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Comment by candiodari | Hacker News Reader

No, he looks at it like left and right. From a European perspective American politics are simple:

Republicans: extreme right (slight adjustment: closed borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons)

Democrats: extreme right (slight adjustment: (ever so slightly more) open borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons)

Libertarians: extreme right

Even the bloody US communist party does not want to abolish markets. Think about how crazy that is.

On the borders point of view, a traditional leftist (one from the 70s or 80s) might even say that the republicans are clearly to the left, politically, of the democrats. Why ? Closed borders protect the rights, and increase living conditions and wages of laborers. Or, as we might say today, of "the 99%".

But yes, those same closed borders will make your iPads more expensive. A leftist should not care.

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That's an interesting perspective.

I know the left/right spectrum has many definitions, and there is little consensus on them, but I think this captures the essential philosophical and ideological distinctions: http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/politics/wp-content/...

So by my measure, both Republicans and Democrats are in the middle leaning left - both supporting various forms of rights violations. Libertarians are further right, advocating a lot of good rights-protecting policies, but often for the wrong reasons - so they're not consistent in the policies they promote.

Also, "closed borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons" doesn't really make sense, as that's an explicitly anti-laissez-fare policy (if you understand laissez-fare as "abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market.", as it's most commonly meant).

That is an absurdly incorrect definition of left/right wing. The original use of left and right wings was that the right wing supported the French monarchy while the left wing opposed it, but under your definition supporters of an absolute monarchy would be far left.

Sure, historically that is true, but that historical usage doesn't capture that, philosophically and ideologically - absolute monarchy and communism just aren't that different - both rely on subjugation of the individual's rights to some authority (a monarch in one case, and society in another).

The historical, and common left/right distinction is even more absurd when you consider that socialism is considered left-wing, and fascism is considered right-wing. Where does that leave Nazism? Centrist?

What I like about the spectrum put together by the Objective Standard is that it essentializes the ideological distinctions between these movements, as viewed from the perspective of "degrees of respect for / violation of individual rights".

I am well aware that it's not the way most people understand the terms left-wing and right-wing, but to be frank, most people DON'T understand the terms, because they're not conceptually consistent in the slightest.

It's not that easy. Especially when it comes to illegals or criminal immigrants, the democrat position would be the extreme left in Europe. Closed border, for example, is something all European parties but the extreme left could agree on. Deporting illegal criminals is something even the moderate left supports, and support for deporting non-criminal illegals is still pretty widely supported (it doesn't happen that often mostly because of technicalities, like the country of origin not wanting their citizens back). Really controversial is only deporting legal immigrants who committed a crime. That's something most parties on the left wouldn't support.

Republicans also have their extremely regressive social policies.

Ha! If you think Republicans are laissez-faire in the slightest you have been reading headlines and not paying attention to actual outcomes

Politicians promise ... don't deliver. Not exactly limited to one side of the aisle.

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