The Difference Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing

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Not really its just the context of the battle has changed. Were not in the same period of revolutions and radical social and economic change which occured in the 19th century and the 2 world war periods.

If anything the post world war 2 world has been a golden age for mankind and what we are seeing now in our lifetime is the end of this period and we will see the next chapter in mankinds history. The golden age is coming to an end now and this brief period the United States has enjoyed as a "hyper" power state is not set to last, from an economic prospective anyway. This will be a very interesting century to live through I think we will see the long term problems we face become an ever closer and more real danger to us. We will have some kind of crisis or new ideology which will come about from the problems we face in the future, thats just guess work what to expect.

There is this kind of arrogance we have in our culture and society at the moment in time that we are better then anything that has come before us and i think we clearly haven't learned well from our own history and were going to learn this lesson the hard way. Infact I think the western world is learning this mistake right now through "TWAT"

I don't know what going around with swastika's dressing up in leather like a bunch of poof's and saluting with one arm forward like a flag mast and walking like a goose and having a head of state who looks like charlie chaplin has to do with being German but hey they voted for it

Excuse me ?
Don't think i feel like sinking to your level.
I'm not going to call every left winger a stalinist.
Generalizing like that is something verry ignorant people do.

Doh! Why you little.......

lmao


An... up-winger? Or a down-winger? Or a forward-winger? Or sumat else in another dimension to left/rite


Left wing has nothing whatsoever to do with responsibility to the state, its to do with the state has responsibility to the people. Right wing, as I said before, is to do with responsibility to the state, and believing that the laws set down by said state play a role in morality.


Thats cos there not ideologies within themselves, there political parties, and subjective to the people who make them up and in particular the party leaders. The Democratic Party might be left-wing and the Republican Party (extreme) right wing at any one time, but they dont define left wing and right wing.


0.o

This is actually why Im reluctant to call any political idea radical. Saying a good political idea is radical suggests that it isnt self-evident, whereas at least in my opinion they usually are, while calling a right-wing idea radical implies that its good.


0.o

Believing in self-determination and personal morality dosent explain support for morality based on religion. If you have a strong belief in personal morality then you shouldnt need a religion to tell you whats right or wrong. Nor should you need strong laws to tell you whats right or wrong.

Not that I have anything against religion, am right-wing in any way, or agree with your definitions to begin with.

And, just to sink the point home, I happen to have a strong belief that personal morality factors infinately higher than any close-to-irrelevant set of laws.


It does seem to be, and I admire you for being able to be unbiased, but I have to say, accuracy scored about a 0.1 out of 10 ¬_¬


In order to support a totalitarian government with good conscience, you have to believe that the people have a strong responsibility to the state, therefore by definition totalitarianism has to be right-wing.



seconded


I take back what I said about you being unbiased ¬_¬


Ideologies are never new, only the names for them are.

Take communism for example, it was supposedly "new" when Karl Marx wrote the manifesto in the 19th century. So... what exactly was Robin Hood half a millenium earlier, stealing from the rich to give to the poor?


Stalin was right wing 0.o

I take your point though.


lmao

Well, he never said anything about responsibility to the state but instead mentioned his thoughts on the economics of the left-wing which do tend to have people contribute to the state (such as in socialism, a left wing economic ideal). The money/result of efforts is taken by the state for redistribution. Right wing economics has more to do with personal determination of individuals... at least in its ideal form. Right wingers believe that capitalism is the best economic system and capitalism is without question one of the most individualistic economic systems as its industries are controlled by individuals as opposed to governments. Right wingers tend to believe in the ability of individuals to make their way through life without government aid AKA "rugged individualism".


Well, self-determination is definitely the belief of right wing economics and personal morality should have been stated better as the morality of the individuals but not necessarily morality independent of societal beliefs. Right-wingers may make laws that support strong morality but they still tend towards small government and would really like to see churches and individuals as responsible for the morality of the people. Also, I did account for the aspect of government morality laws in the section where I put criticisms of right wing beliefs. Also, not every right winger is on the religious right, in fact I would say that most that I have met aren't. Many are simply more pro-capitalist or "rugged individualist" and I have met a few that aren't Christians or that don't mention their beliefs often or that violate Christian beliefs somewhat often and aren't very good Christians to some extent. I have met a few strong religious type right wingers and they do tend more towards totalitarianism I think.


One thing is that for accuracy to be that low I would have to totally get all of the different political philosophies almost entirely wrong but still manage to have the right issues. I still do understand the economics to some extent and I definitely tried to explain the rest of it too. My accuracy is probably not too horribly terrible taking into account the fact that I tried to display everything view as non-negative with a few controversies. I did try to account for various aspects of the right and the left however if there are any flaws that I didn't account for then post them but realize that different people see the same political viewpoints in different lights and try to account for the variances that occur in the view of these perspectives.


Well, considering that many right wingers believe in rugged individualism and small government it would be hard to ascribe those people to totalitarianism. I mentioned totalitarianism as not a right wing thing because it is restrictive on the economy and strictly limits economic freedom(something that right wingers don't like) but it limits personal freedom too(something that left wingers do not like). I mentioned it as not right or left because others have done so in the past.

In the worlds shortest political test it showed right and left and being on opposite corners of a square and libertarianism and totalitarianism(authoritarianism) on the other 2 opposing ends. http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html

The world's shortest test is a test upon many others were based and I chose to go in their footsteps on this matter and leave totalitarianism in the middle.



How is mentioning insane ideologues biased unless you consider me biased against extremes? There are extreme religious people that want to kill every gay man and there are extreme leftists who want to kill all of the wealthy. Both are dangerous and both pose a threat to society should they every gain power. Extremists unbalance nations and lead to major problems that often have difficulties resolving themselves. I guess you could consider me extreme by not calling Bush extreme but really he isn't dangerously extreme. He will not destroy the government but instead will push the pendulum up so far that when it swings against him his party will suffer. America will eventually recover from his right wing idealism, it has recovered against most other bad things that it has faced.


Stalin is typically considered left wing because communism is a left wing ideal. Stalinism is only known for indiscriminate cruelty(not a trait of any non totalitarian political belief), it is known for large government(which is something that many right wingers do not favor, Reagan, a big conservative claimed that government was the evil), and it is known for its economic style which has the former characteristics but it attempts to be somewhat socialist, he also suppressed religion which is something the right is strongly opposed to and he did not promote really any form of morality (other than a cult of personality which hardly counts) he just killed people out of his paranoia. If it is any consolation, Hitler is usually considered the evil perversion of right wingism as Hitler kept corporations, he tried to create a morality in the form of the Nazi ubermensch that could conquer all, and so on and so forth killing Jews to purify the nation and stuff. Neither Hitler nor Stalin are really considered by the groups that others would classify them in as belonging to those groups due to the shame involved and because they are not perfect examples of the ideals of those groups due to their various perversions of the philosophies.

Contributing to the whole, not necessarily the state. Although the state does tend to play the role of the middleman.


Scratch: industries are controlled by MEGACORPORATIONS as opposed to goverments.


Agreed. I wasnt sure whether you were talking about politics or economics.


Id agree with individuals, but Im just as iffy if not moreso about churches thinking they play a role in personal morality as I am about the state thinking the same.

Although, that said, a lot of people DO seem to think the will of their god is the be all and end all of morality...

(NB I say "their god" not because Im an atheist - Im an agnostic Christian - but because Im taking all churches and religions into account here. Pointing this out because after that you seemed to be talking exclusively about Christianity.)


Left wing beliefs are very varied, I guess right wing beliefs are just more varied than I thought to.


Just because we dont understand the logic behind these ideologies dosent necessarily mean it isnt there.

(Please note, when I say there logical, I dont mean to imply that I agree with either one. I also see the logic behind Blairist fascism, despite the fact that I happen to be involved in a movement aimed at preventing it from lasting)


Yes, but while the fact that he was the head of what was called the "Communist Party" does make him a Communist (member or supporter of the Communist Party), it dosent make him a communist (someone who believes everyone is equal).

The distinction is kinda like the difference between a Conservative and a conservative, or a Democrat and a democrat.


Hence part of why I said he was right wing.


Also something many right wingers DO favour (see Adolf Hitler, Nazi Party for example ¬_¬)


The state attempting to control religion in any way (compulsory or banned) is extreme right wing. The fact that many right wingers are opposed to it being banned has more to do with their own religions than their right wing beliefs. There are also lots of religious left wingers (myself included, to a certain extent (unorthadox Christianity, but Christianity just the same)).

We'll, not quite. Rightists are of the firm belief that grassroots organizations more efficient at caring for the needy. It can be properly argued that private organizations tend to have less "management" than the government equivilant, and so more money goes to the cause, rather than the infrastructure.

The thing is, corporations, which arent accountable to the public, have much less incentive to help the needy. Just to hammer that point home, how many major corporations do YOU know who get heavily involved in charity?

Well, the people do tend to contribute to the state in left wing economics. Without the power of the state or a society scaled down to a point where modern industrial society would be impossible, we would not have people share their money.


Megacorporations are controlled by people; they are controlled by the stock holders. Stock holders are only individuals who chose to give up a bit of money to invest in a company. Considering the amount of influence that people have on megacorporations with their buying patterns and the fact that companies would probably collapse without enough stock support I would almost think that we control the economy more than the corporations do.


Well, pretty much conservatives tend to have a concern about traditional values. We hear plenty of times about 10 year olds today in mini-skirts, teenage pregnancy on the rise, higher divorce rates and stuff like that and conservatives tend to blame culture for these things. They think that the sex content of material and stuff like that influences children negatively and their viewpoint has some truth. Sex content in the media has been shown to affect children, and many parents seem to lack the ability to raise their children. The conservative response to this issue is to attack the content and try to instill traditional values to combat this, it may be right or it may be wrong but that is where they see the problem. Yeah, many people do think that their god is the source of all morality, and such an idea is not philosophically unjustified. Morality must come from some source or else society simply is seen as the stronger controlling the weaker. Simply stated, there is only one morality for society or there is no form of morality guiding it at all and in the US we are currently undergoing a culture war to decide which morality will win in the end.


Right wing beliefs are very varied. There are neo-conservatives who believe in an aggressive foreign policy in order to seek the best end, there are paleo-conservatives, who believe in social conservativism and tend to distrust free-trade and large government, there are a few states rightists who believe that the states should have more authority in the laws and workings within those states, there are social conservatives who only care about social issues and not about the size of government at all, there are fiscal conservatives who support capitalism, small government, privatized social security and stuff like that, and the American republican party even has a libertarian wing which goes along with the Republicans out of a support for capitalism and small government and only tolerates the social conservatism.


I never said that these people aren't logical(even though insane may imply it). The fact I called them insane was simply to highlight my disapproval for their ideas. Extremists tend to badly damage and mangle the systems that they get their hands on by twisting them further than they want to go. In fact, I would not consider the Republicans in office in America extremely extremist but they still are creating a backlash that will cause the pendulum to swing more leftist. An extremist would cause an even greater problem as his policies would either not be allowed or have to be forced upon the people.


Well, Stalin's economic actions were sort of leftist as he did not use capitalism or corporations to achieve his ends. He used state interprises with a rather twisted totalitarianism added on to them.


Right wingism is not totalitarianism. The US Republican party which is probably further right than most parties has a libertarian wing to it. Libertarians are the group that is the least totalitarian as they tend not to approve of government intervention in anything. Although the libertarians are not right wingers they apparently agree with the Republican party enough to go with it. Former libertarian party candidate Ron Paul is now a republican representative, and libertarian Milton Friedman votes republican. There is even the Republican Liberty Caucus which tries to push the republicans in a more libertarian direction.

I have already mentioned the Nazi party, but more left wing people like large government than right wingers. Modern right wing parties usually want to downsize the government and increase capitalist control over society and the economy. Hitler was an extremist who arose from the horrible economic situations of the time. Most right wingers DO NOT favor a large government, only a few do.


The state attempting to control religion in any way (compulsory or banned) is extreme right wing. The fact that many right wingers are opposed to it being banned has more to do with their own religions than their right wing beliefs. There are also lots of religious left wingers (myself included, to a certain extent (unorthadox Christianity, but Christianity just the same)).[/quote][/quote]
The left wing tends to be more anti-religion as it is more common for left wingers to claim that religion is an oddity or a perversion that causes humanity great harm and that should be eliminated. The attack on religion is not very right wing because of the fact that support of religion is something the right supports, support of secularism or disagreement with religion is more leftist but most leftist groups would stop at the first and not go to the second.


Corporations are supposed to do 2 things. Pay off all of their supporters in a manner that maintains their position(stockholders to CEOs to workers) and to give us cheap goods. Charity is something left to individuals to do. If CEO Bob wants to build a library or an orphanage then he can go ahead, but if I was a stock owner I would prefer that the money earned by a corporation would go to me so I could decide what I wanted to do with it so I could give it to whatever thing I wanted to. It is for individuals to decide what to do with their money. Corporations are just organizations designed to get money through societal servitude, not to be selfless.

As I said, people contribute to the welfare of other people, the state merely acts as the middleman.


Yes, the stockholders. Most corporations are controlled by 2 or 3 stockholders with majority shares. These are generally the people who are effected least by the companies policy, and therefore they have no reason to restrain themselves in making that policy, whatever makes a profit is acceptable.


Thats not morality thogh, its traditionalism.


So... they try to stop people from thinking for themselves, deciding for themselves whats wrong and what isnt? Yup, sounds about right.


There IS objective morality, which is WHY I dont believe "traditional values" or the "law" hold any worth - nobody has the right to decide on anyone elses behalf what that objective morality is, that would make it SUBjective morality, of which there can be no such thing.


Heh yeh kinda


Not necessarily. As weve seen post-9/11, a climate of fear can lead people to accept extroardinary (and extorardinarily extreme) things (such as, for example, the PATRIOT Act)


Yes, some elements of his economic policy can be interpreted as communist (except allowing all those people in Ukraine etc to starve to death >.<##########) but as I said, communism doesnt depend on economics, it depends on the base philosophy of everyone being equal, and Stalin most certainly did NOT believe (or at least, he didnt show it if he did) that everyone was equal. "Some are more equal than others" simply dosent hold.


Maybe not, but totalitarianism is right wing.


Methinks youll find it also has a totalitarian wing to it (they call it the White House )


George Bushes Republican Party and Tony Blairs New Labour Party suggest otherwise.


The fact that a lot of rightists are religious and that a lot of leftists (and a lot of right-wing pseudo-leftists) are anti-religion is purely coincidental, just as much as more left-wingers having brown hair (I dont know this, but they might, and Im just using an equally irrelevant example to illustrate the irrelevance of the left-right split on attitude to religion)


They only do the second one because its in their interests to do so. And in most cases, corporations pay there workers as little as they can get away with.


Agreed. Its how MUCH money they should have to do it with that we disagree on - you seem to think some people have more right to money to decide what they want to do with than other people.

The difference between left wing and right wing is essentially the difference between right and wrong! To paraphrase Bill Clinton, Right has never been so wrong! Liberal and social-democratic politics are compassionate, respectful of individual rights, future oriented, and egalitarian. Conservative ideology is cold, calculated, moralizing, hypocritical, nostalgic, indifferent to the struggles of the underclasses, and bordering on fascist. The choice is truly simple. Would you rather have an ineffective Democrat as your president or an evil, Machiavellian Republican in high office?

Your bias is showing, I am afraid. I never said anything about corporations; I spoke of private organizations. The Salvation Army, Red Cross, Mothers Against Drinking and Driving... I can go to google if you really want a list.

Corporations, on the other hand, take a different tactic with charity, one that may be argued as self serving, but ultimately beneficial to society. Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Ford.... all the really big corporations give away money to promote education and things such as overcoming developmental issues, such as deafness, even Aspergers and Autism! They hope that by helping people overcome these problems, they foster the use of their unique talents, and if those people are happier for it; all the better.


Please, dont see things so black and white. Corporations are no more evil than they are good.

Heh I guess I just interpreted that as meaning corporations.


I wouldnt use helping people "overcome" Aspergers or Autism as an example to get people with it either one of them on your side, since most of them wouldnt WANT to "overcome" it.

And, I dont see corporations as "evil" - at least not in most cases anyway - just selfish.

corporations do this simply because its in their own interests to do it, no other reason.

Whatever, we are arguing over semantics. No government simply puts the money that they receive into a massive vault. That would destroy the economy, and no government tries to hurt the people, that would ruin their ability to stay in power. Even Hitler's regime did a lot for the people(unless you were jewish).


Well, even if that statement is true which I tend to doubt it is if some of these companies are so large that they have like 40 billion dollars in revenue and such. However, even if this is true still, the average buyer is the average joe and the average joe will pick the best choice in a given situation. Through the selfish seeking of profit these companies have to try to get the most public support. Considering the size of the economy, it would be difficult for anyone group to get absolute power unless the government was being too favorable to that group.

Morality is a system of right and wrong conduct. These things are the result of conduct that is considered bad. Therefore they want greater morality.



No person can stop people from thinking for themselves or deciding for themselves. However, moral decisions made by individuals can have dire consequences for society. The right wing response is to try to prevent these decisions by trying to instill within people the "right way". The world only becomes worse if everyone makes bad personal decisions.

Well, the objective morality of the nation is what holds it together to some extent. Strongly differing beliefs prevent people from forming effective policy and things of that nature. In fact, strong differences in personal beliefs are how civil wars are formed. It is a good thing for society as a whole that most people conform due to their social instinct. Laws are necessary for a working society, without them everything falls.

The patriot act is not really extreme in the scope of things. Most people are not affected by the patriot act at all and the government does not have the power to spy on all 300 million Americans and probably lacks the power to get information on an eigth of that amount either. A law that has little effect on people and that can only have effect on people if they do something that is seen to be a threat to the nation. A totalitarian police state is still far far away, if it weren't far away then there wouldn't be as many people complaining about it.

Left wing economics is greater government control of the economy as opposed to greater private control of the economy as is preferred by the right wing. Stalin has a government that had massive control over his economy and that did not allow for much in terms of private enterprise. That means that economically he tended towards the left.

Well, one thing is I think that you are a person that tends towards leftist anarchism type political beliefs and therefore you are projecting upon the right your personal dislikes I think. I think that both the right and the left have their own totalitarian tendencies.

The Bush administration is not totalitarian. If it was then it is doing a pretty bad job of seizing control over the American government. It is true that the neo-cons are a group that believes the least in smaller government but still Bush has acted in some ways that Hitler would probably not approve of.

George Bush does not control the republican party, which has been seen in the many occasions in which they have voted against him. Also, I believe that Bush has tried to put in some policies that would end up decreasing the size of government, however, the problem lies in the fact that we invaded Iraq based upon bad evidence.

Uh.... I tend to think not. The left wing has traditionally been somewhat opposed to the traditional power of the church. This is not a matter of a correlation without a cause, this is because of the traditional power of religion and the fact that the left has traditionally seen this as a bad thing. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people, a term that is not very favorable and considering that even in modern days there are leftists that claim religion is a bad influence I would have to think that maybe it is the worldview that has something to do with it. Also, simply because your view on the left wing differs from their view does not mean that they must be wrong. No person is an embodiment of all of the views on a wing.

The entire idea of the economy is self-interest. So the fact that they do the second one is a sign of success. Also, it is not odd that they pay the workers as little as they can get away with, workers try to get the best job that they can find. If we have a limited labor population then what will happen is that companies will bid against each other and raise wages. As well, a low wage in America is a very good wage for somebody in some other country. Illegal immigrants are paid as low as it is possible for companies and yet they still keep on coming for jobs.

[/quote] Well, some people are more valuable to the economy. A janitor is not as valuable to society as a brilliant engineer so therefore in order to keep the engineer happy and to encourage other people to take the path of engineering the wage received is higher. Differences between wages is a natural thing in a society as in order to maintain the maximum freedom and to encourage certain careers and stuff like that then we will have to have differences in worker pay. It does us no good to have the highest paid janitors if all of our engineers leave the country for other jobs, and massive government controls over the economy keeps it from being efficient and effective which would most likely cause us to lose some of our edge in technologies and productivity.

I would rather have the Republican candidate in this case as an evil, Machiavellian Republican would still ultimately try to help the nation. Hurting the nation would ultimately not be in this person's best interests as it would hurt his chances politically and lead to greater chances of scandal and of a reputation that would be ruined. Incompetence is the highest problem in any organization and incompetence leads to greater corruption. We can see this in the administrations of Grant and Harding, both individuals were likeable guys but their systems had massive corruption without them being able to know better. Incompetence is almost always worse than questionable ethics because at least the latter has a plan, the former doesn't and would kindly screw things up greatly.