BS: What is Left? Where is Right?

Subject: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: GUEST,wdyat24 from the Etherworld.
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 05:37 PM

What is Left? Where is Right? These days politics gets so confusing. Please enlighten me. I don't know the answers. I am so confused!

wdyat24

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: khandu
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 05:53 PM

I am "Right", therefore anything other than me that is left is left. I trust this has cleared your confusion.

k

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 05:57 PM

It's entirely up to the person who is calling you a rightest or a leftist. The words may have had a meaning at one time, but like "fascist" or "nazi", they have lost all meaning. If someone doesn't agree with you, you call him one or the other.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 06:07 PM

Maybe those designations are really just a very clever ploy by some people to get other people to take sides against each other. You know what they say... divide and conquer ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: Beccy
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 06:07 PM

I have to agree with RangerSteve. Our language has been so abused as to lose concrete meanings to the nebulous world of "what 'is' is". I know perfectly well what "right" and "left" mean to me politically. The problem is that not many folks want to claim one moniker or the other. Personally, I'm a right winger and proud of it. To me that means that I believe in limited government, the penultimate power of the States and the cohesive influence of the feds, the sanctity of human life (yes, I'm against abortion and the death penalty), the limited ability of the government to tax (yes, I'm praying for that tax cut), and the preservation of what has been good in our past with an eye trained toward the future. I am a believer in a strict interpretation of the Constitution rather considering the Constitution to be a "living document." That's what "right" is to me. Carry on!

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 07:35 PM

The first fallacy is to assume that every viewpoint fits along a one dimensional line from left to right; the second is to assume that once you know where someone stands on one thing, that determines where they stand on all kinds of other things; and the third is to ignore the truth that, over time, things change, so that opinions that at one time would have been seen as Far Left are seen as Far Right, and vice-versa.

It makes far more sense to recognise that, if you want to pin someone's opinions down, you've got to provide more than one axis. At the very least, as well as Left-Right, you've got to allow Authoritarian-Libertarian, and probably several more, to do with things like attitudes towards nature and so forth.

Through historical accident, differences that belong on one axis get conflated with differences that belong on another. "Limited government" for example fits on the Authoritarian-Libertarian axis. You can be Left, Right or Middle, in terms of economic politics, and equally Libertarian or equally Authoritarian. The same goes for attitudes to abortion or gun control, or recreational drugs, or religion, and all kinds of other things.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 08:14 PM

Left is where you are when your baby's gone. Right is a matter of opinion.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 08:28 PM

Try walking after removing either your right or your left leg. Not easy. This bears remembering, folks.

"Divide and conquer" is precisely it. That is the fundamental function of the Redemocrapublicants, for instance, the phoniest 2-party system in history.

The more important distinction than "right" or "left" is this: Which political statements and actions arise out of love? And which arise out of fear? Figure that out, and you will be in a good position to decide whom to put your faith in, and whom to offer your support.

I would suggest that virtually every political leader and group out there right now in the main headlines is almost exclusively using fear to push his agenda. I remember one who didn't...Gorbachev. It's amazing they let him live. Another one who speaks from love, not fear, is Jimmy Carter. They are rare birds in politics, those guys.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 08:52 PM

Which political statements and actions arise out of love? And which arise out of fear

That's a good axis to go with Left Right and Libertarian/Authoritarian.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 10:59 PM

These people explain it as well as anyone; better than most. look here

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 11:01 PM

I was trying to link to politicalcompass.org. Can't see why it didn't work.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: khandu
Date: 12 Jan 03 - 11:03 PM

Here's your link!

k

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: Bert
Date: 13 Jan 03 - 12:30 AM

CarolC, you are so right.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: Micca
Date: 13 Jan 03 - 03:11 AM

As I understand it, the origins of the concept are in the French National Assembly, in which the Socialists sat to the left of the main aisle and the conservatives to the right of it, giving rise to "Left" and "Right" of Centre as political designations.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: DG&D Dave
Date: 13 Jan 03 - 03:36 AM

I loved the political compass site. I took the test and fell in the Leftist/Libitarian quadrant.
Half way between Ghandi and Red Ken Livingston.
A result! :-)
Dave.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: Hrothgar
Date: 13 Jan 03 - 03:49 AM

It's all a circle. Those who go too far in either direction find themselvs at the same point as their "opponents."

Subject: RE: BS: What is Left? Where is Right?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Jan 03 - 07:56 AM

But there isn't just one direction. Pretending that there is just muddled thinking.

An illustration of that from Illinois this week, where the outgoing governor, "a conservative Republican" has just lifted the death penalty on all the prisoners on the state's death row.