Far left - US/UK definition

Perhaps because what he was actually doing was providing a counterpoint to Steve's comments on the political attitude of those asked to write 'Comment' articles for the Guardian. While many have liberal views, views you might consider leftist, there are a number of more conservative voices who regularly write comment pieces as well. He hardly seems to be disagreeing with anything that bobbin's said. Being left of centre is hardly the same as being leftist. There are real leftist papers as well, things like 'Socialist worker', The 'Morning Star' and previously the magazine 'Living Marxism'. These are the British left and the Guardian is distinctly centrist by comparison, although some of its individual columnists may be more radicalised.I'd definitely agree with your point that it is false to try and suggest that American media can be pigeon-holed as being like the more traditional british tabloids. The NY Times has a perfectly journalistic tenor to its reporting and its comment pages seem to encompass a broad political spectrum of opinion. Then again, perhaps the NY times is another leftist paper and I'm simply showing my own bias by saying how even handed I think it is.TTFN,WKP.S. The misspelling of 'Grauniad' is a long standing, and some might say obscure for an international audience, joke from the satirical british magazine 'Private Eye'.

Well I don't remember many Licentians sailing to England from Plymouth Rock.TTFN,WK

By that standard I would certainly agree with you, the Guardian is unlikely to be your paper of choice if you are a lifelong, middle aged and middle-class conservative voter from the home counties.TTFN,WK

Perfectly right, this is supposed to be a thread about definitions after all.I think to some extent this problem is compounded by the fact that there is more than one set of criteria needed for these judgements, as with the 'political compass' with its axes for left/ right and libertarian/ authoritarian.Just as a bit of of a guide I did the 'political' compass test myself and came out asEconomic Left/Right: -6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.41Which make me both fairly Left wing and fairly libertarian since the scale is from 10 to -10. This sounds about right as at university I mostly claimed to be an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist and the political compass site says that anarcho-syndicalism would be at around -10, -10.So how do I view the left right spectrum?I think of the far left as being those who still ascribe to marxist views on issues of history and society, this would probably include communists and hard line radical socialists. I think that most extant far-left media, certainly in britain, have a distinctly authoritatian point of view and are far too dogmatic in their views.In the left/ left-of-centre region which I believe I occupy, though possibly towards the left within that region, there are the middle-class socialists who despite their attachment to concepts such as the welfare state and notions of equality in terms of sex, race and culture are still at least equally attached to the creature comforts and cosy familiarity of the modern world with its many private businesses and diverse outlets of entertainment to want really radical socialist government. These people are likely to be in favour of freedom of religion and liberal, as in permissive, in their views on sexuality and abortion. Historically, certainly in my parents generation, they are probably in favour of nuclear disarmament, possibly unilaterally and may be chary of nuclear power in general.The centre is probably the hardest to define. I have a general feeling of sitting-on -the fence about this group. They are the people who can see why abortion is neccessary in a lot of cases but get the serious squicks about thinking about it at all. They like the fuzzy feeling they get thinking that by paying taxes they are helping those less fortunate than themselves, especially as it removes any feelings they migh t have that something more might need to be done in order to address issues of social inequality. They probably like the idea of the NHS but are more than happy if their job gives them some BUPA (private health car) cover. I think that I am making this out to be a fairly reprehensible group of hypocrites, but that isn't really how I see them, and I know that I myself share many of these inconsistent opinions.On the right/ right-of-centre we have those in favour of deregulation and privatisation, who believe that more competition is the best way to improve the eceonomy and improve consumer satisfaction and services. These are more socially conservative people, the peole who feel that success is a matter of belts and braces and getting on your bike and finding a job. They are more likely to be religious conservatives, i.e. the old fashioned high anglican more pomp than the catholics or the pentacostal chapel type, and have views on marriage, homosexuality and abortion in line with that.I'm not really sure about the far right. I certainly don't feel that parties such as the BNP can be seen to represent any valid point on any political spectrum.I think that my idea of the far right is not at present extant in british politics, it would be along the lines of the libertarian movement in America although more extreme. Everything would be so deregulated and the government has so little scope for intervention in peoples lives that it is impractical to try and limit people's personal freedom of choice in terms of religion, sexual preference etc...Your government would at best be some sort of broker helping to organise the various tenders for private contractors in order to maintain whatever infrastructure was neccessary to keep something resmbling a cohesive state together.Those are my tenuously coherent, brit centric and highly idiosyncratic views on the political spectrum.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 07-25-2005 12:51 PM