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biccat wrote:
Um...what?

If politics is relative, then the US has a "real left." Unless you're using a global relative scale, at which point you still have to define what quantifies someone as left/right.

This isn't that hard. If politics are relative, then the US can be said to lack a "real left" (using colloquial parlance) to the extent that its relative scale is significantly to the right of many other relative, national scales. Quantitatively we might reprsent this by saying that, when placed in a set of numbers 100-500 the number 100 is rather low, but when placed in a set including the numbers 1-100 it is rather high. By this measure Obama might be to the left in US politics, but to the right in global politics due to the absence of any significant leftist trend in US politics, or at least a prevailing right leaning trend.

Anyway, it isn't a matter of quantification (-1 point per check on the left side, one point per check on the right?), its a matter of qualification, and even that ultimately just leads to an even left/right split without any sort of degree.

biccat wrote:
Because you're not advancing the issue. When the claim is made "He isn't a true scotsman," and someone asks for the definition of a true scotsman, you can't respond to the 2nd person by saying there's no such thing as a true scotsman. You're casting doubt on the original premise rather than addressing the question presented.

Of course I am, because the issue being discussed is itself absurd. This is a 7 page thread about what artificially restrictive category of political ideology a single person fits in, which is almost hilariously preposterous.

biccat wrote:
Wait, Hu Jintao, the communist leader of the largest communist country in the world who is making moderate capitalist reforms under strong internal and external pressure, is on the "right"?

You mean Hu Jinato the socially conservative, authoritarian, mixed economy advocate. I place him on the right because he advocates maintaining the status quo, for the most part.

biccat wrote:
While a capitalist leader of the largest capitalist country in the world who is making moderate socialist reforms is not on the "left"?

Pratibha Patil is a socialist in a country with a long tradition of socialism, this marks her as politically conservative, and therefore roughly consistent with my definition of the political right which basically amounts to "general conservatism".

Also, incidentally, while Patil might be an over socialist, the person who actually controls the political action of India, Manmohan Singh, is not. In fact, I'd put him to the left of Patil.

biccat wrote:

dogma wrote:Globally, Obama is obviously going to be influenced by his presence in the United States, which is itself right-leaning. In this context he comes out further to the right of just about every leader in the Western world, and really only to left of people like Hu Jintao, Dilma Rousseff, Pratibha Patil, and maybe Angela Merkel.

Wait, Hu Jintao, the communist leader of the largest communist country in the world who is making moderate capitalist reforms under strong internal and external pressure, is on the "right"? While a capitalist leader of the largest capitalist country in the world who is making moderate socialist reforms is not on the "left"?

I see that your scale lacks clarity. Although I appreciate the effort to answer the question.

Dogma nailed it. Within the context of the US, Obama's policies and political acts have been centrist, a little to the left. Within the context of every other first world nation, he's also pretty centrist, but solidly right of center.

Sckitzo wrote:Here is another one http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php, though only 10 questions but pretty quick if not horribly accurate. Though it put me in Libertarian leaning towards Liberal and Centrist.

Apologies if this one already got posted.

Almost dead center, with a slight lean towards statism and conservatism.

dogma wrote:This isn't that hard. If politics are relative, then the US can be said to lack a "real left" (using colloquial parlance) to the extent that its relative scale is significantly to the right of many other relative, national scales. Quantitatively we might reprsent this by saying that, when placed in a set of numbers 100-500 the number 100 is rather low, but when placed in a set including the numbers 1-100 it is rather high. By this measure Obama might be to the left in US politics, but to the right in global politics due to the absence of any significant leftist trend in US politics, or at least a prevailing right leaning trend.

OK, I see we're using two different meanings of "relative".

If Left/Right is relative to other political actors, then there must obviously be a "political left" in the US, because there's a "political right". We draw the line down the center and you've got your left/right divide.

However, it appears you're using the term to mean each country has it's own political issues that makes someone left or right. So a socialist in a communist country is a CRAAAAAAZY right-winger, while a socialist in a capitalist country is a left-wing nutjob.

Or maybe you're using the two interchangably.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:
Because you're not advancing the issue. When the claim is made "He isn't a true scotsman," and someone asks for the definition of a true scotsman, you can't respond to the 2nd person by saying there's no such thing as a true scotsman. You're casting doubt on the original premise rather than addressing the question presented.

Of course I am, because the issue being discussed is itself absurd. This is a 7 page thread about what artificially restrictive category of political ideology a single person fits in, which is almost hilariously preposterous.

...Yeah, that's kind of the point. Saying "Obama is a righty" is meaningless outside of context, I'm just curious what context people are using to make such a statement.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:
Wait, Hu Jintao, the communist leader of the largest communist country in the world who is making moderate capitalist reforms under strong internal and external pressure, is on the "right"?

You mean Hu Jinato the socially conservative, authoritarian, mixed economy advocate. I place him on the right because he advocates maintaining the status quo, for the most part.

See, this is where you're using the other 'relative' definition above. I agree that, if politics is local, then he's on the right in terms of Chinese Politics. But using a global scale, he's most certainly on the left (that is, being mostly communist). And if "maintaining the status quo" is the measure, then there's no way that Merkel is a right winger. Heck, you could call Thatcher a leftist by that definition, which doesn't really fit with the standard perception of the left/right divide.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:While a capitalist leader of the largest capitalist country in the world who is making moderate socialist reforms is not on the "left"?

Pratibha Patil is a socialist in a country with a long tradition of socialism, this marks her as politically conservative, and therefore roughly consistent with my definition of the political right which basically amounts to "general conservatism".

Also, incidentally, while Patil might be an over socialist, the person who actually controls the political action of India, Manmohan Singh, is not. In fact, I'd put him to the left of Patil.

See, here you're on definition #2 of relativism. Which is why your post above was confusing. You seem to switch between "left/right is based on existing social structure" and "left/right is based on other politicians."

I think that if you assume left/right is based on social change vs. maintaining the status quo, Obama is probably left of center. HCR (whatever the hell the acronym is), DADT, DOMA, these are all against the status quo, which would put him squarely on the left.

Sckitzo wrote:Here is another one http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php, though only 10 questions but pretty quick if not horribly accurate. Though it put me in Libertarian leaning towards Liberal and Centrist.

Apologies if this one already got posted.

Lower left corner of centrist(near liberal and statist), about where I would expect. Questions seemed decent, answers you could definitely feel the slant on a few, but I think that is intended as you are supposed to "answer as close as you feel".

No fascists? I must honestly say I'm surprised; alot of fascists I know play warhammer.

You know when your post has "relative" more than five times in it, unless you are from Arkansas you really should be challenged to a whippy stick duel, just for our (meaning mine and the weiners) amusement. En garde!

I think arguing that the the Soviet Military was the most improtant to the allied success in the war is a pretty solid point. Yes, it was successful due to economic aid and the opening of other fronts, but it still essentially beat the germans at their own game.

No way, I don't think they could have ever beaten Germany at their own game. What they did was change the game! That the Soviets won WWII for the allies, there is little doubt. They certainly never did it with air power though! Soviet air power has never been anywhere near as capable as US air power, not by a long shot in any of the of the metrics that matter. Air dominance is key, and I just don't see any era in which the Soviet air force could have threatened dominance over the US.

How left-wing is Obama compared to the Communist Party of the USA?

Kilkrazy wrote:How left-wing is Obama compared to the Communist Party of the USA?

Depends on how much one uses socialism as a synonym for communism I would venture. We have that problem in the US.

Kilkrazy wrote:How left-wing is Obama compared to the Communist Party of the USA?

Well there may be only a few hundred of them, akin to militias. I'd proffer striking them and whatever the Nazi party here is as out as frankly my high school graduating class is porbably bigger than both combined

That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

And on drugs!

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

You have to define a militia
You have a rosey eyed view of communist types, the fellow travellers of the Weathermen and the eco terrorists that spike trees which can kill or maim lumberjacks.

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

You have to define a militia
You have a rosey eyed view of communist types, the fellow travellers of the Weathermen and the eco terrorists that spike trees which can kill or maim lumberjacks.

I see what you did there.

You have a bad tendency to equivocate things which aren't the same. Eco terrorists =/= communists. And the Weathermen finally died out thirty years ago. Find me a news article about a communist terrorist in the US more recent than the Weathermen. Or I'm going to have to conclude that you're pulling the idea out of your backside.

Militias have declined, with estimates showing their peak ~1996 with around 858 groups, variously estimated totaling 20,000-60,000 members. The wiki article shows ~80 currently active groups as of 2010. And some of those have certainly been engaging in illegal terrorist activities pretty recently.

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

You have to define a militia
You have a rosey eyed view of communist types, the fellow travellers of the Weathermen and the eco terrorists that spike trees which can kill or maim lumberjacks.

Mannahnin is right an extremist is still a threat to your safety despite their political leanings, just look at Kaczynski or McVeigh, opposite ends of the spectrum (from my understanding) but go far enough in one direction or another and it all meets back up (at crazy). These are unique examples though. As for militias, they are generally right wing fellows, but I actually know quite a few from the scenes I involve my self with. They can bit a bit paranoid at times or have a slanted view stereotypically, but their not as a collective view some huge horrible threat. A lot of them just feel very strongly about their perceived/actual duty in the protection of America, hell one of the groups actually dimed out McVeigh to the Feds when he started making his threats. But you have your bad ones, just like you have you bad lefties such as ALF and the such.

Sckitzo wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

You have to define a militia
You have a rosey eyed view of communist types, the fellow travellers of the Weathermen and the eco terrorists that spike trees which can kill or maim lumberjacks.

Mannahnin is right an extremist is still a threat to your safety despite their political leanings, just look at Kaczynski or McVeigh, opposite ends of the spectrum (from my understanding) but go far enough in one direction or another and it all meets back up (at crazy). These are unique examples though. As for militias, they are generally right wing fellows, but I actually know quite a few from the scenes I involve my self with. They can bit a bit paranoid at times or have a slanted view stereotypically, but their not as a collective view some huge horrible threat. A lot of them just feel very strongly about their perceived/actual duty in the protection of America, hell one of the groups actually dimed out McVeigh to the Feds when he started making his threats. But you have your bad ones, just like you have you bad lefties such as ALF and the such.

Indeed. My point is that one should never equivocate extremists as not capable of violence. Just because most of the ones a particular person knows about are loser college kids on daddy's money, doesn't mean they all are. Neither should these super paranoid groups be viewed as the realistic end of each spectrum. They have to be a materially large group.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ahtman wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

You have to define a militia
You have a rosey eyed view of communist types, the fellow travellers of the Weathermen and the eco terrorists that spike trees which can kill or maim lumberjacks.

I see what you did there.

Its not often one can say fellow traveller in a sentence.

Lol here in Britain we don't even have anyone as looney as the Republicans.

The Conservatives would fit in with Democrats...

Plus, the American political parties aren't exactly ideologically divulgent from one another (hear me out); if they are the "big tents" that they are painted to be, where you can have Obama and Lieberman in the same party... well, one Republican and a Democrat may have more in common than two Demmys... I think the only real issue seperating them is their stances on state intervention.

Anyway, I'm New Labour... So I went for "Democrat"... despite my disagreement with an American deciding there must be "equivalents" out there; many Dems are to my right.

Frazzled wrote:

Sckitzo wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

You have to define a militia
You have a rosey eyed view of communist types, the fellow travellers of the Weathermen and the eco terrorists that spike trees which can kill or maim lumberjacks.

Mannahnin is right an extremist is still a threat to your safety despite their political leanings, just look at Kaczynski or McVeigh, opposite ends of the spectrum (from my understanding) but go far enough in one direction or another and it all meets back up (at crazy). These are unique examples though. As for militias, they are generally right wing fellows, but I actually know quite a few from the scenes I involve my self with. They can bit a bit paranoid at times or have a slanted view stereotypically, but their not as a collective view some huge horrible threat. A lot of them just feel very strongly about their perceived/actual duty in the protection of America, hell one of the groups actually dimed out McVeigh to the Feds when he started making his threats. But you have your bad ones, just like you have you bad lefties such as ALF and the such.

Indeed. My point is that one should never equivocate extremists as not capable of violence. Just because most of the ones a particular person knows about are loser college kids on daddy's money, doesn't mean they all are. Neither should these super paranoid groups be viewed as the realistic end of each spectrum. They have to be a materially large group.

Crap, I missquoted Mannahnin, meant to quote you Frazzled. While I never assume extremists are not capable of violence, I actually assume anyone and everyone is capable of violence, but you need intent, ability/capability and opportunity for me to actually worry about it.

Frazzled wrote:

Sckitzo wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:That's infinitely more than my graduating class. Since I didn't have one.

There are a lot more than a few hundred people involved in militias. I don't know if I'd call them "akin" to militias, either. US Communists tend to be college radicals or old hippies, and in either case unarmed.

You have to define a militia
You have a rosey eyed view of communist types, the fellow travellers of the Weathermen and the eco terrorists that spike trees which can kill or maim lumberjacks.

Mannahnin is right an extremist is still a threat to your safety despite their political leanings, just look at Kaczynski or McVeigh, opposite ends of the spectrum (from my understanding) but go far enough in one direction or another and it all meets back up (at crazy). These are unique examples though. As for militias, they are generally right wing fellows, but I actually know quite a few from the scenes I involve my self with. They can bit a bit paranoid at times or have a slanted view stereotypically, but their not as a collective view some huge horrible threat. A lot of them just feel very strongly about their perceived/actual duty in the protection of America, hell one of the groups actually dimed out McVeigh to the Feds when he started making his threats. But you have your bad ones, just like you have you bad lefties such as ALF and the such.

Indeed. My point is that one should never equivocate extremists as not capable of violence. Just because most of the ones a particular person knows about are loser college kids on daddy's money, doesn't mean they all are. Neither should these super paranoid groups be viewed as the realistic end of each spectrum. They have to be a materially large group.

I'm not talking about just people I know.

I gave numbers earlier. Approx 20k-60k militia members at their peak in the mid 90s. ~80 current militia groups in the US as of 2010. What happened with the Hutarees recently, again? Weren't they plotting to kill cops?

I asked if you could come up with any examples of violent communist terrorists in the US more recent than the Weathermen, who disbanded literally thirty years ago, and last committed a criminal act in the 70s.

You equivocating the number of dangerous, armed communists in the US with the number of armed militia members is pretty absurd, since it's so significantly at odds with reality.

biccat wrote:
OK, I see we're using two different meanings of "relative".

If Left/Right is relative to other political actors, then there must obviously be a "political left" in the US, because there's a "political right". We draw the line down the center and you've got your left/right divide.

However, it appears you're using the term to mean each country has it's own political issues that makes someone left or right. So a socialist in a communist country is a CRAAAAAAZY right-winger, while a socialist in a capitalist country is a left-wing nutjob.

Or maybe you're using the two interchangably.

You've basically hit it on the head with the second.

biccat wrote:
...Yeah, that's kind of the point. Saying "Obama is a righty" is meaningless outside of context, I'm just curious what context people are using to make such a statement.

Well, if that's all you want, then anyone who is a communist, anarchist, syndicalist, or uncompromising socialist (ie. refuses to negotiate on principle) is likely to view Obama as on the right side of the spectrum, especially if they are surrounded by people with similar views. In fact, there was a guy that used to post here who would have said almost exactly that.

biccat wrote:
See, this is where you're using the other 'relative' definition above. I agree that, if politics is local, then he's on the right in terms of Chinese Politics. But using a global scale, he's most certainly on the left (that is, being mostly communist). And if "maintaining the status quo" is the measure, then there's no way that Merkel is a right winger. Heck, you could call Thatcher a leftist by that definition, which doesn't really fit with the standard perception of the left/right divide.

In regards to Jintao: my claim is that his social conservatism and authoritarian tendencies outweigh his attempt at economic reform for the purposes of classification. In essence, he's more conservative than progressive, and so on the right end of the spectrum. I would make the reverse argument as regards Thatcher. Similarly, I place Merkel on the right due to the consistency of her rule with those of her predecessors, with the only major departure that I can think of being the whole "multiculturalism has failed" thing, and even that is arguable.

I admit, my political spectrum is not conventional, but I think its considerably more useful than the traditional two-dimensional spectrum that is basically stuck in Cold War politics.

biccat wrote:
See, here you're on definition #2 of relativism. Which is why your post above was confusing. You seem to switch between "left/right is based on existing social structure" and "left/right is based on other politicians."

I think that if you assume left/right is based on social change vs. maintaining the status quo, Obama is probably left of center. HCR (whatever the hell the acronym is), DADT, DOMA, these are all against the status quo, which would put him squarely on the left.

You equivocating the number of dangerous, armed communists in the US with the number of armed militia members is pretty absurd, since it's so significantly at odds with reality.

And how feth all is that relevant to the topic?

I'll let you duck the point. You're not responsible to give factual data to support your opinions.

How is it relevant? Good question. KK asked how Left Obama is compared to US Communists. You suggested (if I follow corrently) that it wasn't relevant, since there are so few of them, and that we should similarly ignore Nazis at the other end of the spectrum. I think I agree with you on this. However, while making that reasonable point, you also opined that militias are a similarly negligible, practically-nonexistent faction, and I disagreed. You also seemed to suggest that armed violent communist terrorists exist in this country.

I suppose the greater relevance is probably that I wanted to challenge a false notion I've seen some Obama opponents put forth, that there are dangerous leftist terrorists in the US. Which there really aren't. There are, OTOH, some armed and crazy right-wing groups which have recently committed crimes.

Read some of the Federal and Local LEO releases on domestic terrorists, you'll find a few mentions of communist groups that are worth paying attention to. For the most part though, their just "left-wing" and "right-wing" though, and sometimes they have no real political motivation, it could just be religious, or plain out nuts. A vast majority of these guys are never going to make the news, and that means the FBI and NSA are doing their job. Just because they are not on the news doesn't mean they don't exist, but the whole communist threat thing really lost it's steam after the Cold War. From what I hear and read, it's mostly Eco's and Anti-Government ones, some like to blow up office buildings, others like to burn down labs.

Sckitzo, I know there are a lot of nuts out there, and I give credit to our state and federal LEOs for keeping tabs on them.

I don't ever hear about any armed and organized Communist groups in this country. If you can name one, I'd like to hear about it.

Mannahnin, gimme a bit to search, I gotta find something that is general release but I go into work tonight so I'll ask around to see if anyone has at least a name. As I mentioned, their pretty rare I don't remember the last time I heard about one in the states (did get a few warnings in Germany) but the last few years they've really gone out of "style" M19CO comes to mind, but their dated here is a general release paper to the DOE, it's 10 years old but worth reading http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/left.pdf

On the subject of politics, I live in Northern Ireland, so that quagmire has been what I have to deal with.
All I will say is that ALL forms of government have their good policies.
Castro's Cuba has seen the literacy and qualification rate skyrocket over the course of the regime from 37% to 92%.
Hitler's Germany saw the link between smoking and lung cancer in the mid-30s, almost twenty years before US scientists saw it, which could have saved millions of lives.
(Sadly the fact that Adolf was a monster overules this.)
I tolerate all political views, as long as some lobbyist doesn't try to persuade me with a box of Maltesers.

Interesting... took the quiz and apparently I'm on the line between centrist and libertarian, quarter way between the center and liberal. Liberal?

...

Libertarian.