The general idea of changing things that are bad instead of sticking to traditions
Gay marriage and other rights
More efficient and affordable healthcare
Abortion (though ideally I’d find it fair if “paper abortion” was also a thing)
FOSS (though most people don’t have a strong opinion on that)
Public transportation
Some things I like from the right:
General cautiousness about the negative effects of new policies (for example, schools catering to problematic students at the expense of the other students)
Trying to minimize unnecessary government intervention
Support of free speech (used to be a leftist thing, seems to depend on who is being censored more)
Cautiousness about illegal immigration
Banning of harmful addictive drugs
And what I don’t like about either:
Takes on gender/race equality (left tries to achieve it but has a different idea of what equality looks like, right seems content with inequality)
Voter fraud prevention (right wants the requirement of a driving license or something, left wants no verification at all; I like the normal system of requiring an identity card that every citizen gets for free from the government)
Based on these, I’d consider myself centrist or maybe a bit left-leaning, but the far left would consider me a Nazi and the far right would consider me a communist or something.
Also note that I’m not from the USA and I see USA politics through the lens of what I know to work and not work in my country.
So, gonna do the context bit before I dive in, because you seem to be engaging in good faith. Apologies though, this is probably gonna be a few lines and a little disorganised, but I’ll try and address everything you’ve said. Here goes:
If you’d not guessed already I’m very much left wing. My ideal world looks something like an ideology called anarcho-syndicalism, though I’m not going to pretend I know that’s the perfect system, just something roughly in that shape seems like the ideal system to benefit the most people. This is partially guided by my belief that centralisation of power breeds corruption. It’s also worth highlighting, I’m not sure my ideal world is showing up any time soon, but I’m convinced it’s the direction we should be moving in. It’s never good to treat ideology as religion, no one has all the answers, but politics without ideology is aimlessly bankrupt.
Anyway, your response—firstly it seems to be you’re muddying left vs right and authoritarian vs liberal/libertarian (the US has ruined both of the real definitions of these terms, when I say libertarian going forward I mean the original French definition tied to liberty, not the knuckle dragging ancaps) a bit. Left vs right can generally be simplified as cooperation Vs competition. Left wingers believe the best outcomes come from working together, right wingers believe competition creates the best outcome. Pretty much all the rest of the ideology flows from those conclusions. Authoritarians believe society needs to be controlled to remain, libertarians (again, not the capitalist knuckle draggers) believe people should be free to make their own choices.
There’s a hell of a lot of other ways to split politics up (for example nationalist vs internationalist is another split, given you mentioned immigration, or religious vs secular, republican vs monarchist, the list goes on), but generally the left/right, auth/lib splits seem to be the ones that people polarise around.
As you note, you’re not in the US, neither am I. I’m in the UK where we have had an authoritarian right-wing party in power for getting close to a decade and a half. A great example is that we are subjected to the most surveillance in the world outside of China here. You often hear people saying right wing parties are all about limiting government intervention (as you have), but this is patently not the case. Surveillance in my country has been massively expanded under the Tories.
To address your point around cautiousness, they’ve recently been trying to force tech companies to put backdoors in their encryption to allow them to read people’s encrypted messages (iMessage, WhatsApp, telegram, etc). Everyone with a pulse remotely connected to the technology industry has been telling them how universally stupid this idea is (this post is long enough, so ask if you’re not clear as to why this is ridiculous). They’re planning on forging on ahead putting something effectively impossible or dangerous into law. That’s not caution, it’s reckless.
What is free speech? Some right wingers seem to be banging on about “free speech absolutism” recently, which seems to boil down to the childish notion that “it’s my right to say what I like without consequence, and everyone has to listen”. That’s something that never has and never will exist. No one has to listen to anyone, and further, if someone is freely talking shit, someone else can freely talk shit back at them. As for what I’m assuming you’re getting at regarding censorship, a reductio ad absurdum argument: I don’t think you’d disagree that it’s pretty damn harmful for someone to follow a suicidal person around 24/7 shouting “kill yourself” over and over, right? (At least I really hope you’re with me on this one) So, pretty uncontroversial to try and prevent that scenario right? Preventing some cruel bastard pushing someone over the edge is more important than the bastard’s right to say what he likes, right? There are several similar situations where speech can cause harm that may end up damaging if not fatal. This is the free speech the right-wingers are getting frothed up about. At the same time in my country the right wing government is attempting to ban peaceful protest. Funnily enough, a pattern emerges again, it’s free speech for them, not for their opponents.
This is already getting far too long so I’m gonna do a lightning round for your other points
Cautiousness about immigration. Illegal or not, Immigration is pretty much always a neutral or positive force. More often than not, any negatives you read about are often unusual cases or cherry picked stories amplified to further a political agenda. Funnily enough illegal immigrants are often a net fiscal benefit because they’re often unable to access any public services, yet contribute tax at the very least via VAT/sales taxes.
Banning drugs creates more drug addicts because people are less likely or even able to seek help. It also makes organised crime inevitable, the south American drug cartels would not exist if they couldn’t sell drugs to people. No one is going to buy dodgy illegal drugs if there’s a better option.
Public transportation… What? That’s a lefty thing. Not sure how you’ve got that one mixed up.
And now your don’t like in either bit:
Takes on equality, I’m not sure what your third option is given you’ve highlighted the left is trying to do something about it and the right isn’t. Maybe I’m misreading you.
Voter fraud prevention, so this is an interesting one. It’s not intuitive at all, but adding or changing restrictions on voting will always prevent some legitimate people from voting. A simple example (one of many) is that a new requirement comes in and now you need to bring a driving licence with you, uninformed Bob shows up on polling day and is told he needs a driving licence to vote. Bob doesn’t have a driving licence because he has a disability that prevents it, he’s told there’s a scheme that he could have used to send off for a special ID for people in his situation. Well, he’s not gonna be able to get that done before the polling is closed. Bob’s now prevented from voting, despite being legally entitled to.
Now, you might think that’s an acceptable cost to prevent voter fraud. There’s never been any amount of meaningful voter fraud found to be happening in any modern fair election. Funnily it’s pretty much always the politicians complaining about voter fraud that are trying to unfairly influence things.
Now, I’m obviously coming at this from a left wing perspective, I’ve been up front about that (and sorry for the essay, you got me when I was bored, I didn’t think I’d be typing for 10 mins). If you even partially agree with what I’ve said, can you maybe see that in the most charitable assessment, centrism is simply a lack of understanding rather than a consistent ideology?
(Again, really did not intend for a post this length soz)
firstly it seems to be you’re muddying left vs right and authoritarian vs liberal/libertarian
Thanks for pointing this out. This is exactly the problem – due to the two-party system, USA people are trying to cram many different opinions into two “packages” even if they’re completely unrelated – which is precisely why I think we should pick and choose from these “packages” instead of dogmatically sticking to one.
You often hear people saying right wing parties are all about limiting government intervention (as you have)
I was talking about what seems to be the general stance of moderate right-wing people on the internet, not any specific party. It seems, for example, that many people voted for Trump not because they like him, but because they thought his government would be less controlling than the alternative.
“free speech absolutism” […], which seems to boil down to the childish notion that “it’s my right to say what I like without consequence, and everyone has to listen”
No, free speech absolutism is about the idea that those who transmit information shouldn’t get to decide whether it gets delivered based on whether they agree with the content. A mail deliverer is not allowed to read letters and discard them if they don’t like them, so why should social media be able to do that? The rest of the paragraph seems to be a strawman about what I believe, so I’m not going to address it.
Whether or not illegal immigration creates a burden on the economy, isn’t it unfair toward legal immigrants who worked hard to learn the local language and culture?
Banning drugs creates more drug addicts because people are less likely or even able to seek help.
So why do alcohol and tobacco, the two completely legal drugs, have by far the most addicts?
Public transportation… What? That’s a lefty thing.
I’m sorry, I was ninja-editing my comment and accidentally put it into the wrong section. Ignore that.
Takes on equality, I’m not sure what your third option is given you’ve highlighted the left is trying to do something about it and the right isn’t.
As I tried to say, I want equality, but I have a fundamentally different idea about what equality looks like. For example, I consider “affirmative action” to be a step against equality. And having “female-only” or “black-only” stuff just furthers segregation.
I definitely don’t consider a driving license a good requirement for voting (I don’t have one myself because fuck cars). Not sure how you got that from my comment.
Nothing. And neither should we take anything from the far left. It’s the moderates that have good ideas.
Okay, humour me then, I’m clearly the ignorant one here.
Let’s pretend that this centre which pulls from both sides is completely uninfluenced by the extremes somehow.
What’s good about the not-quite-so-right that’s unique compared against the far right then?
What’s good about the not-quite-so-left that’s unique from the far left?
Do these things marry up in a way that’s not entirely ideologically bankrupt in the dissonance required?
Some things I like from the left:
Some things I like from the right:
And what I don’t like about either:
Based on these, I’d consider myself centrist or maybe a bit left-leaning, but the far left would consider me a Nazi and the far right would consider me a communist or something.
Also note that I’m not from the USA and I see USA politics through the lens of what I know to work and not work in my country.
So, gonna do the context bit before I dive in, because you seem to be engaging in good faith. Apologies though, this is probably gonna be a few lines and a little disorganised, but I’ll try and address everything you’ve said. Here goes:
If you’d not guessed already I’m very much left wing. My ideal world looks something like an ideology called anarcho-syndicalism, though I’m not going to pretend I know that’s the perfect system, just something roughly in that shape seems like the ideal system to benefit the most people. This is partially guided by my belief that centralisation of power breeds corruption. It’s also worth highlighting, I’m not sure my ideal world is showing up any time soon, but I’m convinced it’s the direction we should be moving in. It’s never good to treat ideology as religion, no one has all the answers, but politics without ideology is aimlessly bankrupt.
Anyway, your response—firstly it seems to be you’re muddying left vs right and authoritarian vs liberal/libertarian (the US has ruined both of the real definitions of these terms, when I say libertarian going forward I mean the original French definition tied to liberty, not the knuckle dragging ancaps) a bit. Left vs right can generally be simplified as cooperation Vs competition. Left wingers believe the best outcomes come from working together, right wingers believe competition creates the best outcome. Pretty much all the rest of the ideology flows from those conclusions. Authoritarians believe society needs to be controlled to remain, libertarians (again, not the capitalist knuckle draggers) believe people should be free to make their own choices.
There’s a hell of a lot of other ways to split politics up (for example nationalist vs internationalist is another split, given you mentioned immigration, or religious vs secular, republican vs monarchist, the list goes on), but generally the left/right, auth/lib splits seem to be the ones that people polarise around.
As you note, you’re not in the US, neither am I. I’m in the UK where we have had an authoritarian right-wing party in power for getting close to a decade and a half. A great example is that we are subjected to the most surveillance in the world outside of China here. You often hear people saying right wing parties are all about limiting government intervention (as you have), but this is patently not the case. Surveillance in my country has been massively expanded under the Tories.
To address your point around cautiousness, they’ve recently been trying to force tech companies to put backdoors in their encryption to allow them to read people’s encrypted messages (iMessage, WhatsApp, telegram, etc). Everyone with a pulse remotely connected to the technology industry has been telling them how universally stupid this idea is (this post is long enough, so ask if you’re not clear as to why this is ridiculous). They’re planning on forging on ahead putting something effectively impossible or dangerous into law. That’s not caution, it’s reckless.
What is free speech? Some right wingers seem to be banging on about “free speech absolutism” recently, which seems to boil down to the childish notion that “it’s my right to say what I like without consequence, and everyone has to listen”. That’s something that never has and never will exist. No one has to listen to anyone, and further, if someone is freely talking shit, someone else can freely talk shit back at them. As for what I’m assuming you’re getting at regarding censorship, a reductio ad absurdum argument: I don’t think you’d disagree that it’s pretty damn harmful for someone to follow a suicidal person around 24/7 shouting “kill yourself” over and over, right? (At least I really hope you’re with me on this one) So, pretty uncontroversial to try and prevent that scenario right? Preventing some cruel bastard pushing someone over the edge is more important than the bastard’s right to say what he likes, right? There are several similar situations where speech can cause harm that may end up damaging if not fatal. This is the free speech the right-wingers are getting frothed up about. At the same time in my country the right wing government is attempting to ban peaceful protest. Funnily enough, a pattern emerges again, it’s free speech for them, not for their opponents.
This is already getting far too long so I’m gonna do a lightning round for your other points
Cautiousness about immigration. Illegal or not, Immigration is pretty much always a neutral or positive force. More often than not, any negatives you read about are often unusual cases or cherry picked stories amplified to further a political agenda. Funnily enough illegal immigrants are often a net fiscal benefit because they’re often unable to access any public services, yet contribute tax at the very least via VAT/sales taxes.
Banning drugs creates more drug addicts because people are less likely or even able to seek help. It also makes organised crime inevitable, the south American drug cartels would not exist if they couldn’t sell drugs to people. No one is going to buy dodgy illegal drugs if there’s a better option.
Public transportation… What? That’s a lefty thing. Not sure how you’ve got that one mixed up.
And now your don’t like in either bit:
Takes on equality, I’m not sure what your third option is given you’ve highlighted the left is trying to do something about it and the right isn’t. Maybe I’m misreading you.
Voter fraud prevention, so this is an interesting one. It’s not intuitive at all, but adding or changing restrictions on voting will always prevent some legitimate people from voting. A simple example (one of many) is that a new requirement comes in and now you need to bring a driving licence with you, uninformed Bob shows up on polling day and is told he needs a driving licence to vote. Bob doesn’t have a driving licence because he has a disability that prevents it, he’s told there’s a scheme that he could have used to send off for a special ID for people in his situation. Well, he’s not gonna be able to get that done before the polling is closed. Bob’s now prevented from voting, despite being legally entitled to.
Now, you might think that’s an acceptable cost to prevent voter fraud. There’s never been any amount of meaningful voter fraud found to be happening in any modern fair election. Funnily it’s pretty much always the politicians complaining about voter fraud that are trying to unfairly influence things.
Now, I’m obviously coming at this from a left wing perspective, I’ve been up front about that (and sorry for the essay, you got me when I was bored, I didn’t think I’d be typing for 10 mins). If you even partially agree with what I’ve said, can you maybe see that in the most charitable assessment, centrism is simply a lack of understanding rather than a consistent ideology?
(Again, really did not intend for a post this length soz)
This was beautifully written and well sourced. I don’t have anything else to add, I just wanted you to know I appreciate your contribution.
Sorry for taking long to respond, I’ve been busy.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is exactly the problem – due to the two-party system, USA people are trying to cram many different opinions into two “packages” even if they’re completely unrelated – which is precisely why I think we should pick and choose from these “packages” instead of dogmatically sticking to one.
I was talking about what seems to be the general stance of moderate right-wing people on the internet, not any specific party. It seems, for example, that many people voted for Trump not because they like him, but because they thought his government would be less controlling than the alternative.
No, free speech absolutism is about the idea that those who transmit information shouldn’t get to decide whether it gets delivered based on whether they agree with the content. A mail deliverer is not allowed to read letters and discard them if they don’t like them, so why should social media be able to do that? The rest of the paragraph seems to be a strawman about what I believe, so I’m not going to address it.
Whether or not illegal immigration creates a burden on the economy, isn’t it unfair toward legal immigrants who worked hard to learn the local language and culture?
So why do alcohol and tobacco, the two completely legal drugs, have by far the most addicts?
I’m sorry, I was ninja-editing my comment and accidentally put it into the wrong section. Ignore that.
As I tried to say, I want equality, but I have a fundamentally different idea about what equality looks like. For example, I consider “affirmative action” to be a step against equality. And having “female-only” or “black-only” stuff just furthers segregation.
I definitely don’t consider a driving license a good requirement for voting (I don’t have one myself because fuck cars). Not sure how you got that from my comment.