[ExI] Be nice to leftists

Mon Jun 2 09:54:59 UTC 2014

What is left about?

- Leftists want affordable (or free) healthcare for everyone. Not just for
the well paying middle class, but also for the illegal aliens and even the
poorest homeless alcoholics. This is because leftists see that human value
is intrinsic, humanity is not for sale and everyone are equal. Everyone
deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, since everyone are equal
members of the society. Maternal care and affordable high quality
healthcare have resulted higher quality life and longer life expectancy.

- Same goes with education. In Scandinavia, where left wing ideas have been
traditionally strong, schools and universities have been tuition-free, the
school cafeterias give pupils free lunch and school books need not be
bought since state provides them for free. Genuinely accessible education
has meant genuine equality: everyone can rise up social ladders if they are
skilled, creative or clever. Likewise wealthy or successful people's
offsprings can fail, but their children can again rise up if on their own
merits. Class is not merely result of your parents wealth, it's about your
own merits and hard work.

- This does not mean people are drained in taxes. As the population is
highly educated, the state is able design its functions more smart and more
optimal than less educated and less knowledgeable administration would.
Thus it is able to produce high quality services cheaper and more
abundantly available than what the private sector would. The public
healthcare needs not take their cut and make profit, they can use all their
resources to actual care. With scale benefits the public sector is able to
purchase large quantities of medication for cheaper prices than the private
sector would. Basically leftist countries are able to provide the best
parts of capitalism for everyone without excessive costs.

- Leftists want ecologically sustainable world, that will have healthy
food, plenty of species, fresh water, breathable air, and biodiversity for
the future generations too. Currently every 60 seconds one species goes
extinct. Capitalism and industrial revolution have started mass extinction
wave of species. Every day we may lose cure for cancer and other deadly
diseases, just so you can buy unhealthy cheap burgers produced by exploited
workers in global south and in western countries. Meanwhile air, water and
soil contaminants cause cancer, diseases, respiratory problems, asthma,
lower life quality and life expectancy reduction. By keeping the nature
green, this can be avoided.

- Which leads us to human rights: the left is strong about human rights,
this is why the left opposes wars. Wars are in modern world mostly about
resources and money. The day Afghanistan was captured the oil contracts
were revised. The human rights have not been revised. Wars are only about
the money. And the money goes to the richest 1%. Leftists believe in
democracy and war is not democratic: it is about power of physically
stronger dominating the weaker, it is about killing, torturing, using
force, restricting basic freedoms, suppressing the free press and giving
the power to military instead of democratic leaders.

- Maybe not for authoritarian communists, but for the rest of the left wing
the democracy is key concern and objective. Left wing has fought for
century for universal suffrage. Not just for women but also for the poor. A
century ago the right to vote was tied to economical possessions, not just
to male sex. Left wing has successfully achieved this goal, of course not
alone, many other have been involved too. But left is all about
cooperation, anyways! Democracy is not only about checking a ballot once
every four to six years. It is about freedom of expression and active civil
society. The left wing has been active in promoting participation of the
civil society to decision making and bringing new forms of local democracy.

Left wing is about a whole lot more, but this is a short introduction for
the subject.

The left wing is a very broad term, which includes everyone from marxists
to anarchists, but most are mild social democrats or a bit more
ecologically oriented green leftists. Like wise, the right wing includes
anything from Pinochet to Obama and from Hitler to conservative christian
fundamentalists. Many people thoughts are leaning to the left, despite they
don't really acknowledge it. Perhaps, because those who disagree with
leftist values are so keen on discrediting and pushing false information
about the other side.

BR,
Jukka

http://www.murrur.fi/

Sivu / page: https://www.facebook.com/murrur
Sanat / words: http://twitter.com/mur
löydöt/ findings: http://pinterest.com/mur/

2014-06-01 23:16 GMT+03:00 Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at gmail.com>:

>
> On 05/27/2014 02:33 AM, Eugenio Martínez wrote:
>
>  The Chinese would never have suffered the horrors of the 20th century
>> had they the right to own guns.  When the Japanese invaded during the war
>> and killed allll those unarmed people, imagine what would have happened had
>> there been a rifle behind every blade of grass.
>>
>
> USA is a country with a absurd number of violent crimes. Years and years
> and years of civilians having guns at homes, years and years and years of
> civilians being killed. Spanish civil war showed what happened with armed
> population during a armed conflict: They joined the army that they were in
> favour... and killed and raped and made a lot of revenges and lootering in
> every small town and every ungoverned city.
>
>
> US crime rate has been declining since the 80s.
> [image: File:Property Crime Rates in the United States.svg]
>
> Violent crime rate:
>
>
>
> While the US homicide rate is about 4x what it is in Europe it too has
> been declining since the early 90s.
> Not exactly people getting killed left and right and in their homes and
> the streets that some anti-gun folks would portray.
>
> http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/#view=all
>
> Averaged out there were around 16,000 homicides per year from 2000-2010.
> Of those 66% were committed using a gun.   Thus this mean everyone should
> be disallowed to have a gun legally?  I don't think so.   Of those 16,000,
> 80% are gang related.    So in a country of 300 million people and 250
> million guns that is around 3,000 / year or 1 in 100,000 non-gang related
> homicides by gun.
>
>
>  I don´t know if it is a question of age or education, but even the
> rightest democrat parties in Europe (Like European Popular Party) are
> against weapons owned by civilians and it is seen as something barbaric
> that americans do. In Europe only the nazis parties and maybe a rare couple
> more are pro-weapons.
>
>
> The right to life implies the right of self-defense.  I am 60 years old.
> I am zero match for a 20-something out to do me harm if I do not have some
> means like a gun to protect myself.
>
>
>
> How any sane person could compare the crimes of Mao Zedong to the "crimes"
>> of manufacturing the goods and services of the modern world is a level
>> intellectual dishonesty and/or muddle-headedness that is simply beyond my
>> comprehension.
>>
>
> Capitalism is the way? 16.7 million children living in food insecure
> households and US having the second highest relative child poverty rates in
> the developed world (2011 data. From wikipedia.)
>
>
> What we have in the US is socialist quite strongly, to be more precise it
> is what Mussolini described as fascism as government is highly involved in
> all business and the economy.   So blaming it on "capitalism" is rather
> disingenuous.
>
> Also you did not answer the question.  If you compared what exists even in
> the somewhat blighted US today to the reign of Mao Zedong that is
> unpardonable.    I will not take you seriously after such a remark and
> certainly not after you didn't bother to retract it.
>
> - samantha
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20140602/7222fdcb/attachment.html>