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If left is a term that “goes back centuries”, then I don’t know what it means anymore. In the 18th century it was the group that sat on the other side of the r

If left is a term that “goes back centuries”, then I don’t know what it means anymore. In the 18th century it was the group that sat on the other side of the room from the royalists.

vinceguidry 6y ago
Read a little deeper into that history, things haven't changed all that much. I can offer a Quora answer I wrote some time ago as a jumping off point: https://www.quora.com/How-did-America-become-a-country-of-two-extremes-with-no-tolerance-of-those-having-a-different-opinion/answer/Vincent-Guidry-1 https://www.quora.com/How-did-America-become-a-country-of-tw... Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base. This can be contrasted with liberalism, which is the belief in a core platform of liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law. Though liberalism is often conflated with leftism, it's not, and neither is it the opposite of conservatism. Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They still are relevant, people just aren't really understanding the political philosophy.
- clairity 6y ago
  such concepts are not static across a population, nor through time. beyond the author(s) and early adherents, the population itself has a separate conception of such ideas that can be markedly different from the initial conception, and that also changes through time. it's certainly useful to understand this sort of history, but trying to stake a definition in time and defy the dynamism of these concepts is inherently political (e.g., originalism). sometimes that can be done deftly and sometimes hamfistedly. in any case, the concepts can be relevant and meaningful and still not be useful as identity markers in any meaningful and relevant way. identification principally with a single school of thought is simply a mistake of rationality, and how we get unthinking tribalist extremism. it happens with any -ism: libertarianism, socialism, nihilism, capitalism, etc. the world works as a non-linear composition of all of these ideas and much more. not a single one can be considered "correct" in any meaningful sense.
  - vinceguidry 6y ago
    They retain meaning across populations and through time. That's the whole point of philosophy. People's opinions on the matters change, but that doesn't change the matters. Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly. Like a market, eventually the political landscape returns to rationality. At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism. They don't get to rewrite the meanings of the words because they don't like the connotations. Many through history have used his playbook, and it all follows the same general arc.
    - clairity 6y ago
      yah, that's a political (and politicized) assertion. you also don't get to define terms only to your convenience, without consideration for the long arc of history and the breadth of the world's imagination. > "At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism." impulsive statements like this reveal the limitations of that kind of rigid thinking. trump isn't a fascist, he's a self-centrist. he's one of the simplest human beings to understand because of this. politicized projections such as yours are overfitted at best, and completely unfitted in most cases, as in this case.
      - vinceguidry 6y ago
        > he's a self-centrist Those are the very same thing. A fascist does not care about anything other than personal power. All philosophies and ideology are superfluous. Fascists run on the very basic political premise of "you like me, elect me and let me run things because you like me and you'll like what I want to do." That's the core message, anything else is pointless to understanding. That's what fascism is. I'm not misunderstanding Trumpism, I'm giving it the same name everybody else who understands political history and theory gives it. Everything people like about Trump, are the same things that cause people to put fascists in power. Have a look at this explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8 Fascism isn't some long slow slide down to Nazi Germany that Americans seem to think of when they consider the term. The Nazis are the most visible and publicly know version of fascism, but countless others throughout history, in Europe, Latin America, Africa, have managed to subvert the mechanisms of their republics using the tactics of populism to put themselves in power, unaccountable to any sort of checks.
- worik 6y ago
  Yes, but. How is liberalism not the opposite of conservatism? Conservatives wish to maintain the status quo, true? Liberals wish to change it.... Liberalism has had a horrendous crash lately, many internal contradictions and fallacies have become clear, but the I still adhere to those principals.
  - vinceguidry 6y ago
    You're thinking of progressivism, not liberalism. The American right has turned "liberalism" into a pejorative despite mostly being liberal themselves. (Trump supporters aren't liberal, hard to be liberal when you support fascism) The only two terms that are really opposites here are 'left' and 'right', because they literally mean which side of the aisle you're sitting on. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the extremes of both sides are going to line up around who belongs in power, the elites, or in publicly accountable institutions.
- Izkata 6y ago
  > Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base. This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government. > Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They are certainly approaching that point if people don't mean remotely the same thing when using them.
  - vinceguidry 6y ago
    > This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government. I wouldn't describe these aspects of Republican messaging as their core platform. They're just conservative standards, all conservatives tend to imagine themselves this way. Rugged individualists, callbacks to tradition, even "states rights", aren't particularly leftist in that they aren't calling for moving power anywhere, but rather keeping it where it is. You vote for Republicans if you like their messaging, it just so happens that how Republicans want to achieve these goals means the old white people are empowered to do things the old white way. If you pierce through the dreck of the messaging, the platform's the same as any other conservative ideology. Law and order, another pillar of conservative rationale, is the name of an actual political party in Poland, guess what, they're actually the majority party. There's just not that much special about American politics when you get right down to it. What's dangerous about it is that America has more money than the average European country, but our society is far less well-educated on humanities subjects. If you think that makes us prone to misinformation and propaganda, well, it does.
  - nl 6y ago
    The left-wing perspective on "power to the people" often means the use of state power on behalf of people to counteract private sources of power (eg commercial power). The right-wing perspective often means the removal of state power in favor of private (ie, "personal") source of power (often in the form of commercial entities).
kergonath 6y ago
It’s been basically “power to the individuals” (one person, one vote, this sort of things), as opposed to “power to the elite” (long live the kings etc) since the beginning. The elite makes do without a king, but the aristocratic class reflex is still there. This spectrum is limited and one-dimensional, but it still is meaningful. The people who claim it isn’t are usually con men after your vote. “The third way” always turned out to be a scam.
- tjs8rj 6y ago
  I think you’re overfitting history with your current perspective. It’s so limiting, and mostly a recent phenomenon, to look at the past and politics as just “deciding where the power goes”. Most humans even in the US today don’t care except in how it affects their lives. Peasants likely didn’t care who the king was, or had some deep desire to rule themselves, many were just concerned with crop yields, protecting their family, enjoying life, and so on. Colonists in the US barely cared that they were ruled by a king, at least until they got hit with burdensome taxes. Politics isn’t about power except secondarily, it’s about determining ones way of life. I don’t think anyone would care if they were ruled by a dictator, as long as that dictator didn’t interfere with how they live their life. This is important because it seems like you walk away with the idea that conservatives are always about concentrating power and progressives are all about diffusing it. That’s just incorrect. Both have different ways they want to live their life and their policies are a reflection of attempts to change the environment around them to fulfill that vision. If progressive policy didn’t affect conservatives way of life, conservatives wouldn’t care about progressives. The reverse is true. This framework fits every instance in history and everywhere on Earth for why politics happen: because people want to live their envisioned life.

If left is a term that “goes back centuries”, then I don’t know what it means anymore. In the 18th century it was the group that sat on the other side of the room from the royalists.

vinceguidry 6y ago

Read a little deeper into that history, things haven't changed all that much. I can offer a Quora answer I wrote some time ago as a jumping off point: https://www.quora.com/How-did-America-become-a-country-of-two-extremes-with-no-tolerance-of-those-having-a-different-opinion/answer/Vincent-Guidry-1 https://www.quora.com/How-did-America-become-a-country-of-tw... Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base. This can be contrasted with liberalism, which is the belief in a core platform of liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law. Though liberalism is often conflated with leftism, it's not, and neither is it the opposite of conservatism. Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They still are relevant, people just aren't really understanding the political philosophy.

clairity 6y ago
such concepts are not static across a population, nor through time. beyond the author(s) and early adherents, the population itself has a separate conception of such ideas that can be markedly different from the initial conception, and that also changes through time. it's certainly useful to understand this sort of history, but trying to stake a definition in time and defy the dynamism of these concepts is inherently political (e.g., originalism). sometimes that can be done deftly and sometimes hamfistedly. in any case, the concepts can be relevant and meaningful and still not be useful as identity markers in any meaningful and relevant way. identification principally with a single school of thought is simply a mistake of rationality, and how we get unthinking tribalist extremism. it happens with any -ism: libertarianism, socialism, nihilism, capitalism, etc. the world works as a non-linear composition of all of these ideas and much more. not a single one can be considered "correct" in any meaningful sense.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  They retain meaning across populations and through time. That's the whole point of philosophy. People's opinions on the matters change, but that doesn't change the matters. Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly. Like a market, eventually the political landscape returns to rationality. At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism. They don't get to rewrite the meanings of the words because they don't like the connotations. Many through history have used his playbook, and it all follows the same general arc.
  - clairity 6y ago
    yah, that's a political (and politicized) assertion. you also don't get to define terms only to your convenience, without consideration for the long arc of history and the breadth of the world's imagination. > "At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism." impulsive statements like this reveal the limitations of that kind of rigid thinking. trump isn't a fascist, he's a self-centrist. he's one of the simplest human beings to understand because of this. politicized projections such as yours are overfitted at best, and completely unfitted in most cases, as in this case.
    - vinceguidry 6y ago
      > he's a self-centrist Those are the very same thing. A fascist does not care about anything other than personal power. All philosophies and ideology are superfluous. Fascists run on the very basic political premise of "you like me, elect me and let me run things because you like me and you'll like what I want to do." That's the core message, anything else is pointless to understanding. That's what fascism is. I'm not misunderstanding Trumpism, I'm giving it the same name everybody else who understands political history and theory gives it. Everything people like about Trump, are the same things that cause people to put fascists in power. Have a look at this explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8 Fascism isn't some long slow slide down to Nazi Germany that Americans seem to think of when they consider the term. The Nazis are the most visible and publicly know version of fascism, but countless others throughout history, in Europe, Latin America, Africa, have managed to subvert the mechanisms of their republics using the tactics of populism to put themselves in power, unaccountable to any sort of checks.
worik 6y ago
Yes, but. How is liberalism not the opposite of conservatism? Conservatives wish to maintain the status quo, true? Liberals wish to change it.... Liberalism has had a horrendous crash lately, many internal contradictions and fallacies have become clear, but the I still adhere to those principals.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  You're thinking of progressivism, not liberalism. The American right has turned "liberalism" into a pejorative despite mostly being liberal themselves. (Trump supporters aren't liberal, hard to be liberal when you support fascism) The only two terms that are really opposites here are 'left' and 'right', because they literally mean which side of the aisle you're sitting on. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the extremes of both sides are going to line up around who belongs in power, the elites, or in publicly accountable institutions.
Izkata 6y ago
> Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base. This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government. > Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They are certainly approaching that point if people don't mean remotely the same thing when using them.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  > This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government. I wouldn't describe these aspects of Republican messaging as their core platform. They're just conservative standards, all conservatives tend to imagine themselves this way. Rugged individualists, callbacks to tradition, even "states rights", aren't particularly leftist in that they aren't calling for moving power anywhere, but rather keeping it where it is. You vote for Republicans if you like their messaging, it just so happens that how Republicans want to achieve these goals means the old white people are empowered to do things the old white way. If you pierce through the dreck of the messaging, the platform's the same as any other conservative ideology. Law and order, another pillar of conservative rationale, is the name of an actual political party in Poland, guess what, they're actually the majority party. There's just not that much special about American politics when you get right down to it. What's dangerous about it is that America has more money than the average European country, but our society is far less well-educated on humanities subjects. If you think that makes us prone to misinformation and propaganda, well, it does.
- nl 6y ago
  The left-wing perspective on "power to the people" often means the use of state power on behalf of people to counteract private sources of power (eg commercial power). The right-wing perspective often means the removal of state power in favor of private (ie, "personal") source of power (often in the form of commercial entities).

kergonath 6y ago

It’s been basically “power to the individuals” (one person, one vote, this sort of things), as opposed to “power to the elite” (long live the kings etc) since the beginning. The elite makes do without a king, but the aristocratic class reflex is still there. This spectrum is limited and one-dimensional, but it still is meaningful. The people who claim it isn’t are usually con men after your vote. “The third way” always turned out to be a scam.

tjs8rj 6y ago
I think you’re overfitting history with your current perspective. It’s so limiting, and mostly a recent phenomenon, to look at the past and politics as just “deciding where the power goes”. Most humans even in the US today don’t care except in how it affects their lives. Peasants likely didn’t care who the king was, or had some deep desire to rule themselves, many were just concerned with crop yields, protecting their family, enjoying life, and so on. Colonists in the US barely cared that they were ruled by a king, at least until they got hit with burdensome taxes. Politics isn’t about power except secondarily, it’s about determining ones way of life. I don’t think anyone would care if they were ruled by a dictator, as long as that dictator didn’t interfere with how they live their life. This is important because it seems like you walk away with the idea that conservatives are always about concentrating power and progressives are all about diffusing it. That’s just incorrect. Both have different ways they want to live their life and their policies are a reflection of attempts to change the environment around them to fulfill that vision. If progressive policy didn’t affect conservatives way of life, conservatives wouldn’t care about progressives. The reverse is true. This framework fits every instance in history and everywhere on Earth for why politics happen: because people want to live their envisioned life.