Ashes could get Hicks out

[coldharvest]

Lunatic Fringe = Half of BFC posters, Guardian readers

Sir,
I take exception to being lumped in with Guardian readers!

[Penta]

Aah. Got it. Buzz saw thinks right wing means extreme right or fascist. Duh.

[Buzzsaw]

And Penta believes it means all people without a current subscription to the Guardian. Double duh.

[Renard]

Right wing = Mussolini, Osama bin Laden, Batman

Center Right = Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich

Right leaning = John Howard, John McCain, JFK

Moderate = Buzz Theodore Saw

Left Leaning = Tony Blair, Bill Clinton

Center Left = Lyndon Johnson, Rosie O' Donut

Left Wing = Howard Dean, Fat Columbine Movie Guy

Lunatic Fringe = Half of BFC posters, Guardian readers

Ted,

I'd like some explications:

Batman right-wing?

Howard Dean left-wing?

JFK was more right-wing than Lyndon Johnson?

Blair and Clinton are both centrists in my book, Blair being a poster for the Radical Centre.

By the by, the federal Liberals in Canada are a Centrist party, whose left and right affixes are dependent on the health of the government and the inclinations of its leader. For example, right now, I would qualify it as Centre-Right based on its leader, and Centre-left based on the ad hoc coalition it maintains with the left-out-of-touch NDP.

[Buzzsaw]

Ted,

I'd like some explications:

Delighted, my Quebecois, hockey-stick weilding friend.

Batman right-wing?

Batman's vendetta against criminals and the scum of society borders on authoritarianism. He is a vigilante who acts as policeman, judge, and jury. You will smell no hippie incense in the Batcave.

Howard Dean left-wing?

Somewhere out to the left. Let's not argue about the exact position.

JFK was more right-wing than Lyndon Johnson?

Absolutely. He ran as a staunch anti-communist and tax cutter. You can look it up. The Democrats used to be cool in those days.

Blair and Clinton are both centrists in my book, Blair being a poster for the Radical Centre.

I see Clinton as a bit left of center, but he was basically, like Nixon, a pragmatist. His true ideology was one of his own political advancement. That's why he could be all over the table on the issues (homos in the military, family leave, welfare reform). Blair is pretty center but he is Labour. But Labour ain't what they was thirty years ago either.

By the by, the federal Liberals in Canada are a Centrist party, whose left and right affixes are dependent on the health of the government and the inclinations of its leader. For example, right now, I would qualify it as Centre-Right based on its leader, and Centre-left based on the ad hoc coalition it maintains with the left-out-of-touch NDP.

I'm confused. I have heard of this Canada place before but I wasn't aware that they actually had parties and politics. I thought they were still some sort of hunter-gatherer society subsisting on polar bear flesh and maple syrup.

[Renard]

Delighted, my Quebecois, hockey-stick weilding friend.

Haha. That's funny. I just bought new sticks too.

Batman right-wing?

Batman's vendetta against criminals and the scum of society borders on authoritarianism. He is a vigilante who acts as policeman, judge, and jury. You will smell no hippie incense in the Batcave.

Good points.

Howard Dean left-wing?

Somewhere out to the left. Let's not argue about the exact position.

He was a pretty moderate govenor of Vermont. Supported by the NRA. A noted social liberal, but fiscal conservative. It was pretty typical of the Republicans to paint any leading Democrat as a superlative liberal. They did it to Dean, when he wasn't, and they did it to that loser Kerry (who was just a drifter). The Repubs were quite successful at this.

JFK was more right-wing than Lyndon Johnson?

Absolutely. He ran as a staunch anti-communist and tax cutter. You can look it up. The Democrats used to be cool in those days.

JFK was also a Catholic, so being anti-Communist wasn't much of a stretch. He was also a champion of civil rights. What did LBJ do besides steal votes in Texas, and pile troops into Vietnam after JFK was out of the way?

I'm confused. I have heard of this Canada place before but I wasn't aware that they actually had parties and politics. I thought they were still some sort of hunter-gatherer society subsisting on polar bear flesh and maple syrup.

Well, there's like 34 million of us now. We need some sort of social structure so we don't over-hunt bear, deer, moose, caribou and baby seals and victimize too many maple trees.

[Bobby Sands]

Aah. Got it. Buzz saw thinks right wing means extreme right or fascist. Duh.

I suppose he doesn't know what "wing" means. I think he is mistaking "right wing" with being in the "extreme right wing."

[Penta]

Yes, that's what I was saying.
Buzz: right-wing means those who support political or social or economic conservatism; those who believe that things are better left unchanged; those who are in opposition to left-wing politics.

By any definition the current Australian government is right-wing.

The expression comes from the French Revolutionary politics: the ancien regime supporters always sat on the right.

[Renard]

Penta,

If the Right represents the unchanging, where do Libertarians and Neoliberals sit in your assembly?

[Buzzsaw]

Oh, just fingerfuck me on bullshit semantic details.

By the way, Ren, LBJ's big leftist contributions were the Great Society, the War on Poverty, the Economic Opportunity Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. I'm too lazy to write out the details but you can look it all up if you care.

34 million? That' s a lot of hockey sticks.

[Penta]

Penta,

If the Right represents the unchanging, where do Libertarians and Neoliberals sit in your assembly?

Hey, give us a break. I was just responding to what Teddy Bear must have thought was a clever riposte to the original article with his "Now the coalition government in Australia is right-wing? Whatever", by pointing out that that's exactly what it is, by any conventional reading.

People write whole theses about the relationship of libertarianism and neo-liberalism to liberal philosophy and political theory. And if you think I'm going to tackle that thorny issue in a forum where half the posters have a completely different understanding even of the word liberal from the way it's used in political theory on this side of the Atlantic, let alone where some people think right-wing is a synonym for fascism or the extreme radical right, you are very much mistaken, my friend.

[ROB]

Oh, just fingerfuck me on bullshit semantic details.

99% of the population and 100% of relevant journals that I can think of regard "right wing" as anything to the right of centre. If that is semantics then prepare for a very sore anus.

Just doing a google search for "right wing" turns up scores of conservative moderates who are happy to be branded as such.

[OBie]

Well, we wandered away from the " ... take Hicks out ... " stream, a bit didn't we? Notwithstanding being one of the residents of Little Johnnie's right wing paradise, I reckon the best way to " ... take Hicks out ... " is with the little bit of hardware he's often shown holding! He chose his lifestyle and now he's gotta live with it - tough, eh! Good luck to the Poms if they want to take him in.

The bloke I have sympathy for is the poor bloody Marine who scored the job of being his lawyer and finding him whatever; who did he piss off to get lumbered with that!! If he succeeds he'll be a pariah amongst the "Semper Fi" fraternity and if he doesn't he'll be forever castigated by the bleeding hearts!! Poor bastard.

[Spike the Jackal]

A tab bit touchy on this subject are we?

[OBie]

I suppose you could say that my ire is raised by these clowns who head off with a dream, more often than not misguided and not adequately researched, and who end up in the shit and expect us poor bloody taxpayers to fund their 'civil' suits - don't even start me on welfare and unmarried mothers!

Mate, life's tough and you generally end up laying in the bed you've made, and if my taxes funded the education that allowed you to develop the mindset that led you to that path, and if that bed becomes uncomfortable, don't expect me to pay for it - toughen up!

I'm often described as a "CHOP", and I take no umbrance at that!