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Eh, sorry, I guess we're using different definitions here. I'm not saying "Democrats aren't far to the left of where they were 25 years ago" (nor is twic saying

Eh, sorry, I guess we're using different definitions here. I'm not saying "Democrats aren't far to the left of where they were 25 years ago" (nor is twic saying that, I suspect). "Far-left", at least everywhere I've seen the term used, is not relative to a previous position the same population held, but relative to the overall political spectrum. It's essentially "in the subset farthest to the left one can possibly be". Who exactly fits into the far-left is arguable, but generally abolition of large-scale private property tends to be a requisite.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
If nobody is far-left unless they're Karl Marx and nobody is far-right unless they're Adolf Hitler then in practice nobody is going to be either of those things unless they're ignorant or mentally ill, because they've both been attempted with results so stark that no sane person could want to repeat them. The extremes also expose the flaws of that spectrum to begin with, because your average anarcho-capitalist would no sooner want to live under Hitler than Stalin. But we've somehow managed to categorize as "far right" both the proposition that no one, including the government, should ever use force to coerce anyone to do anything, and simultaneously the proposition that the government should use lethal force to stamp out homosexuality and racial impurity and wrongthink. And on the other side, that far-left at the same time means both granting equal access to power and resources to everyone and granting total economic authority to an all-powerful central government. And that the government should use lethal force to stamp out wrongthink. In that sense far-anything is just a useless general-purpose pejorative, so if it's going to mean anything then it isn't very useful for it to mean that. So I tend to think a more useful meaning is something like the category exemplified by AOC as compared to the category exemplified by Bill Clinton.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Very well put. But in your last paragraph, "useful" probably means "useful for discussing the US. That probably wouldn't classify as "far left" for most of Europe. And that's fine, because if we're discussing US politics, then Europe's definition of far left is rather irrelevant.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    Yes, of course. If you put Bill Clinton in Europe he's a member of a right-wing political party. If you put him in the US he's a Democrat who can carry Pennsylvania and Ohio. If you put him in Saudi Arabia he's a cartoonish left-wing extremist. It doesn't mean anything to talk about positions or shifts over time without some kind of a baseline.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

If nobody is far-left unless they're Karl Marx and nobody is far-right unless they're Adolf Hitler then in practice nobody is going to be either of those things unless they're ignorant or mentally ill, because they've both been attempted with results so stark that no sane person could want to repeat them. The extremes also expose the flaws of that spectrum to begin with, because your average anarcho-capitalist would no sooner want to live under Hitler than Stalin. But we've somehow managed to categorize as "far right" both the proposition that no one, including the government, should ever use force to coerce anyone to do anything, and simultaneously the proposition that the government should use lethal force to stamp out homosexuality and racial impurity and wrongthink. And on the other side, that far-left at the same time means both granting equal access to power and resources to everyone and granting total economic authority to an all-powerful central government. And that the government should use lethal force to stamp out wrongthink. In that sense far-anything is just a useless general-purpose pejorative, so if it's going to mean anything then it isn't very useful for it to mean that. So I tend to think a more useful meaning is something like the category exemplified by AOC as compared to the category exemplified by Bill Clinton.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Very well put. But in your last paragraph, "useful" probably means "useful for discussing the US. That probably wouldn't classify as "far left" for most of Europe. And that's fine, because if we're discussing US politics, then Europe's definition of far left is rather irrelevant.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Yes, of course. If you put Bill Clinton in Europe he's a member of a right-wing political party. If you put him in the US he's a Democrat who can carry Pennsylvania and Ohio. If you put him in Saudi Arabia he's a cartoonish left-wing extremist. It doesn't mean anything to talk about positions or shifts over time without some kind of a baseline.