Posted on 09/02/2017 5:31:01 PM PDT by walford
Again that focus only on the size of government and not what it endeavors to achieve.
If you don’t believe in a right versus left distinction, that it all comes down to government size, then Republicans who want to increase the size of the military or the power of law enforcement are just as left wing as Democrats who want to increase the size of Department of Education or the power of social workers.
It does not seem sensible to treat both as identical on the basis that both increase the size and scope of government; some way of distinguishing those reasons for increasing government would seem sensible.
If you are part of society then you are part of a collective. That collective will order itself some way. In so ordering itself it may leave you less free. However imperfect, the left/right distinction gives a way to describe what and how those limitations may apply.
There is a difference between government power that would proscribe homosexual relations but allow you run your business as you see fit and a government that did the opposite. Both are using government power, both infringe upon freedom, but both are not the same in quality. I think most people could guess which form would be called left and which right.
Both left and right governments will vary in how totalitarian (size) they are e.g., the (left) social democratic governments of Europe do not control or intrude everywhere; Conservative governments may impose restrictions on abortion but otherwise leave personal relations alone. The overall size and scope of government (and diminution of freedom) may be the same in both, but you would not consider them interchangeable.
The same mistake that it is about the size of government not its aims.
Even a republic will need to balance competing aspirations and enforce some power and restrictions (law). A republican (small R) government could still be a right or left wing one depending on how it managed that balance.
Carter and Reagan were both, to some degree, republican (small R) and certainly not totalitarian by any sensible definition. The size of government was similar under both (grew under Reagan’s two terms) but I doubt anyone would have difficulty placing either as ‘left’ or ‘right.’
I agree the problem may be where we assume a linear continuity. The left/right divide is probably better understood as collections of beliefs, attitudes, and tastes. Within both there is some kind of authority/freedom scale that moves them towards more or less forceful implementation of those beliefs, attitudes, and tastes.
same video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgUs5wtXgL4
Post comments/thread BUMP....and thanks for the ping, LucyT.
OUTSTANDING
Thanks for this ping, too.
Thanks - I’ve been looking for a ‘clean’ link.
this one is better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmY6svzI2mw
If that ever happens again, you'll see fighting in the street. One side will define itself as the left and the other will be, by process of elimination, the right.
I'd agree that fascism and national socialism owed a lot to earlier socialist and leftist thinking. In the context of the times, though, they won the support of many who opposed the left, associated with the socialist and communist parties of the day.
Still, this article is very good for Dinesh D'Souza who's written and produced a lot of ... well ... not good stuff over the years.
What the Frankfurt School succeeded in doing was making the holocaust a curse on western civilization. Why?
Why do this?
The Frankfurt School was interested in the destruction of western civilization so that it could be replaced by a communist state. I think it more catchy and appropriate to call it the return of the pharaoh.
This also explains why you see this weird alliance of communists and islamists. They are both interested in the destruction of western civilization. The communists of course want a communist state put in place and the islamists want a caliphate. Both want self government to be a thing of the past— to be replaced by a state ruled by tyrants and bureaucrats.
(I once saw an Egyptian television show that featured a political debate between a guy dressed up as pharaoh and a guy dressed up as a grand emir. I thought this captured the thought perfectly.)
Why do this?
They were Germans. They came to see their whole German culture as rotten to the core. I don't think they ever understood America, but it's not hard to see why Germans might have such a reaction to the Nazis.
They were Germans. They came to see their whole German culture as rotten to the core. I don’t think they ever understood America, but it’s not hard to see why Germans might have such a reaction to the Nazis.
...............
Here is the problem. “they came to see”. How did they come to see. There is a willfulness to German death wish.
For example, Stalin’s killing machine was presided over by the commmunist party. His machine killed more people than hitler’s machine. The dominant ethnic group in the communist party of Russia was the great Russians. But the second largest ethnic group in stalin’s killing machine was russian jews.
There is no world historical guilt evidenced by either the great russians or the russian jews—many of whose descendents are now living in Israel and the USA.
Why didn’t they come “to see their whole German/Russian/Jewish culture as rotten to the core.”
The genius of the Frankfurt school was to paint not just the nazi party,but all german people and all western europeans and all white americans as nazis. The entire west is now rotten to the core.
Yeah, I don’t agree with that graph. If anything, anarchy should be placed right next to Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Socialism, Islamism, Totalitarianism, and Tyranny, especially when you remember that a lot of anarchists strictly adhered to a far-left view of the world (case in point: Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sacco and Vansetti, Noam Chomsky, and Bill Ayers. Heck, Marx when discussing the Communist Manifesto explicitly stated that, besides a classless society, another aim of communism was to create a stateless society, meaning in other words it advocated total anarchy, and based on Marx’s advocating for a gorier remake of the Reign of Terror, I’d say he also means total anarchy in the sense that there literally ISN’T even law and order, let alone any governmental structures).
I’d change it to having monarchy being closer to the right, and the absolute right being Christian theocracy where God and Jesus are absolute rulers, emperors.
L8r
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