TheAsterisk! wrote:Right and left? Really?
Those are terribly inaccurate, even useless terms. Think about it.
An anarchist, invariably a supposedly leftist position, and a Libertarian, who would colloquially be referred to as right-wing, aren't that different. The anarchist just goes all-out.
You can view it as a circle, rather than a line. Take the line, coil it into a circle, and you may find th3 far left and far right ends do a good job of meeting.
Similarly, on the other end of the spectrum of power and control, communists and fascists are no different in practice, but are somehow supposed to be diametrically opposed, if you go by "left" and "right."
One definition to use begins with what their power base is. The communists appealed to the working class. "Right wing" dictatorships and oligarchies are presumed to be the province of the wealthy. One thing that distinguished Fascism and is usually forgotten is that it was a
middle class movement. The supporters equally distrusted the rich and the poor.
You can't conduct a clear debate with unclear language, and describing political philosophies with turn signals is nothing if not unclear and lacking language.
Four alternative terms work much better: authoritarian, libertarian (though the connotation might make a related term- work from "liberty"- more desirable), radical (promote change from current setting), conservative (preserve current setting), and moderate (somewhere between or based in compromise).
They're useful terms, but need more context to be useful, "Authoritarian", for example, can be applied equally well to various groups on both the left and right. So can "moderate".
Similarly, I would argue that "fundamentalist" and "extremist" aren't necessarily bad terms. After all, if I refuse to compromise on my rightful freedoms, am I not an extremist, by definition?
I suspect that will depend upon what you consider your "rightful" freedoms, and whether the person you're talking to agrees with your opinion.
@Bugman: Tin-hat classical liberals- like myself- are not out purely for individualism in the sense of isolation in wilderness or becoming hermits. We don't like centralized power, be that power held by government, social groups or corporations (I suppose I should include individuals, but they tend to draw power directly from association with one of the above).
Unfortunately, centralized power is more or less inevitable in any sufficiently complex society. The question is where it's centralized (and there will be more than one center, as there will be various types of power), and what checks and balances are in place to limit its growth and circumscribe it's actions.
Linux has a comparative lack of such central authority, and as a result I may retain (or feel like I retain) a greater measure of autonomy.
Certainly, it's a community, but it can't tell me what I may or may not do to the same extent a proprietary OS can, and several common copyright licences even guarantee me a measure of freedom rarely found elsewhere.
And even that needs to be more precisely defined. Properly speaking, Linux is the OS kernel. There's a central authority there, in that Linus Torvalds is the final arbiter of what goes into a released kernel. But "May the best code win" is firmly ingrained in the culture, and Linus has allowed himself to be overruled by the community when a solution is demonstrated to be better than the one he proposed.
Most folks tend to use Linux to refer to the kernel and all the other stuff present in a distro, but that's not really accurate. Most distros are called Gnu/Linux distros because most of the other stuff like the standard utilities and application packages are provided under the GPL, but a system can use little or none of them and still be a Linux system. My Linksys router, for example, uses firmware based on a Linux 2.4 kernel. It uses Busybox to provide a subset of the standard utilities, but unless you happen to install third-party firmware based on the original stock code, you never see that, and may not know it's a Linux system at all.
As for the two opposed parties, which are more like competing snack-cake brands than determinants of political philosophy, both are authoritarian, though they justify their power grabs with different colors of bullcrap, and both seem to have a stunning disregard for the longevity and the stability of the states over which they preside.
One thing to keep in mind is that politicians of either variety are elected officials, and have a single over riding goal: to get
reelected. Their time horizon is defined by the next election, and their attitude on issues is governed by what they think their constituents want.
When presented with an issue, they'll tend to have one of three responses:
1) My constituents will like it. It will get me
votes! I'm in favor.
2) My constituents won't like it. It will cost me votes. I'm against it.
3) My constituents won't care one way or the other. So I'm willing to do a deal. My support on what you want in exchange for your support on this thing I'm after.
The last is where the work gets done.
All the politicians are to be distrusted, scorned and scrutinized. These are people who have openly admitted they'd like to tell others what to do, to have the power to wage war, etc. Be wary.
Yes.
______
Dennis