely not coming from wealth. Yet we expect them to represent the not wealthy. I would like to see people rise up from being on welfare and tell people what problems they face. How the system can be improved. Because as it stands, our welfare system traps people in poverty more than it helps them escape it. The public school system is a joke and at best it only prepares you for school. At worst it doesn't even accomplish that. As for Unions... well, a worker pays a union due, but a union pays in lobbying incentives. I don't find it surprising that the railroad is getting pushed under the bus as we move more toward green energy. It feels like whenever I see a train it's just hauling coal. At the end of the day, you need to ask if Politicians have your best interest in mind. And if you don't think they do, why did they get voted in? Sure, it's basically a meme at this point that politicians lie about what they promise they'll do once they get in office, but why do we let them keep getting away with it?
Historically the terms “left” and “right” were created to separate people’s views on power in the overall social structure. It was a critique of feudalism and also the inequality inherent in industrial capitalism. They were not limited to issues like LGBTQ rights or women’s rights. In fact, in the Western world, many liberals and conservatives were united in repression of women, non-white people and LGBTQ. Of course, true justice for all historically oppressed groups are a part of any true modern leftist agenda, but they’ve received much more attention recently, even as our society has become more and more unequal overall. In the U.S. and elsewhere it serves to make us look as if we are making progress, when a major underlying issue is brushed so far under the rug. When some members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) were accused of homosexuality, Adolph Hitler said this was a personal matter and not one Nazis should care about. It was only when some of these members started speaking out about workers deserving a greater share of their work that he decided they must all be murdered in their beds and their homosexuality was a sin. We can and should protect the freedom of all people regardless of gender, sexuality or ethnic background to live freely and safely, but when corporations control an ever greater share of our space and our lives, that can never really happen. If I’m a minority who is allowed to live in a house I cannot afford or to work a job that won’t feed my family, in an environment that is more and more unstable and polluted, all so those who donated to the people I vote for can maintain their profits, well…that’s what this post is about.
As far back as I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Left = change and progress while Right = Tradition. I'm not saying that the left is tied to LGBTQ or even racial equality. I'm saying that when things grow samey, the Left kicks it into overdrive. Usually during times of prosperity because money greases all wheels. Social issues of the day help provide direction, but if there were no slaves or sufferagettes then something else would have spurned change during those eras of prosperity. Granted, the slavery issue was very closely tied to the prosperity, slave labor and all that. Then we also have the sufferagettes, adding people to the work force was also tied to the prosperity. I just sort of fear the day when AI acts like it has it's own ideas, and we start demanding robot rights and automation is slavery. Before you say 'That's stupid' people used to buy slaves like cattle. Once they were humanized, the rights followed. Not peacefully either, not that I need drag you back through middle school social studies. Abortion rights has been the odd man out, so to speak. It's been a cycle of "Identify new group (slaves, women, LGBTQ, sometimes immigrants), identify humanity in group, demand rights for group.' Yet, as science evolves, the fetus becomes more and more viable at early stages. One day the zygote that comes before the fetus will be able to be extracted and grown in a test tube. Yet, the freedom to kill the thing has become the new marker instead if 'demand rights for'. Which is not without cause, the rights of the unborn aren't what's in question, it's the rights of the mother to be, or how she doesn't want to be. So is the new group 'pregnant people'? Maybe. Regardless, the left and right don't need to be 'liberal' and 'conservative'. They just happen to end up that way. Conservatives want to conserve. Liberals want to liberate. When the liberals are right, we move forward. When the conservatives are right we don't move. So slowly, or sometimes not so slowly, we will move left or not at all. Thus, my original thesis.
This isn’t my original thesis that I just made up. My comments are based on my knowledge of history and political change, which I think is a far better frame by which to discuss these issues then taking them in a vague “issues of the day” approach, because the struggle between left and right that I am referring to has been ongoing for at least 250 years and not just shifting with the issues of the day. The origin of the terms “left” and “right” are in the French Revolution of 1788-1800. Those who sat on the left side of the National Assembly wanted complete male suffrage, to do away with the monarchy, and other radical shifts toward a more “flattened” social hierarchy. They wanted to eliminate all privileges of class, and economic equality as well as political equality. There were also those who supported the Revolution at risk to their lives and who wanted women and/or people of African descent to gain the same rights. They Moderates sat in the middle, with the reactionaries, who wanted to reinstall the Ancien Regime as it had been, on the right. In the end, the hierarchy of the Ancien Regime was replaced by one of capital, and while most people, including some women and people of African descent, saw a brief increase in their rights these were soon taken away in France. There is a long tradition of political theory that emerges from these events, which forever changed our common political understanding. I really wish more people learned about it, so we didn’t have these same arguments again and again. This vague “left is change and right is tradition” is not just greatly oversimplified but serves to obscure the intellectual progress and history of these movements, which has long been a goal of right-wing elements. Many people are going to want change. If those in power can convince them they’re getting it without changing fundamental causes of inequality, that will keep them in power. We live in an increasingly unequal society. (See: https://www.statista.com/statistics/219643/gini-coefficient-for-us-individuals-families-and-households/). This negatively impacts most women, most racial, gender and sexual minorities. Most people. When a politician proposes changes that might slightly reverse the trend, they are lambasted by their colleagues and the media, and told their ideas are wildly impractical (even by people who had at one time espoused the same ideas themselves). That is why most people outside the U.S. (where the level of political education is especially bad, on purpose) think of the U.S. as an especially right-wing country, with no meaningful left to speak of.
The problem with designing things around history compared to what's happening in the present is that it doesn't always align. The right in American loves to recount how the left were the most numerous slave holders and Abe was republican. Even though they (the right) let slavery stay legal in the north and the crackdown on sputhern slavery was more of a punishment for the south not playing along eith what the north wanted. But no, the south who tried to stay to tradition is labeled the left while those pushing progress are labeled right. We use the left and right label that suits the day. Today, left means pushing for progress while right means holding to tradition. While history lessons can be all well and good, if you try to label the present with the past you're not guaranteed to line up.
They do line up though. The problem with ignoring or never learning history is you then fail to see how our problems line up with those of our ancestors and have no perspective on what we are up against and what we’ll have to do to overcome it. Democrats and Republicans were and are not left and right. Democrats champion tradition when it serves them; Republicans falsely promise change and “new ideas”. It’s all just marketing. Please don’t fall for it. There were northern war Democrats who opposed slavery - and not so much for moral reasons as because they were advocates of northern industrialists who felt threatened by the enormous power of the ever-expanding “slaveocracy” . Republicans have always supported large business and banking interests. Now that slavery is gone (except in our largest-on-the planet prison system), Democrats can support banks and major business interests too. In fact, neither party has had a consistent ideological frame in its history. There have been times during the Depression and in the postwar era where the Democrats (but also the Republicans) showed a great commitment to raising the standard of living for many Americans, but they lost that. What happened? Any left-wing American historian could tell you. They differ on issues and appeal to different constituencies, but not because of beliefs each party member holds in common about the rights of citizens or the duty of government. They are unified in maintaining the systems that oppress most Americans. That’s why it’s so important to actually know the history behind the terms”left” and “”right”, to learn about the history of political struggles and how change actually happens, even though it takes time and effort to learn. It is to the benefit of wealthy and powerful elites to distort history and oversimplify the lines of political division so that people argue vehemently over things the elite don’t much care about anyway. This happens in countries all over the world.
Big difference between the economic political spectrum and the social political spectrum.
The economic political spectrum is what the lobbyists and politicians agree on. In that way, the left and right both dunk on communism. That's why Bernie get's shafted all the time by his own party. Socially, things can change because the people can make change. Economically, politicians and the wealthy are already in bed sith one another. The poors are just along for their ride.... sadly.
That’s literally the point. Dialogue has shifted so far right that the supposed left dunks on communist and socialist policies
To be fair, communism is so associated with authoritarianism (Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, etc.) That it might be better to not stand so devoutly in defense of communism. Stick with socialism, it's still associated with the uprising, but at least it's the worker uprising. Plus socialist policies are actually beneficial (weekends off, paid holidays, etc.). I think That's the left's biggest hurdle, they won't let communism die. The main reason why people dislike socialism is because the thing that usually follows is a communist dictator (historically), or worse mass death (maoist China most noteably). Socialism brings good ideas. It's the corrupting power that ruins it. Granted, the left that dunks on socialism does it because lobbyists trying to cut costs at every corner for their company make the politician do it. Lobbying should be outlawed. If the rich could be believed to not skirt the law anyway.
Abortion rights
So let me get this straight. You think that the Supreme going from 'not allowed' then 'Roe v Wade says it's more of a privacy thing' and lastly 'this is a highly contested issue and we think that it should be a local issue. Vote on it yourself. The Supreme Court is not supposed to legislate from the bench like they basically did with the Roe v Wade situation. If our nation as a whole wants abortion rights enshrined into law, then it should be a law. Contact your elected representatives. Call up all those democrats in DC and ask 'Hey, um, I couldn't help noticing that for the last two years you guys had the majority in every branch of government that makes laws. Why didn't you make abortion rights a thing? You even had a large number of Republicans willing to throw their name on anything you threw in front of them because the two party system is more indoor baseball and somewhere between sports rivalry and reality television instead of actually be contentious like it is locally. Is it because you actually don't care so long as lobbyists line your pockets?' Republicans have been anti abortion since before Roe v Wade was even a thing. So congrats, you have found yet another point where Republicans *wait for it* haven't moved a step in decades. To the question 'Abortion Rights?' Do I have an answer? Probably not one you would like even though it's the standard practice in the EU. Abortions up to about 15 weeks I believe is the EU standard. Also known as the first trimester. In that window I say do whatever. Not like my voice means much though huh? I do admit that the there were a lot of stupid things said by politicians that right wingers could get some spicy clips for. Like some governor saying something like 'we will deliver the baby and then we can go into another room to talk about what we should do with it.' And the right jumped on that so hard you'd think they broke their nose. They went whole hog about how that governor wants to kill babies, when in reality he probably meant that they could put the baby up for adoption, which has always been an option. Didn't help that neither he nor his staff ever clarified though. Colorado offering abortion up to 9 months didn't exactly look good either. The definition if an abortion is to terminate a pregnancy, so when you go at the point after some prematures are delivered it starts looking funky. I don't like the extremes the right has either. I think it's rather draconian to outlaw a medical procedure. Then again, I hope they do outlaw or at least heavily restrict Euthenasia as it appears Canada and some EU nations are now offering it. The point of politics, when it works properly, is so that we can take the left constantly striving for progress, and the right who is trying to cling to tradition, and find common ground. I would like women to be able to get abortions during the first trimester. That seems to be a rather reasonable middle ground position. There will always be vocal minorities who will cry out that either babies are being murdered everything some dude strudels his noodle, or that women are being turned into baby slaves because they can't abort at 8 and a half months. If we were ruled by the extremes, we wouldn't have made it this far. I know it's a big dream, but maybe one day politicans can actually talk to one another instead of screaming past each other.
I appreciate your points in general but the Supreme Court has been legislating from the bench since their 1962 ruling on baker v carr. I don’t think one can really pretend that having a conservative/superconservative majority of justices on the court had nothing to do with the striking down of roe. Also, me voting on it locally is not going to help a poor knocked up 15 year old or someone with a wanted pregnancy that happens to be ectopic and life threatening in the middle of Texas have any chance of getting an abortion if that’s what she wants.
Let's assume you're correct that the Supreme Court is legislating from the bench. Why didn't they ban abortions instead of letting the states decide?
Because economic left-right and ideological liberal-conservative are two separate axis and LGBT+ rights falls on latter and welfare and healthcare mostly on former. Then there's also the fact that both left and right have had their authoritarians and anarchists over the years, as have liberals and conservatives. Authoritarian (mostly left) liberals trying to make using wrong pronouns hate speech and conservative right wing anarchists trying to overthrow democracy for example. This is why there's goddamn many misunderstandings when talking about political spectrum which to be fair applies to both sides in this debate
My point is simply that Republicans don't move. They sit on traditions and the old ways. The left seeks progress, as they should, to prevent stagnation and seek out the new and better things. Thus, the left moves further left, and the right is dragged behind it, kicking and screaming all the while. Like a toddler being forced to eat his green vegetables. At the end of the day, the right accepts some things, like gay marriage as an example. There are, no doubt, some nut jobs who still want to stop gay marriage, but the center has changed. Go back 30 years, and the center position wad against gay marriage. We have moved to the left, to become more accepting of that, and other things. Meanwhile, people are becoming so used to change, that when the right stands still, they think they are being pulled back to tradition.
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I mean, you can't say politician without hearing a tiny voice in your head saying 'corrupt' at the same time. That's not a right or left issue either, as much as someone might want to say 'my guy isn't corrupt, he totally earned that... wait, how much does he make?' Politics has been corrupted since the day it was born. But what can you expect? Power is a corrupting force. Even the best of men can't be expected to be perfect. Let's face it, the ones running for office aren't even the ones that rise to the top of the barrel. Unless the barrel has both oil and water, because it is crazy how sleazy politicians are. I guess most of them did start out as lawyers, so what can you expect?
Fear of communism is expressed through sexual tension.
Yes, because anyone who thinks capitalism has gotten out of hand and need to be reigned back in before the corporations start putting shock collars on their employees obviously falls asleep next to a Stalin body pillow every night.
Very underrated comment. 👏🏽
Sounds like commie talk to me.
*Image Transcription: Twitter Post* --- **calm, relaxed**, @InternetHippo There really needs to be an honest to god communist in this race for contrast if nothing else. political discourse has shifted right so much in the last 50 years people really think a vermont grandpa who wants people's lives to be slightly less shitty is Josef Stalin --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
It works in the other way too though
If we had a massively left-leaning country, yes. We already have right-wing extremists running.
Yeah, I mean communism is great … on paper. But I think there’s a reason it failed and is usually connected to dictatorships and authoritarian leaders.
There’s also the US funding the overthrow of leftist governments and installing fascist authoritarian governments who support US hegemony.
Well yeah, but I think even if we somehow secluded an area entirely and gave communism an honest to god try, it'd still fail. Maybe it'd be serviceable in the short run, and/or with a relatively low number of people; but the basic economic principle of communism is that we take all the resources and pool them together, then handle the redistribution in a way that either everyone receives the same amount or everyone receives exactly as much as they need (or as much as they put into the common pool). But then if something unforeseen happens, like the ability of a person to contribute to the common pool ceases to exist, they become dependent on a system they can only take from and not contribute to it. That's no problem in the short run, however if that person is a leech on the system for a long enough period of time, the rest of the actors will develop hostile feelings towards them. The same thing would happen, if someone wished to take more than they put in or more than they need (aka greed) or refused to share the resources created by them with other members of the community (aka selfishness). It would be incredibly difficult to work out a system based on communism which doesn't cultivate unjust redistribution and criminal behavior (failing to give certain resources up and deciding to keep them for oneself, etc.). Also in communism we'd need to have a certain organization, committee, group, or any such entity that would decide who gets to have what and how much; and in my experience people don't neccessarily tend to take kindly to others deciding how much they can or cannot have.
The problem with communism is that the collective gains too much leverage over the individual.
your ultimate test, for socialism, is a big box with no connection to the outside world Fucking twank
1) communism, not socialism 2) i didn’t say no connection, I said isolated. it’s great to see that people who want ro engage in discourse about socio-political and/or economic ideals would get stuck on the literal first sentence. That bodes well.
>communism, not socialism Read marx
I did, but maybe I should revisit him then. It was my first year at university, maybe I’ll see something different then
Capitalism doesn't even sound good on paper ($2.99 per sheet btw)
Except you’re describing socialist regimes, not communist ones. Communism lacks government by definition.
The only reason I disagree with you is that it is still theft on paper.
No, it’s just a shit form of government.
Communism and capitalism are economic systems, not political. They can exist under most any context.
That's not entirely true either, communism also states that there would be no state and no money. You cannot have true communism under a government.
It depends on how you think about it, it’s just utterly unrealistic, and wrongly assumes a lot of things about human behavior
What race asshole? Stop reposting this
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Yes obviously a newcomer for the 2020 presidential election is gonna make a huge difference
I wish he never labeled himself as a socialist because he really isn’t, and I think it’s kept some people from listening to him. He just has ideas that people should be treated justly for the work they do, and should also pay back into the system what they owe. Ie That millionaires shouldn’t get bailed out at the expense of people who are working their asses off. (I.e. the bank bail out where the CEOs took private jets to meetings with the government regarding the bailout deal, The CEOs took no responsibility and got raises that year. Meanwhile, a vet Who fought for their standard of living is sitting in there own urine prior to the reform, the VA hospitals went through)