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Comment by tom_mellior | Hacker News Reader

> the right is advocating for freedom more than the left (gun rights, freedom of speech, smaller taxes).

You got that backwards: The left is advocating for freedom more than the right (freedom from gun violence, freedom from hate speech, freedom from preventable/treatable medical conditions).

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agree about freedom re: healthcare. it would also mean freedom to take risks as a creator or entrepreneur, if you don't have to rely on an employer for health insurance.

the gun issue is a city vs rural thing. you don't want them in a city, but you might in the rural context.

> freedom from hate speech

but reframing censorship as freedom is blatantly Orwellian. also, the left is not a monolith.

the liberal left advocates for free speech and liberty. aligned with freedom.

the illiberal left advocates for censorship and control. the opposite of freedom.

> reframing censorship as freedom is blatantly Orwellian.

Why? People largely agree that things like false advertising and fraud regulations increase freedom, despite being literally censorship.

The kind of freedom the left advocates is more about freedom from being dominated by some authority; but we see your boss or your landlord as being more of an immediate authority than the government. So we support labor organizing and tenant rights. Many leftists support the right to bear arms (Karl Marx, famously).

It's a positive vs negative liberty difference. Decentralization and unregulated currency is aligned with the right wing ideas about freedom.

The original meaning of “right wing” meant supporters of monarchy or aristocracy. (The supporters of the aristocracy sat on the right in the Estates General assemblies right before the French Revolution, the commoners on the left). What you are describing is a free market libertarianism that denies or pretends that class doesn’t exist at all, which generally serves the interests of economic aristocracy.

Yes - I just finished reading a book about the French Revolution and it was surprising how far the modern definition of right vs left has strayed. Imagine living in a time when the leftists were pro-war nationalists who loved prison and the death penalty! But in the current political climate, libertarian market ideas are generally included in the basket of ideas labelled 'right'. That's all I meant.

Yes, I think also that the word freedom is a bit ambiguous which lends itself to being distorted. The left wing view is that freedom means not being dominated by authority figures, and the way you fight back against authority is to band together to pursue your common interests, which means that to obtain freedom you have to take collective action. So freedom is seen in terms of power relations. The right wing idea of freedom is being alone or being independent; but we on the left would say that being alone just makes you vulnerable, unless you are already in a position of considerable power. But you know, independence from other people is a kind of freedom too, so I can see the idea there.

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