The site is totally committed to free speech, and even the Dark Web will allow paedophiles, hit men, and every type of criminal, but collaborated to push off an alt right page. In other words, it doesn't appear to be any agenda of Voat, it's just a fact that any site which allows free speech is where those people will end up.
Now if as a society you tolerate them without the use of force, they will try to destroy everyone else who is not part of the their group. Effectively, all tolerance will be eliminated.
The only way you could prevent this from happening is if you are prepared to contain such a group one way or the other. Or allow other people to not tolerate them by using force too. Either way you void your tolerance tenet.
Have to admit - it is indeed a paradox.
The wikipedia page on this notes people dispute this idea, sourcing John Rawls as a notable example.
What you have quoted here is saying physical safety is sincerely in danger. To me this is like him saying it's ok to eliminate terrorist groups, if that is what they truly are.
Suppose even we have this group that's intolerant of everyone else. But their intolerance is expressed in speech, not actions. In other words, they're saying, "you're all our enemies, and should be destroyed", but they aren't doing anything about it. Or maybe they are, but it consists of running a political party on that platform, encouraging people to vote them in.
As a society, you can absolutely tolerate them without the use of force, at least until the point where they actually get the majority of votes (but at that point, they are the society, and you're an outgroup in that society).
For some people this kind of online attacking and lack of freedom to communicate (through effective trolling) may be worse than physical abuse. In the end its the brain interpreting signals and outputting pain.
In the Middle East, this kind of outsize influence might be even worse. I am no expert on Middle East politics, but I think it's fair to say that the most intolerant factions have striven to gain the most political power, in spite of the political leanings of the mass populations over which they rule.
One issue with intolerant groups is that they tend toward violence and oppression of opposing speech. The tolerant and pacifist among us can allow them to gain enough minority power to effect a political coup, which can result in a societal coup, since having political control can grant you some degree of societal control.
In such a society, espousing tolerance might carry with it the risk of violent retribution (since tolerance is viewed by the "in" group as heresy/dissent). This will cause the intolerance to spread, even if seemingly against the will of more tolerant citizens. In this way, certain ideologies can have a "toxic" societal effect. You don't need to look far in modern history to find examples. And, that's the paradox.
> As a society, you can absolutely tolerate them without the use of force, at least until the point where they actually get the majority of votes (but at that point, they are the society, and you're an outgroup in that society).
You just answered your own question
My opinion is that if there's a real threat of extreme political forces coming to power through democratic means in your society, then that society is already broken, and restricting hate speech is basically just sweeping the shards under the rug and pretending that nothing's wrong.
> Because it's hard to unanimously and unequivocally identify those who are intolerant as such.
> This seems to be the MO of this so-called "alt-right" stuff; legal or constitutional barriers are almost impossible to define or enforce.
These are fairly creepy statements. Very difficult to apply a charitable explanation to what you're saying.
> Owing to the beguiling nature of language and rhetoric, the intolerant can thrive and propagate
Sounds familiar.
What I am trying to say is that there is no need to identify intolerant people. All that is needed is to make sure that intolerant and tolerant people do not limit free speech. Protecting free speech can be done without worrying that people will misinterpret laws. For example, a law saying that anyone wishing to publish something to their site can do so regardless if they are anarchists, Nazis, conspiracy theorist, or anyone else. No mater how much hate the intolerant write they will not be able to stop other people from writing about how much they hate the intolerant people.
So we have the intolerant people in the government trying to suppress dissent from the tolerant. This is described in the first paragraph from the wiki link.
If there was a law to be created today making a list of speeches that should be suppressed, what topics do you think would be on there? With the current government, probably things like making it illegal to claim that climate change is happening.
If the left really wants to protect themselves during the upcoming 3 years, I would expect them to try to make free speech as protected as possible before it is too late.
One always has to worry even in a democracy, for instance here one party manipulated the voting system so even though they only got 49 percent of the votes in the election, they got 60% of the representation in the state legislature. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/us/politics/prominent-rep...
You can take the absolutist free speech argument that some in the US make from the first amendment (you write later down that English is not your native language) but Germany seems to be going OK banning Nazi speech/symbols.
I'd really like someone (sociologists) to update Paradox of Tolerance with what we've learned about the Overton Window, the normalization of hate speech (violent rhetoric).
David Neiwert (Orcinus) has deeply influenced (completely changed) my positions on tolerance, free speech. As I've stated else where, I used to be a Chomsky style ultimatist for free speech. Alas, people aren't nice.
Now I know that how we talk changes how we think, that propaganda works, that most people aren't even aware of when they've changed their mind.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&tex...
Because I see it the same way as if you replaced Reddit with Usenet or Internet in your comment. Reddit is a platform where I care and am active only in a very small part of it.
Do you use toll roads? They're a business. Criminals and even "child rapists" use them too. Can't believe you would further their ability to move about our society and evade law enforcement by willfully funding the infrastructure they use.
Get over yourself with your absolutist nonsense.
To be fair, I bet that Reddit would have an easier time than toll roads in identifying those criminals and banning them. With that said, however, I think that the issue is very foggy in who is guilty, and that Reddit is actually relatively accessible for law enforcement compared to other sites the criminals may be on.
For people who are truly guilty of it, their presence on Reddit may offer law enforcement a greater chance at apprehending them.
I would also "tolerate" the opinion piece, in any medium, that argued against it. I think it's very easy to make a good argument against pedophilia so I'm not at all worried about some random NYT op-ed piece suddenly turning the societal norm. Just like I'm not too worried about someone writing an op-ed that argues for slavery again. Once 'we' thought these things were ~ok, now we know they're not, and we have a long list of very good reasons for that that are nearly impossible to overcome.
I don't understand the fear of ideas that censorship advocates have. What's so scary about someone being wrong and having an opportunity to learn as much? If you stifle every conversation on topics we as a society have long since covered, these ideas will grow and fester in the dark (say, on StormFront or whatever). It's OK to let them in the light every now and then so that we have an opportunity to educate those who might not have learned the lesson.
Not so absurd as this already happens to some degree http://prospect.org/article/license-plate-tracking-increases...
Anyway, your point is moot as reddit complies with all applicable child pornography laws just like any other US based internet business AFAIK.
Not really sure what we're talking about here anymore. I'm trying to point out the absurdity of this dystopian future state where a bunch of vigilantes get to decide who is able to participate in society and use its infrastructure.
>and even the Dark Web will allow paedophiles, hit men, and every type of criminal
alt-right? Why don't you call them what they are - Nazis and fascists. They are lowest of all these. There is probably strong overlap. Fascists think nobody should have any rights but themselves.
The vigilantism/collaboration was made necessary by the alarming fact that the people who should have been doing something - authorities all the way up and including POTUS were tacitly sanctioning them, facilitating them, normalizing their behavior.
They present a clear and present danger to the country and free speech. They still have their free speech, they can still cry on youtube. Daily Stormer was just one head of that hydra.
If you know of any pedo, hit men or criminals then reach out to law enforcement and failing that publicly shame them so that the same can happen. None of the above should or will be tolerated.
Oh boy, here we go...
Uh, they are quite literally Nazis. They do the Nazi salute, carry/wear swastikas and yell "blood and soil".
You may disagree with antifa but don't make the mistake of equating them with these losers.
This just isn't true no matter how many times people say it.
The former is the constitutionally protected freedom from government persecution (e.g. imprisonment) based on what you say.
The latter is the misguided belief that you should be allowed to say whatever you want in public without consequence.
I strongly believe it is morally wrong to side with people who support genocide, and whose predecessors have committed genocide. It is morally wrong to suggest they should be allowed (by other members of the public) to continue touting and spreading their hateful, vile ideologies. Siding with such people doesn't make you a Nazi, but it's still pretty bad.
They do have the right, i.e. Freedom of Speech, to demonstrate without government interference. They absolutely do not have the right, morally or otherwise, to demonstrate without interference from public groups.
America fought and defeated the Nazis in World War 2. Can you imagine this "both sides are wrong" argument being pushed forth back then?
Well, actually you don't have to imagine it. In the late 1920s and early 1930s when Nazis were still a relatively fringe extremist group, Antifa was violently opposing them and beating them up in the streets. And many members of the German public, mainly the German middle class, denounced such violence, which only served to empower the Nazis, who could in turn say "See? Violence is wrong! Everyone says so!"
We all know how it all ended up.
Remember this whole cycle started by grown adults wanting special treatment, such as safe spaces and forced usage special pronouns, and people who were against such non-sense.
You think the identification of someone as a Nazi requires them to be wearing symbolism or chanting? No. The alt-right has been espousing Nazi ideals and philosophy for a long time - well before Spencer coined the cute term for them.
> Remember this whole cycle started by grown adults wanting special treatment
Yes, I remember the GamerGate idiots too.
I hardly followed the topic. Refresh my memory, it was about some developer who had slept with some journalist at some point and the journalist gave the game a good review and people thought the game was bad?
All I remember from it was that everyone who played video games was again labeled as misogynist and there were demands from SJW changes bunch of games to have female characters with less revealing clothing.
No.
> everyone
No.
> there were demands from SJW changes bunch of games to have female characters with less revealing clothing
No.
A ex to a female developer of a game wrote a long blog post, where in part he accused her new romantic partner who worked at Kotaku for writing a favorable review of the game. The New York Times then wrote a article about the blog post, causing a lot of attention both sides of the political spectrum where one side accused the other of sexism and the other side for a lack of journalistic ethics.
The best summery was said by totalbuscuit, which if I recall right concluded that the biggest issue with game journalism ethics is not romantic entanglements between devs and journalist, but rather the standard practice of quid pro quo for exclusive early access to review copies. Romantic entanglements is simply not worth talking about in this context.
In the end no one really cared. All people wanted was to continuing fighting a gender war, ignited for both sides by the New York Times. The romantic drama, ethics, or games for that matters was just the excuse.
I think a lot of people who were - and still are - harassed by GamerGate cared about it.
> Romantic entanglements is simply not worth talking about in this context.
Not least because it was bullshit.
> The best summery was said by totalbuscuit
I'm not sure bringing him up in the context of GamerGate is ever going to come under "best" unless it also involves "apologising for being a dick about it".
Keep fighting the gender war. I am sure your side will win by burning the heretics and eradicate the unbelievers.
I don't know where you get your news.
This is from July 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijRE9eR6tX0
An Republican National Convention speaker openly doing the Nazi salute at the end of her speech. No one batted an eye.
This is from November 21st, 2016: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/richard...
Members of the audience perform the Nazi salute at the end of white supremacist Richard Spencer's speech.
I can go on. The fact is that Nazis have always been a part of the alt-right for as long as the alt-right has existed, because their ideology strongly aligns with, and is the logical end result of, alt-rightism. They show up at alt-right rallies because they know they can recruit young, impressionable people to their ranks there by whipping them up into a frenzy.
If you think they started showing up only after Antifa broke a few store windows, you haven't been paying attention.
You know that's going to require more than anecdotal evidence though, right?
This being said I'm also banned from the infamous The_Donald, since I do not belong to the right either.
(I should probably stop arguing with centrists over the internet.)
I do not belong to current Left. I do not agree with their gender politics. I do not agree with their immigration politics. On same vein I do not belong to current Right (or Alt-Right if you must). I do not support their views on homosexuality or their marriage status. I do support gun control. I do think we should help refugees, but again not the same way Left is pushing. I do not believe in White supremacy, on same vein I do not believe in White guilt over what people did over a 100 years ago.
I've always thought myself as being on the Left or at least very left leaning, but currently with all the SJW and Antifa stuff I agree with them less and less. I just want to be me.
Assuming that this is your account, do you call this misogynic shit "civil behavior"?
https://twitter.com/nextlevelwizard/status/71492088722555289...
https://twitter.com/nextlevelwizard/status/71490655573344665...
Spending time with games, anime and 4chan memes doesn't qualify for a political discourse.
Then again I don't see why someone can't enjoy games, anime, or 4chan memes or how consuming them disqualifies you from having political opinions or dismissing them.
Reading some of your Reddit comments is almost worse. Living in Germany, it's hard to imagine that "communists" are still the bogeyman in the US.
Antifa is specifically against fascism. Some sects may also be against free hate speech.
'Antifa is specifically against free speech' is provably correct. They are intolerant of any views they disagree with to the point of inciting violence to suppress those views.
Look beyond their name standing for "anti-facism" and instead look at their actions.
Attacking free speech rallies is terrorism, not "fighting fascism". In fact, the US Dept of Homeland Security already categorized them as a domestic terrorist group in 2016.
Even the extreme left LA times admits they're bad in the wake of their terror attacks at Berkley - http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-far-left-violence-2...
The fact that they wear masks to everything should clue you in on their evil, lawless intent. Law abiding people who oppose facism don't need masks.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/a-beating-in-berkeley/article/...
If you feel that everyone who supports the president is a hostile enemy advocating for the ethnic cleansing of your fellow Americans, you should probably start getting your news from some place other than Google News / John Oliver / etc. Attacking people with opposing views is LITERALLY the definition of facism, which they claim to be against.
Maybe when the media stop putting a lot of people in the alt-right category who are not Nazis nor fascists.
I'd also like to take the time to link to an old classic which I guess a lot of young Internet users don't know about: Godwin's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law which feel more relevant every day.
https://raddit.me/wiki/history
BTW, the footer links to the source:
https://gitlab.com/edgyemma/raddit-app
(php symphony based site)
Wow, it's been a while since I read something that full of propaganda that wasn't at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek (unless this is and I'm missing it). Not that I doubt there's at least a grain of truth to most the statements, but when someone uses "redditcorp" to describe Reddit, and says stuff like "The_Donald completely took over the site and likely propelled Donald Trump into the white house" (emphasis mine), it's hard to take them seriously.
Still if you try and contribute (or perhaps blame) the election on a subreddit you are highly delusional. Both candidates were terrible for very different reasons. Still I thought Clinton would have won.
That's what you get when you have multiple echo chambers cohabiting under the same domain. The only things you can go by is which subreddits are removed or not by the admins. Which is an exercise left to the reader.
Communism: weak central government, strong communal (local) democratic decision making - let people make decision that effect them directly (locally).
You may be thinking of the old-fashioned idea of a socialist state as a "tyrrany of the many" as a transition from an armed uprising towards a communist state?
This is not how it worked out in practice, no?
But if one reads eg Rosa Luxembourg, the lines are very much blurred between the two.
There's a tendency to spend time arguing that the various socialist states that where formed by communist parties were communist, because they were ran by organizations that labeled themselves (and indeed were) communist - I don't think such discussion is much more fruitful than discussing how the US attempted to "liberate" Vietnam, or institute "democracy" in Chile.
You should read Pyotr Kropotkins "The Conquest of Bread" and Alexander Berkman's "What is Communist Anarchism?" if you'd like to know more about anarcho-communist ideology. Or if you'd like to know more about mutualism (essentially a workers run system with a market), then check out the works of Joseph Proudhon.
I'd also argue that anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism are not anarchist in any sense, as they uphold the inherently hierarchical system of capitalism.
> I'd also argue that anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism are not anarchist in any sense, as they uphold the inherently hierarchical system of capitalism.
In what way is capitalism hierarchical, except in an ad hoc way that is constantly redefined based on the current needs of the people interacting?
Karl Marx's definition of "capitalism" is very different from Ayn Rand's definition of "capitalism". And both of them are very different from the "capitalism" that describes the economy as it actually exists in the present day.
That is completely untrue.
I don't believe they aren't "true anarchists", I believe they aren't anarchist at all. They aren't even in the realm of consideration of what constitutes anarchist. Their ideal society would end up corporate feudalism.
Yea, that's what I said. Putting "true" in quote marks was me dismissing the notion that you can redefine words because you don't like their current definitions.
‘One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, “our side,” had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . “Libertarians” . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over. . .’ [The Betrayal of the American Right, p. 83]
The real difference here is philosophical. Right-wing anarchists believe that private property is a natural concept that exists independently of power hierarchies. Left-wing anarchists believe that's an artificial concept that requires such a hierarchy to enforce, and doesn't exist without it. Hence ancaps believe that absence of government will result in a capitalist utopia, while traditional anarchists believe that it would result in a socialist utopia. These two viewpoints are irreconcilable, because the fundamental premise is not just different, but literally opposite.
However, insofar as both groups believe that their ideal society is characterized primarily by the lack of a power hierarchy (and all other things, like unrestricted property rights, or complete lack thereof, simply follow naturally from that), both groups are "real" anarchists.
Left and right are not really well defined ideologies[0]. They're just archaic and lazy ways to generalize political stances.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_s...
Nope. It is always socialist/anti-capitalist. The name as been wrongfully appropriated by anarcho-capitalist, a contradictory term. They are merely for no-gov't-capitalism; which it against pretty much every anarchist principle (anti-oppression).
> Libertarianism is just a form of minimal government
Yes.
> Left and right are not really well defined ideologies[0].
Indeed. But pro-private-property-ad-inifinitum and against it are well defined (and largely overlap with true-left and true-right). Problem, nowadays many that subscribe to capitalism may call themselves "social dems", and thus get a little "lefty" vibe going, thereby diluting the term.
No problem, new terminology come to rescue.
You might say that anarchism is the left wing on a spectrum where authoritarianism or absolute monarchs are considered the right wing. Anarchism is anti discrimination (pro egalitarianism) and by definition is against racism, sexism, nationalism, fascism, etc. It's not because it's "left" like socialists or (socialist) progressives are, but because of the hierarchies it is ideologically opposed to. Its main objective is a society free from imposed and unnatural hierarchies.
Edit: what I'm trying to say is that no one-dimensional linear scale that goes from left to right on which you can place all ideologies and compare them.
Of which we already have a great example in FOSS.
When did anarcho-capitalists stop being anarchists?
Because I strongly doubt any political change will get everyone to work for 'common interests', and a fair few product creators, service owners, artists and others will try and sell their work anyway.
How do anarchists plan to avoid this? What about the people who don't want to own the means of production and are perfectly fine with working for others for a wage? What would stop people competing with each other to get more money and resources?
It works the same way with anarchism as it does in general; that is to say, it captures a real and major axis of variation among anarchists but not the only one. It actually works a little better with anarchists then it doesin general, because “anarchism” limits one of the other significant axes of political variation that exist in the wider society.
Anarchism is anti-state. That's it. Everything else is anarcho-something.
Anti-involuntary hierarchy, not those who voluntarily take part of certain types of power hierarchies.
Politics is complicated, but the two-axes model is a lot less laughably simplistic: left/right, liberal/authoritarian. To drastically oversimplify:
left-liberal: Bernie Sanders, sort of
left-authoritarian: full communism
right-liberal: libertarian
right-authoritarian: paleocons
This is just off the top of my head, has some issues, and is _still_ oversimplified[1], but you can already see how much less than the one-dimensional model it smushes together fairly-mainstream groups that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Anarchists are very much on the left, and big parts of the left (and the right) these days very much dislike liberals.
[1] For example, anarcho-communism doesn't fit very well into this. Ancaps fit (sort of) on the right-liberal side.
The vast majority of people, at least in western countries, agree with the basic assumption of (classical) liberalism, which is that "people should be allowed to do what they want, except...". For the most part people just differ on what comes after the "except", whether it's "sell harmful drugs" or "exploit workers" or "use hate speech" or "burn coal" or whatever other grab-bag of activities a certain individual has decided are sufficiently harmful to outlaw.
The acceptance of the left-right paradigm by half the US voter base looks like little more than a successful propaganda campaign by the incumbent political parties.
There exist libertarian socialists. Libertarian communists. Anarcho-libertarians. You can be whatever you want.
And that may sound silly to you, but the reality is that everything is like this. America is a mix of socialism, capitalism, some new version of authoritarianism, and at least somewhat mercantilist even though we dont admit that we loot resources from weaker countries. In the past we were much more federalist and what would be described today as libertarian, really.
Obama has some quote (that I cant find now) about how ideology isn't as good as pragmatics. He said something like "my ideology is just that everyone should have equal opportunities, dignity and freedoms, and we should try to maximize those, so just ask ourselves what is the best way to do that?"
Hopefully this is not crossing the line in being too snarky, but the trend in identifying with political ideology looks like it is filling the void that religion left behind. I mean, come on, they're both unscientific, morally pompous doctrines to be a part of and get your heart pumping for.
From Introduction [1]: "We should also indicate the history of this FAQ. It was started in 1995 when a group of anarchists got together in order to write an FAQ refuting the claims of certain "libertarian" capitalists to being anarchists. Those who were involved in this project had spent many an hour on-line refuting claims by these people that capitalism and anarchism could go together."
It is pretty obvious that so-called "libertarians" (Rothbard et al., who argue for absolute private property) are not anarchist, but now that David Friedman's ideas and "Machinery of Freedom" book becomes popular and he calls himself "anarcho-capitalist" it became necessary to explain why "anarcho-capitalism" is an oxymoron again.
There is a long tradition of market anarchism, and even Agorsim (see Samuel Edward Konkin III) can be considered to be anarchism in my opinion, but "anarcho-capitalism" is not.
In my view the main difference is not in their view of what should happen, but rather in their impossibly rosy assumptions of what happens next. Left-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government the world becomes a left-wing utopia, while right-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government then the world becomes a right-wing utopia.
To me, neither of these scenarios seems more likely than the other.
I'd say you're strawmanning both sides here, left anarchists know the state grows out of the conflicting class interests of the working class and capitalist class, and that abolition of the state necessarily requires abolition of capitalism. Propertarians believe that if you got rid of the government, the free market will sort things out because it's the gov. interference in private enterprise that causes societies conflicts. Neither believe in a magic switch or anything.
> Propertarians believe that if you got rid of the government, the free market will sort things out because it's the gov. interference in private enterprise that causes societies conflicts
I think you've just given a slightly better summary of the magical thinking of each, rather than fundamentally disagreed with me.
Right-anarchists believe that destroying the state will finally allow capitalism to thrive, while left-anarchists believe that destroying the state will destroy capitalism too.
Partially this disagreement is simply about the meaning of the word "capitalism", though, which both sides chuck around unexamined without bothering too much about the fact that they have completely different definitions of this word, and that neither definition really matches what the man in the street means when he uses it.
Does it, though? If you use the classic Marxist definition of capitalism as "private ownership of the means of production", I don't think either ancaps or left anarchists would fundamentally disagree with it. And both would believe, based on their premises on property (natural right vs social construct), that removing the government from the equation would result in their desired endgame wrt capitalism based on this definition. For left-anarchists, if you remove the government, you also remove any and all private property rights, by definition (since they're a creation of the government) - obviously, this would include property rights on the means of production, and such a society would then not be capitalist. Ancaps, OTOH, believe that governments impede natural property rights, and thus a society without a government would have the strongest possible private ownership of the means of production - i.e. capitalism in its purest form.
https://raddit.me/f/ShitLiberalsSay/6024/verrit-a-hillary-cl...
Like, you literally couldn't have picked a better quote to sum up the left's views in 2017, and then you captioned it with "I'm not sure how left this is".
That being said, I wouldn't really classify Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as all that leftist. In the two-axis model, they're sort of straight down-the-middle centrist liberals (like me!)
You may as well say that American politics only contains extreme leftists, when compared to the rest of American history.
Just because your system is dominated by capitalists doesn't make the rest of the spectrum irrelevant, and redefining the conversation to fit into your narrow band is what has led to the frustrations with the American situation.
The American left is not left when considering the entire spectrum of left-right political ideas, and you don't get to suddenly chose to define something as leftist within the context of your narrow window of acceptable thought, it must encompass all ideas.
No it doesn't. I mean the single-axis "left" and "right" classification is fairly meaningless to begin with, but you don't get to be the one who decides where is where.
>I mean Monarchists are left of fascists
Not really. I mean, this is another example of where the "left-right spectrum" is completely useless. It's like asking whether Mars is north of Winnipeg. Monarchism and fascism aren't even the same type of idea.
> The American left is not left when considering the entire spectrum of left-right political ideas
What is the "entire spectrum" of ideas? What's the left-most possible idea you can think of? What's the right-most possible idea? What's the exact centre? You can't define these things, because the spectrum is meaningless. But if you're talking in the context of American politics, then you can put "the centre" roughly in the middle of what the general opinion of the population believes, i.e. somewhere between Republicans and Democrats, and work from there.
Trying to compare between different countries is fraught with difficulties, however, because the relevant issues are very different in different countries. Let's compare the US to Australia, for instance. In Australia, both major parties and the majority of the population are in agreement on the idea of universal government-funded medical care, which puts them to the left side of US politics. On the other hand, in Australia both major parties are in agreement that any illegal immigrant found in the country should be deported, which puts them both to the right side of US politics. The Australian position on gun control would be left-wing in the US, while the Australian position on inheritance taxes would be right-wing. It's simply not possible to say one is left or right of the other, because the controversial issues are very different.
It does sometimes result in funny moments like this where the critique of American liberal Democrats could easily come from either side.