Why do Americans consider Canada to be a left wing country?

Post Reply New Topic

^ That’s the general idea.

An example(different versions exist, but this is fairly representative of the type):

That chart is really insightful, thanks.

I have a question though. Why does it separates Marxism/Leninism from Bolshevism? I thought Lenin was the leader of Bolshiviks so, by definition, the two should be the same. I know though that things drastically changed from Stalin onward and late Soviet Union might be different from how Lenin intended it to be. But I thought both Bolshevism and Leninism refers to the early days under Lenin? Or are you saying that this word is not to be taken literally and is actually referring to one of the later stages?

Interestingly one of the squares is "Marxism/Leninism/Nationalism" and it is still at the left, despite the fact that "Nationalism" is normally considered a right wing idea. Could this touch upon my question why Soviet Union is at the left despite being nationalistic? What are your thoughts on that particular square and why its placed where it was?

Also, why is Liberalism slightly right of center? I always thought that the word liberal was synonymous with the left?

Canada is closer to the US than it is to the Soviet Union when it comes to free speech.

I agree with that. But you misunderstood what I was saying. What I meant was the following. If you ask me "between the US and Canada, which of the two is slightly closer to Soviet Union". Well, I would have to pick one or the other. So in case of question 1, I pick Canada; in case of question 2, I pick the US. But in both cases they are a lot closer to each other than to Soviet Union, I don't dispute that.

Fair enough, your wording is ambiguous and I wouldn't want anyone to be under mistaken impression that was being suggested.

It's because we have a long-haired neckbeard who legalized pot who doesn't take human life seriously, for a leader.

It could be worse, at least he isn't a Tory.

Well out of curiosity what is it about Canada, that the US considers to be more progressive? The healthcare system was mentioned before, but that's been in Canada since the 60s. So it's not so progressive if it's that old is it? That why I thought Canada was more right wing, because a lot of the things we have seem quite old, unless I am wrong?

Just because an idea is old doesn’t mean it’s not “progressive.”

The idea of “human rights” was quite “progressive” during the 18th century. It still is “progressive” in the 21st century.

It's not old in the US though since US haven't implemented it even now. So that means that Canada is half a century ahead of the US which makes it progressive.

Are you referring to Canadian leader or American leader?

neither the orange terror nor the trudeau scion have "long" hair at least compared to me.

Yeah: although the general concept is a useful thought-tool, most examples incorporate some degree of bias on the part of whoever drew them.
The one I picked was the first linkable example from a google search that didn’t look like totally prejudiced nonsense.
I think the reason why the author split out the various types of communism is probably derived from the history of internal power-struggles within the Bolshevik’s both before and after their seizure of power.
Lenin and his views being controversial within his own party before the October revolution, and Stalin’s purges of dissenters within the party during the thirties being the historical events the chart is reflecting.
Liberalism being just to the right of centre makes sense historically: liberalism being the political movement which first supported the idea of the free-market, and being generally more positive towards the idea than other non-conservative mainstream political movements (remember that in US terminology “liberalism” is used to cover most of the left-hand and bottom right squares... which is rather a vague usage compared to UK or Australian usages).
Whoever drew that particular example up was, I suspect an Anarchist:this would explain why the whole bottom row is made up pedantic definitions of different types of anarchism, and the history derived breaking up of communism into various different blocs.

I wasn’t thinking “this example is true and beyond dispute” so much as “this example shows the general idea well enough in spite of its contentious details around the bottom and red square edges”.
One of the things that’s rather hard to plot sensibly on two dimensions is the fact that in the context of a society with a history of discriminating against, or persecuting, minorities, freeing those minorities from oppression requires some degree of state legislation and intervention to be effective: which can be both paradoxical and confusing.

For the US's version, it basically says "The Westboro Baptist Church can protest saying 'God hates ***' but what they can't say or do is 'kill all the ***' "

And you still are not allowed to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater, unless there actually is a fire. But that's not about speech per se.

When it comes to Canadian law, I think that there should be consequences in defaming others, in the media, if that person has not even been found guilty of any crimes, etc.

However, these new hate speech laws in Canada, seem to be that you cannot say anything about certain idealogies, because you are not defaming a particular person in that case. You are just now allowed to voice an opinion. So I think it goes too far, if you are not allowed to say anything that can be interpreted as negative, when it comes to certain idealogies. Because in those cases, you are not defaming any particular person.

I think what happens is that people assume that if you talk badly about "all blacks" then this logically means that you also talk badly about some black guy John who lives in the opposite side of the country whom you never met. There is a joke on this. A man came to the queen and said "dear queen, in your kingdom all women are selling themselves" the queen responds "so are you telling me that I am selling myself too" the man says "yes" the queen said "what a bastard, so how much do you think I cost" the man says "see, here you are trying to bargain the cost".

In any case, one mistake in the above reasoning is that most racists are "not" speaking about all blacks. They speak about statistics. The other mistake is that the statements don't usually pertain to specific crimes, they pertain to character, intelligence, etc. So even if you did talk about some guy John, saying "John is stupid" doesn't really amount to a libel since being smart or stupid is not anything objective that someone did or did not do.

I guess one example that "might" be construed as a libel is a holocaust revisionism. Since the holocaust survivors claim they actually saw people being gassed -- and you know some of the survivors by name -- if you say this never happened that would amount to saying that a specific survivor named such and such has lied; and making such a big lie is bad. But then again you have to be careful. Some revisionists agree that there were gassings, they just question the numbers and say there weren't 6 million but, say, 1 million instead. But in this case, you don't have to accuse the holocaust survivors of lying since the survivors didn't have means of counting how many, they just had means of seeing what was in front of them. Yet according to Canada all revisionists are engaged in a libel, indistinguishably.

In any case, from my point of view, even speaking badly against the person should be allowed. The reason is quite simple. If left wing people want to forbid the negative talk about fellow left wing people, then why are they engaging in negative talk about right wing people? And by the way this logic applies not just to people on the left, but pretty much to everyone. Everyone wants to be allowed to speak negatively against the people they, personally, don't like -- yet they don't want people to be allowed to speak negatively about people that they like. Well, you can't have it both ways.

I think the best possible solution is to allow everyone to speak negatively against everyone -- and also allow people to defend themselves by producing counter-arguments. As long as people can produce counter-arguments, that would be the best possible defense against negative talk. The only problem, I guess, is that NT-s don't really like to argue. Perhaps that is why they propose such laws instead? Well, then fix this problem with NT society and learn to discuss things.