this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Most Canadians who plan to vote Liberal doing so to stop Conservatives from winning: poll (www.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Most Canadians who plan on voting for the Liberal party are more motivated to stop the Conservatives from winning the election rather than endorsing the party's vision and leader, according to a new poll released on Monday.

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"Left" isn't really much of an identity definition anyway.

Right is clearly aligned with the greater political body of the small-c conservative movement. Preserve existing power structures, resist social progress, prop up 'traditional' values (i.e., the values that match the preferences of your tribe justified by whatever histrionic nonsense you can think of).

The left is really only defined in opposition to the right these days. Liberals, socialists, progressives, Marxists, anarchists, you name it and all the shades in between. The common identity of "the left" is just... not conservative.

Which means I agree with you. Leaning left just means leaning away from right. It doesn't really tell you what specific policies the person wants, just what policies they reject. And center/middle/"moderate" has no particular meaning in this day and age.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i kinda see where you’re coming from, but i think it’s reversed (and let’s ignore here that left and right are economic terms and we are discussion social politics):

left is progressive - aka change things

right is conservative - aka roll back things

the left has policies to push forward, the right has policies to pull that back in - the right is literally the side of “not progressive”. you can’t be a “not conservative” because they dont have positions of their own

this differs of course to anything but conservative, because there are many flavours of progressive

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

By that same line of argument, there are myriad ways to be progressive but only a single way to be conservative. Which is really only true theoretically. In practice, most people who identify as conservative actually have very specific policy preferences for how they want their society to evolve. But at least the way the word is used it has an intended meaning like this.

I mean heck, with the right parameters and conditions doing things like rolling back regulations and appealing to traditional values is progressive. For example look at the advocacy of Strong Towns, who in (very) broad strokes are pushing for a return to more traditional urban development patterns in order to help cities return to safer and more financially sustainable models. If you had a mind to do so you might define this as conservative progressivism, which isn't really a contradiction at all.

Traditionally left and right were not "economic" terms. They were the revolutionaries and the monarchists. And the idea that economic politics as separate from other kinds of politics I kind of reject too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

i think you’re right in a few ways: there are myriad ways people present their conservatism, but i’d just say that’s kind of focusing on issues they care about… progressives have the same thing: some people care about the environment and don’t have much care about trans rights (like they care about it, but it’s not going to change their vote)

being progressive doesn’t mean you support all progress equally, just like being conservative doesn’t mean you support all conservation and (what we would call) regression equally either

i think the thing with progressive vs conservative is how “entrenched” something is… progressives change entrenched systems - “the way society works” kinda stuff, which can absolutely mean rolling back legislation - like don’t ask don’t tell, laws that made sodomy illegal, etc. these are all kind of entrenched societal things that we try to change. conservatism, by contrast tries to keen the entrenched societal things the same

in a well working system, this is actually great! progressives push really hard to change things and conservatives keep the best of the bits that were working - the bits that people actually care about. in reality of course, modern politics doesn’t work like that because it’s all corrupt bullshit