I like to consider myself leftist. But it’s true that I don’t agree in all that most current left wing political parties stand for.
I think all human are born equal, and should have a good life. That politics should be used to improve everyone’s life.
But in the what does this mean or how to do it I feel more and more differences lately.
To give an example, I cannot really stand identity politics. I think that the best course of action is to dissolve identitarian (is that word real?) groups instead of exacerbating their differences. I feel like people should be getting rid of labels instead of having more and more labels every day.
That’s just a personal opinion, based on the idea that if you define different groups the chance of conflict between groups is bigger than if you define only one group. And I do get the idea behind identity politics within the left wing spectrum. I just don’t agree that’s the best course of action.
I don’t consider myself left leaning. Both left and right are corrupt and neither actually practice what they preach. The left is the US is currently the lesser of two evils though. I do consider myself a socialist-libertarian. I think government should be there to keep the populace safe, and provide basic human necessities to all, and no more. The govt should not be able to execute capital punishment nor declare war. Retalitory strikes, defense and supporting allies defending themselves are all fine, but we could get rid of most of the military and funnel that money back to socialist programs and be a MUCH wealthier and happier country.
Yes. They are fanatics too. Like Twitter but instead of wanting to kill people for profit, IRS wanting to kill people for not being left.
Come on, that’s not true. We just want to “re-educate” you guys
Anti-Conservative
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
- Frank Wilhoit
Thanks, Frank! Very eloquently put!
My priorities in politics is:
- Don’t wreck the economy.
- Uphold the rule of law.
In my country that makes me right leaning. In the US with the current president that apparently makes me a leftist.
You communist!
Yes. Signing up is not easy. Most people here can understand written instructions and have some basic technical knowledge. People who are not stupid tend to lean left.
I’m team right-wing.
The right chicken wing is always tastier, so I eat that first.
Edit: Wait, this is politics? Wrong thread.
I promote right-wing policies: you should always use the right wings for your airplane, using whatever wings you happen to have left in stock is a recipe for disaster. Left-wing policies are dangerous.
See, this is why so many right-wingers are seen as simply not intelligent enough to understand basic science. Numerous studies have shown that the left-wing is on average, plumper, juicier, and more tender.
I bet you probably also believe those wing pieces with two bones are better than the big one-bone wings that look like little chicken legs, too. Typical right-winger, your brain has been melted by right-wing propaganda.
Sorry, but reality has a left-wing bias. Educate yourself, and do better.
I’m as left-wing as they come but to imply that drummies are somehow superior to flats is wrong-headed and shows your own biases. I’ll concede that the little chicken legs are easier (and more fun) to eat, but the quality of the delicate meat between the two little wing bones in the flats ones makes them more of a delight to me.
Do Twix have wings?
worldwide, I would put most people on the right side of the American left/right. there are a lot of people in south asia for example. china and russia are conservative as fuck also. without looking at a wikipedia table I think that’s probably most people already.
Western Europe is pretty leftish I guess, but it’s not a lot of people
The American “left” is on the far-right of almost every other country in the world. Not right, not even center. You need recalibrating
There are a lot of countries where being gay results in prison or death
In my country (one where its technically illegal to insult people based on their sexual orientation), a candidate that wants to make civil unions legal for same-sex couples is considered left-wing because of that
you are thinking of the western countries, not the world. most of the worlds population is not in the west. most are living in highly conservative societies where the social progression led by the western world is decades behind.
By LEFT do you infer compassion, empathy, and class solidarity? In contrast, by RIGHT do you infer me-first, only my rights matter and only those in my clan deserve to be cared about?
Then, yes.
Spoken like a true liberal.
Well we know where you stand without doubt
Most people everywhere are slightly left of centre*. Most leaders everywhere are slightly right of centre*.
*Not in the American sense. Y’all crazy.
Not only that, I’ve tried pitching the fediverse to right wing people, but they didn’t bite.
Even the crypto bros that were all about decentralization couldn’t see why a decentralized social media platform was superior.
This also didn’t matter for people who care about “free speech”.
You think the allure of being fully independent and having your own instance would be right up their alley given how they value independence, but nope.
Seriously? Why isn’t there a right wing instance? My guess is that a right wing person can’t fathom owning something that benefits others which doesn’t give them back profit.
“free speech”, as your quotation marks imply, does not really exist outside of theory. In reality, free speech is a set of laws governing hate speech or other dangerous speech.
Both the right and the left have ideas of what they think these laws should be.
But there is no such thing as “free speech” in the real world.
Maybe they would like nostr more
Like everything on the right, decentralization is a means to an end, not a value in itself. They only care about it when it’s useful for helping them get ahead. Just like they only care about free speech when it’s them speaking to people who don’t want to hear their bullshit.
You think the allure of being fully independent and having your own instance would be right up their alley given how they value independence, but nope.
Because it’s not about freedom of speech for them, it’s about freedom to force people to listen. Having their own server where they can shout at each other all day doesn’t serve their purpose. Their panties get wet by forcing others to listen.
Trump’s tremendous social media platform truth dot barf runs on Activity Pub, they just don’t federate with anyone by default. It’s like they don’t want dissenting views on there. Weird.
i think there were one or two right wing instances, but they got defederated from everyone
Which were they? As in what was their domain name?
Do they still exist? I’m honestly curious if they are active or if it’s abandoned
The only one I know of shut down and the admin posted this message:
I knew Lemmy had its challenges, but I hoped it would evolve for the better. Sadly after 2 years, the culture of censorship through defederation has only grown stronger.
So they shutdown because they couldn’t federate with any other instances and considered that censorship. A few people in that thread linked to another instance I’ve never heard of as an alternative and that one 404s if you type in the address so I guess they’re all still on reddit and twitter.
So they shutdown because they couldn’t federate with any other instances and considered that censorship
Damn, I actually didn’t see that coming, I guess they will move the goal post from any starting point.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate and ask: How is it not censorship?
Cause no one is stopping you from going to said instance and just having the discussion there.
If there was this super important leak that needed to be out there, if it’s posted on a right wing instance that is a defederated ghost town, it’s still out there. People can link to it and leverage the instance to have the needed discussions.
Censorship means removing access, defederation does not wipe it off of the Internet.
I would argue that censorship includes the suppression of information in its definition, not only it’s removal.
Because “crypto bros” care about making money, not any ideology, except in a performative sense. If you pitched the fediverse to the original researchers inventing cryptocurrency and the early adopters, they would likely be receptive. But these are no longer associated with the current crypto crowd.
They don’t care about making money, they care about gambling and having a gambling addiction and trying to justify it
Why isn’t there a right wing instance?
Because all other instances would assume that it’s for Nazis and defederate.
there are 3 major right-wing instances: lemmy.ml(ran by the Lemmy developers), lemmygrad.ml(the openly fascist version of lemmy.ml) and hexbear.net.
if anyone wants to argue, I don’t. Anyone supporting Russia is right-wing. Authoritarianism is inherently conservative, reactionary and therefore right-wing.
Authoritarianism is inherently conservative
Sorry, but no
There’s a reason the step up from just left/right axis is the up/down of libertarian v authoritarian. Auth-left is very much a thing and is what tankies are
It does seem that way from what I’ve seen. What am I? I’m the guy whose got it figured out. Always vote for the worst candidate. Its reverse psychology and works like a charm
yes
This is the fediverse it’s full of new people, adventurers, change makers. The majority of people who would be interested in this platform will have a more progressive bent. So the majority of people here will be more accepting of liberal policies.
Just say yes
Quibble: Many here are explicitly leftist, in the a leftist-not-liberal sense, and will even use “liberal” derogatorily. So, progressive, yes, but liberal, not necessarily.
to make matters more fun, many ‘explicitly leftist’ lemmings are tankies (blind supporters of russia, china, north korea, etc), who are explicitly not leftist but authoritarians masquerading in the skinsuit of the people’s revolution.
Good point, many think left = liberal = US democrats who are centrists at best from the international perspective. So no, most people on here probably aren’t actual leftists, but I’m guessing when they say they ‘lean left’ they mean US-liberal-not-conservative, not socialist or whatever.
From my perspective I think that that is very silly. I don’t care for purity tests, but what would I know? I’m just a dirty libertarian.
It isn’t a purity test, it’s a necessary accommodation of the fact that people in the US (and I say this as an American) think that the left ends at progressive liberalism, while everyone else in the world sees progressive liberalism as center-left at best because they acknowledge that ‘the left’ extends quite far past the bounds of Liberalism (the philosophy, not the political leaning), because Liberalism is about individualism and property rights but most people to the left of that are collectivist in some way shape or form.
Liberal policies are an actual thing, a thing that leftists frequently disagree with.
Libertarians are often placed on the right part of the left-right divide. The fact you’ve chosen the label libertarian instead of conservative is animated by the exact same “purity test” that you find so silly.
I would like to throw out there that the ACLU is a libertarian organization that would likely line up with the majority of the beliefs of Lemmy users. With that said I understand most people aren’t using libertarian in its ‘correct’ meaning as the ACLU does.
Yea I tend to think than when someone identifies as a Libertarian they almost certainly don’t mean a civil libertarian, which is how the aclu actually identifies themselves.
We have grown from a roomful of civil libertarians to more than 4 million members, activists, and supporters across the country. The ACLU is now a nationwide organization with a 50-state network of staffed affiliate offices filing cases in both state and federal courts. We appear before the Supreme Court more than any other organization except the Department of Justice.
This is literally the only time the word libertarian appears in their own history https://www.aclu.org/about/aclu-history
I only know because I interned there and it’s something they talked about. Maybe it was always preceded with ‘civil’ I just don’t remember that as well. The big issue amongst the workers when I was there was that in principle they supported Citizens United, and most of the employees did not support it in practice.
Just adding my experience to the topic, not sure why I got down voted for it. I’m not trying to push anyone to be libertarian just pointing out other ways the definition can be used.
You realize that libertarianism is not a left right spectrum of the political orientation, correct?
For example Stalin was an authoritarian based in leftist ideology. Hitler is an authoritarian based in right-wing ideology.
Notice that while their economic goals are at complete odds with one another, they are both authoritarians.
You realize that libertarianism is not a left right spectrum of the political orientation, correct?
For example Stalin was an authoritarian based in leftist ideology. Hitler was an authoritarian based in right-wing ideology.
Notice that while their economic goals are at complete odds with one another, they are both authoritarians.
I’m libertarian because I believe in freedom of choice. I’m not a conservative because the only things I care about conserving are the oceans and the forests.
I hope that in the future we can stop using the worst monsters and strawmen from our peers chosen political affiliation to color our view of those peers.
You can’t be both a libertarian and pretend to care about parks and forests. Pick one.
That’s not true. I’m pretty sure most people don’t 100% agree with The strictest definition of their chosen label.
I’m not entirely sure about what are the reasoning behind your comment, but i see it as : llibertarian implies no state + parks and forest require state = incompatibility. I’d disagree on the parks and forest require state, i thinl they only need organization, meaning one or more NGO could handle it. Accepting this, not that much incompatibility between libertarian and forest remains (accepting libertarian as left wing meaning that does not imply private property)
It wouldn’t kill you to read
But based on your username, that may not be in your skill set
You’re about one “and I think healthcare is a human right” from being a progressive/dem soc.
I like the Democratic socialists. I don’t like it when they seize power that will be upsurped by the next administration in powerand used to oppress people.
you forgot to switch alts to argue with yourself
You seem very confused I edited a comment and it posted to itself. It’s the same fucking comment should I have deleted the tree and collapsed the thread?
Libertarian as the USA mean or the rest of the world mean?
As in the traditional meaning of the word
Thanks. I look forward to learning about libertarianism with and from you. Not saying I’ll agree, but that I look forward to learning more.
Personally myself, I’m a bit of a geoist and a bit of a minarchist. I would advise that if you are interested you should start reading, John Lock and David Henry Thoreaus essays on governent and from there branch out.
it’s full of new people,
Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not a new people. I’ve been a people for almost my whole life. I bet most of us have.
Not me, I’ve only been a person for the past couple years. Prior to that I was a caffeine-powered AI.
I don’t adopt views wholesale - I evaluate each issue on an individual basis, so my views tend to be a mixed bag. From a political standpoint, most people would probably see me as an unreliable ally as my views can be hard to predict. While I agree with many, if not most, “left-wing” ideas, there are still plenty of others that would get me labeled as a Nazi MAGA Republican.
That said, on Lemmy I’m definitely in the minority when it comes to holding certain beliefs that many would label “right-wing,” even though on other issues I can out–left-wing even most leftists.
