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» Ship of Fools   »   » Oblivion   » Do we need new political descriptors ?

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Source: (consider it) Thread: Do we need new political descriptors ?
Doublethink.
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# 1984

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Strikes me that currently the political landscape is changing. I think it would be helpful to try develop descriptions less simplistic than left / right.

What continua would it be helpful to include ? But some suggestions:

  • Big state, little state
  • Venture capitalism to communal barter
  • Sexually conservative to totally uninterested
  • Eco-warrior to climate change denial
  • Human rights to security first
  • World's policeman to not within our borders not our problem
  • Little Britain to globalist

Could we somehow manage this with compass positions - xparty are north east, by south west moderate.

(It would make political discussion pleasingly like the shipping forecast.)

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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Dafyd
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# 5549

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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
[*]Big state, little state

This one surely needs to be subdivided. There are people who think that the state shouldn't regulate the financial sector or have more than minimal welfare provision but that it should spend lots of money on the military and the police, and keep the police loosely regulated. There are people who think the state should heavily regulate the financial sector and maintain a strong provision of services, but that the police should be heavily regulated.

I don't think there's any good reason why the latter position is widely considered more big state than the latter.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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Marvin the Martian

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# 4360

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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
[*]Big state, little state

This one surely needs to be subdivided.
Yes, into at least the "low tax/low spend - high tax/high spend" and "minimal regulation - maximal regulation" categories. The latter of which, of course, itself has the subdivisions to which you refer.

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Alan Cresswell

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# 31

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We've needed new political descriptors ever since someone coined the terms left and right. They were never adequate.

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Adeodatus
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# 4992

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"Tory" is derived from an Irish Gaelic word meaning "outlaw" or "thief".

Works for me.

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Alan Cresswell

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# 31

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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
Little Britain to globalist

This is an interesting one. As a generalisation it is assumed that "left wing" are internationalist, and "right wing" are nationalists. Except, of course the SNP are commonly thought of as left wing but are clearly nationalist. In many countries, of course, "nationalist" is an intermediate position, in the US to one side you have internationalists (although they seem to be a rare beast from what I've seen) and to the other those who hold to the individual States having greater autonomy.

And, the position along the local-nation-region-global spectrum is also issue variable. People who think about, say, economics should favour local enterprises may still say defence is something best handled by international organisations such as the EU or UN.

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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

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agingjb
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Us and Them?

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Refraction Villanelles

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quetzalcoatl
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Marxism is interesting as it is often associated with big state (as in the Soviets), yet M and E used to talk about the state shrinking away in the end. In fact, the term they used was 'wither away':

"The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong–into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax." (Fred).

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Hedgehog

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Idiotic egotists to Egotistic idiots?

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TomM
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quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
We've needed new political descriptors ever since someone coined the terms left and right. They were never adequate.

To be fair, they weren't all that inaccurate for the French National Assembly at the revolution. Though they didn't tell you much more about someone's politics than roughly where they might be sat in the meeting chamber.
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LeRoc

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# 3216

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Smart to dumb?

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Dafyd
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# 5549

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quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Yes, into at least the "low tax/low spend - high tax/high spend" and "minimal regulation - maximal regulation" categories. The latter of which, of course, itself has the subdivisions to which you refer.

That depends. Do you think spending on the police and army is sufficiently similar to spending on health to be bound up together along one axis, or are they in fact two different axes.
It a bit depends upon your political philosophy whether they're different axes or the same axis.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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Stetson
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# 9597

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I think the Nolan Chart bascially does what the OP is suggesting. It charts political positions on a quadrant, rather than a continuum.

I've long been uncertain as to what I think about this approach, since part of me still thinks that "right" and "left" are both rooted in distinct views of human-nature. Though I admit that Nolan does make a certain amount of sense when you're trying to categorize groupls like the Ron Paulites in the US(anti-welfare, anti-war), or people like that "bigoted old woman" who hectored Gordon Brown on the campaign trail(as I recall, she was pro-welfare, but anti-immigration).

[ 23. September 2015, 19:58: Message edited by: Stetson ]

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Stetson
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# 9597

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Cresswell wrote:

quote:
in the US to one side you have internationalists (although they seem to be a rare beast from what I've seen) and to the other those who hold to the individual States having greater autonomy.

Actually, if the word means something like "Wilsonian Internationalist", ie. support multilateral military interventions around the world in order to bring freedom and democracy to everyone(and hey, grab a few resources and install a few friendly regimes while we're at it), rather than "New Internationalist", ie. the British magazine about going to the third world and helping people dig wells and use birth control, then "internationalism" has fairly widespread support in the US. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would both be examplars of the tendency.

[ 23. September 2015, 20:08: Message edited by: Stetson ]

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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!

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Doublethink.
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# 1984

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I started thinking about this OP whilst listening to Andrew Neil interview Mathew Paris about the Lib Dem conference, (I'm off sick watching daytime tv - so bite me).

Paris was suggesting the lib dems - and Farron specifically - have no principles because they are now saying they are going for the "centre ground".

It seemed to me that this missed the point, the liberals almost never talk about liberal theory. It also makes me think that several parties can end up with similar policies for certain areas - but for entirely different reasons.

At various times talking about why they may make those choices, is more useful than knowing such and such a specific choice in advance. Sometimes not.

[ 23. September 2015, 20:10: Message edited by: Doublethink. ]

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984

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I think it may alsobear on what you think the government is for, or the nature of the social contract.

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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Enoch
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# 14322

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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
... Parris was suggesting the lib dems - and Farron specifically - have no principles because they are now saying they are going for the "centre ground". ...

Why is that unprincipled? And why should the extremists and doctrinaire have a monopoly on principles? It sounds a good principle to me.

[ 23. September 2015, 22:02: Message edited by: Enoch ]

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Doublethink.
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# 1984

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My point exactly - but part of the problem seemed to be that we almost never hear the lib dems explaining what liberalism is - rather than explaining being for or against specific policies.

[ 23. September 2015, 22:06: Message edited by: Doublethink. ]

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
My point exactly - but part of the problem seemed to be that we almost never hear the lib dems explaining what liberalism is - rather than explaining being for or against specific policies.

A cynic might argue that a reasonable fraction of the Liberal Democrat party isn't actually Liberal.
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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:

Could we somehow manage this with compass positions - xparty are north east, by south west moderate.

The libertarians always used to publish their "political compass" quiz that seemed designed to make people seem more libertarian than they actually were by careful choice of question.

A decade ago, a guy I knew online (now deceased) produced his own version based on asking a set of questions and performing a principal component analysis to determine what the axes were. He found that the dominant axis was close to a traditional left/right thing, with economic and social issues blended. The second axis he describes as pragmatic vs idealistic. It's a slightly odd blend of opinions, and I suspect that this axis was rather skewed by the self-selecting nature of his dataset.

He re-did the analysis in 2005, based on YouGov data from a representative sample of British voters, and the results are here. Two axes - both are left-right in some sense: one is more of a social / crime-and-punishment / leave the EU axis, and the other more of a free-market axis.

It would be interesting to see a recent repeat of such an exercise.

[ 23. September 2015, 23:01: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]

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Leorning Cniht
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# 17564

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it would also be interesting to see how what people said their opinions were related to how they acted, but that's hard to measure.
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Doublethink.
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# 1984

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I don't think the liberal democrats have ever been libertarians though - have they ?

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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Alan Cresswell

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There are some distinct differences between liberal and libertarian, and especially between social liberal (which the LibDems mostly seem to be) and libertarian.

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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink.:
I don't think the liberal democrats have ever been libertarians though - have they ?

No, not at all. I'd agree with Alan that the centre of the modern Liberal Democrat party is more or less social liberal, but some significant fraction of the party doesn't seem to be very liberal at all.
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