Talk:Right-wing politics/Archive 3

message: This article is disproportionately focused on the concerns of the contemporary right in the United States. It hardly mentioned the capitalism/socialism issue, which has been the main distinction between left and right in most of the world for most of the last 150 years. I have expanded the right wing issues section a little. I think some major changes are needed:
*1) Far more history (autocracy; classical liberalism; emergence of the democratic right in the 19th century onwards; the anti-democratic right (ie fascism and Nazism), including its connection with the anti-democratic left etc.)
*2) Clear definitions of the main strands of contemporary right wing thought on a global basis (ie not just the US), which acknowledge the complexities without getting bogged down in them
*3) A section on the relationship of different strands of right wing thought to democracy (probably instead of the fascism section)
*4) More economics
*5) Less on the war on terror
*6) Less on Israel-Palestine
*7) A reduction in US centrism in any area not already covered.
Philip 07:09, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: I think this is a poorly balanced article

message: This edit  is mostly POV of rubbish.  Citation leads back to a political activism organization.  At the very least, this section needs much more qualification.  Personally, I think it should be deleted outright. --Pearlg 01:00, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The xenophobic label would hardly seem exclusive to the right when one considers the trade unionists and and communist anarchists in the anti-globalization movement, etc.  The passage overall, seems a work of fantasy.--Silverback 23:27, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
"The Religious Right consists of the following sectors: Christian Nationalists and Christian Theocrats." - thats certainly not true. I also agree with the removal, and feel we need to be very careful (as all past discussion has shown) with who we label "right", and why. ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 23:42, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Section of Sociological Classification

message: The current lead paragraph is bad to the point of actively propagating ignorance.
The first sentence has been there for some time, and is perfectly OK:
:In politics, right-wing, the political right, or simply the Right, are terms which refer, with no particular precision, to the segment of the political spectrum in opposition to left-wing politics. 
But then we go off into La-La Land:
:In political science terms, right-wing usually describes a preference for economic freedom at the cost of equality, as opposed to the left-wing preference for equality at the cost of economic freedom.
This is ridiculous. At best, it is true of certain times and places, and even then mainly if "economic freedom" is understood to mean the rights and privileges of owners of private property. Certainly the original "right", the defenders of the aristocratic and clerical classes, were in no sense advocates of economic freedom — the original "left", which included the Girondists, had far more claim to that — but they were the defenders of the rights of property deriving from the Ancien Régime. And, at the risk of being as polemical as the person who wrot this, most people's economic freedom is enhanced by knowing that if they quit their job they will still have a roof over their head and access to medical care, a position far more commonly taken by the left. In short, I guess that if "economic freedom" were replaced here by "the rights of property owners", this would be much closer to the truth; I'm still not at all certain it should be stated (especially without any citation except the weaselly "political science terms") as a definition of right-wing in the second sentence of the article.
From here, we go off to near-total irrelevance:
:At the extreme left is Communism, where the government is in complete control of the economy and attempts to achieve maximum equality, while at the other end is Anarchism, where government intervention is non-existent. 
What on earth is the third sentence of an article on right-wing politics doing contrasting about two political views that are usually counted on the left, and which have common roots in mid-19th century worker-based left politics? What about the right? Isn't that what this article is supposed to be about? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:34, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
::This is the way I've always thought of the terms: An extreme right winger eliminates civil liberties (drugs, gambling, abortion, etc). An extreme left winger eliminates private property. A totalitarian is the combination of extreme leftism and extreme rightism. An absolute libertarian is the negation of all degrees of leftism and all degrees of rightism.  Is that correct or am I off the mark? RJII 05:15, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Your correct, as best I can tell "La-la land" seems to translate to: "reality" in the above rant ;) See the Nolan chart, discussion above, etc... ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 18:54, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead paragraph 

message: RJII has now changed "those forms of liberalism that emphasize the free market more than social equality" to "those forms of liberalism that emphasize the free market more than egalitarianism in wealth". I think this is simply wrong: liberals aren't levelers, not even American liberals. Again: nearly everyone who calls themselves liberal is (at least in theory) in favor of both the free market and social equality (in a broad sense of both terms). What makes them "left" or "right" is which of these (at least potentially) conflicting ideals gets priority. "Egalitarianism in wealth" simply isn't in the picture.
I feel that the current wording simply propagates ignorance. But at this point I've said my piece, reverted more than once, and will not keep reverting if no one else steps in. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:25, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
:The wording before said "liberalism that emphasizes the free market more than social equality." That statement is not true, as liberalism does indeed advocate social equality --otherwise known as Herbert Spencer's "law of equal freedom." That's why I changed it. They do advocate social equality just as much as they advocate free markets. They do not, however, advocate wealth equality. Individual liberty for all individuals equally is the essence of liberalism, so I don't see how on can say that a free market is emphasized over social equality. That's just not true. My putting in that they don't favor egalitarianism in wealth was the result of my interpretation of what I believed was intended by the claim that they don't emphasize social equality. The only way that could properly said is if what was being referred to was equality in wealth. RJII 03:29, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps someone can come up with a better wording here, but the reason that (say) the German liberals generally viewed as "on the (center-)right" is that when it comes to conflicts between social equality and the market, they usually come down on the side of the market, whereas American liberals are usually considered "on the (center-)left" because they tend to go with the social equality. This is not always a matter of even equality of incomes, let alone wealth (the latter would require a confiscatory policy). For example, U.S. liberals have been pretty uniformly on the side of the American Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and of immigrant rights today; post-WWII German liberals do not particularly have a similar history vis a vis Turks in Germany. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:09, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
Your using a definition of social equality which is not accepted by those not on the left. Many see the free market, or even natural selection as a state of social equality. Many see taxation and regulation as a form of government oppression, benefiting a bureaucratic oligarchy. These ideas are not new, Machiavelli opposed social welfare programs for these reasons, seeing taxation for any reason as a net loss for the people, and a source of their resentment. For every dollar collected in taxes, and later given to a social program, how much is eaten up inbetween by fraud, waste and abuse? Such leftist attempts to involuntarilly "redistribute wealth" end up in Bureaucratic collectivism, perhaps the worst possible fate for the workers, since its nearly identical to feudalism. Sam Spade 14:17, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Sam, I'm not saying that leftist levelers don't exist. I'm saying that they are not liberals. There is plenty to the left of liberals. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:38, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
The term "liberal" transcends left-right politics. Same w libertarians. The idea of freedom being the essential value is very different from power/authority as the central value. "Social equality" means extremely different things to different people, and for MANY on the left, it means equality of outcome. These people are sometimes refered to as "liberals" (they certainly arn't conservative!), but then my friends in europe who oppose taxation and govt. regulation are also liberals? The difference is in equality of process, vrs. equality of outcome. Sam Spade 20:11, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redux 

message: openDemocracy, which was recently linked here as an external link, certainly looks like a decent site, but I don't see why it is linked from this article. What, particularly, does it have to do with right-wing politics? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  openDemocracy 

message: There were some inconsistencies in the format and emphasis of this article in contrast to the article on left-wing politics, which seems strange since these two concepts are roughly symmetrically opposing and meant to be defined against the other. I've tried to incorporate the informal aspects of each article in a rather symmetric introduction. I think this also minimizes potential POV issues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.251.6.195 (talk • contribs) 23 Oct 2005
: About a year and a half ago they were very symmetric, but they haver each grown independently since then. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:31, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see that the lead has been changed to say "often pejoratively". While true in a sense --  obviously, those on the left use "right" pejoratively and vice versa -- I don't think it is true enough to belong in the lead of the article. Political scientists unhesitatingly use the term, and do not consider it inherently value-laden. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:42, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistencies between this article and the "left-wing politics" article 

message: There were just way too many digressions in the article - Franco, Wolfowitz, Hitler, heaven knows what else.  I would suggest that these matters be addressed in articles about the specific issues rather than in an article about a very broad and vague term.  --Leifern 15:36, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lots of changes 

message: JMabel's reversion is vandalism because it involves a wholesale reversion without keeping any of the well-intended edits.  It is also bad form because the reversion wasn't discussed.  Obviously, my major changes can be improved upon, but let's try this structure.  The previous version of the article was an "everything but the kitchen sink" article, and since "right-wing politics" is a vague term (see how we dealt with the article on "Palestine" for another example), this article should be concise.  I will report another reversion of this kind as vandalism.  --Leifern 12:19, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism by JMabel