How to build a house majority

[imported_tajmahal]

Correct, they are not.

You're so far out in left field you're not even in the Ballpark anymore.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Linked from WaPo

http://www.thirdway.org/report/how-to-build-a-house-majority

The left is in trouble. Even if in 2018 they take every suburban district that they don't have today they can't win a majority.

All the haters here are going to need the rural white vote.

The haters already have the rural white vote. How do you teach racists to love their brown and black neighbors?

 

[Jhhnn]

Why are we acting like Obama was some kind of single payer champion that was stymied by congress? His program was subsidized health insurance from the very beginning. He never seriously fought for single payer.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying he wasn't chasing any unicorns & that he didn't have the clout to rope 'em if he was. Single payer was a non-starter & therefore a waste of effort & political capital. Hell- the ACA barely squeaked by.

 

[fskimospy]

Is there any evidence that that's even what Obama wanted? Did he campaign for it? Did he fight for it at all? I don't remember any part of the Democratic Party fighting for single payer.

He fought for what was achievable. Again, if you look at DW-NOMINATE scores for the democratic majorities of 2008-09 they are vastly more moderate than the GOP majority today.

Leftism is generally associated with socialism and the idea that public interests take precedence over private. Solidarity with working and impoverished classes across all borders is important, so that's why interventionism doesn't make much sense. Vietnam is a communist state that has never had an aggressive foreign policy. Neither has Cuba.

Cuba sent agents and soldiers to Africa and its neighbors in order to destabilize and overthrow their governments so that more Cuba-friendly ones could be installed. That's how Che died, after all. As for Vietnam...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian–Vietnamese_War

Like I said: Every. Single. One.

You won't find many leftists in power, again, Sanders and Corbyn are the two that come to mind. In terms of higher profile leftist writers, academics etc. I'd say Noam Chomsky, George Ciccariello, Freddie DeBoer, Amber A'Lee Frost and the cast of Chapo Trap House, Adam Johnson, Matt Bruenig, Sam Kriss, and Carl Beijer.

Yes but how do you define it? Not people, but what set of beliefs?

I've not seen a lot of people advocating that. It's hard to imagine Goldman Sachs paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone on the left for a speech. It'd be like Exxon Mobil paying tons of money to climate scientists or environmentalists.

Again though, this comes back to how you define the left, as in what set of beliefs. Presumably leftism is not defined by who pays you to make speeches.

 

[woolfe9998]

Liberals, sure. I'm fine with that. I see a vast difference between liberals and the left.

Liberals: Obama, Clinton, (Macron, Ossof)

Left: Corbyn, Sanders

I honestly haven't the foggiest idea where you are getting these definitions of "left" and "liberal." Left/right is a spectrum of beliefs. Liberals fall somewhere to the left of center, by definition.

I've heard this argued in the exact reverse BTW. That people like Sanders are the real liberals, while others "on the left" are not true liberals. It's best just to treat the terms as synonymous and talk about degrees of leftism or liberalism. All of those people are on the left, and all are liberals, just not to the same extent.

 

[pmv]

The data is pretty clear on this, true UHC failed because Obama couldn't do any better. The democratic caucus in both the house and the senate was vastly more moderate than the current GOP congress. Not even in the same ballpark.



This seems like a no true Scotsman fallacy. I'm not saying anything about what people should support, I'm simply noting that governments that were ultra leftist had interventionist foreign policy, meaning opposition to that doesn't seem to be a defining aspect of leftism.




I am using the two terms as synonyms. Regardless, this all came up because someone tried to say Clinton and Obama were on the right, which is ridiculous.

I'd call Clinton on the right, no question. Soft-right, I guess. Obama's instincts I think were a little more leftish (couldn't imagine either Clinton using a final presidential act to Pardon Chelsea Manning, they'd doubtless have spared some corrupt business associate instead) , but the very softest of soft-left at most, and in any case the individual isn't the issue, they are just part of an entire 'machine'.

Regarding 'intervention' I think the whole argument is misframed. Those 'interventionist' leftist governments you refer to were very divided internally over such issues, and in any case you can't talk about 'interventionism' bereft of context. Who is intervening, on whose side, for what purpose, in what way? Generally the kind of interventions the US is likely to engage in (short of some fantastically improbable Bolshevik socialist revolution in the country) are unlikely to be the sort of interventions an actual leftist would feel supportive of.

 

[Victorian Gray]

You're so far out in left field you're not even in the Ballpark anymore.

The opinion of the stain in Donito Trumpolini's tighty whities carries more weight than anything you can come up with li'l fella.

Have a nice day.

 

[pmv]

I honestly haven't the foggiest idea where you are getting these definitions of "left" and "liberal." Left/right is a spectrum of beliefs. Liberals fall somewhere to the left of center, by definition.

Don't know where you get that from. I grew up with it taken as a given (accepted by everyone) that Liberals are, by definition, in the middle. Liberalism, after all, arose as the philosophy of the rising industrial classes, in contrast to the conservative land-owning classes. Then you got socialism on the left with the growth of political involvement from the working class.

In a way its far too crude to talk in terms of a left-right spectrum anyway. There are just different philosophical positions and traditions, and they don't _really_ fall on a single line, they all emphasise different things and will take different positions depending on circumstances.

Plus, what theoretical ideology anyone claims to hold isn't really the point - people will pick different 'sides' depending on their particular self-interest happens to be in any particular context. The same people can jump different ways depending on events.

 

[woolfe9998]

Right, and the president had approval ratings in the mid to high 60s while this debate was going on. I can't agree that he didn't have more leverage.

Obama had high approvals, but single payer did not at the time. IIRC it was polling in the low 30's nationally. It's gone way up since then.

Also, bear in mind that the dems needed all 60 of their Senators to get on board with whatever healthcare bill they pursued, including those from red states who wouldn't vote for even the ACA with a public option. Indeed, it was difficult to get them onboard for this rather centrist approach without the public option. What kind of pressure do you think would have had to be applied to get red state dem senators to vote for something which would have been vastly unpopular in states they represented such as Louisiana and Nebraska? It was not going to happen.

Here is Obama, likely in 2003, stating that he supports single payer universal healthcare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE

He "moderated" his rhetoric later on because, as I said, this position was considered far left and unpopular in 2008. He did the same thing with gay marriage. At first he supported "civil unions" then came out for gay marriage when the polling improved. I think he can legitimately be criticized for this kind of politically motivated flip flopping, but this criticism has nothing to do with where he really is ideologically.

 

[Victorian Gray]

The haters already have the rural white vote. How do you teach racists to love their brown and black neighbors?

The same way that you teach nazis not to throw people in ovens?

 

[fskimospy]

I'd call Clinton on the right, no question. Soft-right, I guess. Obama's instincts I think were a little more leftish (couldn't imagine either Clinton using a final presidential act to Pardon Chelsea Manning, they'd doubtless have spared some corrupt business associate instead) , but the very softest of soft-left at most, and in any case the individual isn't the issue, they are just part of an entire 'machine'.

When people talk about these sort of things they tend to cherry pick issues, which is why I defer to empirically tested metrics like DW-NOMINATE that look at a wide range of their positions. This measure puts all legislators in a common space by comparing their votes to one another over time. By that measure Clinton was one of the most liberal politicians in the US, slightly to the left of Obama.

Why do you think DW-NOMINATE gets Clinton's position so wrong, specifically?

Regarding 'intervention' I think the whole argument is misframed. Those 'interventionist' leftist governments you refer to were very divided internally over such issues, and in any case you can't talk about 'interventionism' bereft of context. Who is intervening, on whose side, for what purpose, in what way? Generally the kind of interventions the US is likely to engage in (short of some fantastically improbable Bolshevik socialist revolution in the country) are unlikely to be the sort of interventions an actual leftist would feel supportive of.

Blackjack's argument was that leftism was inherently against intervention, but you're saying leftism is fine with intervention in some circumstances. This supports my point.

By any reasonable definition communist countries were on the extreme left; can you tell me which of their numerous invasions of other countries you think were okay?

 

[pmv]

When people talk about these sort of things they tend to cherry pick issues, which is why I defer to empirically tested metrics like DW-NOMINATE that look at a wide range of their positions. This measure puts all legislators in a common space by comparing their votes to one another over time. By that measure Clinton was one of the most liberal politicians in the US, slightly to the left of Obama.

Why do you think DW-NOMINATE gets Clinton's position so wrong, specifically?

I have to confess I've lost track of which Clinton you are referring to. But both of them took a great many right-wing positions. Cuts to AFDC being one...the precise list depends on which one you are talking about.

Blackjack's argument was that leftism was inherently against intervention, but you're saying leftism is fine with intervention in some circumstances. This supports my point.

By any reasonable definition communist countries were on the extreme left; can you tell me which of their numerous invasions of other countries you think were okay?

As I say, those countries were internally very divided over their interventions. And one can argue as to whether the nationalist turn that the USSR took under Stalin was really 'left' in any sense.

The invasion of Poland as an attempt to break through it to spread the revolution to Germany just after the Bolshevik takeover had a certain logic given the context they were in. But that was actually Lenin going against his own dictum that 'you can't spread the revolution on the point of a bayonet, and it of course failed.

But that isn't to say I 'approve' of it, any more than I approve or disapprove of the Roman Empire invading places. It was a historical event, it happened for complex multi-factoral reasons.

The Vietnamese intervention to overthrow the Khmer Rouge is an interesting one. Considering how much more justified it was than the US invasion of Iraq (Cambodia was right next door, and the Khmers had been constantly raiding and launching incursions across the border, as well as being the most ghastly regime we've seen prior, perhaps, to ISIS) it's striking that the US (who had essentiallly bought the KR into existence by illegally and secretly bombing Cambodia and completely destabilising it) condemned it and imposed long-lasting sanctions on Vietnam for it.

But I'm not quite clear what you are asking - why do you think I think any of them were 'OK'? I'm just pointing out that being in favour of _Western_ intervention is not really an attribute of the left.

 

[woolfe9998]

Don't know where you get that from. I grew up with it taken as a given (accepted by everyone) that Liberals are, by definition, in the middle. Liberalism, after all, arose as the philosophy of the rising industrial classes, in contrast to the conservative land-owning classes. Then you got socialism on the left with the growth of political involvement from the working class.

In a way its far too crude to talk in terms of a left-right spectrum anyway. There are just different philosophical positions and traditions, and they don't _really_ fall on a single line, they all emphasise different things and will take different positions depending on circumstances.

Plus, what theoretical ideology anyone claims to hold isn't really the point - people will pick different 'sides' depending on their particular self-interest happens to be in any particular context. The same people can jump different ways depending on events.

I think liberalism is a qualitatively different concept than socialism. It may include socialism, for those socialists who are also liberal. Liberalism originally meant the belief in equality and freedom, two ideas which stood in opposition to authoritarianism. A socialist would not be a liberal if he supported authoritarianism. Remember when Sanders spoke out in support of Ann Coulter's free speech rights just a couple months ago? That's because Bernie is socialist and liberal. Not all socialists are liberal.

You're using a definition which is essentially confined to modern day America, where self-described "liberals" are something like socialism-lite. That has little to do with historical liberalism, or even liberalism as construed in other cultures. In my view, elements of the far left have become quite illiberal, which is to say, both intolerant and authoritarian. In this, they have something in common with the far right, even though the policies they advocate are mostly the opposite of the far right. So I would agree that "left" and "liberal" are different, but I don't necessarily agree that "liberal" means centrist. It could mean anything from center to far left. I think all liberals are on the left to highly varying degrees, but not everyone on the left is liberal.

 

[fskimospy]

I have to confess I've lost track of which Clinton you are referring to. But both of them took a great many right-wing positions. Cuts to AFDC being one...the precise list depends on which one you are talking about.

Hillary Clinton, although both Clinton's were definitely on the left.

As I say, those countries were internally very divided over their interventions. And one can argue as to whether the nationalist turn that the USSR took under Stalin was really 'left' in any sense.

I'm judging them on their actions. The US has generally been very divided on those interventions as well, but that doesn't change them.

IMO if communist Russia is not leftist then the term has no meaning.

The invasion of Poland as an attempt to break through it to spread the revolution to Germany just after the Bolshevik takeover had a certain logic given the context they were in. But that was actually Lenin going against his own dictum that 'you can't spread the revolution on the point of a bayonet, and it of course failed.

But that isn't to say I 'approve' of it, any more than I approve or disapprove of the Roman Empire invading places. It was a historical event, it happened for complex multi-factoral reasons.

It doesn't matter to me if people approve of them, again my point is simply that noninterventionist foreign policy is demonstrably not a vital part of leftist doctrine.

The Vietnamese intervention to overthrow the Khmer Rouge is an interesting one. Considering how much more justified it was than the US invasion of Iraq (Cambodia was right next door, and the Khmers had been constantly raiding and launching incursions across the border, as well as being the most ghastly regime we've seen prior, perhaps, to ISIS) it's striking that the US (who had essentiallly bought the KR into existence by illegally and secretly bombing Cambodia and completely destabilising it) condemned it and imposed long-lasting sanctions on Vietnam for it.

Not here to debate the merits of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, just here to point out that Vietnam invaded, occupied, and set up a puppet government in a neighboring state. Not exactly noninterventionist.

But I'm not quite clear what you are asking - why do you think I think any of them were 'OK'? I'm just pointing out that being in favour of _Western_ intervention is not really an attribute of the left.

That's even worse then as it engages in an arbitrary geographical and cultural condemnation of some interventions over others.

 

[fskimospy]

I think liberalism is a qualitatively different concept than socialism. It may include socialism, for those socialists who are also liberal. Liberalism originally meant the belief in equality and freedom, two ideas which stood in opposition to authoritarianism. A socialist would not be a liberal if he supported authoritarianism. Remember when Sanders spoke out in support of Ann Coulter's free speech rights just a couple months ago? That's because Bernie is socialist and liberal. Not all socialists are liberal.

You're using a definition which is essentially confined to modern day America, where self-described "liberals" are something like socialism-lite. That has little to do with historical liberalism, or even liberalism as construed in other cultures. In my view, elements of the far left have become quite illiberal, which is to say, both intolerant and authoritarian. In this, they have something in common with the far right, even though the policies they advocate are mostly the opposite of the far right. So I would agree that "left" and "liberal" are different, but I don't necessarily agree that "liberal" means centrist. It could mean anything from center to far left. I think all liberals are on the left to highly varying degrees, but not everyone on the left is liberal.

This is a very good and important distinction. People on the far left can be just as suppressive of freedom as people on the far right, and this freedom is a fundamental component of liberalism, but not of 'leftism', at least as they appear to be describing it.

 

[agent00f]

Is there any evidence that that's even what Obama wanted? Did he campaign for it? Did he fight for it at all? I don't remember any part of the Democratic Party fighting for single payer.

Funnily enough, the Hill dog's OG HC plan when her husband got elected was more or less a path to single payer. They lost that fight and in true centrist fashion basically adopted the GOP's alternative proposal at the time for the D platform.

Don't know where you get that from. I grew up with it taken as a given (accepted by everyone) that Liberals are, by definition, in the middle. Liberalism, after all, arose as the philosophy of the rising industrial classes, in contrast to the conservative land-owning classes. Then you got socialism on the left with the growth of political involvement from the working class.

In a way its far too crude to talk in terms of a left-right spectrum anyway. There are just different philosophical positions and traditions, and they don't _really_ fall on a single line, they all emphasise different things and will take different positions depending on circumstances.

Plus, what theoretical ideology anyone claims to hold isn't really the point - people will pick different 'sides' depending on their particular self-interest happens to be in any particular context. The same people can jump different ways depending on events.

Elsewhere in the western world, "liberal" often refers to classical liberal econ, which is a frozen set of basically capitalist (mercantilism) orthodoxy from a time when it was relative liberal compared to the feudal monarchy. This is different from the intellectual liberal ideals from the enlightenment, thus the confusion.

Your point about self-interest is well made. Politics is largely just rationalization of personal interests.

 

[agent00f]

I think liberalism is a qualitatively different concept than socialism. It may include socialism, for those socialists who are also liberal. Liberalism originally meant the belief in equality and freedom, two ideas which stood in opposition to authoritarianism. A socialist would not be a liberal if he supported authoritarianism. Remember when Sanders spoke out in support of Ann Coulter's free speech rights just a couple months ago? That's because Bernie is socialist and liberal. Not all socialists are liberal.

You're using a definition which is essentially confined to modern day America, where self-described "liberals" are something like socialism-lite. That has little to do with historical liberalism, or even liberalism as construed in other cultures. In my view, elements of the far left have become quite illiberal, which is to say, both intolerant and authoritarian. In this, they have something in common with the far right, even though the policies they advocate are mostly the opposite of the far right. So I would agree that "left" and "liberal" are different, but I don't necessarily agree that "liberal" means centrist. It could mean anything from center to far left. I think all liberals are on the left to highly varying degrees, but not everyone on the left is liberal.

Sure, proponents of denazification and such were the Real nazis. Pretty obvious people like this existed ever since liberalism was a thing to proclaim it has now crossed some imaginary line in their little head, and yet society still progresses. In contrast the original liberals were smart visionaries.

 

[agent00f]

This is a very good and important distinction. People on the far left can be just as suppressive of freedom as people on the far right, and this freedom is a fundamental component of liberalism, but not of 'leftism', at least as they appear to be describing it.

The "leftists" you're talking about were basically dictators who used marxist socialism's good name to promise potential revolutionaries with nothing to lose 40 acres and a mule. Given the peons never got any of that means of production, it's left as an exercise to the reader to figure how "leftist" they were.

 

[pmv]

Hillary Clinton, although both Clinton's were definitely on the left.



I'm judging them on their actions. The US has generally been very divided on those interventions as well, but that doesn't change them.

IMO if communist Russia is not leftist then the term has no meaning.



It doesn't matter to me if people approve of them, again my point is simply that noninterventionist foreign policy is demonstrably not a vital part of leftist doctrine.



Not here to debate the merits of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, just here to point out that Vietnam invaded, occupied, and set up a puppet government in a neighboring state. Not exactly noninterventionist.



That's even worse then as it engages in an arbitrary geographical and cultural condemnation of some interventions over others.

Oh, well Hillary seems clearly on the moderate right to me. Supporting her husband's cuts to AFDC, her love of military intervention all over the world inb purusit of US interests, imposing a dodgy corrupt ruler on Haiti, voting against the ban on cluster bomb exports, the infamous 'super predators' speech, a reluctance to actually do anything about climate change, applauding the Honduras coup, gleefully selling high tech weaponry to Saudi Arabia, her record of serving on the board of Walmart while doing nothing about it's anti-union stance, and acting as a corporate lawyer helping defend corporations against their own employees, her past record on gay marriage and the death penalty...I really don't see how one can consider her left wing, but of course different countries and eras have different standards for judging these things. I just don't share yours, that's all.

Her foreign policy stances in particular seem to be entirely concerned with US interests, and domestically she doesn't have a particularly good record with regard to the less well off. I grant she's probably OK on some feminist issues like abortion (but then the US is odd in that that issue is so contentious in the first place).

It's very debatable whether Stalin's Russia, with regard to foreign policy, was 'left wing'. Much of the point of Stalinism was that it involved a turn away from internationalism and an increased concern with Russia's national self-interest. This often meant the very opposite of intervening, it meant a withdrawl from supporting foreign communists if it doing so was in the USSR's interest.

As for the last point, you miss the point. 'Interventionism' has a meaning only in particular contexts. In this context it refers to capitalist western states. In that respect leftists don't support interventionism. What the word means when talking of a different era and different context is entirely irrelevant, we aren't in that era and the USA is not communist. And don't assume any of this means I personally think those Soviet interventions were a good thing. I'm merely pointing out what actual leftists tend to think.

 

[agent00f]

Oh, well Hillary seems clearly on the moderate right to me. Supporting her husband's cuts to AFDC, her love of military intervention all over the world inb purusit of US interests, imposing a dodgy corrupt ruler on Haiti, voting against the ban on cluster bomb exports, the infamous 'super predators' speech, a reluctance to actually do anything about climate change, applauding the Honduras coup, gleefully selling high tech weaponry to Saudi Arabia, her record of serving on the board of Walmart while doing nothing about it's anti-union stance, and acting as a corporate lawyer helping defend corporations against their own employees, her past record on gay marriage and the death penalty...I really don't see how one can consider her left wing, but of course different countries and eras have different standards for judging these things. I just don't share yours, that's all.

Her foreign policy stances in particular seem to be entirely concerned with US interests, and domestically she doesn't have a particularly good record with regard to the less well off. I grant she's probably OK on some feminist issues like abortion (but then the US is odd in that that issue is so contentious in the first place).

Centrism is basically a practical strategy of promising something to everyone, and clintons are posterkids for centrism. So some social democracy to liberals, some white welfare aka .mil to conservatives, some bombing brown people to racists, and so on.

It's very debatable whether Stalin's Russia, with regard to foreign policy, was 'left wing'. Much of the point of Stalinism was that it involved a turn away from internationalism and an increased concern with Russia's national self-interest. This often meant the very opposite of intervening, it meant a withdrawl from supporting foreign communists if it doing so was in the USSR's interest.

As for the last point, you miss the point. 'Interventionism' has a meaning only in particular contexts. In this context it refers to capitalist western states. In that respect leftists don't support interventionism. What the word means when talking of a different era and different context is entirely irrelevant, we aren't in that era and the USA is not communist. And don't assume any of this means I personally think those Soviet interventions were a good thing. I'm merely pointing out what actual leftists tend to think.

Stalin wasn't all that different than Putin, or Trump for that matter. He does for himself what he can get away with.

 

[cytg111]

I know excatly how the "left" can win this one... problem is that by this definition winning means loosing.

Step
1. Create new media outlet. SwampWars.
2. Obtain the 2016 data leaks in terms of cambridge analytica and kin.
3. Begin own datamining operations by hiring CA or likewise.
4. Hack RNC databases plus individual congress members and their immediate family and friends. Leverage.
5. Seed information campaigns ala :
- Melanie secret clone of Ivanka.
- Ivankas true mother is Putin
- Trump and Putin met at secret gay gangbang in moscow 2015
- Trump shares 97% genome with a pig
- Melanie secret covert Soviet agent
- Melanie and Ivanka in secret lesbian relationship
- Trump has downs syndrome, <focus on eyes>
- Putin wants to take your guns away
- Trump want to turn you gay
- Trump was born in Mexico
etc.etc.etc.etc.
Carpet bomb the populus with misinformation and propaganda and rally the rallyable, you all know how this goes. To war.

 

[pmv]

Centrism is basically a practical strategy of promising something to everyone, and clintons are posterkids for centrism. So some social democracy to liberals, some white welfare aka .mil to conservatives, some bombing brown people to racists, and so on.

Stalin wasn't all that different than Putin, or Trump for that matter. He does for himself what he can get away with.

Replace 'centrism' with 'triangulation' and I would agree.

Stalin wasn't the same as Trump or Putin though. Domestically it can't be denied he was 'left wing', unlike Putin he didn't preside over a system of 'crony capitalism', he was still a communist, however much communists might want to disown him, and unlike Trump he clearly had a vast reserve of class-resentment/hatred (to the degree he hated his fellow Bolsheviks if they were middle-class intellectuals).

Also he was more a paranoid psychopath than an insecure narcisssist, so he had a quite different set of personal dysfunctions to Trump!

Edit - I actually find myself occassionally feeling sorry for Trump. I don't think he's very happy, underneath. I think he's desperately insecure. There's something quite sad about his attitude to women.

 

[pmv]

I think liberalism is a qualitatively different concept than socialism. It may include socialism, for those socialists who are also liberal. Liberalism originally meant the belief in equality and freedom, two ideas which stood in opposition to authoritarianism. A socialist would not be a liberal if he supported authoritarianism. Remember when Sanders spoke out in support of Ann Coulter's free speech rights just a couple months ago? That's because Bernie is socialist and liberal. Not all socialists are liberal.

You're using a definition which is essentially confined to modern day America, where self-described "liberals" are something like socialism-lite. That has little to do with historical liberalism, or even liberalism as construed in other cultures. In my view, elements of the far left have become quite illiberal, which is to say, both intolerant and authoritarian. In this, they have something in common with the far right, even though the policies they advocate are mostly the opposite of the far right. So I would agree that "left" and "liberal" are different, but I don't necessarily agree that "liberal" means centrist. It could mean anything from center to far left. I think all liberals are on the left to highly varying degrees, but not everyone on the left is liberal.

I entirely disagree that 'all lliberals are on the left'. The distinction between 'liberalism' and 'neo-liberalism' has always seemed a bit bogus to me (most liberals turn out to be neo-liberals when the going gets tough), and neo-liberalism is of the right.

But I agree that 'liberalism' and 'socialism' and 'conservatism' and even 'fascism' and the rest are essentially different traditions and philosophical positions that don't actually exist on some a simple one-dimensional line. They aren't really commensurable and are often at right-angles to each other. The whole left-right thing is a crude simplification.

Liberalism has a certain set of assumptions and beliefs behind it (e.g. individualism, a rejection of the idea that you are born into a pre-existing set of obligations and duties, etc), and whether the manifestation of those beliefs appears 'left' or 'right' depends on the context.

That is why in much of the world (e.g. parts of continental Europe) the 'liberal' party is a party of the right, being very pro-free-market and even what the Anglosphere might call libertarian. In the UK the liberals were long seen as a rather wishy-washy mixture of things in the centre (the Lib Dems have both social-democrats and Ayn Rand fans among their number) while the US, in a way I still can't get used to, regards liberals as being on the left.

I still have trouble with the term 'extreme liberal' (how can you be extremely in the middle?).

 

[fskimospy]

Oh, well Hillary seems clearly on the moderate right to me. Supporting her husband's cuts to AFDC, her love of military intervention all over the world inb purusit of US interests, imposing a dodgy corrupt ruler on Haiti, voting against the ban on cluster bomb exports, the infamous 'super predators' speech, a reluctance to actually do anything about climate change, applauding the Honduras coup, gleefully selling high tech weaponry to Saudi Arabia, her record of serving on the board of Walmart while doing nothing about it's anti-union stance, and acting as a corporate lawyer helping defend corporations against their own employees, her past record on gay marriage and the death penalty...I really don't see how one can consider her left wing, but of course different countries and eras have different standards for judging these things. I just don't share yours, that's all.

Her foreign policy stances in particular seem to be entirely concerned with US interests, and domestically she doesn't have a particularly good record with regard to the less well off. I grant she's probably OK on some feminist issues like abortion (but then the US is odd in that that issue is so contentious in the first place).

Again though, the idea that nonintervention is left wing discounts the behavior of literally every seriously left wing country in history. It hardly seems left wing to me at all.

It's very debatable whether Stalin's Russia, with regard to foreign policy, was 'left wing'. Much of the point of Stalinism was that it involved a turn away from internationalism and an increased concern with Russia's national self-interest. This often meant the very opposite of intervening, it meant a withdrawl from supporting foreign communists if it doing so was in the USSR's interest.

As for the last point, you miss the point. 'Interventionism' has a meaning only in particular contexts. In this context it refers to capitalist western states. In that respect leftists don't support interventionism. What the word means when talking of a different era and different context is entirely irrelevant, we aren't in that era and the USA is not communist. And don't assume any of this means I personally think those Soviet interventions were a good thing. I'm merely pointing out what actual leftists tend to think.

I am aware of no rational reason why intervention would only apply to western states in this conversation and I'm aware of no definition of it that limits it to western states. If leftists do think interventions only apply to western states then they are stupid and bigoted.

 

[pmv]

I am aware of no rational reason why intervention would only apply to western states in this conversation and I'm aware of no definition of it that limits it to western states. If leftists do think interventions only apply to western states then they are stupid and bigoted.

Or they have different politics to you, perhaps? They might be wrong (on most Soviet interventions I'd absolutely say they were) but it's a mite more complicated than just 'bigotry'. I guess they would distinguish between interfering to support the downtrodden workers, and imperialist meddling to further imperialist/capitalist interests.

Anyway, I thought this conversation was about politics in Western states? As there aren't really any communist countries left, I don't see the point in arguing about that flavour of interventionism.