I reject leftism, how about you?

[Axalon]

“What do you think of the political left, what are your views?”

As I understand the left (progressivism) it is against personal freedom, choice and merit. It is against a world of distinct and free nations - with their own peoples, cultures, history and traditions. It is against the free market, free speech, free thinking, free choices, free information, free ownership or any freedom of association. Marxism and socialism – the ever present foundation of the left - are both openly totalitarian and authoritarian movements. Anything inspired by, sympathetic or derived of these movements will always carry such traits somehow, one way or the other, openly or hidden. It all boils down to the forced collectivisation and uniformity of all – and state/party-sanctioned suppression of the individual and the distinctive at every turn. Man is thus essentially reduced to some sort of obedient insect that live only to serve the "hive" (the party or state), little else.

Naturally, I reject all such leftist ideas and goals…

- A

[AqD]

The left wingers, specifically the pre-marxist socialists and the social democrats can be credited with improving worker conditions but historically they have done nothing on the freedom side. We can thank the socialists (except for the marxists) and social-democrats for the minimum 20 days payed vacation, social security, free healthcare etc we have in Europe

Welfare is freedom, or a large part of it.

Don't believe me? Take a look at British Hong Kong and other Asian places, or China today.

1. Want to study art? Better have a rich daddy or you'd live in parents' basement forever
2. Want to study something else after failed to land a job? Need rich daddy or mommy again, or work 12 hours a day and study at midnight
3. In 10 or 20 years your parents will literally depend on you for survival. Better pray they die early, but not in hospital or you'd bankrupt for life.
4. And pay for good insurance because working like that guarantees tons of healthy problems later, if you don't die suddenly in office at 30.
5. Want to get married? You need a lot of money to prove you're financially capable, read reasons above
6. Get fired at 40 or 50 for being a mediocre worker like everyone else? Better have a car so you can drive taxi
7. Get a disabled cousin? You can choose a) break your back helping him until he dies, or b) watch him thrown out of hospital, rented home and live on street like stray dog, in that order.
8. Get a retarded kid? You can jump from a bridge now. Don't forget to grab his hand. (read reasons above)

Now again, what freedom? Sure you can vote, you can travel, you can speak and scream and protest. But call it freedom?

[Cyclops]

in favor of quality public health and education.
in favor of the rights of women and LGTBI groups..
in favor of policies that fight against sexist violence.
in favor of welcoming immigrants regardless of their race or religion.
in favor of controlling the greed of the entrepreneurs/employers.
in favor of promoting culture.
in favor of stopping climate change.

yeah I could support that.

A lot of these elements of the modern left have roots in former movements like Humanism (which contested with conservative scholasticism and ultramontane orthodoxy), Jacobinism (vs the Ancien Regime), various late 18th/early 19th century radicals (often inspired by the Jacobins, such as anarchists, communists etc). A few concessions (such as the Tory's expanding the franchise in 1869) stand out as rare moments of compassionate reform but much of the positive steps taken (that I frankly caricatured above) were made either by outright revolutionaries, or under he threat of unrest unless concessions were granted.

Right and Left as modern incarnations call up true and false images of the past for present battles, but I'd never be so foolish as to reject The Right or The Left as absolute constructs, because as such they never existed.

[mishkin]

right now I am content with any political party that does not fight against any of the things I have said.

[Flinn]

I very seldom post in anything "political", but I think it's worth to spend a few words in this discussion.

I never, ever, rejected a political idea or position just because it was commonly affiliated with one side or the other, and I don't think I ever will. In my life I had the chance to travel a lot, I've been almost everywhere because of work (never been to the US, but that's the only "main" country I missed so far), and because of that I had the chance to talk with many different people and see things from other perspectives, and there are some things I realized: first, any "political stance" is absolutely subjective, both personally and culturally (I mean as a people), and totally dependent on the history of that people and of that country, so pretending to limit any "political stance" to a specific sets of values (or to rejecting other values) is pointless IMO, at the least on the wider scheme. Second, any individual should be using their experience to build up their own political stance, and not the other way around; to be clear: pretending to sit on some values someone else has defined for you, no matter how good they look or actually are, is always a mistake, both personally and for the development of our civilization. Third, any "political stance" is for politicians, not for the people; in other words, as individuals we should have our own set of values and they really should be private (in the sense that they should not be identifying us publicly), because otherwise the single individual would be subject to be an easy pray for politicians to exploit them. On the contrary, the base of any successful democratic system would be secrecy of vote (and by extensions secrecy of opinions), because that's the only way to be able to held politicians accountable for their deeds.

As it is obvious, it happens to me often that when I discuss with other people about current of past events, or whatever (just like in this post, for example) I end up being identified as either "one side or the other" depending on from where the observer is looking at me; for instance, I'm pretty sure someone will think, by what I wrote above, that I have somewhat anarchistic positions, isn't it so? You can't imagine how often it happens to me that people tells me that I'm such a communist or fascist (meaning specifically on the extreme left or right, respectively), for the very same idea I expressed somewhere.

In the past I used to think of myself as of a centrist, but I dropped that idea as well: it is just me, with my experience, and what I believe today is the direct result of that experience. I don't need any affiliation or label or "friends", for what matters... if anything is someone else who wants to give me those, but exclusively for their own interests, not certainly for mine.