He could have easily listed any Scandinavian leader, the majority of Canadian prime ministers, the majority of French presidents etc. etc. It's amazing how much more progressive the world is when you compare it to America. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing, but most of the developed world is left to the center compared to America.
Just as strong government is good, essential even, for capitalism. Without a strong government there can be no capitalism. The important questions these days are about which parts of our economy and society are best managed by the private sector, and which are best managed by various governments. When the terms socialist and capitalist start getting thrown around they're generally just being used as empty rhetoric.
i completely agree, and have no problem saying that it necessarily is a good thing that the majority of the developed world is progressive. unfortunately we lag tremendously. for the bottom 80% living outside of the united states would probably give those individuals a better quality of life. better healthcare, better various social safety nets, a longer life, etc. though upward mobility is probably a bit more limited at least for the upper middle class.
He was the leader of a socialist party, The Labour Party, which is a member of an international socialist organization. http://www.socialistinternational.org/about.cfm What's your definition of a leftist?
You really think the bottome 80% would be better off? What yearly salary would put you in the top 20%?
What do you mean think? No, I think we just have some different experiences and perspectives, which is one of the reasons I find coming to this board so interesting. I learn a lot here too.
I try to, but sometimes it's hard to get a decent conversation or good information when the people are just throwing insults back and forth. I didn't even see my spelling error until I was quoted. Nice that I can't edit that.
But at the same time, they were ruled by a party which has a history of torturing and murdering dissidents.
Blair is Labour. I think globally you would consider him neo-conservative, but I've always held that neo-conservatives are left of center (yes, even Bush). Blair was a moderate domestically, but if you're using his foreign policy to not call him a leftist, where does that put Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Stalin, and virtually every Soviet leader? Left-wing warmongers have outnumbered right-wing warmongers by a long shot in modern history, by any definition.
Yeah...kind of like when the Bolshevics overthrew the czar. When will people learn? When a group overthrows a government that they feel has beaten them down, they in turn beat down the public....because now they can.
I can't imagine that anyone would seriously call him a neo-conservative. There were some editorials that called him that after he jumped in bed with Bush for the Iraq war, but every other way he is a socialist like every other democratic socialist in the world today. He raised taxes and increased spending on health and education, for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiership_of_Tony_Blair
From the very link you provided: [rquoter] Blair is both credited with and criticized for moving the Labour Party towards the centre of British politics, using the term "New Labour" to distinguish his pro-market policies from the more collectivist policies which the party had espoused in the past. [/rquoter] The best analog is Clinton, who the hard core right-wingers undoubtedly consider a socialist-commie pinko, but who was clearly a centrist who pissed off the most left-leaning of his backers.
That almost sounds like a justification for not overthrowing oppressive regimes. I hope that's not what you were trying to say. Regarding the Bolsheviks, they overthrew the Czar during a revolution. This was a democratic election. I think the two events are quite different in any event.
I think that's a trend that exists in many, perhaps most, democratic socialist parties today. Blair may have been one of the first, I suppose, but there are a number of provincial NDP governments in Canada that had very similar ideas at about the same time. Some have even cut taxes. I think the underlying point to this line of discussion is that the term "leftist" has no real meaning anymore, imo. Are socialists leftists? If not then who is? What exactly is a leftist, or is that just an empty term now that's only used as some kind of archaic scare tactic?
Not really. Look at all the South American countries which seem to be so fond of nationalization. That generally couldn't be described as a 'pro-market' policy even by the most broad of definitions. If you think nationalization is generally a positive step, you might be a leftist, as opposed to a liberal. Maybe it just means that there aren't any leftists in the USA/Canada or Western Europe any more. It is pretty well undeniable that US politics has swung way to the right in the past 30 years, so that guys who are liberal now would have been moderate conservatives in the 1970's. But there are still plenty of old style guys out there. Just because the full range of the political spectrum in the USA is not expressed, doesn't mean that that full range is not real anymore.
