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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (9932)	1/27/2006 10:09:08 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541481

I'm actually a little baffled that any politician mentioned so far can be described even as left-of-centre, still less far left. I take your point. I think that the parties identified as "far left" represent the core of the Democratic party in the US, which IMO is somewhat left of the center of the Democratic party just as the core of the Republican party is to the right of the center of the Republican party. And the center of the Democratic party is left of the US center and the center of the Democratic party is to the right of the US center. As if my centrifugal force. If you use as a scale the range of "normal" US political thought and lop off the loonies, which is a more practical and useful scale, then the Democratic core would be at the far left of that scale and the Republican core at the far right. If you use a scale that includes the loonies, it may be more technically correct but it really doesn't tell you anything you need to know.

To: thames_sider who wrote (9932)	1/27/2006 12:11:36 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541481

Expansion of the state, at the expense of private enterprise? That's been a fairly steady theme of the Democratic party and the Republicans sometimes join in as well (for example Bush's new drug entitlement). A belief that in the long run, the state can plan and manage as well as or better than the private sector? In certain areas most of the left, and many others also believe this. Particularly in education, health care, environmental management. Expressed desire to raise taxes on unearned wealth? Rolling back Bush's cuts on such taxes is a popular them of the left. Mandated central economic direction by the state -"national champion" industries as agents of state power Forced nationalisation with minimal compensation State control of all services it provides (i.e., no private education, medicine, security etc). State control of all officially approved media Yes that would be the far left on the wider political spectrum. I have been careful to state that I am talking about the far left and the far right of the spectrum of political ideas that get more than negligible support in the US.