Munden&#39;s Bar

I presume you've been following

no_right_turn's psots about Britain's proposed new regime of anti-terrorism laws.

Actually had an interesting conversation with one of my flatmates over the weekend about this regime. His perspective was that these kinds of freedoms (speech, etc) were not actually important in comparison to political and economic stability - that being the best way to ensure the best living conditions for the greatest number. Once again highlighting in my own mind that differences of this sort are not due to the right-wing not being as smart as the left, but about wholly different priorities.

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But that is just plain wrong!
If you look anywhere at all in History you find it just doesn't work that way at all. O_o

A good economy is useless without fair distribution of the wealth that it brings. If people are not free to complain or protest when they are being treated unfairly, it all falls over.

*shudders*

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I'm not so sure it is incorrect. Look at Athens' brghtest period - under Pisustratus, a de facto dictator. It's most turbulent, and ultimately what broke its military power, times were when the ideals of democracy were at their height - when the demos was actually running the show.

Sparta is a good example of a non-democratic system which worked extremely well for a long time; their society only started to have problems once their military tactics were adpoted by Corinth (et al) and they failed to adapt. But nothing lasts forever.

China seems to be doing okay without those "basic" human rights claimed by liberals.

Ultimately what we're talking about here is "what is more important, the person, or the people". The liberal view being that you can't have "people" without "persons", which is not proven.

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I think you misunderstand.

the best way to ensure the best living conditions for the greatest number

The problem with dictators is that you can't get rid of them when they turn bad. Good dictators are few and far between. But I wasn't talking about dictatorship - you can still have freedom of speech in a dictatorship.

I was talking about fair distribution of wealth. The only reason we have reasonable working conditions now is due to others standing up and fighting for them. Without the ability to complain about the hand you get dealt, the poor only get poorer. In general this creates poor living conditons. Poor living conditions lead to civil unrest time and time again. Civil unrest leads to a poor economy.

Sure, in an ideal world where everyone is good and fair noone would need the freedom to protest. We don't live in that world.

China has some of the poorest living conditions in the world - expecially considering the over-all wealth. The majority live in povety.

Liberal? I don't know what liberal is anymore. It has been applied to so many different things... It seems to be more of an emotive word than anything.

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Good dictators are few and far between.

Good democracies are also few and far between! It's often a lose-lose situation, as neither really judges the decsion-making capabilities of the leadership on merit. A dictator is more likely to be a better decision maker simply due to the rigour of ascending to the position. I think the example of leadership like Bush is a fairly clear recent example that democracies can't be trusted to make good decisions. Just as the problems in China's Great Leap Forward (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_leap_forward) are an indication of the fallability of a cental dictatorship.

The key idea of market economic theory, as put forward by Adam Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith) and his successors is that no central authority is inherently capable of meeting such demands, and hence a de-centralised and individal decision making process is needed.

There's a similar disagreement going on about the nature of computing in in the future. The two options being centralised mainframe computers running a large number of terminals, or a decentralised arrangement where each individual computer can meet the needs of its user. That's slightly tangential; but ultimately both are trying to get the most efficient use of processor power to the greatest number of people. Multi-nationals compared to small businesses would be a similar economic situation.

Ultimately it is the concentration of voting power, either in the form of shares, or in election funding, which allows people to skew the agenda in their own favour.

But I wasn't talking about dictatorship - you can still have freedom of speech in a dictatorship.

True: but economics and politics and "human rights" are all inextricably linked. A dictator cannot allow the population to speak out against her, because that could ultimately lead to her disposal. "Free speech" allows your mistakes to be promulgated, and if confidence in your leadership is undermined too much, popular unrest will start up, which is just a pain. Only by keeping the population ignorant can you hope to maintain the necessary illusion of infallibility which is a pre-condition for people to let you run their lives.

Yet, democracies are fickle and capricious. Look at how divided our own election was... people have so quickly forgotten the last National government, and how badly they ran things. Or, as in Athens, they might execute Victorious Generals on a whim!

The majority live in povety.

One unfortunate reality is that in a society with economic specialisation, such as we have had since we started tool using, you need all echelons of society to be filled. Simply, someone has to be a poor farmer - that's the nature and result of civilisation. The American Dream, that everyone can be wealthy, that everyone can have a secondary or tertiary industry job... is patently untrue, and unfeasible without a technological advance allowing fully automated primary industries. This specialised division of labour is what allows our society to function.

Liberal? I don't know what liberal is anymore.

At it's core, the concept of liberalism is that people should be left as free of rules and regulations as possible in order to allow everyone the same freedom. The role of government is simply, and only, to ensure that individuals are not interfered with.

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"The American dream"

AAAARGH!

Are you American? I know the answer is no, so why spout that when you don't live in the country and never have? The only thing the US ever had going for it was a fast pool of easily exploitable resources that propped up their standard of living for a while. I'd argue that the New Zealand dream of an egalitarian society is far more rounded and achievable than the American dream of a V8 for everyone.

There is no reason why someone has to live below the poverty line just because they work in primary industry. In fact given the relatively small number of people needed to actually grow crops in a mechanised society, that argument holds no water at all...

Chris

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I meant "a vast pool". Ooops.

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"The American Dream" is really just the most easily recognisable and distilled version of the same underlying principle of all liberal philosophy. That is, that a person can, through hard work and good luck, rise to a position of wealth and influence. It is this optimism about the condition of a human life which is at the very heart of virtually all western political thought. It rejects the caste system which is still somewhat entrenched in India, or the class system that prevailed in England and has nothing to do with a specific car you'd like to drive.

There is no reason why someone has to live below the poverty line just because they work in primary industry.

This is true; but is also true that by-and-large, your farmed will be poorer than your marketting executive, despite the absolute necessity of the former and the dubious plausibility of the latter. The divide will be exacerbated if the marketing exec also actually owns the farm - and this is the situation we have in numerous parts of the world.

To that extent the land-seizures of Mugabe's regime have a rational basis - white people got their advantage by subjugating the natives, and there is no inherent market force which will dislodge them from that position. His mistake was in execution, since those to whom farms were granted lacked the capability of running them. It was, I suppose a radical form of "affirmative action", and an implicit rejection of the American Dream, viz that it is just that: A Dream.

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You think Bush is the result of democracy? I'm not so sure that is true. America does not actually have democracy. I'm not sure what you would call their system, but it isn't really democracy.

Bad democratic leaders are easier to get rid off than bad dictators, and the process involves less bloodshed. Not that I care too much for democracy either - just the right of people to have their opinion heard. You can have that in a dictatorship. You can, arguably, also have it in an oligarchy. That would depend on the power and intent of certain important individuals.

I say a good dictator would let the people speak - after all, isn't it better that they say it to your face than plot behind your back? The role of a dictator is to look after and do what is best for the people. The will of the people inevitably impacts the governance of a country, be it through words or through bloodshed. Bad rulers have poor countries, and unhappy people. The key is having a more powerful propaganda mill than your enemies.

You don't have to run people's lives! That is not a useful part of being a dictator. The more involved you are in their affairs, the more they will come to despise you.

The issue isn't dictatorship vs. democracy. It is good government vs. bad.

New Zealand's version of democracy is better than the Athenian version. I am happy with my country. Sure they don't always agree with me, but at least I am allowed to disagree.

The question is actually, what type of government and laws allow for the highest living conditions for the greatest number. This isn't the same as whatever questions you seem to be answering. O_o

Living conditions have risen since socialism came on the scene. The economy doesn't seem to have suffered at all...
Socialism, as a militarist movement, doesn't relie on free speech - but it is a whole lot messier when it doesn't have it.

At it's core, the concept of liberalism is that people should be left as free of rules and regulations as possible in order to allow everyone the same freedom.

However, liberal can also apply to Social policies...

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You think Bush is the result of democracy?

The USA presents itself as the paragon of democractic virtue, but the real truth is, as you suggest, otherwise. The people were asked to speak, and it turned out they had nothing to say.

I say a good dictator would let the people speak - after all, isn't it better that they say it to your face than plot behind your back?

I'm just going to quote a bit of Machiavelli; as is my wont.

For this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody. (The Prince, Ch XIX)

The point being that by controlling your public image, you can make it difficult for conspiracies to get going and make them form in hostile conditions. Only by limiting the freedom of people to say bad things about you, can you ensure you are loved. This is a rule almost universally followed by dictators, to great effect!

The question is actually, what type of government and laws allow for the highest living conditions for the greatest number. This isn't the same as whatever questions you seem to be answering.

Read between the lines. I've argued that Right Wing governments create an environment where people are left to their own devices, and that this allows the best decision making to be done, since a central administration of whatever sort cannot cope with the complexities of the real world.

Living conditions have risen since socialism came on the scene. The economy doesn't seem to have suffered at all...

Technology has risen too... it is the energy-input into our closed thermodynamic system of economics. :) And actually the economy has gone through many upheavals since Socialism came on the scene. The crash of '87 and the economic downturn around the mid-eighties is largely thought to have been caused by socialism and economic interventionism. Basically, WWII created a huge booming economy in the West which socialism bled dry over the next forty years.

However, liberal can also apply to Social policies...

Yeah, unfortunately it's been appropriated to refer to the process of enabling people to compete in the level playing field. I.e. to refer to out-of-market activites.

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The point being that by controlling your public image, you can make it difficult for conspiracies to get going and make them form in hostile conditions.

I guess that depends on how well you treat your people otherwise. If the mutterings are warrented they will be spoken, and change will come. If you keep your people happy, and maintain a translucent government, people will be too apathetic to do anything. I guess it depends on culture a little bit too. In some cultures you are supposed to question, is others you are not. For example, if you started persecuting the Scottish for saying bad things about their rulers, you would end up with no more Scots. Same goes for quite a few other cultures. I guess you could breed that out of them, but that would take time. It's better to listen to the critisium, than ignore it or penilise it.

You can control public image without taking away the right of others to speak. Where do you draw the line? How harsh should the penalty be?

I've argued that Right Wing governments create an environment where people are left to their own devices, and that this allows the best decision making to be done, since a central administration of whatever sort cannot cope with the complexities of the real world.

That is not exclusive to the 'right'. Many left wing parties also believe in small governments. I think we may have differing views on what is left, and what is right. Facisium is also right wing... and not exactly small government. I don't think that ideaology belongs to either side. Anarchism is more left than right - but believes in no government at all.

I argue that people are essentially stupid and selfish. When you leave them to their own devices they turn to slavery. Slavery = poor living conditions for the majority.

Also, technology has risen in part because more people have access to education. More people have access to education because of the rise of socialism.

War always creates money. I'd rather be poor.

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Though I have to say, the period studied the most is the 100 -150 years after Peisistratos died. These are the years we know of as the golden years of Athens, and it is Perikles not Peisistratos whose influence shines the brightest.

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Yes, I have been following that.

Yeah, it's not about smarts, it's about selfishness and self-delusion.

The following is a bit of a rant that is probably incorrect in places, I'm not striving for accuracy just the general thrust of the argument, and I can;t be botherd lookig up sources at present, so with that in mind :

Political and economic stability are never good for the majority, only for those in power, and they definitely do not ensure the best living conditions for the greatest number.

The longer a period of stability lasts, the more wealth and prosperity are controlled by the elite and the more downtrodden the masses become. I wish I could remember the text that showed this with numerous historical examples.

Conversely the majority of the population are far better off in a politicaly unstable climate such as we currently have in New Zealand), because the government needs to actually please the people to stay in power.

Note that there is a significant difference betwen just being "politically unstable" and "civil war". I would agree that civil war is a bad thing, but political instability is not equivalent to civil war, or an occupation. New Zealand is politically unstable. Iraq is politically unstable and under occupation by a foreign power and on the verge of civl war. Its not the political instability that is the problem!

In "real" terms, in other words adjusted for inflation, average living conditions in Western countries have been steadily decreasing since the seventies, because of the accumulation of money at the top end. This is disguised by the fact that in absolute terms they have apparently been increasing, as we generally have more "stuff" now.

But the reason we have more "stuff" is because it's being imported cheaply from countries where workers do not have very many rights and are exploited, such as China, Korea, India, the Philipines, etc, so even though there is an apparent increase in living conditions for the minority of the world's population that live in "Western" countries, the majority of the world's populations are not really seeing those benefits.

And at the same time we buy that stuff by borrowing money, meaning that although we may own assets, as soon as someone calls in their markers, those assets will be repossesed

To summarize, we seem to be living well, but it's built on slave labour and excessive debt, and it won't last forever, no matter how stable you try to keep it, it will get steadily harder to keep stable, and the longer you try to keep it stable the bigger the "correction" when it finally gets out of control.

If it is contolled long enough, eventually the leaders will be forced to implement stricter and stricter totalitarian controls in attempts to maintain that stability (eventually? how about now?), and this will, at some point, result in violent revolt and actual physical overthrow of governments involved when either the economy collapses and/or enough people get pissed off enough to fight.

The important point here is that it doesn't matter whether you believe such revolutionaries are terrorists or martyrs, it doesn't matter if their actual motives are ideologically pure, whether pro-liberty or whether they are religious fundamentalists, or whether they are just common criminals. Repressive legislation and social discontent will inevitably generate them anyway.

What the US government doesn't actively tell it's people (but which they can find out pretty easily by reading the yearly FBI reports on terrorism), is that every year the vast majority (about 97% last time I looked) of terrorist attacks in the continental US were U.S citizens acting against government or corporates with no influence from external terrorist groups.

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Yeah, it's not about smarts, it's about selfishness and self-delusion.

NO! Selfishness imputes a negative moral imperative on the right wing which I think is unfair. Self-delusion is one of the various forms of assuming a position "I know best" - the ultimate self delusion.

I honestly believe that the right wing have the same basic motivation - the improvement of manking - as the left wing. Their methods are different, their goal is the same. Sure, there are patently evil people working the right-wing system without a sense of fraternity with humanity, but there have equally been people using the left-wing systems the same way.

The right-wing view is based on the notion that central control is inefficient, that's all. The left-wing like to think that if you gave someone sufficient magic power, you could wave a wand and everything would be alright; the right wing argue that nobody can be given enough power, and that even if they could, their "help" might take the wrong form. The huge cuts to industry (etc) in the 1980s were a symptom of the Left's inability to maintain their interventionist policies - they were unsustainable.

Taking a simple example, which I am sure you will have observed, is that if one person quietly assumes the role of doing the household chores, the remainder of the flat will disengage from them. In my first flat, Sarah used to clean the kitchen as a matter of urgency and over the course of the yearmost everyone else built their habits taking advantage of it - not maliciously, but because you naturally adapt to your environment. When Sarah left, the place rapidly deteriorated as people hadn't those good habits - she had created an atmosphere of indolence by her hard work. The left-wing economic interventionism is the same thing on a large scale, and just as Sarah was unable to maintain her role as organiser indefinitely, so too are governments unable to endlessly print money to inject into an economy. If Sarah had ignored the dishes (etc) early on, the work could have been evenly spread throughout the year and when she left, the others would have had an easier adjustment. So, economic interventionism merely delays, and to some extent exacerbates the realities which the hands-off policies of the right genuinely acknowledge.

One of the problems though with Right Wing governments such as the Bush administration is that they talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. US tarrifs on NZ steel, for example, are an example where on a genuine western-world-even-playingfield, the US is not competative, and unwilling to reform to become competative.

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Political and economic stability are never good for the majority, only for those in power, and they definitely do not ensure the best living conditions for the greatest number.

I actaully agree. There are a number of problems within our pseudo-liberal money-based economy, and one of those is that, like any game, once you start winning it is easier to continue winning. This continues across generations - I am better placed to compete in the world than many people because of the success of my parents, which in turn was aided by the success of theirs. Obviously upsets occur from time-to-time, but on the whole we have a de facto caste system, which includes the bonded servitude of foreign labourers. The plight of coffee-growers in the Americas is just awful, as the landowner controls of land and rentals mean that by manufacturing one of the most lucrative crops around they can be earning poverty wages.

These unfair elements are entrenched - the IMF, World Trade Organisation and World Bank are diabolic instutions controlled by corporations who have no intention of reducing their profits of the benefit of anyone.

From: (Anonymous)

In my experience, people on the far right tend to have either a pretty warped idea of what constitutes the world being a better place, _or_ they have such a limited world-view and knowledge of history that they actually beleive in things like the trickle-down theory and the idea that cutting taxes increases growth.

There are of course fluffy ideologues on both sides (anyone who uses Marxist phraseology on the left, for instance) but I think that in general the left are more concerned with actual people than with some free-market financial abstraction of a person.

Chris

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Well... actually all of those things really do happen.

The tax-cuts under Thatcher in the UK caused economic growth, because people just had more money, plain and simple. Before she took power, the highest tax bracket was something like 80%... so of your 100000 you had 20K to spend, the rest was appropriated and arbitrarily inflated and then re-injected via government spending. The inflation was the problem, because it slows economic growth.

I think that in general the left are more concerned with actual people than with some free-market financial abstraction of a person.

Yes, but, as discussed elsewhere, that direct-focus doesn't necessarily yield results. Think of it like a laplace transform - you can't solve the equation directly because it's too icky, so you make it look like something else, solve that problem, then re-translate it.

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Yes, but, as discussed elsewhere, that direct-focus doesn't necessarily yield results. Think of it like a laplace transform - you can't solve the equation directly because it's too icky, so you make it look like something else, solve that problem, then re-translate it.

Funny that - the right does the same thing with money.

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I don't think that Thatcher is a good example. Wasn't there massive unemployment during her reign, not to mention a whole slew of social problems that haunt Pommy-land to this day? Her (already rich) friends got rich, the working classes got the sh!t kicked out of them...

More recently, pretty much every Western nation that has raised taxes has seen an increase in growth -- the US under Clinton, NZ under Clarke and Cullen.

Chris

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That period of unemployment was a "market correction". It was an unfortunate side-effect to businesses having to re-adjust to "real" market conditions without government protectionism.

Honest.

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The right wing view is based on the notion that central control is inefficient, that's all.

No - that is just one view the right wing have, not the defining view.
Monarchy is right wing, and central control...

The reason we talk about right and left wing is due to some French people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-Right_politics/temp). Arguably, the left wing has less to do with government.

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svendelmaus.livejournal.com

I honestly believe that the right wing have the same basic motivation - the improvement of manking - as the left wing.

From observation of the kinds of arguments put forward, I would say the driver for the "right wing" seems to be "Justice is more important than Mercy". The kinds of anecdotes used tend to be, "Here's a case where someone has gotten something they haven't deserved;" or even better, "They got what they didn't deserve, and it hurt them."

Oh, and there's often an underlying assumption that, even if the playing field is not level, it is Just -- which leads to the "hands off == virtuous" ideal.

In any case, blog-based political argument is hardly ever a valuable endeavour -- before you know it, I'd be pointing at the parable of the workers in the vineyard, and alienating all those with Views About Christianity as *well* as the Libertarians. ;)

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Oh, and there's often an underlying assumption that, even if the playing field is not level, it is Just -- which leads to the "hands off == virtuous" ideal.

Yes, you cut right to the heart of the matter. Essentially it's a belief in incremental decision making. You are in a better position to decide what is best for you than a government beaurocrat with your vital statistics on a bit of paper. Essentially you just scale up that analogy until you get to a free market.

There are serious problems with the whole thing.

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In any case, blog-based political argument is hardly ever a valuable endeavour -- before you know it, I'd be pointing at the parable of the workers in the vineyard, and alienating all those with Views About Christianity as *well* as the Libertarians.

I'm a bit less well equipped these days to discuss religion than economics... but there's no denying that the death of religion prophesied by many Enlightenment thinkers is well overdue, and that in fact it's recently making a come back. Who'd have thunk?

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Random comments, I cant be bothered checking them for concistency. I can believe contradictpry things, and apply fuzzy logic.

Actualy it's you thats making the assumption that selfishness is neccessarily negative. Selfishness in itself is not bad. It is primarily a positive survival trait when applied at an individual level, if everyone is selfish, statistically more people survive thwan when they think of others.

It's only at a large group level that selfishness becomes damaging and altruism becomes useful.

I agree that "self-delusional" is a derogatpry term, but in the case of most right wingers at present, it is also accurate.

It is actually obvious to everyone on both sides what is going on, but right wing leaders such as Bush decide to actively ignore objective reality and promote their own version of it. as can be seen by the comments not so long ago by Bush staffers complainng that journalists had such a "reality-based mindset".

To continue on about selfishness, I personally believe that the right wing are all about selfishness, and that the right wing mind set, while functional at an individual, or even tribal, level, is dysfunctional when applied to large communities. Yes, that sort of implies I have my own theory of social evolution, and that I consider it inherently wrong, when applied to large groups, but that is just my opinion.

So I'd disagree with your assertion that both ends of the spectrum want whats best for everyone.

In genral, the right wing want what's best for them. This wuld be fimne if "they" were everybody. The left wing are normally the onew who want what's best for everybody, evben if they don't agree with them.

Communism is all about centralized control, but the concept of communism is left wing, even though most so-called communist governments have been right wing dictatorships.

At the same time it is the right wing that have always historically controlled fiscal policy, just as Robert Muldoon and Margaret Thatcher did in the seventies and Bush and his cronies are doing now ion the US by basically printing money, and it has been the left wing that have really done the most toward implementing "free market" policies in New Zealand and much of Europe.

But I don't believe either fiscal policy or the degre of belief in centralized control is relevant to whether a government is left or right wing.

IMO, the simple definition of right wing vs left wing is that the left wing promote the idea that the people are more important than the leaders, and the right wing think that the leaders are more important than the people.

I'm sure many right wingers would argue, but the right wing is inherently conservative, and conservatism means standing for the status quo, which means that those who have power and money now will retain it and those that are poor will remain poor.

It's an attitude problem not a policy problem as such.

In a denocracy, what constitutes "the leaders" tends to be a larger group than under a dictatorship or a monarchy.

Even a monarch can be either right wing, and assume everyone is there to serve him and work to preserve the exisiting power of the nobles, or left wing and assume that he is there to serve the people (which includes the nobles). A fuedal system could be left wing, if everyone in it, or the majority at least, follow the principles of fealty well, with the vassals gladly providing their labout and tithes and the liege caring properly for their people and listening to them.

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I agree that "self-delusional" is a derogatpry term, but in the case of most right wingers at present, it is also accurate.

To be honest, not more so than left-wingers. Have a read of some Kropotkin and tell me he's more rational than Hayek...

But I don't believe either fiscal policy or the degre of belief in centralized control is relevant to whether a government is left or right wing.

This is the central philosophical division between the two camps; but as you rightly point out, a large part of the left/right divide in practise is in marketting. Bush's "right wing" government has some pretty protectionist and anti-market policies, as well as actually increasing the size and involvement of the government in all areas. These are more typical characteristics of a left-wing government! Yet he lacks the social-justice policies that characterise a left-wing government.

Also, the 1984 labour government in NZ was essentially as right-wing as you can get in terms of economic policy... so it is a bit of a jumble. I'd note that after 1984 we ceased our steady decline down the vrious rankings - some sign surely that they were on the right track with their economic policies.

But, while questioning his methods, I don't think you can argue that Bush is deliberately trying to inflict harm on the US public.

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This is the central philosophical division between the two camps

Okay, you keep saying that. I want proof.

I have NEVER found that to be the case at all.

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Yeah, cause you're citing such compelling evidence yourself...

The right (etc)... "is a marriage between two apparently contrasting ideological traditions. The first of these is classical liberal economics, particularly the free-market theories of Adam Smith, which were revived in the second half of the twentieth century as a critique of 'big' government and conomic and social intervention.... the second element is traditional conservative social theory, especially its defense of order, authority and discipline." - Heywood (2003) Broadly covering my bases in defining my terms as I have. If you *really* want me to go through and find quotes from bigger brains than me to support "my" argument, I can, but just take my word that "my" arguments above have been towing the right-wing party line as set out by neutral commentators like Heywood and right-wing brains like Hayek. I haven't really talked about the left wing except as in opposition to the right, but I'm sure I can find quotes for my position there too.

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Right and left are a tad simplistic for the modern climate... try this one:

politicalcompass.org (http://www.politicalcompass.org/)

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I have seen those diagrams, and their ilk before. Ultimately any such device is going to simplify things quite a bit. r/c/l is a terminology that many feel has outlived its usefulness; and it is extremely simplistic. However, pretty much all of those spectrums ignore three very important political movements: feminism, environmentalism and religion. Those factors, rather than the purely economic terms usually used to distinguish r/c/l parties are what determines the votes of many people. Feminism in particular encourages a wholesale replacement of our current society, while Religion varies nearly as much as r/c/l...

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Well I guess the problem is this: You can be Socially Liberal, and economically conservative, or any mix of them.

Socially femisnists are left wing. Economically, they could be right.

The Left defines things by social policy, the right by money. Oh dear... what happens when the left adopts right policies on economics but stays socially liberal? Or when the right adopts left wing social policies but stays socially conservative.

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I think you may find that everyone has very different ideas about what is left and what is right. I think the terms are very outdated myself. What is right oneday, is left the next. The small government ideology usedd to belong to the left. In some countries, and to some people, it still belongs to the left.

I think the methods change a lot. The only real defining factor are the priorities The right directly support money, the left directly support people. The way they go aboput it changes so often that it doesn't even matter.

If the left oneday started to say small government was good for people, and started to campaign that way they would still belong to the left.

You can define governments as the are now, but that doesn't actually mean much. The important thing is the essense...the thing that, if you take it away, changes the whole meaning of something. Small government is just a means, not an end. The idea has been harnessed by both the left and the right - read that link I posted up there somewhere about the French.

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Further quick comment, for a depressing and remarkably prescient view of the way this could all happen, try reading John Brunner's fiction, especially such classics as Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up

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lobelet.livejournal.com

Beautifully gloomy books, and prescient as all hell. John Brunner was a nasty man, a great writer and sadly unappreciated. I shared many a happy pint with him. Both the books you mention were his masterworks (he thought so too).

I agree with everything you said (what a sycophant I am...).

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