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Well feel better - there is no right/left divide in America. By the standards of anywhere else there is only very right / slightly less right. The greatest tri
by cmdkeen 13y ago
Well feel better - there is no right/left divide in America. By the standards of anywhere else there is only very right / slightly less right.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was convincing Americans that anyone to the left of Attila the Hun was a Communist...
What I find odd is that the article equates libertarianism with Rand and the Koch brothers, as if no other type exists. There's also a hint of conflating liberalism and libertarianism.
- walshemj 13y agoAnd describing Obama/Dems as a liberal when hes/they are centre right.
- saraid216 13y agoLibertarianism is basically a fundamentalist version of liberalism. It's essentially "liberalism has gotten too complicated and the complexity is producing errors; here are the most important bits and they're what Really Matter", which is what fundamentalism is.
- yarrel 13y agoIt's a fundamentalist version of economic liberalism certainly, but not of political liberalism in the sense of vaguely leftist centrism.
- saraid216 13y agoPolitical liberalism is and always has been nonsense. It's a propaganda label and is as meaningful as having a Libertarian Party with a platform half the libertarians in the country disagree (all of whom contend that those who do agree aren't True libertarians).
- jacoblyles 13y agoThe Democratic Party is trying to gobble up more of the economy to spend through the federal government, the Republican Party is trying to make it eat less. How are they not left and right?
- scarmig 13y agoYou can't map being right and left wing to a scale measured by "desired percentage of GDP to be spent by the government." Consider: Bush or Clinton? Huckabee or Romney? FDR or Hitler? Ukrainian anarchists or Stalin? French monarchists or Jacobins? Southern segregationists or Northern industrialists?
- declan 13y agoAnd under George W. Bush the Republican party created the Department of Homeland Security, the purpose of which is arguably to "gobble up more of the economy to spend through the federal government." And engaged in new excesses of deficit spending (since exceeded by Obama, true). The broader point is that politics is multidimensional. It's not just one axis. The history of tech policy votes in Congress is a good example that's close to HN home.
- skaevola 13y agoThere's a wonderful short story by Orson Scott Card titled God Plays Fair Once Too Often concerning this.
- eru 13y ago> By the standards of anywhere else there is only very right / slightly less right. Depends. Germansy is rather social democratic, but to a German government subsidised housing (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and universal minumum wage sound vaguely socialist.