America: two right wing parties???

I've seen several people here comment that America has no real left wing party, and all of our democrats are still right wing. I would like clarification on how Obama is seen as right wing.

 

It's all bullshit. There is no left and right. The people in power all have the same agenda. They use left and right to divide and control people at the bottom, who don't understand how the system works.

But I, too, would like to know why people think this country is moving towards the right, when the government continues to grow in size, with ever increasing laws, regulations, taxes, entitlements, bureaucracy, etc.

I don't think most people even have a clue what defines left and right, and I think that's the way the controllers want it.

The traditional definition of right wing would pertain more to the preservation of personal freedom and limited government. Today, words have been twisted to meet the agenda of the ones in power. Now people think more government is the solution to everything, when it's government that has created most of the problems to begin with.

I don't believe in the left vs. right dialectic, but even I find the notion of Obama being on the right laughable. I don't think there is one single truly conservative politician in this country, other than the ones who pretend to be conservative by using religion as their facade. Maybe Ron Paul, but I don't trust that guy, either. Certainly his voting record is more conservative than anyone else's, though.

 

For the Republicrats would be Ross Perot & Sarah Palin. I'm not saying we'd get better government, but aaahh the entertainment value........lol

 

OK here is an edited post from another thread -

Political liberals once supported economic liberalism because they believed it undermined the political authority of the few. Then many political liberals realised that economic liberalism had led to an economic authority that curtailed ‘liberty’ as much as political authority did and began to turn against economic liberalism just at the point when wealth began to realise that economic liberalism granted them more power in the shape of economic authority.

So political liberals became seen by those on the right as ‘left-wing’ opponents because they wished to undermine the power and wealth of the few. But political liberals were often in opposition to left wing political groups/party’s and many on the left see ‘liberals’ as being ‘right wing’.

In the UK at the moment we have a right wing government made up of Liberals and Conservatives.

In an American context ‘liberals’ are seen as left wing only because much of left wing thought has been systematically purged from US society over the last 50+ years. So without a real left wing the centre right liberals are seen as the left wingers.

This is why many outside the US believe that Americans have two right wing parties with a centre right Democratic Party and are more right wing Republican Party.

It is also why many Americans see left of centre parties in other countries and think they’re hard left socialists/communist and why some even think some of our right wing parties are left wing, I mean we have openly gay right wing politicians and right wingers that support the NHS.

 

But what about obamas policy makes him a right winger? That was my question

 

Letlovin

Ok first a couple of things – I’ve written many times that there is too much emphasis on personalities in US politics. What we are talking about here is the Obama Administration that depends on the support of the Democratic Party. Obama’s Clinton’s and Bush’s can come and go but the Parties remain.

The second is in the light of what I’ve explained above what do you categorise as ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’?

 

just in case there is over simplification needed. compared to other countries obama would be called a right winger.
therefore since he is the farthest to the left that the popular vote sees then it would seem as if there is two right parties. one to the right and one to the way over there right.

 

Okay. What about the Obama administration makes it (the administration) right wing?

Ive always chosen not to look at things left vs. right, so honestly I don't have a clear understanding of the complex categories. That's one reason I made this thread, to better understand the terms outside of America. I'm trying to get away from what I "know" a little bit in order to learn what you know. Because everything I've been taught tells me that Obama (and his administration) is anything but right wing.

Does that make sense?

 

I'm asking WHY here. Not to repeat what I've heard a hundred times with no explanation.

 

Obama is acquiescent to the military industrial complex. In fact all U.S. Presidents, almost by definition, must be acquiescent to the military industrial complex because they are the commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces. The United States's economy and foreign policy is imperialistic in nature. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of its prosperity is based on weapon's manufacturing and arms dealing, certainly since its civil war. Weapons sales, U.S. foreign policy and it's perpetuation of the drug war are so interweaved that it's impossible to separate the three. All of these are used to influence or outright control its foreign strategic interests. The problem with this is that the U.S. government hasn't been upfront with its own citizens about its true strategic intent since WWII (or perhaps even before that). So the government invents boogey concepts (Communism, Terrorism, WMDs) to satiate its largely altruistic, but very stupid and vulnerable to propaganda, citizens to acquiesce to aggressive imperialism. This system is so woven into the U.S. government that no single man (president) could hope to correct it, and I suspect that if someone was crazy enough to try, he/she would experience the same fate as R & J Kennedy.

The mainstream GOP loves imperialism. The mainstream left (who someone on here correctly identified as really being more like the center) is largely acquiescent to it. The Democratic Party is the party of "let's fight the system from the inside" with incremental and tiny social justice victories which are largely symbolic in nature, and designed to keep the far left a little less dissatisfied and just apathetic enough not to aggressively infiltrate the government, as the Koch brothers have done via the Tea Party.

So, as it stands now (and has for quite some time) the two party system is theatre, entertainment - like "Pro Wraselin'" - a diversion. The Occupy Movement recognizes this, and they shout it from the mountaintops, but the corporate (military-industrial-banking-pharmaceutical-energy, etc, complex) controlled media (remember that 4th branch of government) has effectively blacked out that message to the sheeple majority and will continue to do so. It's a hard pill for most to swallow, so it's easy for "mainstream" Americans to go along with the ride, cheer on their favorite team and then go back to their "lives of quiet desperation", once the winner is proclaimed.

I don't dislike President Obama. I think he's taken some significant political risks for our benefit, but the far left is disillusioned with him because he was far too compromising. A lot of us voted for him because we hoped that he would go to war for us, domestically. That he would expose and correct the madness of the Bush/Cheney regime, and hold that regime and its participants accountable in a real way. The President has spent four years applying tourniquets to the hemorrhaging wounds inflicted by his predecessor, who basically decided to hand the keys over to a manic financial sector just months before he left office with the suggestion of "Do your worst, have fun, burn this fucker down, and batten down the hatches"

We're in a frightening place right now, when half of my lefty friends have gotten all starry eyed over Ron Paul. The fact is, in many ways, he does represent them better, especially with regard to foreign policy and this wasteful farce that is the war on drugs. I personally still don't trust him, I don't think I could trust anything that would be capable of spawning Rand Paul. I've read The Fountainhead - it's neocon fantasy porn. Self determinism is only relevant in a "merit based" society (to borrow an all too often used phrase of Mitt's). The United States has never been a merit based society - unless you count "nepotism, wealth and privilege" as a "merit" - and let me assure you, that there are plenty of men and women out there making decisions every day that directly affect your life, who do consider "nepotism, wealth and privilege" among the highest of merits.

 

Obama busts medical pot more than bush, despite promising not to.
Obama has ongoing CIA drone murder programs and has extrajudicially killed (murdered) US citizens and many scores of children and noncombatants.
Obama has gitmo alive and relatively well.... was supposed to be his FIRST action is office, to close it outright.
Obama has bradley manning facing all sorts of silly charges, and has repeatedly, I think, prosecuted and persecuted whistleblowers, despite promising otherwise.
Obama went from SAYING he wanted single payer health care, to agreeing to mandate individuals to buy from corporations, which is a right wet dream, and originally, right brainchild.
Obama fabricated a secret service sex scandal to keep the media off the US refusing to invite cuba to the summit of the americas, and the demands of the rest of the continent to legalize drugs and stop ruining their countries for american political games.
The list goes on. And on. And on.

The only "left" thing he's done is work on don't ask don't tell..... and yeah, it seems bold, but think how little it DOES, for the nation as a whole.... it's to keep looking left. Fox news can keep pretending he's not bombing children like any other good republican, and he gets the whole gay vote.

 

You're getting ideological left wing confused with political left wing.

If anything, the legalization of marijuana would be more conservative than liberal, since the true definition of conservative pertains to small, decentralized government that protects individual freedoms and liberties. 99% of the ideological, bible-thumping conservatives you see on FAUX News are not conservatives at all. They are big government bureaucrats like their counterparts on the left. The only difference is that one side uses religion or issues pertaining to morals to rally their base and differentiate themselves from the "other side," which is controlled by the same big banks and corporations, thus the lack of difference between the two corporate-owned parties beyond superficial, smoke screen issues that ultimately mean nothing.

Your definition of conservative seems to be based on what the TV has given you. If you think Bush, Romney, or any of those other clowns are conservative, you are sorely mistaken.

War has nothing to do with political left or right, since left wing/Democrat presidents have never been any less anti-war than most right wing/Republican presidents. (Historically speaking, the Democrats have been the bigger warmongers, and the first proponents of nation building.) A truly conservative stance would be an anti-war one, since, again, it deals with keeping the government in check according to the Constitution. What in the Constitutions authorizes the US to wage preemptive wars overseas? What is conservative about that?

Nothing else you wrote has anything to do with liberal or conservative anything. It just shows how the two parties are so much the same.

 

^ that's pretty much what I was thinking and is why I'm confused.

 

a left wing party would be introducing rules to protect trade unions and workers rights over those of the wealthy or capitalist class.

they would also be supporting the nationalisation(putting in to state ownership) utilities, railways, large corporations (in the UK we had nationalised steel and mining).

naturally all of theses things would cost money, a left wing government would raise this by increasing taxation on large corporations and on the wealthy.

Obama's administration is perfectly happy for the current situation to continue, or at least seems so from its actions

 

I understand that....

See the thing is, you can have a great left OR right wing government, if you do it right.

But left and right mean certain things in the US, and those things are both very nasty.... And just because one side SORT of agrees with you on something, does not make them "your" side, which is the problem and what's tearing america apart. Even me and individual agree on a lot, and if you consider one of each of us as a party, we would get a lot done in government, we could fix a lot, and honestly, the things that we'd stalemate on, might be what would save the government from both of us. But the current partys and their versions of left and right have no such check, because they totally agree on doing the worst thing in all the important shit, and disagree on talking points.

Anyway, if I say something about a conservative or liberal, I mean the US type, unless I note otherwise.

 

Letlovin

Ok politics 101

As I pointed out in my reply here earlier this is difficult because it is dependent on outlook and the problem that there are very, very few absolutes in politics.

Political liberalism can go from left of centre right out to right wing libertarianism, just as left wing views can be hard-line Stalinist to centre and even cross over into right of centre. It can all be about the circumstances and the subject.

Ok to explain again - in my view and the view of many others - the Obama Administration is politically liberal in character backed by a mainly liberal Democratic party.

Now as explained there are many differing types of liberal from left to right. Now due to the nature of the US two party system the party has factions of differing hues, with those that would be in a left wing party somewhere else to those that would be in a right wing party somewhere else, but I think as a unit it is liberal.

With me so far?

Now In my opinion and that of others the Democrats were once left of centre liberals, think FDR, but they have always been happy to attack those further to the left and were enthusiastic in the purging of left wing ideas during the ‘red scares’.

But in many people opinion it has moved to the right, this is generally thought to have become obvious under Clinton when he and the party began to embrace the neoliberal ideas being promoted by Alan Greenspan and others (e.g. deregulation). And today many Democrats are what I would term ‘compassionate neoliberals’ – that is strong supporters of free market ideas with moderate regulation while having social programmes in place as a safety net. So when they look for models for systems they think in free market terms (like the healthcare reforms).

Obama has said – “he and his administration have pursued a “fundamentally business- friendly” agenda and are “fierce advocates” for the free market, rejecting corporate criticism of his policies. “The irony is, is that on the left we are perceived as being in the pockets of big business; and then on the business side, we are perceived as being anti-business” (Bloomberg News) Now those further to the right might scoff at this but I don’t think Obama or his administration thinks he is lying.

You only have to look at his economic appointments. What we have is weak Keynesianism and diluted neoliberalism (by the way John Maynard Keynes was a liberal and life long member of the right of centre British Liberal Party).

So what we got for example were bail outs not left style nationalisation, the left would have took over the banks that were in trouble, those further to the left would have nationalised the whole financial sector.

In the UK the New Labour Party (right of centre) did a ‘soft’ nationalisation of the troubled banks (but it could nationalise at all was due to the idea of nationalisation been less of an anathema as it is in the US).

I could go on but I’ll give you that to be going on with.

 

Letlovin

Just in passing - a note about Rat, a well loved member of our community - but he is a conspiracy theorist and the basis of his political views are that the world is secretly controlled by a cabal of Lucifer worshipers (is that still correct Rat?).

This cabal he thinks pulls the strings and are the ‘true’ power behind every political party of both left and right in the world.

He also thinks that Hitler was probably Jewish and is certain that he was financed by the international banking elite; in particular he emphasises the Jewish Rothschild’s.
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=104835&page=2

 

No, that is not correct and never was. But it's funny, because that is completely off topic and in no way relates to the topic of this thread. However, since you're choosing to go there once again, the answer is no, I do not believe the world is controlled by "Lucifer worshipers," and I quite frankly find that to be a ridiculous accusation, since I don't believe in Lucifer being anything more than a fictional character which is merely symbolic of something (hidden knowledge) but used to scare religious people who don't know any better into the good vs. evil dialectic.

And as far as Hitler being Jewish, his grandmother (Anne Marie Schickelgruber) was a servant at the castle of Baron Rothschild around the time Hitler's father, Alois, was conceived. This comes from the psychoanalyst Walter Langer, who did an extensive look into Hitler's life history for his book The Mind of Hiter, where he writes:

"Adolf’s father, Alois Hitler, was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. It was generally supposed that the father of Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber) was Johann Georg Hiedler. There are some people who seriously doubt that Johann Georg Hiedler was the father of Alois… (an Austrian document was) prepared that proved Maria Anna Schicklgruber was living in Vienna at the time she conceived.

At that time she was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Rothschild. As soon as the family discovered her pregnancy she was sent back home... where Alois was born."
​

Is this conclusive, definitive proof? Perhaps not, but Langer got this information from a high level gestapo officer named Hansjurgen Kohler, which was published in 1940 under the title Inside the Gestapo. Quite a strange coincidence that Hitler's grandmother was working for the most wealthy, powerful family in Europe -- one that was absolutely behind WW II and the Nazi war machine -- many decades before Hitler was born and would rise to later become one of the most notorious, infamous names in the entirety of known world history.

The fact that Hitler was financed by international bankers is pretty much common knowledge among anyone with a cursory knowledge of real history. IG Farben, IBM, Standard Oil, Kodak.... Hello??? Are you actually denying they (US corporations) were doing business with the Nazis while the US was at war with them? If so, your knowledge of history is truly feeble, since even the History Channel has talked about this (albeit briefly).

 

Rat this is me – here is one of the places where you said it -

(my bold)
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showpost.php?p=2156544&postcount=8

I admit this was seven years ago and you might have changed your mind but that was why I asked if you had.

I’m pointing it out because some people don’t understand what you views are based on.

 

Yes, but thanks for going to the hassle of dredging up a post I made 7 years ago to prove a point. That point being....???

I probably would not use that same wording today to describe it. The problem is when most people hear the word Lucifer, it gives a religious connotation based on religious indoctrination. Lucifer is at the top of Freemasonry, symbolically speaking, as is admitted by Albert Pike and others. (We can argue all day about whether Freemasonry has power or not in world affairs -- I believe it does.) Lucifer is purely symbolic because it represents secret knowledge kept from the "profane" masses to keep them in the servitude humanity is under. Only religious people (and those who don't know any better) associate Lucifer with an actual being/devil/whatever. Lucifer is symbolic of the system which runs this world. It is the eye in the capstone of the pyramid (also referred to as the eye of Osirus/Horus). It's on the back of the dollar bill, and only a fool would deny that it means something. It's just that most of the ignorant public doesn't know and doesn't care. All they know is that it buys them things so they can remain fat, dumb and happy.

Thanks for (again) dragging this thread off topic, moderator.