Talk:Left-wing politics/Archive 5

message: Africa is noticably missing from the discussion, which seems to cover the rest of the world.  I'm not qualified, but can anyone expand here?--Dvyost 5 July 2005 12:59 (UTC)
:As is practically anywere that isn't (north) America or England.This is a big issule that needs to be sorted, unfortunatly most of are contributers are from one of those two places. One of the interesting things about africa and other underdeveloped countries is that their National liberation movments generally painted themselves as Marxist.--JK the unwise 15:17, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The African liberation movements can generally be placed in two categories: those which advocated African socialism and those based on more "official" Soviet-influenced Marxism, some of which later developed links with China.  There were also - and still are - important trade union movements in many countries.  While I couldn't contribute much on left-wing opposition to war in Africa, I might be able to work on some of the other sections. Warofdreams 13:19, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Africa 

message: The middle of this article reads like a republican campaign blog,
it's a nice mix of France bashing, liberal bashing, and one section even equates all pacifists with terrorists,
it's been re-written so many times it actually contradicts itself from paragraph to paragraph,
can we either get a re-write, a deletion, or a POV tag for this thing --172.152.1.161 14:46, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: You have got to be kidding me

message: [Explain your reasoning]
behind using "postmodernism" as a way of describing to the average person what a left-wing position is. Explain how this gives a person unfamiliar with the subject a useful understanding of what it means to be left-wing. (Annon User:68.118.218.128)
:Postmodernism is not used to describe what left-wing is. The article is not saying that leftwing=postmodernism (which would be incorrect). The article is not just about defining it also aims to give background on related issules. Hence The left and china Section and The left and opposition to war section. The left and postmodernism section aims to give a person unfamiliar with issules surrounding 'the left' an understanding of how left-wing ideas have interacted with postmodernists ones.--JK the unwise 13:37, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Explain your reasoning

message: Searching this talk page I can not find anything that gives a specific NPOV problem thus unless someone can clearly state one here I will remove the tag (it has most recently been added by annon user:68.118.218.128). I few things that could be whats at issule but need expanding.
*Africa is noticably missing from the discussion (User:Dvyost, 5 July)
:This is true and a huge defect of the article but isn't a neutrality problem.
*The middle of this article reads like a republican campaign blog (Annon User:172.152.1.161, 27 July)
:The article has had a majour overhall since this was written.
*the article is rife with extrapolation and generalisation from individuals and small groups to all "leftists" and the the left and opposition to war section is writtern from an 'leftists are really islamists' POV. (Annon User:80.203.115.12, 3 August)
:As well as untrue, this is to general what lines exactly contain this POV and how do they do so?
*Terms like "Postmodernism" do not belong in politics (Annon User:68.118.218.128, 15 August)
:The complaint is against the Left and postmodernism section but the complaint seems to be that it is factually incorrect that their have been any relationship between the left and postmodernism (which is itself incorrect). This is a factual dispute rather then a neutrality dispute. So I have replaced the NPOV tage with a  tag.
::Since 68.118.218.128 has not advanced any further argument that this is the case and since Electionworld and Annon User:64.168.12.237 think that is not the case, I am removing the dubious tag.--JK the unwise 18:33, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current NPOV dispute (25 Aug 2005) 

message: I'm not an expert on those issues, but I reckon that the order of seating in traditional depictions of the Last Supper, in the British House of Commons and in the French assemblies have the same origin. Traditionally, in the West, the right hand side of the host at a table was the place of honour (from the point of view of the host). Thus, in medieval depictions of the Last Summer, the "Chief Apostle" Peter is always to the right of the host. In the revolutionary National Assembly formed from the Estates-General, the Church and the nobility went to the more honourific side (the right) while the "third estates" (commoners) went to the left. Similarly, in the British House of Commons, the government goes to the right-hand side (place of honour) while the opposition goes to the left.
Can some expert confirm this to me? David.Monniaux 21:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins 

message: Without, for the moment, debating the merits, these edits by Revolución include major deletions of longstanding material, and were made with no edit summaries beyond the names of the section headers. As I understand it, major removal of longstanding material should usually be accompanied by an explanation of why the material is being removed, and should generally be accompanied by pasting the cut material (or at least a summary) to the talk page. 
I have too many irons in the fire to do more than note this right now, but someone may want to look carefully at the cut material. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've restored the material.  While far from being the finest parts of the article, they should be improved rather than deleted - or, if there are serious innaccuracies in them, they should be raised here on the talk page. Warofdreams talk 10:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

text: This article needs a major rewrite. for one, there is terrible POV problems. The layout was horrible to begin with. And this doesn't even touch upon the various left-wing ideologies (communism, socialism, anarchism, liberalism/progressivism). I will leave the article as is for now but I will be working on a rewrite in one of my subpages. And then we will judge the two versions to see which is 'better'. --Revolución (talk) 00:57, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Revolución, you're not necessarily wrong, but you seem to be avoiding all approaches that involve collaboration. First you do a bunch of big edits with no summaries, not even explaining your rationale, then you propose that you will write a different article from scratch. Thank you, though, for finally at least giving us a paragraph explaining your rationale. I think it would be much more productive, and much more likely to lead to consensus, to give a rough list of what you think should be dropped from the article and a rough outline of what you would like to add, so that people have some chance to react on that level rather than to an entire substitute article. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major deletions without edit summaries 

message: The POV tag has re-appeared on the article, to the best of my knowldge it was put there by User:Revolución on the 5th of October.
I have given it a while but no spesific explaination of the lack of nutrality has been given.
From what I can gather Revolución merly states that there are POV problems without pointing out what they are. One of the things Revolución mentions that is a true problem is that "the article doesn't even touch appon various left-wing ideologies (communism, socialism, anarchism, liberalism/progressivism).". There is some truth in this and needs to be improved but doesn't not mean there is a NPOV problem. I am thus removing the tag until someone provides a clearer explantion of the POV problems.--JK the unwise 10:01, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Further reading of the The Left and Opposition to War section has lead me to bleive there are some POV problems however because of my moving most of the content of that section to its own page (see next comment section) and leveing only a summery, I beleive this page is now NPOV. The new page could do with some help to sort out its POV problems though.--JK the unwise 12:09, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current NPOV dispute (26th Oct 2005) 

message: The The Left and Opposition to War section was getting far to big and swamping the rest of the article. I have therefor sent it off to its own article at The Left and Opposition to War and tryed to just have a summery here. I have done my best however the article is very hard to summerise. Any comments?--JK the unwise 11:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The The Left and Opposition to War page has now been nominated for delition. See its desicusion page here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Left and Opposition to War--JK the unwise 12:33, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Left and Opposition to War 

message: Do we really need all these external links? The discussion sites links seem just to be adverts, are they even particulary notable examples of such sites? The Blogs etc. section seems to be the same; pointless and unencycopedic.--JK the unwise 09:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be glad to lose the blogs, neutral on the discussion sites. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Bang and the inapropreate links are gone.--JK the unwise 17:37, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: Recently added. Probably worth taking up (whether here or elsewhere), but the current version is a bit slipshod and vague. I made some copyedits, but this needs a lot more work. In particular, I find the last sentence incomprehensible: "Fears significant scientific support for leftist liberal social policies is a significant theme in American Christian fundamentalism, especially the Intelligent Design movement." -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I had soemthing I wanted to say there, but it came out crappy, if I think of a better way to say it, I will do so.  I'll go remove the sentence for now.  Actually Mary Midgley should maybe be mentioned in that section, as she may have been the first such critic of Marxist thought, but I've not actually read the book Beast and Man myself.  - JeffBurdges 21:03, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Left and Darwinism 

message: Richard Dawkins is described as a "leftist" in the section on Darwinism. I've never thought of him that way at all, based on his writings on evolution, which is all I know of him. But perhaps he has written things that I don't know. Is there a basis for this claim? -- Jmabel | Talk 19:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a vage memory of attending a left-wing meeting by Steven Rose in which he was disagreeing with Dawkins and saying that his version of evolutionary theory was ideologicaly right-wing (or some such thing). However, interestingly he allso said that Dawkins generally has good left-wing politics for example he was one of the first people to sign a motion supporting the academic boycott of  Israel. [THIS MEMORY COULD NE INNCORRECT] Anyway, other then that half remembered snipit I have always thought of him as right-wing too.--JK the unwise 09:55, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *I was involved in a (successful) campaign against the takeover of a school in Conisbrough by the Reg Vardy Foundation (creationists).  Richard Dawkins was fully in support of the campaign and wrote an article in The Times in support of it (somewhat surprisingly, with the Bishop of Oxford).  Having said that, although the campaign was strongly left-wing, I can't remember the contents of the article - he may just have been stating scientific fact, which isn't in itself leftist.  Incidentally, I think I've seen Rose give the same talk, and it's really his opinion that Dawkins' view of evolutionary theory is right-wing - it's not a widely accepted thing. Warofdreams talk 18:26, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *I don't think Rose's critisism is relevant, or even valid.. the educated left is abandoning the "blank slate".  Dawkins non-scientific writing is often anti-religious, but it does sometimes support leftist agendas directly, such as vegetarianism.  It might be reasonable to remove him as not being "actively leftist enough".  But I certainly wouldn't give him any other classification besides leftist.  Anyway, the idea that understanding of the IPD can be used as a corrective to Marxism is leftist, although obviously not Marxist.  Many people besides Dawkins have written about this, nothing wrong with trying to find one with a higher leftist pedigree.  JeffBurdges 21:35, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What is "leftist" or "rightist" about vegetarianism? Or, for that matter, about being anti-Israel: surely U.S. paleoconservatives are not leftists. - Jmabel | Talk 06:34, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Richard Dawkins a leftist? 

message: Regarding the proposed merger into this page: There are other issues that might affect both the Left and Right pages.  The biggest one is the idea of changing the pages Far left and Far right into disambiguation pages. The terms have many conflicting uses, even in academia, and are often used just as political epithets.  There is also a huge area of study of the Extreme left which is distinct from the study of left-liberals and progressives. These would generally be communist cadre organizations or underground groups.  Most of the current links to "Far-Left" should be divided up and most pointed to Left-wing politics. Some should go to the re-created Extreme left which would be a small page that parsed out links to various groups and movements and theories, while Far left would be a disambiguation page.  I am not invested in a particular outcome, but the current sets of pages are very muddled (except for Left-wing politics) and both sets need an extreme makeover that pays at least some attention to scholarly research.  Lot's of work, but it needs to be done.
Perhaps folks could first join in at Talk:Right-wing_politics  --User:Cberlet|Cberlet]] 17:13, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In American politics, "left-wing" is used to describe the Democratic party.  See a recent study showing that American media are "left-wing" by showing that American media are pro-Democrat.  During the fifties in America, "lefties" was a synonym for "commies", and so Republicans call Democrats "left-wing" at every oportunity, in hopes that some of the tar from the commie brush will stick.  On the other hand, almost nobody in American self-describes their position as "left-wing", or even, these days, as "liberal".  The result is that the Democratic party has, essentially, fallen apart, and doesn't stand for anything any more.
Rick Norwood 17:15, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Muddled concepts, bad grammar, and tricky terms

message: I think a short discussion of Unilateralism v. Globalism would fit well in keeping the article up to date. Mostly this would describe the United States mainly Unilateral approach in Iraq, and the opposition of the Left in that situation. As we know, this was not only in the US but in many other countries. If people agree it's a good inclusion, I could do the research and write the subtopic.
Chenenko 27 Dec 2005
: There is no question that at the moment the worldwide left opposes U.S. unilateralism, but I'm not sure that over time the left has been particularly multilateralist. I'd be interested in seeing someone track down some citable views from respected historians on this, not just get a litany of contributors' personal impressions. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:56, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: To the extent that "American left" means anything, few people in America, and no successful politians, are going to give up American hegemony and submit to world courts.  I would say the split is between those who favor spreading American influence by arms, and those who favor spreading American influence economically.  The former group -- Bush and Co. -- do not have any strong overseas interest beyond the preservation of Israel and keeping the oil flowing.  The latter group are, in a sense, more interested in Unilateralism -- that is, they are only interested in cooperating with those nations that agree with them, while Bush & Co. will cooperate with anybody who keeps the oil flowing and leaves Israel alone.  For example, the war in Bosnia was, pro forma, a multinational war, but the US called the shots.  I find it hard to think of anyone genuinely interested in Globalism in any real sense of, say, one nation one vote, or even one person one vote.  When people praise Globalism, it usually means something to the effect that countries like us -- the capitalist liberal democracies -- banding together to spread liberalism, women's rights, and secular humanism.  Which is, of course, a good thing, yes? Rick Norwood 15:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Unilateralism

message: There is a debate on the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army page about whether the group should be defined as left-wing. I would appricate the views of the editors of this page on the subject to help resolve the debate.--JK the unwise 14:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Clearly they are. Reminds me of the YIPPIE movement in the US. Giovanni33 19:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army