What exactly does "left" or "right" mean to you?

[St Leo]

Originally posted by skywalker
Where, then, would you place a system that focuses on giving benefits based on merit, but has an equal opportunity to show that merit? Where would you place a system that wants to make everyone better, but doesn't care if they're equal?

The Left, because that system would obviously have a strong public education system.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Japher
Left=Che
Right=Ned

I would like to expand on this and add

Bottom=Slowwhand

[Buck Birdseed]

Ah. Liberals. Definately on the right I'd say- they dress up inequality in facy words but it all boils down to the same thing.

(BTW isn't it fantastic how the word liberal can mean so different things to different people? I saw a lefty poster recently advertising a talk on "George W Bush's Liberal Crusade". I nearly LOLed.)

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by St Leo
The Left, because that system would obviously have a strong public education system.

So I switch back to being on the Left. Hmm....

[Japher]

Left and Right is not based on gross generalizations such as that... It is based on how personal freedoms should be granted and managed. The left want more government interference/control and the right wants less...

[SKILORD]

Let me take a go at it.

Left: Big government. Believe in creating a nation dependant upon inefficient beaurocrats and limping it's way into a grave.

Radical Parties (Communist, Fascist) take full control of the economic output of the nation.

Milder parties (Republican, Democrat) control the populus in less extreme ways (No Gay-marriage Amendment, and Social Security are both examples)

Known Parties

Democratic
Republican
Socialist
Communist
Fascist
etc.

Right: Supporting private control of decisions rather than state. Small government. Basically the ideals that the American Constitution was founded under.

Known Parties

Libertarian

[Agathon]

Skywalker now has the gayest name on Apolyton. Did you lose a bet, Sky?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Japher
Left and Right is not based on gross generalizations such as that... It is based on how personal freedoms should be granted and managed. The left want more government interference/control and the right wants less...

Always with the proviso that some of the Right want more governmental control, when it comes to things such as sexuality, and a woman's rights over her own reproductive activity.

It's a truism that sexual conservatism has been as big a feature of some of the Right as it has been of some of the Left- Stalin reversed all the sexually radical initiatives of the early days of the Revolution, and neither Mao's China nor Castro's Cuba had particularly enlightened policies as regards private (or public) expressions of sexuality.

As George Orwell so ably demonstrated in '1984', it is important to authoritarian regimes, of whatever shade of political opinion, to control sex and sexuality- hence the emphasis on producing children in Soviet Russia, and 'Kinder Kuche Kirche' in Nazi Germany.

[Japher]

Always with the proviso that some of the Right want more governmental control, when it comes to things such as sexuality, and a woman's rights over her own reproductive activity.

I think that is a very specific point... Yet, it has always been a religious argument for these thing, and religion is dominate by leftist... IMO, right winged ppl are only religious to appeal to voters.

[Ramo]

I'll say that the left/right divide is ultimately a cultural idea rather than centering on specific issues.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Japher


and religion is dominate by leftist... IMO, right winged ppl are only religious to appeal to voters.

On which planet?

The Vatican teamed up with right wing American Protestants and Islamic states to stymie a plan to promote sex education in Africa.

And please- don't pretend that Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Vatican are left wing.

[Bosh]

edit: ooops wrong thread

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Agathon
It's simpler. It's a conflict of fundamental values. The stuff about governments and policy are just means to an end. That's why both right and left have endorsed statist solutions at one time or another.

In my view the fundamental value of the left is equality: no person's welfare has more moral significance than anyone else's. The resulting political program emphasizes equalizing outcomes as much as practically possible (exceptions can be made when inequalities will lead to the bottom group being better off than they would have been under absolute equality.

For example, public education is a leftist institution because it attempts to give everyone a good education so that they may fairly compete for the more desired positions in society. In the view of the left this is a just and efficient outcome. Just because it preserves equality of opportunity and efficient because (ideally) nothing gets in the way of talent being recognized.

The fundamental value of the right is inequality - the privileging of the welfare of certain groups over that of others. That's why the right will tend to support anything that preserves power, class and privilege and why it is the preferred ideology of the powerful - in our case that usually means inequality of wealth.

Again education is a good example. The right prefer private education over public because it allows wealthy individuals to give their children a competitive advantage and maintain class inequality (they give other reasons, but this is the real one - which parents who send their kids to private school will admit if pressed).

Not even a passable troll.

[SKILORD]

The right is often religious because religion lends itself quite easily to morality which is required for the smaller role of the state which they espouse.

However when they decide that the ends justify the means and that government force (which they otherwise oppose) should be used to enforce the morality which is to be put into place to avoid the government force, they become left wing.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
Skywalker now has the gayest name on Apolyton. Did you lose a bet, Sky?

No. I just thought it fit