posted
Alright, in one of the Anti-W threads we took off on a tangent about what Liberal and Conservative really meant. I posted one definition that a couple of people called outdated, and admittedly, I took it from a book published in the middle of the last century, but it goes a little something like this:
Most people see the scale of left vs. right like this:
But the problem with this scale is the whole scale is Communist (Sounds like a middle of last century sentance, doesn't it?).
The real scale is like this:
Total Government----------Middle-----------------Anarchy
But the argument against this is that it's an archaic defenition, and that nobody's really against big government any more, they just want different parts of the government to be big, so the first scale is more accurate.
However, have you ever really met a right-winger who was excited about totalitarianism? Any of them saying, "Boy, that Saddam really had something going on there, with that all-intrustive government there."
------------------------------------ Another definition I've seen of left vs right is the freeway analogy. Think of the political spectrum as a multi-lane freeway.
The far left lane, number 1 is the extreme liberal. This is the fastest moving lane, constantly changing and modifying things. As you move right, the lanes get slower and slower, until you come to the number 5 lane where things are stopped cold, and then in the number 6 lane, you actually go backwards.
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My problem with most standard definitions of liberal vs. conservative is that they tend to be unfair to the other side.
What really is the definition of liberal and conservative?
And can we define them based on thier base beliefs, or, as was suggested in the thread, is that too pie-in-the-sky, and we must only define them based on how they act?
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I've actually envisioned the economic spectrum as going:
Socialism/Communism------------------------Moderate---------------------Pure Capitalism. At least as far as the government involvement is concerrned. It is possible to have capitalism and no anarchy, just a government that does not involve itself in the economy at all.
A scale with Anarchy on one side would have Fascism on the other, one total government, the other no government. But neither would last, at least not with today's people, so it's really worthless to speak about them.
If you're speaking about left and right independant of the economy, this is what I believe. As far as the right and left are concerned, the scale is not so much the type of government, but the focus of the government, no matter what it is.
The extreme left believes the sole purpose of the government is looking after the "little guy", the one incapable of defending himself, while at the same time, ignoring the majority, sometimes to the point of reversing the discrimination against them. It makes sense in certain instances, but on the larger scale, you ignore the power that the majority can have, and not just in destroying little guys.
In Liberal mentality, the majority is a useless function. You should be concerned about only minorites. But who exactly is a minority? Everyone, that's the answer. If you're a woman (more than half the current world's population), if you're a child, if you're black, if you're religious (this does not include Protestant), if you're an immigrant, if you're stupid, if you're a genius, etc. It works out that everyone, aside from the average, normal, healthy, middle class, white man (of which there are few) is a minority. What happens is that it breaks down society as a whole. Without feelin as part of the majority, without a feeling of common goal, it creates disputes, against people, and against the government. I'm not sure about whether it was designed to do that, or whether it just does. So, in some sense, the extreme left can lead to Anarchy, or Extreme Socialism/Communism. (The reason I group the two is because their ideas about the common man having equal value are virtually the same. If this was about economics, I would not put them together.)
The extreme right, on the other hand, is basically utilitarian. You satisfy the needs and desires of the largest group to the best of your ability, while some of the minorites may suffer. Of course, the meaning of "largest" is subjective; it could mean the group with the most people, or it could be the group with the most money and influence, it depends.
The obvious focus being put on the majority, people strive to become part of that majority, either by increasing their wealth, or their social standing. There will be a minority, of course, and there will always be, but it creates an atmosphere of competition without spliting up the group. There could be socialist programs implemented such as public school educations to help the minorities reach a level playing field as the majority. On a whole, it's more like every man for himself toward the collective good, while the left is every group for itself, for the group's good.
Personaly, I feel right-wing governments would be a lot stronger, as long as there is not so much social tension and protestation of the minorites. Thanks to the world we live in today, a world where people would rather complain about their status then try to find ways to better it on their own, such a concept largely doesn't exist. Right-wing governments are seen more as suppressors, rather than allowing people the freedom of mobility without interfering. Left-wing governments take away that freedom of upward motion, by forcing everyone onto an equally flat playing field, where status and prestige are largely considered to be evils of society.
Now, it's also possible that all my years of watching the way the world works, and all the analyses I was able to decipher from it, is completely bogus, and I'm 100% wrong. I hope that's not the case. These are only my opinions on the subject. I've been here for almost 2 decades, so I'm bound to have missed something. Let me know if I am wrong, I'll need to begin working on it immediately.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
The problem with your scales is that you are mixing terms related to amount of authority and terms related to economic philosophies. So "Socialist--Middle--Fascist" is a fair description, but note that the words liberal and conservative are not in there. A better breakdown of the philosophies related to government authority is "Anarchy--Middle--Totalitarian." But these are not necessarily analogous to each other. You can be socialist and totalitarian, like the Soviety Union and Cuba, you can be socialist and not totalitarian (I'm not aware of any actual anarchies, so the idea is probably impracticable) but moderate socialism like many Eurpoean countries approach. You can also be Fascist and totalitarian, though, like the Nazis, so totalitarianism isn't restricted to the communists.
The terms Liberal and Conservative properly refer to how strongly you want to maintain the status quo, which is evidenced by the fact that after the fall of the Soviet Union, communists in the former country were referred to in the media as conservatives, when in fact they were diametrically opposed to what we would call conservatives.
And it is also correct that what we call conservatives in this country are technically actually classical liberals, vs. neo-liberals, but since there are virtually no classical conservatives around (i.e., believers in the divine right of kings and such), I think this is a silly distinction that only serves to create confusion.
Left and right, iirc, refers to where delegates naturally grouped themselves in the Continental Congress. Being able to sit wherever they wanted, they tended to sit near their friends. The liberals, who wanted to break away from England, all ended up on the left side of the aisle, while the conservatives ended up on the left. It became typical, since then, to think of conservatives as being on the right and liberals as being on the left. At least, it seems to me that I remember having read something like that.
The problem is that the terms conservative, right, and capitalist are not completely analogous, and neither are the terms liberal, left, and socialist. But we treat them like they are, and that's where we get problems. That's also where we get people accusing OSC of being disingenuous when he claims to be a democrat. He doesn't fit their simplistic notion of what a democrat is, so he must be lying.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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