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This is from the 'Leftism and the Soviet Union' section of the article: "...some parts of the radical left extol all or some aspects of Soviet-style communism or that of Maoist China, while others loathe the perceived crimes of those regimes and denounce them at every turn."
Isn't it generally regarded that enormous crimes were committed by the Soviet Union and Red China? Whose is the perception that this is not a concrete fact? I think that the word "perceive" should be removed from that sentence. Trau
Although I have no problem considering such atrocities as "crimes" the word "perceived" is completely necessary. The murders did occur, weather or not they were actually criminal is subject to a debate, thus it would violate a neutral point of view to simply call these acts crimes since there are possible arguments that the killings have some justification. I could not conjure such an argument, though the fact these arguments exist is enough to warrant their "perceived" condition.-- 69.212.173.4 03:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
So since we've decided that murders have occurred, can we just say "murders committed by these regimes"? -- Chenenko 04:30, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I think "murder" carries the connotation of private rather than public killing. "Percieved crimes" sounds judicious and works for me. Rick Norwood 15:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
(not me, but looked into it.) The group should be apparently
but the link is indeed presently at American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy. Will create the relevant redirect etc. later. Schissel : bowl listen 17:30, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
Africa is noticably missing from the discussion, which seems to cover the rest of the world. I'm not qualified, but can anyone expand here?-- Dvyost 5 July 2005 12:59 (UTC)
I just edited the main page for this article and foolishly wasn't logged in at the time. So here is a good place to initiate further discussion.
The original article stated the "As this original reference became obsolete, the meaning of the terms has changed as appropriate to the spectrum of ideas and stances being compared." I felt that this is incorrect, and empirically so.
Left wing parties, regardless of their particular implementation of democracy, tend to support republican governments over monarchies, secular laws over state religions and religious legals codes, and natural or universal rights over national rights.
I don't think should be is a matter of any historical or contemporary dispute, but would be interested in hearing any contrary evidence. ( User:Lev lafayette 12 July 2005)
The middle of this article reads like a republican campaign blog, it's a nice mix of France bashing, liberal bashing, and one section even equates all pacifists with terrorists, it's been re-written so many times it actually contradicts itself from paragraph to paragraph, can we either get a re-write, a deletion, or a POV tag for this thing -- 172.152.1.161 14:46, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
This page needs a majour overhaul. I have made a first bash at doing that. Firstly I have factored out the long list of left-wing parties and moved it to Political parties on the left, secondly I have added a some historical detail on the section about the left and oppositon to war, its still sketchy and will need improving but its a start.
Lots more needs to be done, here are some of the issules I beleive need to be sorted out:
-- JK the unwise 14:21, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Considering that this whole article is based in a strong US point of view of left-wing politics, I'm not too surprised that it contains a section on "leftists are really islamists". While the article is rife with extrapolation and generalisation from individuals and small groups to all "leftists" without much justification or logic, this section is particularily bad. If this section is to be kept, I suggest that those who want to keep it should be more specific in their claims (as to which "leftists" they're talking about) and supply better sources while they're at it. Links to Geocities and to Wikipedia discussion pages doesn't really cut it in my opinion. 80.203.115.12 15:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I have made the referenaces so that the link to a list of ref's at the bottom (as per
Wikipedia:Footnote2ish), I have done this because; 1:It means we can include non-webbaced referenaces 2:It makes it easier to scan the list of ref's to assess it for bias 3:If links break can still know what they orriginally pointed to.
There are some referances which i think are of low/dubious quality:
Generally, if we could search for more academic type refs that would be good.-- JK the unwise 12:50, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
The term "Postmodernism" is a philosophical term that is never used by political analysts or political scientists and really has no meaning in the world of politics. It's really just one of those silly buzz words that people use more to feel better about themselves rather than to actually explain something. Having a section on the left and postmodernism makes as much sense as having a section on the left and existentialism. (Annon User: 68.118.218.128)
I'm not sure that the postmodern section really adds anything worthwhile. It is poorly written and is mainly a confused critique rather than a wiki entry. I think something probably should be mentioned about the important relationship between some academic leftism and postmodernist philosophy. Most the famous postmodernists/poststructuralists (particularly Lyotard and Foucault for example) saw their theories as profoundly politically radical. Postmodernism (as well as versions of pragmatism) claim that all understandings of truth and reality are historically and socially constructed, rather than being a mirror of 'the way things really are'. Leftists have often use these notions to undermine the taken-for-granted nature of the status quo, and to argue that much of what we take for granted has been generated by power relationships resulting in the oppression of subordinate social groups. As an alternative, they ground politics in localised struggles to transform culture in the interests of groups they perceive as oppressed.
Many in US political science are not too keen on ideas of postmodernism, but there is a lot more to the world of politics than US political science journals. (For a start, the United States is not representative of the entirety of academia, and there are more disciplines of relevance to politics than merely political science - eg. political philosophy.)
Someone mentioned Rorty. While Rorty is both a leftist and a pragmatist (which has similarities to postmodernism), he, unlike most postmodernists, is quite skeptical about whether postmodernist theory has anything to offer politics. In his own words, he "wavers" on this point. He thinks that practical programs of policy reform are of far more political importance than any abstract theory of truth, culture and reality.
And Fukayama a postmodernist? How so? Sure he believes that there should be no more great conflicts between metanarratives, but this is not because he believes metanarratives are dead, rather precisely the opposite. He believes neo-liberalism to be the ultimate utopian narrative to which all history has been working. This is about as un-postmodern as one can get. He also believes that politics and ethics should be based in a universal conception of human nature. This is partly what postmodernism set out to critique.
Perhaps I will just adapt what I wrote about postmodernism here to go in the article, when I get the chance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.233.18.3 ( talk • contribs) 18 Sept 2005.
[Explain your reasoning] behind using "postmodernism" as a way of describing to the average person what a left-wing position is. Explain how this gives a person unfamiliar with the subject a useful understanding of what it means to be left-wing. (Annon User:68.118.218.128)
Searching this talk page I can not find anything that gives a specific NPOV problem thus unless someone can clearly state one here I will remove the tag (it has most recently been added by annon user:68.118.218.128). I few things that could be whats at issule but need expanding.
-- JK the unwise 14:19, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
"Few left-wingers who supported one side in conflicts such as the Boer War." Does anyone know what this means to say? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:59, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Reads really poorly.
I'm not an expert on those issues, but I reckon that the order of seating in traditional depictions of the Last Supper, in the British House of Commons and in the French assemblies have the same origin. Traditionally, in the West, the right hand side of the host at a table was the place of honour (from the point of view of the host). Thus, in medieval depictions of the Last Summer, the "Chief Apostle" Peter is always to the right of the host. In the revolutionary National Assembly formed from the Estates-General, the Church and the nobility went to the more honourific side (the right) while the "third estates" (commoners) went to the left. Similarly, in the British House of Commons, the government goes to the right-hand side (place of honour) while the opposition goes to the left.
Can some expert confirm this to me? David.Monniaux 21:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Without, for the moment, debating the merits, these edits by Revolución include major deletions of longstanding material, and were made with no edit summaries beyond the names of the section headers. As I understand it, major removal of longstanding material should usually be accompanied by an explanation of why the material is being removed, and should generally be accompanied by pasting the cut material (or at least a summary) to the talk page.
I have too many irons in the fire to do more than note this right now, but someone may want to look carefully at the cut material. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I have taken an adversarial position with respect to the terms conservative and liberal.
Liberal is short for libertarian. Left is synonymous with liberal. But liberal is associated with anti-libertarian and this causes great confusion. Leave it to the French to throw things out of semblence.
My position is to redefine conservative as anti-libertarian and name it as government management or conservation of government management. Conservative is thereby pitted against libertarianism as contrary philosophical principles.
The current concept of conservative is a moral and subjective position whereby consensus determines policies rather than philosophical principle. The conservative position is to preserve the value of the policies while the policies themselves are both social conservative and economic libertarianism. Conservative projects the value position of social mores as right even righteous. And further generalizes the position of economic libertarianism as right and righteous eventhough it is arguably a social libertarian institution.
The following reiterates the supposition. In gross generality two types of policies exist, social and economic. Further distinctions can be made between economic conservatism or libertarianism and social conservatism or libertarianism.
In social conservatism government management is summoned against libertarian principles of individual freedom. In economic conservatism government management is economic anti-libertarianism seeking to preserve government economic management which are policies of socialism, statism, communism, and fascism as authoritarian government.
In both social and economic libertarianism the government management is expunged from individual freedom and involvement.
Thus philosophical definition of conservatism and libertarianism become consistent along with the terms, libertarian and liberal.
Liberal and libertarian are used interchangeably in criticism typically of Democratic positions. Yet liberal philosophy does not represent the relative position of consensus value as the term conservative. The term conservative is entirely relative as modifications or migration from accepted or present standards. As so, it is a consensus and not philosophy to be applied.
Current definiton of conservative makes the generalization and allegation of liberal in contradiction of their economic libertarian endorsement.
Democrats typically project social libertarianism. They also project economic conservatism by endorsing government economic management which is economic anti-libertarianism. Additional nuances are that Democrats express their social conservatism via economic anti-libertarianism.
Republicans typically project social conservatism. They also project economic libertarianism. Additional nuances are that Republicans express a contradiction of social conservatism via economic libertarianism.
Thus they endorse conservatism as a term evading the issue of an inconsistent application of the libertarian concept. Psychologically they conceive social conservatism as liberating yet refer to themselves as libertarians.
Finally, the terms left-wing and right-wing may only represent economic policy positions. Social positions within the contexts appear to be more complex.
I am interested in reasonable response and concerted efforts to resolve the seeming disparity of inconsistent definition eventhough the terms proposed are not current manner. Please respond to gemija@sbcglobal.net
The terms "Liberal" and "Conservative" are generally useless in any serious political context today. Liberals were a left-wing movement, back when democratic Capitalism itself was a left-wing goal. This is the origin of the term, Conservatives sought to slow down the transition to Capitalism, and supported maintaining the monarchies and general social order. Sometimes they outright opposed the shift to Capitalism, and any parliamentary reform. This is when Liberals were left-wing.
Today, the term "Liberal" does not denote any sort of left-wing politics, in fact it often denotes the opposite, as exemplified by the Liberal party of Canada, or the Liberal economic policies of Clinton.
Time to move on and pick up some better terminology, and a more serious political analysis. The only place where "Liberal" and "Conservative" could be useful is in describing the differences between center-right and far-right parties in certain countries, such as the US, though the Democrats can only be considered "center"-right on certain issues.-- Revolutionary Left | Che y Marijuana 21:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Jmabel. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have switched so many times that it is hard to use them with any historical significance. If anyone would like proof, remember that Adam Smith, essentially the first free-market economic scholar, was considered a crazed liberal. In 2005, however, Smith would be extremely conservative. The problem is that there really aren't any other good terms to use! In America we can use Democrat and Republican, but we clearly can't state every party from every country every time we want to say "liberal". If we stick with "left" and "right" I think this should clear up most misunderstandings. I also think avoiding "leftist" is good, we could say "leftward-leaning". -- Chenenko 04:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
There were some inconsistencies in the format and emphasis of this article in contrast to the article on right-wing politics, which seems strange since these two concepts are roughly symmetrically opposing and meant to be defined against the other. I've tried to incorporate the informal aspects of each article in a rather symmetric introduction. I think this also minimizes potential POV issues.
The POV tag has re-appeared on the article, to the best of my knowldge it was put there by User:Revolución on the 5th of October. [4] I have given it a while but no spesific explaination of the lack of nutrality has been given.
From what I can gather Revolución merly states that there are POV problems without pointing out what they are. One of the things Revolución mentions that is a true problem is that "the article doesn't even touch appon various left-wing ideologies (communism, socialism, anarchism, liberalism/progressivism).". There is some truth in this and needs to be improved but doesn't not mean there is a NPOV problem. I am thus removing the tag until someone provides a clearer explantion of the POV problems.-- JK the unwise 10:01, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
The The Left and Opposition to War section was getting far to big and swamping the rest of the article. I have therefor sent it off to its own article at The Left and Opposition to War and tryed to just have a summery here. I have done my best however the article is very hard to summerise. Any comments?-- JK the unwise 11:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
The page has servived delition and has now been moved to The Left and war. I have edited the section of this page to reflect that change.-- JK the unwise 12:46, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Do we really need all these external links? The discussion sites links seem just to be adverts, are they even particulary notable examples of such sites? The Blogs etc. section seems to be the same; pointless and unencycopedic.-- JK the unwise 09:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
The recently added material on Sokal: this was about postmodernism, not about leftism, and unless I am very mistaken, Sokal said this explicitly. Unless someone has an actual citation of Sokal saying this was about leftism -- I certainly don't remember him saying that -- it does not belong in this article. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:51, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
My appologies, from the quote you have provided it seems that Sokal was concerned specificaly with left-wing thought. That said I do think that the current revised version is an improvement as it makes more explict why he was aiming it at the left.-- JK the unwise 13:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
My Peter Singer comment may not belong in the intro, but I didn't see a section on definitions. I vaguely feared that I might have to transfer some hard fought over material on secularism from the intro to the definition section if I created one. Comments? JeffBurdges 11:57, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Recently added. Probably worth taking up (whether here or elsewhere), but the current version is a bit slipshod and vague. I made some copyedits, but this needs a lot more work. In particular, I find the last sentence incomprehensible: "Fears significant scientific support for leftist liberal social policies is a significant theme in American Christian fundamentalism, especially the Intelligent Design movement." -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Richard Dawkins is described as a "leftist" in the section on Darwinism. I've never thought of him that way at all, based on his writings on evolution, which is all I know of him. But perhaps he has written things that I don't know. Is there a basis for this claim? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the proposed merger into this page: There are other issues that might affect both the Left and Right pages. The biggest one is the idea of changing the pages Far left and Far right into disambiguation pages. The terms have many conflicting uses, even in academia, and are often used just as political epithets. There is also a huge area of study of the Extreme left which is distinct from the study of left-liberals and progressives. These would generally be communist cadre organizations or underground groups. Most of the current links to "Far-Left" should be divided up and most pointed to Left-wing politics. Some should go to the re-created Extreme left which would be a small page that parsed out links to various groups and movements and theories, while Far left would be a disambiguation page. I am not invested in a particular outcome, but the current sets of pages are very muddled (except for Left-wing politics) and both sets need an extreme makeover that pays at least some attention to scholarly research. Lot's of work, but it needs to be done.
Perhaps folks could first join in at Talk:Right-wing_politics --User:Cberlet|Cberlet]] 17:13, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Rick Norwood 17:15, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I think a short discussion of Unilateralism v. Globalism would fit well in keeping the article up to date. Mostly this would describe the United States mainly Unilateral approach in Iraq, and the opposition of the Left in that situation. As we know, this was not only in the US but in many other countries. If people agree it's a good inclusion, I could do the research and write the subtopic. Chenenko 27 Dec 2005
I will do my best to find out more information on the historical stances of the right and left on Unilateralism and Multilateralism. If anyone else finds anything, cite it and send it to me! Chenenko 22:50, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
"China has undergone a transition from a "Communist" state to in many ways a right-wing authoritarian regime in recent decade"
This is stupid because a communist state is a contradictory term. A state cannot be communist any more than a square can be circular. I realise it doesn't quite imply that China was a communist utopia, but does anyone agree that this should be changed? -- ScottishPinko 12:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
My POV is that a Communist state is a contradictory term and that China never was Communist, rather I beleive it was Sate capitalist. However, this article should aim to present a neural point of view (to the extent that this is posible). Many people beleive that the Chinise state was Communist so this article has to reflect this. I do think that the article needs some work so that it more clearly presents the fact that there is considerable debate over what a communist society is and whether it has ever existed so far.-- JK the unwise 12:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
That would be almost perfect. -- ScottishPinko 13:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
There is a debate on the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army page about whether the group should be defined as left-wing. I would appricate the views of the editors of this page on the subject to help resolve the debate.-- JK the unwise 14:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 10 |
This is from the 'Leftism and the Soviet Union' section of the article: "...some parts of the radical left extol all or some aspects of Soviet-style communism or that of Maoist China, while others loathe the perceived crimes of those regimes and denounce them at every turn."
Isn't it generally regarded that enormous crimes were committed by the Soviet Union and Red China? Whose is the perception that this is not a concrete fact? I think that the word "perceive" should be removed from that sentence. Trau
Although I have no problem considering such atrocities as "crimes" the word "perceived" is completely necessary. The murders did occur, weather or not they were actually criminal is subject to a debate, thus it would violate a neutral point of view to simply call these acts crimes since there are possible arguments that the killings have some justification. I could not conjure such an argument, though the fact these arguments exist is enough to warrant their "perceived" condition.-- 69.212.173.4 03:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
So since we've decided that murders have occurred, can we just say "murders committed by these regimes"? -- Chenenko 04:30, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I think "murder" carries the connotation of private rather than public killing. "Percieved crimes" sounds judicious and works for me. Rick Norwood 15:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
(not me, but looked into it.) The group should be apparently
but the link is indeed presently at American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy. Will create the relevant redirect etc. later. Schissel : bowl listen 17:30, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
Africa is noticably missing from the discussion, which seems to cover the rest of the world. I'm not qualified, but can anyone expand here?-- Dvyost 5 July 2005 12:59 (UTC)
I just edited the main page for this article and foolishly wasn't logged in at the time. So here is a good place to initiate further discussion.
The original article stated the "As this original reference became obsolete, the meaning of the terms has changed as appropriate to the spectrum of ideas and stances being compared." I felt that this is incorrect, and empirically so.
Left wing parties, regardless of their particular implementation of democracy, tend to support republican governments over monarchies, secular laws over state religions and religious legals codes, and natural or universal rights over national rights.
I don't think should be is a matter of any historical or contemporary dispute, but would be interested in hearing any contrary evidence. ( User:Lev lafayette 12 July 2005)
The middle of this article reads like a republican campaign blog, it's a nice mix of France bashing, liberal bashing, and one section even equates all pacifists with terrorists, it's been re-written so many times it actually contradicts itself from paragraph to paragraph, can we either get a re-write, a deletion, or a POV tag for this thing -- 172.152.1.161 14:46, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
This page needs a majour overhaul. I have made a first bash at doing that. Firstly I have factored out the long list of left-wing parties and moved it to Political parties on the left, secondly I have added a some historical detail on the section about the left and oppositon to war, its still sketchy and will need improving but its a start.
Lots more needs to be done, here are some of the issules I beleive need to be sorted out:
-- JK the unwise 14:21, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Considering that this whole article is based in a strong US point of view of left-wing politics, I'm not too surprised that it contains a section on "leftists are really islamists". While the article is rife with extrapolation and generalisation from individuals and small groups to all "leftists" without much justification or logic, this section is particularily bad. If this section is to be kept, I suggest that those who want to keep it should be more specific in their claims (as to which "leftists" they're talking about) and supply better sources while they're at it. Links to Geocities and to Wikipedia discussion pages doesn't really cut it in my opinion. 80.203.115.12 15:29, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
I have made the referenaces so that the link to a list of ref's at the bottom (as per
Wikipedia:Footnote2ish), I have done this because; 1:It means we can include non-webbaced referenaces 2:It makes it easier to scan the list of ref's to assess it for bias 3:If links break can still know what they orriginally pointed to.
There are some referances which i think are of low/dubious quality:
Generally, if we could search for more academic type refs that would be good.-- JK the unwise 12:50, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
The term "Postmodernism" is a philosophical term that is never used by political analysts or political scientists and really has no meaning in the world of politics. It's really just one of those silly buzz words that people use more to feel better about themselves rather than to actually explain something. Having a section on the left and postmodernism makes as much sense as having a section on the left and existentialism. (Annon User: 68.118.218.128)
I'm not sure that the postmodern section really adds anything worthwhile. It is poorly written and is mainly a confused critique rather than a wiki entry. I think something probably should be mentioned about the important relationship between some academic leftism and postmodernist philosophy. Most the famous postmodernists/poststructuralists (particularly Lyotard and Foucault for example) saw their theories as profoundly politically radical. Postmodernism (as well as versions of pragmatism) claim that all understandings of truth and reality are historically and socially constructed, rather than being a mirror of 'the way things really are'. Leftists have often use these notions to undermine the taken-for-granted nature of the status quo, and to argue that much of what we take for granted has been generated by power relationships resulting in the oppression of subordinate social groups. As an alternative, they ground politics in localised struggles to transform culture in the interests of groups they perceive as oppressed.
Many in US political science are not too keen on ideas of postmodernism, but there is a lot more to the world of politics than US political science journals. (For a start, the United States is not representative of the entirety of academia, and there are more disciplines of relevance to politics than merely political science - eg. political philosophy.)
Someone mentioned Rorty. While Rorty is both a leftist and a pragmatist (which has similarities to postmodernism), he, unlike most postmodernists, is quite skeptical about whether postmodernist theory has anything to offer politics. In his own words, he "wavers" on this point. He thinks that practical programs of policy reform are of far more political importance than any abstract theory of truth, culture and reality.
And Fukayama a postmodernist? How so? Sure he believes that there should be no more great conflicts between metanarratives, but this is not because he believes metanarratives are dead, rather precisely the opposite. He believes neo-liberalism to be the ultimate utopian narrative to which all history has been working. This is about as un-postmodern as one can get. He also believes that politics and ethics should be based in a universal conception of human nature. This is partly what postmodernism set out to critique.
Perhaps I will just adapt what I wrote about postmodernism here to go in the article, when I get the chance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.233.18.3 ( talk • contribs) 18 Sept 2005.
[Explain your reasoning] behind using "postmodernism" as a way of describing to the average person what a left-wing position is. Explain how this gives a person unfamiliar with the subject a useful understanding of what it means to be left-wing. (Annon User:68.118.218.128)
Searching this talk page I can not find anything that gives a specific NPOV problem thus unless someone can clearly state one here I will remove the tag (it has most recently been added by annon user:68.118.218.128). I few things that could be whats at issule but need expanding.
-- JK the unwise 14:19, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
"Few left-wingers who supported one side in conflicts such as the Boer War." Does anyone know what this means to say? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:59, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
Reads really poorly.
I'm not an expert on those issues, but I reckon that the order of seating in traditional depictions of the Last Supper, in the British House of Commons and in the French assemblies have the same origin. Traditionally, in the West, the right hand side of the host at a table was the place of honour (from the point of view of the host). Thus, in medieval depictions of the Last Summer, the "Chief Apostle" Peter is always to the right of the host. In the revolutionary National Assembly formed from the Estates-General, the Church and the nobility went to the more honourific side (the right) while the "third estates" (commoners) went to the left. Similarly, in the British House of Commons, the government goes to the right-hand side (place of honour) while the opposition goes to the left.
Can some expert confirm this to me? David.Monniaux 21:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Without, for the moment, debating the merits, these edits by Revolución include major deletions of longstanding material, and were made with no edit summaries beyond the names of the section headers. As I understand it, major removal of longstanding material should usually be accompanied by an explanation of why the material is being removed, and should generally be accompanied by pasting the cut material (or at least a summary) to the talk page.
I have too many irons in the fire to do more than note this right now, but someone may want to look carefully at the cut material. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I have taken an adversarial position with respect to the terms conservative and liberal.
Liberal is short for libertarian. Left is synonymous with liberal. But liberal is associated with anti-libertarian and this causes great confusion. Leave it to the French to throw things out of semblence.
My position is to redefine conservative as anti-libertarian and name it as government management or conservation of government management. Conservative is thereby pitted against libertarianism as contrary philosophical principles.
The current concept of conservative is a moral and subjective position whereby consensus determines policies rather than philosophical principle. The conservative position is to preserve the value of the policies while the policies themselves are both social conservative and economic libertarianism. Conservative projects the value position of social mores as right even righteous. And further generalizes the position of economic libertarianism as right and righteous eventhough it is arguably a social libertarian institution.
The following reiterates the supposition. In gross generality two types of policies exist, social and economic. Further distinctions can be made between economic conservatism or libertarianism and social conservatism or libertarianism.
In social conservatism government management is summoned against libertarian principles of individual freedom. In economic conservatism government management is economic anti-libertarianism seeking to preserve government economic management which are policies of socialism, statism, communism, and fascism as authoritarian government.
In both social and economic libertarianism the government management is expunged from individual freedom and involvement.
Thus philosophical definition of conservatism and libertarianism become consistent along with the terms, libertarian and liberal.
Liberal and libertarian are used interchangeably in criticism typically of Democratic positions. Yet liberal philosophy does not represent the relative position of consensus value as the term conservative. The term conservative is entirely relative as modifications or migration from accepted or present standards. As so, it is a consensus and not philosophy to be applied.
Current definiton of conservative makes the generalization and allegation of liberal in contradiction of their economic libertarian endorsement.
Democrats typically project social libertarianism. They also project economic conservatism by endorsing government economic management which is economic anti-libertarianism. Additional nuances are that Democrats express their social conservatism via economic anti-libertarianism.
Republicans typically project social conservatism. They also project economic libertarianism. Additional nuances are that Republicans express a contradiction of social conservatism via economic libertarianism.
Thus they endorse conservatism as a term evading the issue of an inconsistent application of the libertarian concept. Psychologically they conceive social conservatism as liberating yet refer to themselves as libertarians.
Finally, the terms left-wing and right-wing may only represent economic policy positions. Social positions within the contexts appear to be more complex.
I am interested in reasonable response and concerted efforts to resolve the seeming disparity of inconsistent definition eventhough the terms proposed are not current manner. Please respond to gemija@sbcglobal.net
The terms "Liberal" and "Conservative" are generally useless in any serious political context today. Liberals were a left-wing movement, back when democratic Capitalism itself was a left-wing goal. This is the origin of the term, Conservatives sought to slow down the transition to Capitalism, and supported maintaining the monarchies and general social order. Sometimes they outright opposed the shift to Capitalism, and any parliamentary reform. This is when Liberals were left-wing.
Today, the term "Liberal" does not denote any sort of left-wing politics, in fact it often denotes the opposite, as exemplified by the Liberal party of Canada, or the Liberal economic policies of Clinton.
Time to move on and pick up some better terminology, and a more serious political analysis. The only place where "Liberal" and "Conservative" could be useful is in describing the differences between center-right and far-right parties in certain countries, such as the US, though the Democrats can only be considered "center"-right on certain issues.-- Revolutionary Left | Che y Marijuana 21:45, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Jmabel. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have switched so many times that it is hard to use them with any historical significance. If anyone would like proof, remember that Adam Smith, essentially the first free-market economic scholar, was considered a crazed liberal. In 2005, however, Smith would be extremely conservative. The problem is that there really aren't any other good terms to use! In America we can use Democrat and Republican, but we clearly can't state every party from every country every time we want to say "liberal". If we stick with "left" and "right" I think this should clear up most misunderstandings. I also think avoiding "leftist" is good, we could say "leftward-leaning". -- Chenenko 04:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
There were some inconsistencies in the format and emphasis of this article in contrast to the article on right-wing politics, which seems strange since these two concepts are roughly symmetrically opposing and meant to be defined against the other. I've tried to incorporate the informal aspects of each article in a rather symmetric introduction. I think this also minimizes potential POV issues.
The POV tag has re-appeared on the article, to the best of my knowldge it was put there by User:Revolución on the 5th of October. [4] I have given it a while but no spesific explaination of the lack of nutrality has been given.
From what I can gather Revolución merly states that there are POV problems without pointing out what they are. One of the things Revolución mentions that is a true problem is that "the article doesn't even touch appon various left-wing ideologies (communism, socialism, anarchism, liberalism/progressivism).". There is some truth in this and needs to be improved but doesn't not mean there is a NPOV problem. I am thus removing the tag until someone provides a clearer explantion of the POV problems.-- JK the unwise 10:01, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
The The Left and Opposition to War section was getting far to big and swamping the rest of the article. I have therefor sent it off to its own article at The Left and Opposition to War and tryed to just have a summery here. I have done my best however the article is very hard to summerise. Any comments?-- JK the unwise 11:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
The page has servived delition and has now been moved to The Left and war. I have edited the section of this page to reflect that change.-- JK the unwise 12:46, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Do we really need all these external links? The discussion sites links seem just to be adverts, are they even particulary notable examples of such sites? The Blogs etc. section seems to be the same; pointless and unencycopedic.-- JK the unwise 09:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
The recently added material on Sokal: this was about postmodernism, not about leftism, and unless I am very mistaken, Sokal said this explicitly. Unless someone has an actual citation of Sokal saying this was about leftism -- I certainly don't remember him saying that -- it does not belong in this article. -- Jmabel | Talk 03:51, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
My appologies, from the quote you have provided it seems that Sokal was concerned specificaly with left-wing thought. That said I do think that the current revised version is an improvement as it makes more explict why he was aiming it at the left.-- JK the unwise 13:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
My Peter Singer comment may not belong in the intro, but I didn't see a section on definitions. I vaguely feared that I might have to transfer some hard fought over material on secularism from the intro to the definition section if I created one. Comments? JeffBurdges 11:57, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Recently added. Probably worth taking up (whether here or elsewhere), but the current version is a bit slipshod and vague. I made some copyedits, but this needs a lot more work. In particular, I find the last sentence incomprehensible: "Fears significant scientific support for leftist liberal social policies is a significant theme in American Christian fundamentalism, especially the Intelligent Design movement." -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Richard Dawkins is described as a "leftist" in the section on Darwinism. I've never thought of him that way at all, based on his writings on evolution, which is all I know of him. But perhaps he has written things that I don't know. Is there a basis for this claim? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the proposed merger into this page: There are other issues that might affect both the Left and Right pages. The biggest one is the idea of changing the pages Far left and Far right into disambiguation pages. The terms have many conflicting uses, even in academia, and are often used just as political epithets. There is also a huge area of study of the Extreme left which is distinct from the study of left-liberals and progressives. These would generally be communist cadre organizations or underground groups. Most of the current links to "Far-Left" should be divided up and most pointed to Left-wing politics. Some should go to the re-created Extreme left which would be a small page that parsed out links to various groups and movements and theories, while Far left would be a disambiguation page. I am not invested in a particular outcome, but the current sets of pages are very muddled (except for Left-wing politics) and both sets need an extreme makeover that pays at least some attention to scholarly research. Lot's of work, but it needs to be done.
Perhaps folks could first join in at Talk:Right-wing_politics --User:Cberlet|Cberlet]] 17:13, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Rick Norwood 17:15, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I think a short discussion of Unilateralism v. Globalism would fit well in keeping the article up to date. Mostly this would describe the United States mainly Unilateral approach in Iraq, and the opposition of the Left in that situation. As we know, this was not only in the US but in many other countries. If people agree it's a good inclusion, I could do the research and write the subtopic. Chenenko 27 Dec 2005
I will do my best to find out more information on the historical stances of the right and left on Unilateralism and Multilateralism. If anyone else finds anything, cite it and send it to me! Chenenko 22:50, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
"China has undergone a transition from a "Communist" state to in many ways a right-wing authoritarian regime in recent decade"
This is stupid because a communist state is a contradictory term. A state cannot be communist any more than a square can be circular. I realise it doesn't quite imply that China was a communist utopia, but does anyone agree that this should be changed? -- ScottishPinko 12:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
My POV is that a Communist state is a contradictory term and that China never was Communist, rather I beleive it was Sate capitalist. However, this article should aim to present a neural point of view (to the extent that this is posible). Many people beleive that the Chinise state was Communist so this article has to reflect this. I do think that the article needs some work so that it more clearly presents the fact that there is considerable debate over what a communist society is and whether it has ever existed so far.-- JK the unwise 12:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
That would be almost perfect. -- ScottishPinko 13:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
There is a debate on the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army page about whether the group should be defined as left-wing. I would appricate the views of the editors of this page on the subject to help resolve the debate.-- JK the unwise 14:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)