Far left - US/UK definition

I don't think it's very useful to compare policies from four or more decades back. Case in point. Nobody was in favour of gay marriage or multiculturalism back then. So how could you tell the left from the right?

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Steve, having posted those images, and removed them, I'm feeling a bit sick now. Anybody who wishes to decide whether Israeli attacks cause indiscriminate carnage can do a google search based on the details I provided in my previous message. But PLEASE don't do it if you are easily upset.I had hoped that seeing such images would "humanize" supporters of the right wing warmongers.Regards,Mick

Wasn't the whole point of this thread to try to figure out what is "left"? If the answer is as simple as you think, what have we been discussing?

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

No. The corruption was actually a very small part of it.Why are you so reluctant to admit that a government with real conservative policies just did a piss-poor job?

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Left--communism; right--fascism.That's why I'm in the middle.One should be a centrist in politics. Any extreme leads to disaster.

I (kind of) agree with you. The problem we are discussing here is:1. In the UK, we have seen a very rapid transition in what is considered the centre. Since the death in 1994 of John Smith (who was labour leader before Blair) the Labour party has moved in a radical and unexpected right wing direction. Given that the Labour party was the traditional left position, the centre has moved rightwards in an alarming manner. Labour supporters who threw out the Militant Tendency in the 1980s (who would previously consider themselves towards the centre) have suddenly found themselves members of the extreme left simply because they believe in universal free healthcare, for example. This is quite a surprise for the poor Labour supporters. In the past, their position would have been considered centrist, agreed by all. The result is that the traditional left wing of british politics no longer has a political party that represents it. This is why we find a resurgence of interest in hard left trade unions, and the Respect party, and also in non-Parliamentary parties based in hardline working class solidarity.2. In the US, the centre has been drifting right for a very long time (major shift in the Reagan years, and righwards ever after). Many in Europe consider that the American political centre is free flowing towards the right without much democractic mandate. This has clearly terrified the people of the US who used to consider themselves centrist, but now find themselves described as hard left because they believe gay men should not be strung up by the testicles on the street corner.This confusion is added to by European public sector workers who watch the disintegration of US trade unions with a great deal of fear (because what happens in the US today happens in Europe tomorrow).So Robin, you are a centrist in a political system that is moving fast to the right. If you keep your centrist course you will end up stringing up gay men by the balls, carrying out abortions with rusty razors, and you will still be able to say "I'm in the centre, because it's sensible". The right wing have gas chambers, and the left believe in free love, so the rusty razors are a good compromise...Mick

This is an incorrect view of the American political scene. True, George W. is a cowboy, but he is not very popular these days. Most people are fairly sensible. If by the left you mean national health insurance, that is not going to happen anytime soon, but the sacred cow will be saved--social security. They will not take that away from us. Abortion will also be saved.

You're getting rather impolite. As you well realize, being somewhere does not make you right. And as you also rather know well, the NDP has been around since the 60's as such and before that as the CCF. That the CCF was around in sask before ottawa is irreleabnt to this conversation.

But that's my point: today's conservatives are largely what the liberals of the early 60's were (classical liberals), and today's liberals have left them behind altogether.

Did you not see my long post on this matter? I believe, more than anyone else, I have made a serious effort at describing the distinction. As for my post on CNN to which you refer, it was nothing other than a quick response to a particular point of a particular post.

You entirely miss the point of this forum on left vs right, trying to generalize the extremely limited experience of a corrupt, inept putatively and nominally conservative, small provincial government in canada to the the world of right vs left. I don't agree with you about that government. But it really doesn't matter, as it is not germane to the bigger picture.

I agree. But i also believe that today's left has slid towards an extreme unwittingly, even though it is not, of course, Communist. It is naively and blindly abandoning classical liberalism and supplanting it with something radical and bound to fail. This includes losing its sense of self as a western civilization, losing sense of what made us so successful. It wants so much to be fair and tolerant, that it has begun to create as much injustice as the injustice it addresses; it has begun to be so tolerant that it tolerate intolerance; it wants so much to be open-minded that it has become close-minded to truth.

What should you make you sick is that the left has become so amenable to such egregious anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda. If you don't accept an official UN report on this, and despite the anti-Israeli bias of an organization dominated by islamic nations and western powers wanting oil and oil business with many of those islamic nations, then does that not suggest that you have made up your mind about israel's culpability, the facts be damned?

There are, ironically, as many rich leftists as rightists, from turner to Soros on the left, and all those wealthy new Yorkers who vote Democrat, to the usual suspects on the right.

I don't think bobbins will be chuffed to see the mess that we've made of her thread (for which I take my share of responsibility) so I'm going to reply briefly to all of your posts at once before hanging up the gloves: True. And knowing nothing about the history - which you have demonstrated - doesn't make you right either. I suppose it wasn't what you intended to say, but I agree: today's "liberals" have left the "conservatives" behind - about a century behind. Get it through your head: it was a real conservative government and it failed miserably. Also get it through your head that a "leftist" government picked up the pieces and cleaned up the mess.You claimed that no leftist government had ever reduced poverty and I showed where you were wrong. That's all.I never said that that is conclusive proof that conservative policies can never work. Why can't you understand that conservative policies don't always work? Why must you make excuses for the horrendous failure of a true conservative government? Saying that over and over doesn't make it more true. I have tried to explain that that statement depends on how you define "leftist" - which is the question in this thread. It has not been answered yet.When I worked on construction many years ago, I learned that talking to brick walls is not a profitable exercise. Hopefully, everybody else reading this thread will have gotten the point, except for you and Faith.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.