🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@TruthSandwich

We all know you hate the GOP and anything they do you will go off on... I dont blame you the GOP is shit (though i can remain a bit more objective when i talk about it I guess)... but doesnt change the fact that enabling people to choose what school they send their kid to, rather than forcing one school everyone must go to (except the rich people who can afford private schools) is very clearly a left-wing principle.

They arent abstract ideas, they are very tangible and easily applies, as we just did. You just seem to be hung up on some pretty heavy preconceptions.

@alecui

@dmoser Why is this inaccurate image showing the actual capacity of the cars, but the maximum capacity of the trains? Kinda delegitimatizes the whole graphic. Very rarely have i been on a tram that was filled to capacity, in fact I have been on them far more often where they were quite empty.

@TruthSandwich

The RNC is certainly farther right than most for sure. But they do have some left-wing principles...

School choice is a central beleif of the right-wing. That is a reduction of centralized power in education allowing schools to compete for students and allowing parents to pick private schools even if they cant afford it with the same moeny fueling the public system.. So it is one example of a left-leaning principle that the GOP supports.

while admittedly the GOP is very strongly right leaning, its not a purely right-wing party

@alecui

@TruthSandwich

Since Universal Healthcare is intending to preventing wealth from determining who can get treated and who doesnt, and wealth is a form of power dynamic, it is a quality that is left.

inb4: parties in any country do not represent principles wholly on the left or the right. The GOP will have mostly right-wing political ideals, and will have some left-wing. Overall the GOP is considered ont he right because they have far more ideals that are objectvely right (as I defined earlier) than right.

So while in europe many right-wing political parties will support UHC, and that is a left-wing principle, the majority of the principles of a right-wing party will be right-wing and thus overall the party is considered to lean right.

There has never and will never exist a party which exclusively adopts right or left wing principles, even if overall the party clearly exists on one side of the spectrum or the other. In fact the is the very reason why the american GOP is farther right than the tories in the UK for example, because the tories adopt more left-wing principles than the GOP does, pushing it farther to the left while still being right of center overall.

@alecui

@TruthSandwich @alecui

This diagram might help

@TruthSandwich @alecui

> You are defining the left-right continuum independently of actual people and actual countries in the actual world. I am not.

Wrong, and I explicitly stated as much. What i have done is looked at how every government I could find that has identified as left or right had in common and found a simple definition of the spectrum that is appropriate for every one of those examples.. It is very clear the distinction is a universal one...

As I said you only have to provide a single counter example to prove me wrong, something you have yet to do.

> Like socialists and political scientists, I am defining it as the center of political gravity, which is something that shifts and is defined issue by issue.

Nah, you dont get to speak for political scientists, and this is certainly not how they define it.

> For example, there was a time in America when same-sex marriage was so far left as to be fringe. Now it’s mainstream, although still opposed by the far right.

Why do you keep repeating the same failed logic like you arent even listening to what I am saying.

How many times have I said that what is moderate vs what is fringe is absolutely relative (and relies on the current political gravity as you put it)... what the center point is is **not** relative, that is fixed... how wide of a range around that is considered moderate is completely relative however.

> Gravity shifted.

The position of the center of gravity never changed... the size of the gravitational field however did.

@TruthSandwich

All you have to do is provide one counter example.. a government policy or party that has been self-identified as left or right and doesnt line up with the definition I provided.

@alecui

@TruthSandwich

Not at all. I am saying the center has nothing to do with if any state existed at all.. it would be the same evne if humans never existed and no government ever existed. Because it is an ideological idea, like how tall something is.

Its really simple... If you think a system should be in place to put power in check, you are on the left. If you think power dynamics are natural and good then you are on the right. If you think neither of these ideas have any merit then you are at the center.

These things do not change based on any opinion of the state or its people, all that changes is where they are on this scale.

@alecui

@JonKramer

That doesnt rule out the fact that Biden might be hanging out with him... Pretty sure there is a good chance Biden has been dead for 15 years too.

@realcaseyrollins @alecui @olmitch

@TruthSandwich

> You’re arguing for a left-right continuum that’s purely theoretical, not based on the current limits of the Overton window. I don’t believe this is how such terms are understood. More on that later.

Not purely theoretical at all, very much tangible, and very much applies accurately historically and across nations

> You seem to be defining the left as supporting government control of the economy.

No, I said nothing about economy, nor does the control have to come from centralized governemnet.. What I said is that the left always wants to mitigate natural power dynamics from forming where power accumulates too much in a central place. In some cases that means government regulation, but even then we arent talking strictly economy. But in the case of anarchists then it isnt mitigated by government control at all, in fact the government is the very central power being avoided in that case, but its still about avoiding central power in one form or another.

> But right-wing, even fascist, governments have often taken direct economic control, particularly in wartime (and right-wing nations can be at war continually).

Yup, which lines up with what I said, that the right is ok with power accumulating in a centralized place (in this case the government taking over complete control).

> Again, I don’t believe this is how such terms are understood.

How the terms are "understood"... I agree.. it is how the term clearly has been used, whether it was known or not. The way I defined the terms lines up perfectly with all historic examples that have self described themselves ont he left or right, so its a good definition historically.

> The UK’s anti-gun policies would be considered fringe in America.

So? As I already stated what is fringe is completely relative.. what is center is not.

> Where is the center? The US center? The UK center? And that’s just for one issue.

There is only one center, the UK center and the US center are the same. Center is a point, not a range... "moderate" is a range. How big of a range moderate encompass is entirely relative... the point at which the center exists is not.

@alecui

@TruthSandwich

> “At least in that aspect” is the key.
>
> But not in others.

So? Since the center is not defined by the mean it doesnt matter. Even if europe had every single political party ont he left it would still be the left. The center and right would be nonexistant but still ideologically fixed.

> It’s hard to say whether a particular political party under one system is to the left or right of a particular political party in another because the answer usually depends on your metric. In other words, it can be to the left in one sense, to the right in another.

Its not hard to say at all, it is quite simple in fact. I laid out how one could think about it and apply it.. If the party focuses on regulation in an attempt to minimize natural power dynamics occuring, then they are ont he left. The more such regulation they promote the farther to the left they are. Two parties have the same relationship on this scale regardless of what system they are in.

> You might think that extremists would be an exception: UKIP, for example, is obviously to the right of the DNC, but then you find that UKIP supports the NHS (at least for “real” Brits), whereas even the tattered echoes of the moderate right in America oppose ACA, much less M4A.

Extremism is a different matter. Where the line is where a group might find an idea fringe is absolutely relative and a matter of opinion. The center however is fixed and not relative.

Its like the number line... how big a number has to get before it is "large" is a matter of opinion and relative to the context. But 0 is always 0, and always the center of the real number line.

@alecui

@JonKramer I meant of the USA, but yes thats fair globally.

@JonKramer

And Reagan wasn't president in my life time. So my point stands.

@alecui

@TruthSandwich

I would disagree and say you are following into the same pitfall as @alecui in that case.

Fiirst political parties are not the same as left-right political spectrum. While a strong social safety net is generally accepted by most parties in Europe it is still on the ideological left. Because the center doesn't mean "the mean of all opinions".

I've explained before but the best way I can personally simplify the idea of left vs right is the left is where people believe the government needs to regulate things to ensure natural processes do not allow for uneven power balances to manifest that infringes on peoples freedoms... The right believes that natural power dynamics arising are a good thing sometimes even believing central power to be necessary. All of the more "official" definitions basically try to describe this in one way or another, indirectly.

Gun freedom will always be a right-leaning idea. The fact that almost no party in europe pushes for gun rights doesnt mean gun rights are suddenly farther right on the spectrum, it just means that europe is less embracing of the right side of the spectrum, at least in that aspect.

@TruthSandwich

My guess is that @alecui wrongfully assumes the center of the spectrum is the "average opinion", which is completely naive to what the left and the right means.

Basically, yea the left int he USA is a bit more to the right than the left in europe, sure. And the right in europe is far less represented. But the center is the center, and it is based on ideological not what is popular.

@realcaseyrollins

Very true, the democrats prides itself on race politics. It seems like the **only** criteria for biden to make decisions is race 90% of the time.

@alecui

@alecui

> last time I checked Dems aren’t the ones with the racist rhetoric… Just saying 🤷‍♂️

They literally elected a president currently in office who spent most of his career being racist and literally started his career and made it the focus of his career to keep segregation alive... literally the first president in my lifetime who built a career on pro-segregation... Yea pretty sure the dems are still built on racist rhetoric, if they werent a man like that would have never even been a senator, let alone much more.

@alecui

Except they didnt wake up one day and change...

@icedquinn