Who Goes Right, Who Goes Left, Or Who Compromises

You will find some of these ideas in Charles Dobson's Citizen Handbook cross-referenced on this site under "Action Items"; Gandhi's methods would be the original source.<br />
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<a href="http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/gandhi.html">http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/gandhi.html</a><br />
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I think Vive would benefit if this was must read material when becoming a member on Vive. It would probably be the most effective awy to turn down the level of ranting.<p>---<br>"We are all in this together somehow, some more than others somehow"

If we are to learn something about "war" from Robert S. McNamara: "You must sympathise with your opponent, respect your opponent, and understand your opponent."<br />
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I beleive he paraphrased this from Sun Tsu's "The Art of War:"<br />
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<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/132/132-h/132-h.htm">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/132/132-h/132-h.htm</a><br />
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"Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."<br />
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Excellent piece by the way!<br />
<p>---<br>"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill<br />

The 'Art of War' is about winning, which means your enemy must lose. Today's destructive weapons can mean that it is a zero sum 'game' - if you don't win, you've lost everything. One can talk all about philosophy after their victory.

Nice link. Can be easily inverted to the principles of "Divide and Rule",
that's probably by design.

Methods for creating an opponent:

1 Promote violence and hostility.

2 Attempt to betray your opponent’s trust through
- Deceit
- Secrecy about intentions
- Condescension (condescending piety if the other side experiences an
unrelated difficulty)
- behave offensively in order to compromise rational discussion of the
issue at hand

3 Set a goal of humiliating your opponent.

4 Make invisible sacrifices for one’s cause.
Ideally, make the interest of the benefactor invisible.

5 Carry on destructive work. Address parts of the problem you can disrupt.
Engender discord where you can. Create schism in activities regarded by
everyone as benefitting everyone.

6 Discourage contact with the opponent. This is absolutely necessary if
disruption is to succeed.

7 Demonstrate mistrust in the opponent.

8 Develop indifference, ill will and impatience toward the opponent.

Both the "right" the "left" have power structures, some of which maintain their
peculiar order within via "divide and rule". Such social order is a cheap
substitute for reasonable, indivdual, rational consideration. Notice that most
of the inverted rules cannot be done by oneself, but must be recommended
as the proper behaviour for ones followers. Further, leaders must always
portray the "ghandi" approach, regardless of the real, underlying divide-and-
rule strategy.

Thinking not of the "true blue" (or "small-c") conservative, but of the new
variety "brand name" conservative, we must realize that "the machine" uses
divide and rule as *very* effective fuel.

Thus, outreach of the tolerant, considerate and reasonable variety, at least
toward those who are not knowingly and deliberately promoting divide-and-
rule is certainly a noble purpose, probably more important than the
issue itself. The issue divides--it always does--the identity does not. This is
what the highly successful conservative movement has figured out and
employed with a success anyone should admire and be prepared to learn
from (despite disagreement with its outcomes).

Debate is also a battle. No one dies. The only weapons are information.


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"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill

The war of ideologies, between the right wing and left wing. I'm starting to think its inevitable that it will cause a world war. If not a world war, civil wars in many countries.

Kevin

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Advice from history, for President Bush. "What luck for the rulers, that men do not think
--Adolf Hitler

There is no 'right wing' or 'left wing', these are media constructions designed to dumb down the articulations of the population which are as enlightened as the leaders. While they 'play people off' against one another they do what they want. The problems today, while unique, are similar to what they have always been-regular folks trying to make life better. Do some research on when the terms 'right wing' and 'left wing' turned up, you'll be surprised.

Definitions of words have changed over the years. The media seem to have defined right and left very simply: the right is against government intervention in the economy and social welfare and more control over our private lives; the left prefer more government intervention in the economy and social welfare and less control over our private lives.

Those in the center advocate the necessity of achieving balance between the two.

The media NEVER defines terms that it creates since that creates restrictions on their use. At one time in one forum it may mean one thing, and at another time it may mean another, all depending on which message is being sent. The right certainly isn't 'against' government intervention in the economy, especially now that there is a war on. The control over our private lives is an interesting one, however, I think it depends exactly what you mean by it. New dog laws are created, some which ban certain types of animals, some that make you 'scoop', that imposes on ones private life but I don't see how it is 'right wing'. I certainly don't want to give the impression though that I think 'right' and 'left' are meaningless, far from it, you can look them up in a new dictionary and read their meaning. I do think the previous comment is certainly 'in the ballpark' but by no means is that 'simply' defined (in fact if you really look through a dictionary almost nothing is 'simply defined')

I agree with you Marcarc. The division isn't really one between "left" and "right". There are, for example, lots of people who are "conservatives" who are as opposed to the neocons as "leftists." Furthermore, Tony Blair is supposed to be "left" and if he is "left" what is "right?" As you say, the terms are largely a media construct. There are divsions of course, but the ones that interest me are those between libertrians and authoritarians, the violent and the non-violent, "roots culture" and corporate junk Kulture", the ethical and the "end-justifies-the-means" crowd.

"Definitions of words have changed over the years."

I would rephrase this to say, "Definitions of words have been changed for us over the years."
One weay to stamp something out is to change the definition of something into its opposite. This Orwellian practice has been going on for a long time, perhaps starting with the Church which turned nature religions into devil-worshipers. Those in power monkey with definitions as a means of control.

It is only over the past few years that the media defined classical conservatives as right wing. Our politics was not defined in ideological terms until recently.

It has not only been the media who have worked to change our concepts of political ideas. The leadership of the Conservative Party, both Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay, has defined their party as "right of center." Obviously they have some concept of what that means to them. As well, many of their supporters have made it very clear that those who are non-ideologically "right wing" are not welcome in their party. This would include classical conservatives. The Conservative Party has defined itself as "right wing."

A classical conservative is one who promotes slow but progressive change; right wing conservatism tends to be regressive. A classical conservative focuses on "the common good" of society. A modern right wing conservative focuses on individualism. Right wing conservatism is governed by rigidly enforced principles defined by the leadership not by consensus. I believe the political philosophies of the right wing conservatism of the new Conservative Party and classical conservatism are irreconcilable.

The "right" supports approaches to government policy that preserve and promote the various cultural mythologies which enshrine the current political and economic elite, as well as those who feel they benefit most directly from this situation.

The "left" supports government policy which challenges these mythologies in order to dilute, or even invert, the relative political potential of the centres of power. In general it ends up supporting the aspiring political elite.

The left, when successful, become the right.

This is perhaps a better working definition than "low taxes and free enterprise" vs. "tax and spend", the typical nonsense. The "burn rate" of public funds under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II (esp.), Mulroney, for example are higher than any "left wing" administation. Chretien/Martin presided over the most fiscally austere finance regime in recent Canadian memory. I suspect a lot of "new right" money/power displaced "old right" money/power in the process (probably more a result of the boom in sectors like tech), hence the hatred.

Yet this immense spending tends to further capitalize the existing elite (and those riding coat-tails), so it's OK. New Deal-type stuff does the opposite, so it's bad.

The left is at a perpetual political disadvantage because the right has all the money, but that's their achilles heel too. The biggest threat to the right is from within: some are true conservative and libertarian patriots defending their freedom and national identity, while still others seek only internationally portable capital with no strings attach.

Liberal/conservative, republican/democrat have their own right and left wings. They also both have their own portable-capital-seeking-elite, with whom they must do business in order to get elected in high-stakes politics.

So, here's a crazy theory for you right wingers:

What kind of "conservative" and "patriot" is W. Bush? He's spending faster than any democrat in history, with a lot of the spending increasingly capitalizing the foreign holdings of multinationals who happen to be his political base.

All this while more and more of the treasury debt is owned by countries like China. Sure, you can argue it's a global economy, but that global economy is based on the dollar, and big, domestic, "left-wing" assets like CPP/Social Security and state/union pension funds are often big shareholders with waaay too much say.

How many of us know that right before the iraq invasion, iraq started accepting euros for their oil instead of dollars? While everyone laughed, they made out like bandits as the euro appreciated. Now, with mass privatization of of iraq's domestic assets on the table, it's ripe for the picking by the multinationals already there, with tight controls over who gets to invest. The more pension and unions funds who refuse to invest in these companies as a matter of conscience, the better--you're not shareholders, F off.

Once these U.S.-based multinationals can safely tie more of their bottom line, including military and petroleum-derived assets and income streams--based in dollars, euros or otherwise--to captial outside the influence of a bankrupted federal government, or for that matter unportable, "left wing" capital like social security and pension funds, what happens then?

Perhaps when the neo-cons claim they are "winning" in the middle east they are not lying at all--they just weren't talking to *you* in the first place. "My Fellow Americans" was never meant to be a broadly inclusive statement.

Any bankers out there have anything to support/refute this?

Exactly! And in the US "Conservative" which used to mean "small government, don't meddle in foreign affairs" now means authoritarianism and empire.