Far left,Left,center, Right, Far Right

[Takamuri]

I think you have left and right mixed up in a lot of categories.

[namelessone]

Your choice of how you want to thing of right and left.

If Right = Conservative than the Right is 'Libertarian' , If Right = God than 'Libertarians' are left


*The use of Libertarian is because they are the closest belief system to the idea of "If you can buy it you can have it, and zero Government."

Isn't that basically Anarchy, and therefore outside of political spectrum? Anarchy is neither left nor right nor center.

[Gothicshark]

I think you have left and right mixed up in a lot of categories.

Freedom of choice and small government always goes to the founding fathers which is the 'Conservative' point of view. My chart does something uncomfortable intentionally. It points out that Socialism is not freedom, and that freedom includes the right to choose. the issues in the US and in many parts of the world do not fallow logic.

[obdigore]

This is just. Ugh.

The problem is that you used your opinions and the twisted US definitions of a lot of these things.

[Mormolyce]

There's a lot of inaccuracies in this thread, both historical and ideological (major one being confusing left and right wing ideologies with social issues) but I just want to point out a minor one: the death penalty in the US is ONLY used for murder, never rape. The Supreme Court has ruled against laws that attach the death penalty to anything else, in particular rape.

+1, quite a few things backwards. I would not consider Libertarians far right, right is usually considered the conservative side of the spectrum.

Using the modern American definitions ("left" and "right" wing have varied in their meanings a lot over time as the political landscape has changed, and of course from country to country):

"Left wing": economically socialist, socially liberal
"Right wing": economically capitalist, socially conservative

Libertarian would be more economically capitalist, socially liberal. So in theory they're a bit of both. Though all the ones I've ever met have been far right wing conservatives who've latched onto the ideology and their libertarian status is rather disingenuous... I think this is a consequence of it being a very small ideology that's mostly popular only on the internet.

[Gothicshark]

Isn't that basically Anarchy, and therefore outside of political spectrum? Anarchy is neither left nor right nor center.

An anarchy is the ultimate system of pure freedom, it falls at the farthest point opposite of a system which treats everyone property of the state. ie George Orwell's "1984" Both are on the same linear spectrum. The hang up most people have is Religion. They think that Religion gives them Freedom. The truth is that Marxism, Nazism are also religions, they just define god in a different way.

[Mormolyce]

This is what really really gets me:

Drug use Far If you can pay for it you can have it

Republicans are the cause of the War on Drugs, and the continuous BS on marijuana. They completely go against their "As little government interference in our lives as possible" mantra.

Yes because they are only in favour of less government interference on economic issues. On social issues they are in favour of more government interference. Democrats are the opposite, more government interference in the economy and less in your personal life.

It's a very weird set of ideologies.

[Mihalik]

OP the amount of nonsense you just managed to drible all over there forums is mind bogling.

First of all your actual understanding of what is what by political definition is completly false. You absolutly dont understand the definition betwen Communism, Socialism, Conservative, Libertarian, Fascism or National Socialist (Nazi.)

Further more...WTF Franco? That dude had nothing to do with the development of Far Right ideologies. The origins of Fascism and National Socialism are both directly traced back to Benito Mussolini and was influenced by Mikhail Bakunin's ideas of propaganda by action. (Violence.)

Both National Socialism and Fascism where Corporatist, Oligarchical and state run Syndicalist and while there are some paralles betwen their understanding of Social Justice with Socialism there are strong applied divergences.

Further more none of these political ideologies are directly applied today (altought I would be willing to call certain aspects of U.S right wing politics somewhat Fascist, considering their obession with militarism and focus on nationalism.) The only Communist countries in the world today are Cuba and North Korea. There are no Fascist or National Socialist nations at all.

Social Democracy and Conservative Populism are the dominant political currents in the western world.

[namelessone]

Freedom of choice and small government always goes to the founding fathers which is the 'Conservative' point of view. My chart does something uncomfortable intentionally. It points out that Socialism is not freedom, and that freedom includes the right to choose. the issues in the US and in many parts of the world do not fallow logic.

I think the whole idea that founding fathers wanted small government is a bit odd. Take Jefferson - he preaches liberty and small government, while owning slaves and trying to push an incredibly expensive and bloated Embargo.

[Gothicshark]

This is just. Ugh.

The problem is that you used your opinions and the twisted US definitions of a lot of these things.

Aimed at Americans. So yes it makes for a flip flop of what are conservative values.
Conservative values are Personal Freedom, Freedom of belief, Freedom of Business.
Liberal(which is not a good term for Modernist American beliefs) values would be Socialism, Regulation, Federalism, Uniting of Church and State

The parties split these values up in strange ways.
Republicans get Freedom of Business, Federalism, Uniting of Church and State
Democrats get Personal Freedom, Freedom of belief, Socialism, Regulation, Federalism

[Nadev]

I think my brain sprung a leak.

[obdigore]

I think the whole idea that founding fathers wanted small government is a bit odd. Take Jefferson - he preaches liberty and small government, while owning slaves and trying to push an incredibly expensive and bloated Embargo.

'The founding fathers' disagreed on EVERY SINGLE THING, except they didn't really want to pay taxes to England. They thought they were getting the short end of the stick from the English Lords, and even after refusing to pay taxes, they considered themselves good Kings men, until the King George III refused to hear their petition.

Anyone who says 'the founding fathers said/did/wanted' is using a couple of them in an attempt to support their opinion while disregarding others.

[Gothicshark]

I think the whole idea that founding fathers wanted small government is a bit odd. Take Jefferson - he preaches liberty and small government, while owning slaves and trying to push an incredibly expensive and bloated Embargo.

Yes they had slaves, yes they had some contradictions. But considering what they where trying to do they, I think they got the message across as to what the focus of the USA should be.

[Mormolyce]

It's kind of debatable where you could put Nazis on a simple political scale like this, the ultimate answer is that no matter how far they were to the left or right it's completely overshadowed by the major part of their ideology which is that they were NATIONALISTS.

They have socialist in the name and they started out as a radical organisation but of course once in power they became the opposite of radicals. They were extremely hostile to Communists and they were certainly pro-establishment given that as an absolute nationalist dictatorship they WERE the establishment. I think they are traditionally thought of as right wing for this reason. The way the modern right wing has embraced nationalism certainly hasn't helped distance them from that comparison.

[obdigore]

Aimed at Americans. So yes it makes for a flip flop of what are conservative values.
Conservative values are Personal Freedom, Freedom of belief, Freedom of Business.
Liberal(which is not a good term for Modernist American beliefs) values would be Socialism, Regulation, Federalism, Uniting of Church and State

The parties split these values up in strange ways.
Republicans get Freedom of Business, Federalism, Uniting of Church and State
Democrats get Personal Freedom, Freedom of belief, Socialism, Regulation, Federalism

If you are going to go further down this path you really need to rework the chart since you have a ton of stuff in the wrong places. It is like you took what the words actually meant, and what the current US parties stances were, and mixed and matched just for S&G until you found something that would get a lot of people telling you that you were wrong.

[Endus]

It is not a circle, Communism and Nazism are the same thing, Franco the guy who invented National Socialism was a Socialist who wanted to control the whole thing.

While there's a lot of errors in there, this one's pretty easily the most egregious.

Nazi fascism and Communism are diametrically opposed. That's one reason there was so much tension between the two nations, and why the Soviets joined the Allies.

Neither has ANYTHING to do with "Socialism". Socialism has two definitions, depending loosely on whether you're talking economics, or politics, and don't connect in any way, even with each other. Economic socialism is credit unions and union ownership of factories and such. That's it. Nothing else. Ownership of the means of production (factories, banks) by those who work them, rather than a CEO or board of directors who profits off the workforce.

Socialist politics is just social welfare policies. Universal health care, unemployment insurance, welfare, etc.

If you, think the Nazis of Soviet Russia was "socialist", then you need to open a dictionary, because you don't know what the word means. Yes, the Nazis were the "National Socialist" party. That doesn't mean they were Socialists. It means they were lying about their motivations, claiming to be socialist until they could enact their fascist authoritarian policies. Who knew, the Nazis might lie about something.

Seriously, the idea that the Nazis were dead honest and up front about their motivations and intent is one of the most enduring yet patently ridiculous ideas I've ever seen.

[jahasafrat]

OP, you are so wrong on so many points that it's not even amusing. This is either a troll thread or a public display of your staggering ignorance. I can only hope that no young and/or impressionable minds are tainted with this nonsense.

[Decagon]

"The next strange twist was the rise of Socialism, People just lumped various groups as left or right to make sure they where polar opposites. Communism and Nazism are the same thing with 1 minor difference. Communism believes in no God, and the eventuality of no leadership. Nazism believes in One God and one Leader."

I'm not sure you understand what Nazism is. Regardless, even forgiving that, you forget that under Hitlers rule, businesses enjoyed a surprisingly large amount of freedom. Communism didn't HAVE the business sector.

Please, you're using an outdated method, like the other posters here, I'll have to refer you to the political compass. Oh, and btw, anarchy doesn't mean atheist, I'm an atheist and I'm up there with Stalin on my social views, same goes for authoritarian, Stalin was extremely authoritarian, and they were an atheist state. You're mixing religion, economic policy and social policy into one blob that doesn't make any sense. I think you need to learn that religion, social agenda, and economics are not the same things before you try to tell us that we're wrong and what we really believe in.

Also, the right and the left were called that because the Revolutionaries stood to the kings left, while the kings supporters stood to the right. The left and the right both at this point in history didn't actually really care about the middle class and they certainly didn't believe in freedom of choice.

Also also, I find it funny that you put the US at further left than the EU, when the EU is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more leftist (for good or for bad) than the US.

[Gothicshark]

It is like you took what the words actually meant, and what the current US parties stances were

I took the literal meanings, with no regard to party affiliation.

System	No Government - Anarchy	Limited Government -Constitutional USA 1776	Middle (modern US)	Large Government - Socialism	All Government -Totalitarian System
issue: Taxes, God, Drugs, ...	0%	1-25%	26-74%	75-99%	100%

Sad thing is this works on each issue.

Y

[obdigore]

I took the literal meanings, with no regard to party affiliation.

System	No Government - Anarchy	Limited Government -Constitutional USA 1776	Middle (modern US)	Large Government - Socialism	All Government -Totalitarian System
issue: Taxes, God, Drugs, ...	0%	1-25%	26-74%	75-99%	100%

Sad thing is this works on each issue.

Y

Except you said 'Democrat and Republican' at the top in lieu of mid-left and mid-right. A ton of those stances are wrong.

I'm also baffled why you think leftist/socialists require a state run religion, but meh. I'm too bored of the subject to argue anymore.