“For about half a century the intellectuals, most of whom are leftist, have been struggling to achieve a spatial situation which is geometrically impossible: a political field consisting of a middle and a left-of-middle, with no right-of-middle. They came close to succeeding. Their success was made possible by the non-philosophical attitude of most rightists, who surrendered the intellect to the leftists, accepted their basic premises, and mouthed empty slogans in answer to deadly political principles.
“This permitted the intellectuals to play the game of ‘window dressing,’ i.e., to preach political tolerance or impartiality and to practice it, on suitable occasions, by featuring the weakest, most befuddled champion of capitalism as a representative of the right. (Which led people to the conclusion: ‘If this is the best that can be said for the right, then the leftist position must be true.’)”
~ Ayn Rand
NB: For the record, I still describe myself as neither right nor left…
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8 comments:
Dim-post has a couple of fascinating posts this week on the failure of Marxism. Comments are hilarious.
It doesn't matter how you like to describe yourself: if John Key is too 'leftist' for you, then you're definitely on the right of the spectrum.
A "spectrum" that has communism at one end and fascism at the other makes no sense, and is based on false assumptions about what it fundamental in politics. It's like trying to put yourself on a spectrum between someone who likes to kill puppies (but loves kittens), and someone who likes to kill kittens (but loves cats). If the spectrum was clearly defined as libertarianism/limited gov't at one end and fascism/communism at the other end I would happily call myself right wing, but the leftists deliberately try and coflate the two by using the term to describe both fascists and advocates of limited gov't.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about Mark. You can learn about the political spectrum here: politicalcompass.org
That's someone's version of spectrum, but it's not one that's widely accepted, and it's not one that appears to make any sense either. At first I thought it might have some validity given it had left/right on one axis and authoritarian/libertarian on the other axis - but I couldn't find anywhere a clear explanation on what left or right even meant; and given that it puts ACT as the most "authoritarian" of the NZ political parties, and Greens and Mana as the most "libertarian" it appears to be complete nonsense.
This is not the first time I've seen you make bizarre claims that lack realistic context - and my guess Ben is that you're young, not very well read, and you try to acquire knowledge by finding something on the internet that you latch onto uncritically without a wider context to fall back onto. That would be fine if you were honest and open to reason - because you'd gradually acquire that wider context and correct any errors - but I doubt you are because you're arrogant in your ignorance - and seem more focused on trying to show us all how much you know than actually acquiring knowledge and getting to the truth.
Actually it's a very widely accepted spectrum Mark. If you had ever bothered to Google "political spectrum" you would realise that.
The explanations are all there on the site. Clearly you stopped reading when you realised your political myopia may be called into question.
That website is run from the UK, which would explain any inaccuracies regarding NZ political parties. It's not a flaw of the spectrum itself. Here is an American site using the same spectrum:
http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html
All the criticism in your second paragraph is strikingly hypocritical. You clearly only read what agrees with your libertarian/Randroid worldview, to the extent you weren't even aware what the widely accepted political spectrum is.
In centuries past the Bible was regarded by many as the source of all truth, and the measure of what was widely accepted. You've replaced the Bible with what pops up first on Google.
Ridiculous comparison. If you want to know what is widely accepted then what Google's algorithms come up with is about as reliable as you can get. You do understand how these algorithms work and why they've made Google so successful? Of course you don't.
Just admit you were wrong otherwise you'll just keep making yourself look like more & more of a dipstick.
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