I'm a leftist. Hell... I'm to the left of Mahatma Gandhi. Barack Obama is no leftist

[MrScorpio]

Again, our right wing "friends" are completely full of shit.

[marmar]

1. You're my kind of leftist.....

.... I'm left of Gandhi and Marx is in sight.

[MrScorpio]

3. And you're another Tigers fan

I'm in good company

[Tansy_Gold]

4. I"m a marxist. C'mon over.

We don't bite.


Tansy Gold

[MrScorpio]

18. I may not be a Marxist, but i've been to Karl Marx's house in Trier, Germany

Hey, you guys got donuts?

I love donuts

[cali]

2. well, yes the right wing is full of shit but you ain't no Gandhi, sweetie.

[jonnyblitz]

7. he didn't say he was gandhi , he said he was left of gandhi.

you need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills, SWEETIE.

[GCP]

14. Smack!

:toast:

[hobbit709]

9. Not until we see Mr. Scorpio in a loincloth.

[Forkboy]

10. Smugness, thy name is cali.

Among other names that would fit.

[MrScorpio]

15. I never said that I was a Gandhi

I said that I was to his left

Hence, my political compass..



Which as you can see, is to the left of Gandhi



It doesn't make me better, just more of a leftist.

[berni_mccoy]

25. If you are using that as your metric, I would say consider deleting your post.

That "Political Compass" is political b.s.

[TransitJohn]

5. I'm so far to the left

of the national Democratic Party, let alone the Wyoming Democratic Party, that it's not even funny.

[Hepburn]

6. I am a liberal....

...Obama is way to the right of me. I see him as a centrist.

JMHO

[a kennedy]

17. and seriously where do you put the big dawg.....bill clinton??

I'd say right of central..... :shrug:

[hobbit709]

8. According to the RW nutjobs

Anyone to the left of Hitler is an out and out Communist.

[iceman66]

11. Its a relative thing

When compared to other elected office holders in this country, Obama is more left than most.

In most other countries he'd be considered right of center.

[KG]

12. been quite amusing watching teabaggers whip-out term like 'socialist', 'stalinist,' etc, as if they

have a clue what they mean. :eyes:

[Hepburn]

16. I agree. My undergrad degree is poli sci...

...and when I hear this bullshit, my head spins! They simply have no clue that there a mega differences in the political philosophies they use to slam the POTUS.

Merely shows their stupidity.

What is fun is to confront them with the fact that Russia never had a communist government since the highest stage it ever reached was a dictatorship of the proletariat.

LOL ~~ if you ever want to see some very puzzled looks, try that one on a RW nut!

[Ozymanithrax]

28. The Socialism accusation is a "Frame."

By framing the discussion that way, the have tapped into unconscious attitudes present in many people in the USA. It does not show they are stupid because it is the emotional reaction to "Socialism" they want. Definitions don't matter and facts don't matter.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

13. I so agree, Mr. Scorpio

You're my kind of leftist!

[Mari333]

19. agreed. I roll my eyes. nt

[rrneck]

20. Obama is a center right president.

The country as a whole is waaaaaay too far to the right. He's the best we could do, but it's going to take an effort to make this ocean liner of a culture make a hard left to port. I hope we don't run out of time getting it done.

[LWolf]

21. You are correct, except for "he's the best we could do." nt

[rrneck]

23. I would have preferred

Kucinich, but there was just no way. Obama's a smart guy and if we do our job as citizens and keep pushing him to the left, that will mean a lot.

[LWolf]

44. My point still stands, though.

Obama is not "the best we could do."

There are plenty of people who would have been center, or slightly center-left, without the party having to have been principled enough to pick someone like Dennis Kucinich.

Out of the original pack running, Obama was the furthest right of center.

This mess falls squarely on Democratic voters, whose votes are no more principled or courageous than the Democratic reps in Congress they pretend to be so frustrated with.

[rrneck]

45. Yep. Government is only as good as the people it governs. nt

[earth mom]

48. No, most of the U.S. isn't far right-just the media, corporations, teabaggers and fundies.

I have no doubt that the majority of the country is left of center if not waaaaay left of center.

The media is feeding everyone the bullshit that everyone is a rethug and it's simply not true.

[rrneck]

50. Sure.

But the bunch that pushes the far right the mose effectively has most of the money. And a fair bit of that money finds it's way into the pockets of Democrats. Dismantling that machine will take time (and a little luck). Most of the population is center left, but the money leans way to the right.

[earth mom]

51. Most people want Univ. health care, NO war, corporations to be controlled + * & Cheney in jail.

Are these things center left or far left?

Who knows anymore, since everything is so far right these days.

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. Me too. Proud far leftist here!

And Obama is closer to the right than he is to me.

[Vincardog]

40. Roger that Obama is WAY closer to the right than he is to me. He favors republicans over progress

[berni_mccoy]

24. Um, very bad analogy. First, it's Mohandas Gandhi. Second, he was a Libertarian

He was for NO Government. An Anarchist.

He was not a leftist by any means.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

26. Gandhi was a leftist Libertarian. - cool test

http://www.politicalcompass.org/index

[berni_mccoy]

27. Right. I'm sure Gandhi answered all those questions himself too. That test is b.s.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

30. This test has been posted on DU many times and according to responses seemed pretty accurate.

[berni_mccoy]

37. Means nothing if these people did not take the survey themselves. Gandhi belongs center bottom.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

39. In your opinion.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

42. On Left Libertarians

http://libertarianwiki.org/Left_libertarian

Left libertarian
From Libertarian Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Left libertarians start by objecting to state interference with private lives. For them the libertarian interest in individual freedom is important. Especially they believe that consensual sex should not be interfered with by the government. They are also interested in legalizing most drugs. They differ from the traditional left which often wants government to regulate such matters in the name of 'protecting' people. They may disagree or care less about some of the economic and property rights issues that libertarians coming from the right care about.

This is a very political subject with everyone having their own definitions but I think the part below is describing traditional leftists not libertarians who reached their libertarian beliefs by starting with a leftist slant.

"Leftist" libertarians have less individualistic ideas about property rights than right libertarians. They are often connected to the anarchist, or socialist-libertarian traditions. Even Marxist movements included a libertarian vision, though they reserved this vision for the distant future and believed that centralization of power in the hands of the state was inevitable, and that this power could be coopted and used for the common good...at least the sincere Marxists believed this.

Leftist libertarians view economics and politics as being intimately connected. Economic independence is necessary for political independence. Economic equality is necessary for political equality. Leftist libertarians promote free and egalitarian associations across all of society. Rather than trying to micromanage associations as the statist leftists do, left libertarians focus on producing the basic conditions that enable individuals to freely enter into egalitarian relationships. They emphasize cooperative and participatory economic structures.

If you scroll down the page, Gandhi, along with Mandela and the Dali Lama are classified as Left-Libertarians.

Then you have this which was part of a book review. The book itself was written by the Neocon Jonas Goldberg.



http://www.amazon.com/review/RUNXQ3FUIEIST

If one takes into consideration all of the various political ideologies present in western democracies during the 19th through the early 21st centuries and places them on a Cartesian plane with economic issues on the x-axis (left/right) and social issues on the y-axis (authoritarian/libertarian) one can more easily distinguish the differences between various points of view. Authoritarian rightists like the American Republican and Democratic Parties would be in the upper right, authoritarian leftists like Castro and Lenin would be on the upper left, libertarian leftists like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela would be on the lower left, and libertarian rightists such as Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand would be on the lower right.

[MisterP]

43. this copypasta test put me in the SW corner, and I gave pro-dirigisme answers n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

31. It is not an analogy at all.

The OP is saying he is to the left of Gandhi, not that he is like Gandhi. So while one could agree or disagree with that statement, it is not an analogy. An analogy is always based on similarity or likeness. That is the meaning of the word. The OP says the opposite, that he is not like Gandhi, and that is not an analogy. It just isn't.

[Selatius]

56. An anarchist is to the left if we simply discuss socialism v. capitalism.

Anarchists of the kind like Noam Chomsky hold distinctly left wing views as far as capitalism goes. What separates an anarchist from a statist socialist is that an anarchist prefers left wing reform through collective action borne of free will. Statists necessarily would rather compel behavior not by convincing everybody and then letting them decide for themselves but legislating it in and then compelling people to obey through various mechanisms of coercion from taxation to laws to military force. Keep in mind not all statist socialists are brutal. Democratic socialists typically prefer legislating in reforms by majority, as opposed to the point of a gun like Joseph Stalin.

[Critters2]

29. I'm a Socialist. No, really. I'm a card-carrying Socialist.

Barack Obama is no Socialist.

[MannyGoldstein]

32. By His Actions, Obama is Basically a Reagan Republican

To the right of Nixon.

Think about it.

[democrat2thecore]

52. Did you read Matthew Rothschild's piece in The Progressive?

He just destroys Obama's first eight months and says what he said in the speech to Wall Street could have come from the lips of GHW Bush or Ronald Reagan. Hard hitting piece.

[kestrel91316]

33. Obama is a centrist, though he appears to be slightly to the left of another favorite

centrist of mine, Bill Clinton.

I doubt we'll see a true left president in my lifetime. The US has turned into a fascist stronghold.

[MrScorpio]

34. If by fascist, you mean corporatist... I wholeheartedly agree

We may never see a true left leaning president

[kestrel91316]

35. What other meaning of fascist is there, other than corporatist? Mussolini himself defined it.

[MrScorpio]

36. Exactly

There are quite a few other people who never got that memo

[Odin2005]

38. I'm a Left-Libertarian.

Sympathetic to the Anarchists, though not anti-state, just skeptical of both both corporate and state power.

I'm a Liberal of the John Rawls and Karl Popper variety, basically

[La Lioness Priyanka]

41. gandhi wasnt really a leftist but i agree with your sentiment

and the right is full of shit

[uppityperson]

46. The goal posts have been moved so far right, what used to be center is now left

[democrat2thecore]

53. Especially in economic matters. You're exactly right. -nt

[jimlup]

47. Actually I believe a 2-Dimensional model would be more helpful...

I'm a left-libertarian and I know that this isn't a contradiction though ALL right wingers are incapable of grasping this.

[truedelphi]

49. From one far lefty to another

:toast:

[Rex]

54. No he is not, another Rovian lie.

Man, what WON'T idiot Repukers believe!?

[Vidar]

55. K&R,

[Czar One]

57. By British, Canadian, and French standards.....

...Obama is center-right! Charges of "socialism" are absolute nonsense!