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It looks to me like there’s some variation in the number of private vs public hospitals and beds (figure 3). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8005513/ So at least we could say the idea of having publicly owned hospitals did fly in Norway and the Netherlands, for example. Unless I’ve misunderstood the data. WRT guns, it is true that we have a crazy amount of guns in the US, more than one per person, which is totally absurd. But there’s significant state-level variation, for example I grew up in Massachusetts where we have around 7 guns per 100 people, which seems OK compared to some EU countries. Bernie represents a fairly rural state (and also one with gun manufacturers), so he’s more little-l liberal (in the “anything goes” sense) on guns than a lot of Democrats. Anyway, I’d agree that he’s more left-leaning than most democrats and maybe he’s a little to the right of, at least, some centrist EU political parties. But IMO the fact that one of our most left wing politicians happens to be weak on guns is more of a coincidence that overplays the difference (which certainly isn’t to say there isn’t any difference). You could look at Liz Warren for someone who’s just smidge to his right, but is also more willing to restrict guns. Another interesting departure from Democratic Party principles for Bernie was that he was more of a NAFTA (free trade in North America) skeptic, and is less of a proponent of immigration. In the US these are generally Republican-party aligned positions, so if we want to call the parties our arrows for “left” and “right,” that puts him more to the right. But, he came to those positions through worker protections concerns. And, it is not that uncommon for left wing parties in Europe to have similar concerns, I think? IMO, there are just too many issues to make a one or two dimensional map. |