Left/Right?

[AtlasTrips]

Interesting piece on the increasing uselessness of using terms such as left/right in todays politics

www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3182

Stupid piece written by an idiot. Apart from that it's really good.

I think the terms are becoming more nuanced. Just because I agree with someone about one thing doesn't mean I agree with them about everything. You can still be left and right on particulate issues, but even then outside economics it's increasingly unclear which way the compass points.

lol fonz

Intersting about Pim Fortuyn though. I had never known that about him, just believed the media in their description of him as 'right-wing' i.e. facist.

Its all a bit shocking really just how much we are at the mercy of idiots in the media

The piece is bilge and what he says isn't interesting or original.

There have always been people who are socially liberal and economically conservative. Big deal.

The Dutch guy he's writing about seems to be socially liberal, economically conservative and foamingly anti-Islamic. Big deal x 2.

You're only at the mercy of idiots in the media (like the author of this piece) if you stop thinking for yourself.

And now I think of it, the heterodoxy of Pym Fortuyn's views was widely covered in the media at the time, so the notion that he was crudely represented as simply "far right" isn't even true.

This is the nub of it though - "Nor is he doing it for any perceptibly nationalistic reasons. He is doing it, as he has always explained, because he believes that the post-Enlightenment culture of The Netherlands is preferable to the pre-Enlightenment culture of Islam."

Surely this is a complex issue - too complex just to be put down as 'foamingly anti-Islamic'. That's why I personally balk at such simplistic analyses - because I am thinking for myself.

And I don't remember the heterodoxy of Fortuyn's views being covered widely in the media at all - maybe if you read a lot of media - and who has time to do that with a young family? One of the first things to go is the daily paper for the sunday roundup!

Interesting Hoochie

Legislating to stop people wearing the clothes they want to wear is pretty foaming in my book.

Yet at the same time I'd rather live in Amsterdam than Riyadh.

Did you see what I did there? I transcended the distinction between left and right, just like the subject of the piece, but without actually being a loon.