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In France liberals belong to the right
They do in America as well.
touché
Well I didn’t understand the meme then haha
If those kids could read they’d be very upset right now
It’s cool. The neolibs allowed (and encouraged) heights of commodification of education so egregious that much of a generation has been robbed of levels of literacy that were considered “normal” in previous generations.
Gotta love American politics.
So, what’s your choice? Centers right? Or far right? You can only pick one.
You must pick one
You should vote in political primaries where there are many more candidates to choose from.
You should also be politically engaged so that those candidates have to address your concerns.
US democrats are the largest and most successful left party in the world. Our large two party system obfuscates the underlying factionalism within the political parties (progressive cacucus, justice democrats, blue dogs, New Democrat Caucus) kind of reveals this inherent disagreement within our political parties, where members of the progressive caucus and justice democrats can be pretty clearly seen as on the political left.
In the US, social liberalism and political freedom is generally much more popular, as compared to Europe, and seen as being associated with the political left. There is no major socialist political group in the United States, and usually people who claim that there is “no left wing party in the US” want an actual Socialist party, but there are very few examples of successful socialist parties in Western Democracies and tend to be consigned to either being permanent opposition, or forcing themselves to liberalize to the point of not being socialist anymore (think SPD in Germany and Labour in the UK).
I am thankful that the US democrats focus so strongly on issues of social liberalism, think, immigration, abortion, LGBTQ rights, where in Europe these issues are much more controversial especially on issues of abortion and immigration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Europe#Abortion_laws_by_jurisdiction
This is pretty much propaganda. Left political parties do OK in Europe. The point of this post hides the fact that the Dems are not actually Left, they are just Left of the GOP. This isn’t necessarily a criticism, the base voter in the US is right leaning. The Dems just work with what they’ve got, but that doesn’t make them a party of the Left.
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I never once mentioned ‘socialist’ in reference to any political party, because the word is so loaded, particularly for American participants. As to Europe and left leaning political parties, the flavour ebbs and flows as the years change. Sometimes more popular, sometimes less so. Much more so than historical American cases, even with the Dems in charge.
There is a line in US politics that cannot be crossed, even with your ‘centre-left’ party’. The examples are everywhere. Weird wars in third world countries are supported by both the Dems and the GOP (even if softly criticised sometimes by the Dems). Also the rather odd hostility to Cuba which almost the entire world wants ended. Also, the massive mixed messages coming out of the White House on Gaza.
If you are rejoicing in the Liberalism of the US Democratic party as a unique feature in light of the many contradictions I believe that it’s not too far off calling it propperganda on its own terms.
Don’t get me wrong, my own country is another example of faux left. Just as bad, possibly worse?
We have it worse because we are a hegemon. Most countries don’t have to take a stance on imperalism because they lack the resources to actually engage in it and outsource it to us.
Overall, my point is to show that the Democrats are not a monolith and have internal factions, and on a number of issues, we are more left than other issues on the planet. If the main thing you care about is foreign affairs, you are always going to be disappointed, hell, I am. The Deep State is in charge of that and it’s basically outside of the political system.
I agree with much of this post. I’m not complaining about why it is so. You are right about real politic, I just disagree with the suggestion that the Dems are uniquely of the left.
Sorry I deleted my post, I don’t mean to leave it like that where it looks like your talking to yourself. I don’t think dems are uniquely of the left, I just think there are rising left wing factions in the Democratic party and I don’t think the situation is as hopeless as people think it is as a binary choice between center-right and the right wing. And I really don’t think Europe is really much better off in this regard.
It seems to me that Europe is largely dominated by a largely center right consensus.
There’s a strong part of the European population as a whole who is left leaning but at the same time the EU is a trade union which is center right I’d say
Dems world be one of the right parties in just about any other county.
They’re also currently pushing far right immigration policies and have ignored doing anything to put abortion rights into law.
The Dems are more like 4 political parties pretending to be just one. The dems would be split up in any other country.
have ignored doing anything to put abortion rights into law. But also Democrats have enshrined abortion rights into law at the state level. We are a rather large country.
Majority of what would be broken up would still be on the right.
Pointless when they needed to do it nationally, just like with leaving health insurance expansion to states
Leaving health insurance expansion to the states was because of the Supreme Court, not the Democrats. Specifically medicaid expansion with the ACA I assume you are talking about?
It’s as if collapsing politics into one dimension makes it hard to identify distinctions
Liberalism includes the right of private property, which is definitionally at odds with leftist thought. Points for social liberalism I guess, but when social goals are viewed through the narrow lens of individuality it misses giant, glaring social structures that arguably have more impact over individual liberty than state governance does.
“most successful left party in the world” is a contemptible assertion.
It’s interesting that the modern “right-wing” (a rather nebulous term, in itself) seems to use “liberal” as a pejorative. If one is living in a Western society, I would hope that they recognize that it is generally founded on “liberal” ideals.
Generally not what happens, I can only think of one modern style democracy that does that.
Would you mind providing examples to clarify your point? I don’t want to assume meaning/intent.
Of course, happy to expand on my point!
I mean, so far as I know, liberal is only a pejorative in the USA. Not heard it used that way in other political systems, likely because of the reasons you mentioned.
so far as I know, liberal is only a pejorative in the USA
The term is also used that way in Canada — though, arguably, this could be due to bleed over from the USA. To add to the confusion, Canada has a political party called the Liberal Party of Canada (its members are commonly referred to as “Liberals”), and, arguably, they are not actual liberals (by the political science definition, that is). I could be misremembering, but my memory seems to have me believe that I’ve heard it used that way in the UK as well.
I do not understand why leberals are supposed to be left wing. Given that free market concepts are far from left wing and the height of liberal ideas.
Because American democrats call themselves liberals, and it is inconceivable to them that they might share something in common with Republicans (gross)
When it’s pointed out to them that property as a right is a central pillar of capital-l liberal while being the central point of contention in leftist ideology, they simply deny property is any issue at all to left wing ideology except at the fringe (gross)
Modern discourse in the US about democrats and being “liberal” is usually as a pejorative using the term to describe yourself is usually as a reclamation from the political right in the US and less about being an actual “liberal” as in liberal theory.
Is it a reclamation of it from the political right, or is it an affirmation of the tenants of liberal theory?
I would say it’s a bit of both depending on the context.
In the war of rhetoric, people like to use terms to try and bias you to their side.
liberal actually just means “free” and so there are many types of liberalism: social liberalism economic liberalism (as in free market economics) political liberalism etc…
In the USA liberals tend to be highly socially liberal and highly political liberal. Social liberalism tends to be associated with the political left, and when using liberal as a pejorative, it’s usually meant to claim that the opponent is “too socially liberal.”
US liberals also tend to be associated with the creation and maintaing of a welfare state which is commonly seen as being a left wing concept.
In the US, there is also a large history of debate between what the size and scope of government should be, and how the government should be run. This debate can somewhat be characterized as “liberal democracy vs populism”, i.e good governance based on institutions rules and ideas versus well, populism, a decent example is Donald Trumps rhetoric about “draining the swamp.” US liberals tend to be associated with institutionalism and supposed “good governance”, and populism is commonly seen more as a right wing ideal, so in this area US liberals are considered on the political left as well.
It seems to me that this is how the term is used (excessive capitalism) in a lot of non US places.
Thank goodness we have all these meaningful political labels to argue about instead of focusing on the 90% of policy goals we agree on.
