> almost always reflected the ideas of the existing system.
The existing system has reflected the liberal democratic ideas (ideals in plural).
The existing system has reflected the liberal democratic ideas (ideals in plural).
Part of this is that the Overton Window has shifted so far right that "left wing" in the mainstream now means "center", however it cannot be ignored that what the mainstream considers 'normal' has indeed been shifted over time by the editors (and through them, the owners) of the newspapers.
I think for me the most startling revelation recently was that what I considered to be a traditionally marxist perspective and given right, "The freedom from want", was adopted by western countries during World War Two. It's a damn shame that although it is a founding right, it, and efforts to implement it, have been for decades ignored and disparaged within the media and within "right-wing" academic circles.
That's a bit disingenuous, considering the overton window had been relentlessly moving leftwards for decades before this. I think what you're seeing now is a correction, and the end of "peak leftism" - at least for another few decades.
You can easily observe this on politicalcompass.org
They analyze voting records, speeches, etc. and use an objective test to score each party leader on where they stand on certain policies.
Here is a general yardstick for you, you might not agree with it, but this is the scale that I tend to use: https://www.politicalcompass.org/images/axeswithnames.gif
As you can see for America:
2004: The candidates are evenly spread around the map (https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2004)
2016: Almost all of the candidates are on the right-hand side of the map (https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016)
One of the problems in US discussions that I've noticed as someone from Europe, is that Americans tend to talk about "leftists" and "rightists" to mean people who are respectively "less authoritarian" and "more authoritarian", regardless on where those people actually stand on matters relating to the left/right divide. I would say this is one of the biggest problems in US politics, as it causes the most misunderstandings when two people enter into a discussion.
As for the UK, you can see here that historically there is and always has been a right-wing bias, which fits with the (more or less) three party system that we have: https://i.imgur.com/yI0QXpL.png
But Marxism is a much more socially acceptable than say, fascism. I've seen a lot of communist themed parties where people hang up hammer and sickle flags, but rarely any parties where people hang up swastikas (or at least, they don't post them on social media !)
> Political Compass isn't an impartial or scientific measure. It's center is not guaranteed to correspond the political center of the globe.
Are you sure? I'm seeing a hell of a lot of openly fascist speakers (Spencer et al) getting positive publicity in the mainstream press. I mean, really the only reason why Milo's book tanked was because he said some disgusting things about child-abuse. My more right-wing leaning friends (pro-Tory) have been sourcing Breitbart lately, which is an obviously fascist news source.
It's also important to note that Fascism traditionally has never been seen as a widely acceptable option by the mainstream since Mussolini, possibly before. This has had even more reinforcement with the US's operations in Iraq and the surrounding regions supposedly being justified with "They're fascists, we want to give these people democracy".
Compare that with Communism only really getting a bad rap under McCarthyism and Stalin (And I guess China? Except only really Stalinists will call that Communism, since less than 3% of the workers were in the "People's Party" at the time of the revolution...). Communism's affinity for the unions, which in non-American are systems that guarantee that employees get treated like humans, only helps further a positive image for it.
> Political Compass isn't an impartial or scientific measure. It's center is not guaranteed to correspond the political center of the globe.
Of course. But it's much, much more impartial than many other sources I could bring up.
I've noticed terms like "fascist", "white supremacist", "far-right" are thrown about fairly casually, while calling self-proclaimed communists "communists" is often met with derision or denial.
Richard Spencer is essentially, a Nazi, his philosophy lines up pretty damn perfectly: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Richard_Spencer#Everything.27s...
Breitbart is one of the major nodes in the new wave of cryptofascism that we have: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alt-right, https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Breitbart.com
You mentioned McCarthyism before, yet you believe in a similar conspiracy theory - "Crypto Fascism" - where instead of people being secretly communist, they're secretly fascist. I don't know how you reconcile this with yourself but I don't buy it.
I'm sure it seems that way to you.
As a conservative, I'd claim the window has shifted in the other direction, at least in some respects.
Are you able to give any examples that you see as evidence of a broad shift to the right?
But on issues like labor and capital the media definitely moved rightward. On foreign policy, the press definitely seems to favor conflict escalation over diplomacy, which can be viewed as a leftward or rightward bias depending on the situation.
So today, the "center" in media is the socially-permissive, global intervention, capitalist perspective.
in the 60's people on the left literally criticized US soldiers as they returned to the US from Vietnam. (the phrase "baby killers" comes to mind). you don't hear that sort of thing today.
criticizing US soldiers is just not done. even Barbara Boxer touted her work with the "Wounded Warriors" project. Al Franken went on USO tours. it's just not ok to criticize US soldiers. on the contrary, we thank them for their service and try not to call into question what happened "over there."
furthermore, when GW Bush argued for an invasion of Iraq in 2003, an awful lot of Democratic politicians got on board and voted to authorize it. i think they were afraid not to authorize it.
later, drone attacks carried out by the Obama administration were more or less accepted too.
i'd argue you're both right and the window has widened in both directions.
Let me start with the idea of a "personal Overton Window". It's the positions that an individual thinks are within the realm of reasonable discourse. Then society's Overton Window is composed of a bunch of individual ones.
So, 40 or 50 years ago, it was clear to about 95% of people that gays could not marry. Those 95% gave society a clear Overton Window on the topic.
But today, maybe 30% of people still have gay marriage outside their personal Overton Window. Maybe 40% not only have gay marriage in their personal Overton Window, but it is outside their personal Overton Window to not be totally accepting of gay marriage. This means that 70% of the population excludes at least 30% of the population from their personal Overton Window. As a result, no societal Overton Window is possible - we're just left with a bunch of conflicting personal ones.
"left wing, unauthoritarian" news papers preaching xenophobia, ignorance, and bad science.