You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

0
1

[–] inductive 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

I dont know why you got downvoted this is perfectly true. Hitler was not lassez faire, populists like trump are not, i dont know enough about paleocons but there is strong right wing/folkish arguments against ancap style capitalism.

0
2

[–] goat2017 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

The left/right spectrum gets redefined constantly to the point it is becoming arbitrary, what left/right means depends on who you're talking to and that makes it totally useless for communicating political ideas. I generally prefer the 2 dimensional political spectrum but that can create confusion when you go back to talking left/right.

I've noticed a trend now where people just redefine the political spectrum so that all the 'good guys' are on one side and all the 'bad guys' are on the other. Libertarians will sometimes base the left/right spectrum on liberty and so 'freedom' goes on the right and all the bad 'not-freedom' stuff goes on the left. It isn't even entirely wrong. Maybe a political spectrum based on individual liberty makes sense to you and to other libertarians and reflects your worldview. That is definitely a rational argument to be made for arranging it that way. That's great, but the problem is that it doesn't help you communicate political ideas with people outside of your circle. If every group is using a political spectrum that makes sense only to their own group then the groups can't talk to eachother about politics using the 20 different political spectrums out there. It's like having 50 fucking genders, it just makes the whole concept arbitrary and meaningless. The left often does the same thing. It isn't uncommon to see these people put Stalin on the right wing of the political spectrum because, they argue, the USSR practiced 'state capitalism'. Again, a completely rational argument could be made that they're right, within their own way of thinking about economics and politics. But without having some objective, unchanging standard with which to compare against..... if left/right doesn't mean the same thing to all people at all time, then it becomes totally arbitrary and you can make all kinds of insane statements about who is left or right.

I always try to use it in its original historical meaning; do you believe in hierarchy or do you believe in fundamental equality of people in some way or another ? If the first, you're on the right. If you're the second, the left. The problem is that modern politics is almost totally 'left' politics, so it becomes an argument of who is 'further' left than others.

0
0

[–] inductive ago 

And the problem with the far left is they will tell you everyone including liberals are on the right. And the problem with far left politics is they claim to be against authoritarianism but its essential to their politics to use authoritarian methods to achieve their ideal of government/no-government. If they got their way there would have to be a government of some kind, an authoritarian one, which would of course just be a temporary thing, tanks on the street, just for little while...