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I'll remind everyone that it was Democrats who passed the Jim Crow laws. Those laws were passed because racist, leftist people didn't want to compete (i.e. they

I'll remind everyone that it was Democrats who passed the Jim Crow laws. Those laws were passed because racist, leftist people didn't want to compete (i.e. they were against the free market). That's what you get when leftists legislate.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
The actual human beings who passed the Jim Crow laws weren't "leftists", at least, not if you judge by: * Articulated leftist principles, as written in, say, the Communist Manifesto, AND * The fact that these people mostly switched to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and gave us the Southern Strategy of Nixon and Reagan that basically became modern "conservatism".
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  It's a bit silly to cite Nixon as a non-leftist, at least as a counterpoint to innguest claiming left wing andi-free market types are pro-segregation. Nixon was a Republican mainly because he was anti-soviet. His domestic policies included wage and price controls, ending the gold standard, creating the EPA, federalizing medicaid and proposing an Obamacare-like health law. Nixon seems to support innguest's (unnecessarily partisan) point - opposition to civil rights does seem to require opposition to free markets.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    If we are going by the political map in usage at the time when Nixon ran and governed, then he was a right-winger. That today's political spectrum is far to the right of Nixon is not a fact about Nixon at all, but instead a fact about history after Nixon.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Nope. To borrow a quote from Wikipedia: "by identifying himself with a policy whose purpose was inflation's defeat, Nixon made it difficult for Democratic opponents ... to criticize him. His opponents could offer no alternative policy that was either plausible or believable since the one they favored was one they had designed but which the president had appropriated for himself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Economy I guess the 1970's Democrats were also not left wing?
- innguest 11y ago
  You can't be serious. You're tying to convince me that someone passed a law interfering with the market and they are not leftists? Please. Do you even understand what left and right are? Right is not where Hitler lives. Hitler lives in the Left together with Democrats. Also not far from Republicans in an American context (unless we wax lyrical about founding fathers). In the right sit Anarchists. So your suggestion that the human beings that passed laws interfering with the market are not leftists is wrong on its face.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    No, left and right are not defined by "statist" and "anarcho-capitalist", except in really especially cultish Libertarian Party meetings. Words have meanings: * Left: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics * Right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics There is also the problem that, as noted, many/most of the actual individuals behind today's anarcho-capitalist movement are in fact the same people (or their children/grandchildren) behind segregation and Jim Crow. The far-right has changed its propaganda, not its actual ideas.
    - innguest 11y ago
      Leftists love "definitions" just like Christians like quoting from the bible. You can quote from definitions given by your priests, the academics, all you want. Of course they've defined things to make themselves look good. Leftist churches, I mean, universities, defined leftism to be good and fuzzy and caring and they defined the right to mean evil discriminating people that can't give speeches on campus because leftists won't let them? I'm so surprised. I'm sorry if the world isn't neatly defined the way you wish but there's no political difference between Hitler and Obama - both think it's OK to bring legalized violence into the free market and both were OK taking money from a group of people and giving that money to another group of people (rich/poor, jew/german). Your State-sanctioned wikipedia articles are cute but how would you explain to a kid that it's OK to steal from the rich except if they are jewish? Easy, you tell them the Left has redefined the political axis to make themselves look good, and you tell them there's a group of people in the Right that believe stealing is not OK period, not from the rich, not from jewish people, not from anyone. Kids understand that. Stealing is wrong, even if Obama does it. In summary, if you think the definition of Left and Right are those given by some French people hundreds of years ago and that the term "evolved in its meaning" then you would benefit from the Chinese proverb: "the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names" First, why do we drop the "traditional definitions"? Because they change throughout time. Easy. We need constants. So Philosophy decided that Left is totalitarianism and right is anarchy, that way we neatly have a spectrum where we can place all political ideas! Isn't that neat? Isn't that more useful than a changing definition that people have to consult Encyclopedias to talk about? That old leftist strategy of delaying the debate by saying "you don't even know what such and such means", lately seen employed by feminists (another group that only looks at the definition of the word, and not the actions of those who say they espouse the ideology).

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

The actual human beings who passed the Jim Crow laws weren't "leftists", at least, not if you judge by: * Articulated leftist principles, as written in, say, the Communist Manifesto, AND * The fact that these people mostly switched to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act was passed, and gave us the Southern Strategy of Nixon and Reagan that basically became modern "conservatism".

yummyfajitas 11y ago
It's a bit silly to cite Nixon as a non-leftist, at least as a counterpoint to innguest claiming left wing andi-free market types are pro-segregation. Nixon was a Republican mainly because he was anti-soviet. His domestic policies included wage and price controls, ending the gold standard, creating the EPA, federalizing medicaid and proposing an Obamacare-like health law. Nixon seems to support innguest's (unnecessarily partisan) point - opposition to civil rights does seem to require opposition to free markets.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  If we are going by the political map in usage at the time when Nixon ran and governed, then he was a right-winger. That today's political spectrum is far to the right of Nixon is not a fact about Nixon at all, but instead a fact about history after Nixon.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Nope. To borrow a quote from Wikipedia: "by identifying himself with a policy whose purpose was inflation's defeat, Nixon made it difficult for Democratic opponents ... to criticize him. His opponents could offer no alternative policy that was either plausible or believable since the one they favored was one they had designed but which the president had appropriated for himself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Economy I guess the 1970's Democrats were also not left wing?
innguest 11y ago
You can't be serious. You're tying to convince me that someone passed a law interfering with the market and they are not leftists? Please. Do you even understand what left and right are? Right is not where Hitler lives. Hitler lives in the Left together with Democrats. Also not far from Republicans in an American context (unless we wax lyrical about founding fathers). In the right sit Anarchists. So your suggestion that the human beings that passed laws interfering with the market are not leftists is wrong on its face.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  No, left and right are not defined by "statist" and "anarcho-capitalist", except in really especially cultish Libertarian Party meetings. Words have meanings: * Left: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics * Right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics There is also the problem that, as noted, many/most of the actual individuals behind today's anarcho-capitalist movement are in fact the same people (or their children/grandchildren) behind segregation and Jim Crow. The far-right has changed its propaganda, not its actual ideas.
  - innguest 11y ago
    Leftists love "definitions" just like Christians like quoting from the bible. You can quote from definitions given by your priests, the academics, all you want. Of course they've defined things to make themselves look good. Leftist churches, I mean, universities, defined leftism to be good and fuzzy and caring and they defined the right to mean evil discriminating people that can't give speeches on campus because leftists won't let them? I'm so surprised. I'm sorry if the world isn't neatly defined the way you wish but there's no political difference between Hitler and Obama - both think it's OK to bring legalized violence into the free market and both were OK taking money from a group of people and giving that money to another group of people (rich/poor, jew/german). Your State-sanctioned wikipedia articles are cute but how would you explain to a kid that it's OK to steal from the rich except if they are jewish? Easy, you tell them the Left has redefined the political axis to make themselves look good, and you tell them there's a group of people in the Right that believe stealing is not OK period, not from the rich, not from jewish people, not from anyone. Kids understand that. Stealing is wrong, even if Obama does it. In summary, if you think the definition of Left and Right are those given by some French people hundreds of years ago and that the term "evolved in its meaning" then you would benefit from the Chinese proverb: "the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names" First, why do we drop the "traditional definitions"? Because they change throughout time. Easy. We need constants. So Philosophy decided that Left is totalitarianism and right is anarchy, that way we neatly have a spectrum where we can place all political ideas! Isn't that neat? Isn't that more useful than a changing definition that people have to consult Encyclopedias to talk about? That old leftist strategy of delaying the debate by saying "you don't even know what such and such means", lately seen employed by feminists (another group that only looks at the definition of the word, and not the actions of those who say they espouse the ideology).