[kenberg]

Starting maybe a year or so ago I have frequently seen it claimed that the United States is a center-right country. Does this phrase actually mean anything at all?

I can see, for example, what it would mean to say that the Republican Party is a center-right party. This would mean (true or not) that their general outlook is somewhat but not greatly to the right of the center of the country. But a center-right country? We cannot be somewhat to the right of ourselves can we? What center are we said to be to the right of? Does the phrase mean that we are somewhat to the right of the world's center? There is one? With regard to some parts, far to the right I think. With other parts, less so. Presumably to the left of some others. What would it mean to say that we are to the center-right of, say, Indonesia (random choice, I am unprepared to compare and contrast the politics of the US and Indonesia)? And is this what the phrase is intended to convey?

Politicians and journalists often use phrases with little or no meaning but for some reason this solemn assertion that we are a center-right country is one that I have found annoying. As near as I can tell, it means nothing whatsoever.

[kenrexford]

I believe they mean that the center is immediately between democrat and republican. So, the take is that the country titls ever-so-slightly republican ideologically.

I'm not sure where they get that.

BTW -- if you then claim that this missed the entire rest of the world, I think you understated your objection. The US defines the rest of the world based on the world position relative to the U.S. center as if the U.S. center, assuming it exists, is the standard.

[helene_t]

No, China is the country in the center. Look at the sign for "China" in Chinese. It says exactly that.

Btw, every government is called either center-right or center-left (unless it's a broad coalition). I suppose "right" means neo-nazi and "left" was some obscure thing that went extinct in the 80s.

I find it difficult enough to understand what "left" and "right" means here in Europe. So I won't think of what it might mean in the US or Indonesia. I have a vague feeling that I count as moderately right-winged in Europe and that I would count as extremely left-winged in the US, though. I might be wrong. Anyway, it's more interesting to talk about real issues.

[hrothgar]

The whole "America is a center-right" nation is yet another cynical attempt to frame conversations by establishing a meme...

One would think that the results of the last election would have put a stake through the heart of this one. However, thr right seems to be investing even more resources trying to push this idea.

[blackshoe]

http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm

[helene_t]

hrothgar, on Nov 11 2008, 03:32 PM, said:

One would think that the results of the last election would have put a stake through the heart of this one.

Regardless of the last election, it is still so that lots of Americans vote for politicians who run on issues that barely exist in the rest of the World. Abortion, gun ownership and death penalty are non-issues outside the US (sorry, slight exaggeration. They are non-issues in Western Europe). So somehow the US is off-center. Whether it makes sense to talk about "left" vs. "right" I dunno. Since those issues don't exist over here they aren't really associated with left or right.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

A look at wikipedia helps.

Where does left and right come from:

It originates from the sitting order in the french parlament during
the "July" revolution 1830.

What does left politics mean?

It usually indicates a politic influenced by the work of Karl Marx.
This does not only include communists, but a whloe lot more.
Even in the US you have unions, and the idea to form a unions
originiates from the ideas formulated by Karl Marx.
"Workers of the world unite" (Communist Manifest 1847 by
Karl Marx)

Simply speaking:

Extreme to the left, you will find the commmunists.
Center left, you will find social democrats, unions.

The difference between communists and social
democrates is, that the social democrates want
to change the system from within without using
arms / a revolution, the communists are willing
to use arems and revolution.
Unions are somewhere in between.

Center / Center right, you will find the people, who
believe in the free market system / capitalist systems

Extreme to the right, you will find ... (I will skip this one).

If you take this statement, than the US being a center right
country just means, that most people in the US believe in
the free market, that the free market will solve anything.

Contrast this to european thinking, the european believe,
that the free market needs to a strong regulation by the
goverment, e.g. france or german ("Soziale Marktwirtschaft").

With kind regards
Marlowe

[helene_t]

OMG do left-wingers believe in Marx and in strong regulation of markets? Count me right-winged, then.

[MickyB]

hrothgar, on Nov 11 2008, 03:32 PM, said:

The whole "America is a center-right" nation is yet another cynical attempt to frame conversations by establishing a meme...

One would think that the results of the last election would have put a stake through the heart of this one. However, thr right seems to be investing even more resources trying to push this idea.

FWIW, I've heard it said that the democrats are "to the right" of the majority of mainstream political parties in Europe.

[P_Marlowe]

helene_t, on Nov 11 2008, 10:39 AM, said:

OMG do left-wingers believe in Marx and in strong regulation of markets? Count me right-winged, then.

I dont know, if left wingers believe in Marx, but left politics is
influenced by Marx, unions are one example, of course Marx
was heavily influenced by Hegel.

Maybe you prefer to say, you believe in ideas formulated by
Hegel.

Of course there is a third group, which quite often gets mixed
up with right and left, but which is basically different, the
"Liberals".

In germany we have the word "Bildungsbürgertum", not sure how
to translate this, it means people, who were considered well behaved,
but had to work (intellectuals).

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: On a side node, just to show, that Marx is still relevant,
the introduction of VAT is another example, the origins of this
tax is the "Capital" by Karl Marx.
I am not claiming VAT makes Marx popular, but at least it showes
his work is still relevant ...

[barmar]

Would extreme right be true theocracies? In the US, the right wing is strongly influenced by religious groups, but they don't have any official power. And we often hear of the "religious right", but never "religious left".

[P_Marlowe]

barmar, on Nov 11 2008, 10:54 AM, said:

Would extreme right be true theocracies? In the US, the right wing is strongly influenced by religious groups, but they don't have any official power. And we often hear of the "religious right", but never "religious left".

Extreme right:

I think the term was coined for people following the ideas
of Fascism.

Nazis were members of ths NSDAP, short for
National Socialist Democratic Workers (="Arbeiter")
Party.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[jkljkl]

barmar, on Nov 11 2008, 10:54 AM, said:

Would extreme right be true theocracies?  In the US, the right wing is strongly influenced by religious groups, but they don't have any official power.  And we often hear of the "religious right", but never "religious left".

seems the time is come to read a little bit about "liberation theology" in south america :-)

[TimG]

hrothgar, on Nov 11 2008, 09:32 AM, said:

One would think that the results of the last election would have put a stake through the heart of this one. However, thr right seems to be investing even more resources trying to push this idea.

Change doesn't come that quickly. This election may be seen more as a reaction to Bush (and/or Cheney) than an overall shift one way or the other. Certainly we'll have to wait a few years (or decades) to find out.

[Aberlour10]

P_Marlowe, on Nov 11 2008, 10:34 AM, said:

Contrast this to european thinking, the european believe,
that the free market needs to a strong regulation by the
goverment, e.g. france or german ("Soziale Marktwirtschaft").

The principe of german "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" bases on...

"das Prinzip der Freiheit auf dem Markt, mit dem Prinzip des sozialen Ausgleichs zu verbinden"...

...it means free market (without strong regulations in the kernel substance) but flanked by many social elements which should equalize negative social spin- offs of the market mechanisms.

Robert

[awm]

Perhaps the meaning is that Americans have a general distrust of government. This goes back to the Bill of Rights where people demanded that the government powers to interfere in the rights of citizens be explicitly limited. It's still the case that most Americans don't look to government for help when things are going badly, and prefer to trust the free market system (or the church, or their family) rather than government.

So in the sense that most Americans prefer less government intervention in their day-to-day lives, less taxes (and less services), perhaps America is a "center-right" country.

The current election is not really a negation of this idea. The fact is that under George W. Bush's administration, the government has grown in size dramatically and involved itself in quite a number of things that impact ordinary citizens. Generally speaking, the current administration has been a disaster. So even though Barack Obama has much more faith in the power of government to help solve problems than most Americans do, we'd much rather have someone who will try to use government to solve problems than a representative of a party which apparently uses government to create problems. The election is a rejection of George W. Bush and of his party's "neo-conservative" policies which seem to advocate never-ending war in the middle-east, fiscal policies which redistribute wealth upward, increased government interference in local and personal issues, and a very high degree of corruption including letting oil company lobbyists write the energy policy. It's worth noting that the Republican party under Bush is not exactly a "party of smaller government."

To reply to P_Marlowe, it's not really fair to compare "leftists" to Marxists. While Marxism may be the extreme of the "left" position, the extreme on the "right" is anarchism or plutocracy (rule by the wealthy). Neither extreme is particularly desirable, and few politicians advocate either extreme position. On economic policy, the "left" position favors regulation of the market and laws guaranteeing a living wage and worker's rights. The "right" position favors deregulation of the market, lower taxes and less government involvement in economic policy. Of course, what exactly these folks stand for depend on the status quo (generally democrats in the USA want to make the minimum wage a living wage, support worker's rights to form unions, guarantee health insurance for everyone -- in Western Europe the status quo is already to the left of what most USA democrats want).

The position on social issues is less clear. One might expect that the "left" politicians would favor bigger government involvement here and the "right" politicians would want less, and this might be true in a traditional sense but it's not really reflected in US policies. As far as I can tell, the democrats feel that it is reasonable for the government to enact social policies which restrict individual rights in order to improve public health. This includes bans on smoking, restrictions on vehicles which create a lot of pollution, requirements that children receive vaccines, restricting gun ownership to "responsible citizens" and so forth. The republicans feel that it is reasonable for the government to enact social policies which encourage moral behavior (under a traditional mostly christian definition of morality) such as restricting pornographic or violent material, restricting the rights of homosexual couples to marry, encouraging heterosexual couples to marry, restricting birth control education in schools, and so forth. Both parties tend to reject the other's approach on social issues, claiming that it conflicts with American principles of personal freedom or separation of church and state.

[P_Marlowe]

Aberlour10, on Nov 11 2008, 11:11 AM, said:

P_Marlowe, on Nov 11 2008, 10:34 AM, said:

Contrast this to european thinking, the european believe,
that the free market needs to a strong regulation by the
goverment, e.g. france or german ("Soziale Marktwirtschaft").

The principe of german "Soziale Martwirtschaft" bases on...

"das Prinzip der Freiheit auf dem Markt, mit dem Prinzip des sozialen Ausgleichs zu verbinden"...

...it means free market (without strong regulations in the kernel substance) but flanked by many social elements which should equalize negative social spin- offs of the market.

Robert

<but flanked by many social elements which should equalize
negative social spin- offs of the market.>

Which in effect means, you formulated rules, which all players
in the market need to follow, i.e. you regulate the market at
least certain aspects, since you dont allow the free market to
do, what the free market wants to do.

As always you have peoble, who want tighter controls and
others who want to looser controls.

As an example take the current finance crisis.

Today there was an article in a newspaper ("Handelblatt") which
stated, that the german goverment supports the introduction of
central world wide rules for the finance industry (together with
france), this followes more or less the above concept.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: The following has nothing to do with the topic, but it may be
of some interests for those who read the discussion:
The "Soziale Martwirtschaft" was developed by economist, which
were deeply influenced by the catholic church, but it is certainly
not wrong to claim, that those ideas got developed as an response
to the suggestion made by Marx / the left.

[P_Marlowe]

awm, on Nov 11 2008, 11:17 AM, said:

<snip>
To reply to P_Marlowe, it's not really fair to compare "leftists" to Marxists.
<snip>

Just a simple comment:

The statement assumes, that Marx was a Marxist, which is
not true, he never was.

The ideas of Marx got developed further by several others,
and as I tried to point out, there was a split of the left
movement in social democrates and communists, the split
happened 30 years after Marx died, but certainly the split
started earlier.

Just guessing, but most "leftists" would not disagree, if one
would call them social democrates in the german sense.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[Aberlour10]

P_Marlowe, on Nov 11 2008, 11:23 AM, said:

Which in effect means, you formulated rules, which all players
in the market need to follow, i.e. you regulate the market at
least certain aspects, since you dont allow the free market to
do, what the free market wants to do.

Not exactly.

The market participants are fully free in their economic decisions and actions, the goverment complete substantial social tasks acting as guarantor of "Soziale Frieden" (Social Peace)

[P_Marlowe]

Aberlour10, on Nov 11 2008, 11:40 AM, said:

P_Marlowe, on Nov 11 2008, 11:23 AM, said:

Which in effect means, you formulated rules, which all players
in the market need to follow, i.e. you regulate the market at
least certain aspects, since you dont allow the free market to
do, what the free market wants to do.

Not exactly.

The market participants are fully free in their economic decisions and actions, the goverment complete substantial social tasks acting as guarantor of "Soziale Frieden" (Social Peace)

...

Not exactly, but I think we dont really disagree, we just
disagree with wording.

Just an example: An company of a certain size usually has
a "Betriebsrat", at least one member (there may be more)
of the board with full voting rights, which gets elected by
the work force.

The "Betriebsrat" will have a certain "veto" power in lots
of economic decisions the company wants to make, he
is able to block things decided by the board.
A company may be able to overturn the veto, but it is not
easy.

The "Betriebsrat" and general german lawes make firing
people a lot harder than in other countries.

The "Betriebsrat" is an instrument to ensure "Social Peace",
but its existence limits the decision a market player can make,
and the limit is real.

And if you have just a minority of employees in the company
(1% for all I know), which requests that a "Betriebsrat" gets
installed, the "Betriebsrat" will be installed, even if a huge
majorityof the the other employees say "No".

In my comapny, it was 90-95% (No) vs. 5-10% (Yes).
Personnally I voted "No", but I dont mind it, because it was just
making a already existing structure more legal compliant.

With kind regards
Marlowe