[wutbrodo]

Treating left as if it has some inherent, context-free meaning is ridiculous. If you're going to define a spectrum, the context matters, and the context we're currently discussing is American politics.

You may as well say that American politics only contains extreme leftists, when compared to the rest of American history.

[tray5]

Sure it is, leftism occupies a spectrum of economic and social ideals, which the US left (led by the DNC) falls uniformly outside that spectrum. I mean Monarchists are left of fascists, but that doesn't make monarchists leftist just because you compare them to something further right.

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.

[tomjakubowski]

You're confusing "the American left" with the Democratic Party. The US left exists, it's just terribly unorganized and has little political power. Their opposition has simply done a better job of marginalizing them compared to left movements in other countries.

[Domenic_S]

That's just not a meaningful distinction. Technically correct, probably -- useful? Nah.

[FridgeSeal]

Could you clarify? How is it not a useful distinction - they pretty clearly outlined the differences.

[pamqzl]

> Sure it is, leftism occupies a spectrum of economic and social ideals, which the US left (led by the DNC) falls uniformly outside that spectrum

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.