Leftism vs Rightism

[Fight!]

As many of you know, this forum is filled with threads where a leftist vs rightist debate occurs. Now I want to know where you all stand on this matter. I would like to know the following:

• Which you prefer, leftism or rightism (If you don't have a say either way and are perfectly central on the political compass, that's fine, but this thread is only for rightism vs leftism.)
• Why you are a leftist/rightist
• Your favorite Pro/Anti Socialism/Communism/Capitalism/etc. quote

Please don't get too worked up if you disagree with a statement made by another poster. I'd prefer no debate gets out of hand.

[Gauvin]

1."rightism"

2. Because when coupled with other forms of liberalism, it provides the most individual freedom.

3.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. - Alexis de Tocqueville

by democracy he means liberal democracy

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. - Winston Churchill

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. - Thomas Paine

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. - C.S. Lewis

[pchalk]

1."rightism"

2. Because when coupled with other forms of liberalism, it provides the most individual freedom.

3. by democracy he means liberal democracy

i cant say i really like simplifying my political stance in this 2 dimensional spectrum but right fits me best basiclly for the same reasons as Gauvin here

[removeduser_487563287433]

I don't tend to like people who are enthusiastic to declare themselves as one or the other.

[Foreign Fruitcake]

I don't tend to like people who are enthusiastic to declare themselves as one or the other.

Concise, articulate and to the point.

[Celsius]

1. Rightism

2. Didnt say I was either. Just which one I preferred.

3. If it wasn't for capitalism you wouldn't be sat at a computer reading this.

[Desperado †]

3. If it wasn't for capitalism you wouldn't be sat at a computer reading this.

Lol, nice try but the internet was helped on by government investment.

[MathiasOfAthens]

1. Rightism

2. Didnt say I was either. Just which one I preferred.

3. If it wasn't for capitalism you wouldn't be sat at a computer reading this.

Really cause the computer was developed by the government and only privatized after. And last time I checked Ikea comes from a socialist country so clearly inovation exists in social market economies.

[cfmonkey45]

If you're younger than thirty and aren't a liberal, you have no heart. If you're older than thirty and aren't a conservative, you have no brain.

-Anonymous

Right-winger. Although, in America, it would probably mean that I support rugged individualism, a free market economy, and traditionally conservative Jeudeo-Christian moral values. In most other world nations, this is center, or center-left.

[hellheaven1987]

1. Social Liberalism (those guys who are in center, not right or left).

2. Partial socialism + partial capitalism.

3. Merc warfare?? That is socialism + capitalism.

[Pious Agnost]

Which you prefer, leftism or rightism (If you don't have a say either way and are perfectly central on the political compass, that's fine, but this thread is only for rightism vs leftism.)

• Why you are a leftist/rightist
• Your favorite Pro/Anti Socialism/Communism/Capitalism/etc. quote.

Economic Right, Social Left. Redistribution of wealth is stupid, and the way conservatives seem to go about social things is also stupid

If you're younger than thirty and aren't a liberal, you have no heart. If you're older than thirty and aren't a conservative, you have no brain.

-Anonymous

Also my favourite quote

[Juvenal]

As many of you know, this forum is filled with threads where a leftist vs rightist debate occurs. Now I want to know where you all stand on this matter.

Left/Right is a system for trying to force everyone into two camps: loyalist and opposition. It is imposed on a spectrum of opinion where very few people actually hold the ideal views in their entirety.

It is a form of simplification which enable the creation of a ruling group where members subscribe to the doctrine, compromising their own beliefs in exchange for privileges and enhanced power over those outside the group.

It is ironic that the extremes of Left and Right are both totalitarian, subsuming individual freedom to the State.

False Dilemma

The informal fallacy of false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy) involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options. Closely related are failing to consider a range of options and the tendency to think in extremes, called black-and-white thinking. Strictly speaking, the prefix "di" in "dilemma" means "two". When a list of more than two choices is offered, but there are other choices not mentioned, then the fallacy is called the fallacy of false choice, or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses. False dilemma can arise intentionally, when fallacy is used in an attempt to force a choice ("If you are not with us, you are against us.") But the fallacy can arise simply by accidental omission—possibly through a form of wishful thinking or ignorance—rather than by deliberate deception ("I thought we were friends, but all my friends were at my apartment last night and you weren't there.")
When two alternatives are presented, they are often, though not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities. This can lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options are typically presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy can be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.

[chilon]

Left/Right is a system for trying to force everyone into two camps: loyalist and opposition. It is imposed on a spectrum of opinion where very few people actually hold the ideal views in their entirety.

It is a form of simplification which enable the creation of a ruling group where members subscribe to the doctrine, compromising their own beliefs in exchange for privileges and enhanced power over those outside the group.

It is ironic that the extremes of Left and Right are both totalitarian, subsuming individual freedom to the State.

False Dilemma

quoted for truth!


Neither "Leftist" nor "Rightist" ill conceived political extremism is beneficial or positive for society.

[razor-]

What exactly does the left and the right constitute these days?

[Enemy of the State]

1. Right
2. Because I value myself
3.

Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the 'practical,' but the only moral system in history.

Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups — workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers — exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society — the symbol of America.

[Angrychris]

Doesnt matter regaurdless

[justicar5]

1. Left

2. Because what benefits society as a whole benefits the individual.

Favourite anti laisse fairre quote:

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

[L]et me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power. Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era. It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.
Paul Krugman, Losing Our Country

Markets operate by buying and selling, they treat things as commodities, and unless prevented from doing so they turn people also into commodities. Until control was imposed to prevent it the outcome of market operations was either chattel slavery or some virtual equivalent, peonage or serfdom or naked children towing trucks in the mines. It was the "free" market that hunted the blacks through African forests and brought them to the auction block in Charleston. Chattel slavery, and exploitation of "free" workers that was hardly better, were ended only when (and where) government imposed control upon the market to prevent these things happening.
George Walford, "Friedman Or Free Men?"

Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it. -anonymous.

[gewehr36]

1. Left

2. Because what benefits society as a whole benefits the individual.

I would agree with this though I consider myself more of a Rightist if I have to choose sides. Your reason for choosing left is also the basis behind Nazism, which is considered to be in the far right spectrum.

[justicar5]

I would agree with this though I consider myself more of a Rightist if I have to choose sides. Your reason for choosing left is also the basis behind Nazism, which is considered to be in the far right spectrum.

nope nazism was about what benefits the race benefits society.

[Dr. Croccer]

Leftism. It's the more logical and humane choice over the absurdity that is the Right wing. The only Righties I have some sort of respect for are moderate Conservatives and Liberals, both of which are scorned by the ''true Right''.