<div dir="ltr">What is left about?<div><br></div><div>- 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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>- 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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>- 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. </div>
<div><br></div><div>- 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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>- 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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>- 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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Left wing is about a whole lot more, but this is a short introduction for the subject.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div>BR,<br>Jukka <div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.murrur.fi/" target="_blank">http://www.murrur.fi/</a><br>
<br>
<font size="1">Sivu / page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/murrur" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/murrur</a><br></font>
</div><div><font size="1">Sanat / words: <a href="http://twitter.com/mur" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mur</a><br>
löydöt/ findings: <a href="http://pinterest.com/mur/" target="_blank">http://pinterest.com/mur/</a> </font><br>
</div></div>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-06-01 23:16 GMT+03:00 Samantha Atkins <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sjatkins@gmail.com" target="_blank">sjatkins@gmail.com</a>></span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div class="">
<br>
<div>On 05/27/2014 02:33 AM, Eugenio
Martínez wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">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.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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.<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
US crime rate has been declining since the 80s. <br>
<img alt="File:Property
Crime Rates in the United States.svg"><br>
<br>
Violent crime rate:<br>
<br>
<img><br>
<br>
While the US homicide rate is about 4x what it is in Europe it too
has been declining since the early 90s.<br>
Not exactly people getting killed left and right and in their homes
and the streets that some anti-gun folks would portray. <br>
<br>
<a href="http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/#view=all" target="_blank">http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/#view=all</a><br>
<br>
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. <br><div class="">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<br>
</div>
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.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
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. <br><div class="">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<br>
<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote">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.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
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.)<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
- samantha<br>
</font></span></div>
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