| scottie said: Out of curiousity, where do you think my country is?
Oh, you're not American? Then it's strange that you should focus so heavily on American politics. Maybe because that makes things much easier; the US has the worst conservative party in the Western world, after all... Scott Walker (and there are plenty of other examples, such as Thatcher, to use an example that is neither from my country nor the present day, or John Howard, who is from my country and approximately the present day) and their union busting activities. All Right wing without a shadow of a doubt, all acting in defiance of the 'small government' concept in order to concentrate wealth in the hands of the already wealthy. I would also like to point out that after Howard was voted out of office, the Labor party (left wing) overturned John Howards ban on collective bargaining. Trade unions aren't inherently bad, but they've very often been used to hold both employers and governments to ransom, and their political goals tend to be "big government" goals. They also have a habit of bullying their members into supporting actions they don't agree with, and they often refuse to allow people to work for whoever they're striking against. This goes dead againt concepts of individual liberty and the free market. It's interesting that you should bring up Thatcher. At the time she took power, union leaders in Britain were almost tyrants; they were close to ruling the country as an oligrachy. The people were damned sick of them, and they showed their support for Thatcher in the ballot box. Of course, no left-wing government would oppose such activity; they need the union votes. You can also look at the tax cuts that Bush brought in, or the GST that Howard brought in as examples of ways the right wing shift the tax burden to the poor. Are you talking abot making tax more equal and refusing to punish the wealthy for their success? Some of us think it's quite unfair that some pay so much more tax than other, so we support relatively flat rates. Of course, Bush took things too far, but if you're going to take his as the archetypal right-wing politician, I'm going to take Stalin and Mao to be the archetypal left-wing politicians. It's only fair. Now, if you left-wingers love the poor so much, why do you always starve them to death? I also used the example of Iceland (left wing) not giving bailouts, and the Democrats (and eventually Republicans) (both right wing, to varying degrees) giving bailouts. Now the Democrats are right-wing? This is where I stop taking you seriously. You claim that there are left wing governments that are "all about" supporting their friends in big business. name some, as many as you can. I can't respond to your experience, if I don't even know what countries you are refering to. Look all over Europe. Our continent has been almost universally left-wing for decades, and things seem to be much more skewed in favour of the big business status quo here than they are in the US. If you want a classic example of a corrupt left-wing government looking after its friends, look at the British Labour party. I could go on for days about the horrible things they've done... |
