Your Views

Dirk said:

Centre-right is not necessarily libertarian or authoritarian. Being right or left wing doesn't make you Statist or Anti-statist in itself.

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ArghMonkey said:

I am not crazy about this list so I abstained.

You know that liberal in europe is small c conservative in the states and conservative in the states doesnt really exist in europe ...

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deanhills said:

I'm not an expert on Europe, but as far as I can understand they do have groups that are to the right of the centre, and those would be considered conservative. Such as the Conservative Party in the UK?

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Liberalism in Europe today

In Europe, on the other hand, parties that call themselves liberal are moderate in outlook, ranging from centre-left to centre-right, promote typically economic and business freedom. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe[17] is a party of the European Parliament that represents most liberal parties from European countries. Similar policies are promoted by many liberal parties throughout the world,[18] such as the Liberal Party of Australia.[19]


Trade unions and socialist parties often criticize politicians for promoting lower taxes on business, or more flexible hiring and firing laws, by calling them "liberals" or neoliberals. Thus, just as in the US, "liberal" may occasionally be used as a term of abuse. But when someone is called "liberal" in Europe, it has an entirely different meaning than in the US. In fact, the US meaning of liberal is more similar to the politics of European socialist or social democratic parties.[20]

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In Europe, with a strong traditional class-structure, historians and social scientists identified the political spectrum on the basis of class, with left, right and center representing the working, upper and middle classes. While these cleavages developed at the time of the French revolution, they deepened in the 19th century and both right and left accepted the class nature of their positions. While universal suffrage, the acceptance of democracy and regional and religious division blurred the distinction between the groups, the analysis continued to be applied. The most usual ideologies of left, right and center were socialism, conservatism and liberalism.[9] Seymour Martin Lipset saw modern political parties as continuing the "Democratic Class Struggle" that led to their creation.[10]


In America, with its economic system less codified as rigid a structure of hereditary social classes, the political spectrum has been analyzed with a more idealogical emphasis. For example, Louis Hartz identified the mainstream political ideology of America as Lockean liberalism, not lying in a feudal past, and saw the two main opposing forces in American history as Whig and Democrat, representing the industrialists and the agriculturalists, but both accepting liberal principals and therefore essentially centrist.[11] Russell Kirk however argued that the American Revolution had been a conservative reaction and therefore the term conservative could apply to American politics.[12]

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Dirk said:

The Conservative Party aren't conservative in the same way as, for example, George Bush or Obama are conservative. I'm sure some of them would like to be properly conservative, but there is some sort of democratic accountability (though not much). Enough to ensure that they have to accept things like civil liberties and the NHS. There's overwhelming public support for it.

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Dirk said:

No, more so.

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Dirk said:

Well, out of necessity, the Conservative Party must accept things like the NHS. Obama and Bush don't support such a system. And don't need to.

British politics recently has been a dash for the centre. The Labour Party was, previously, in favour of Social Democracy. It's acually now right of the Conservatives, who are right of centre, so they overshot their target. The Tories, after Thatcher, became moderates almost overnight. The Lib Dems actually drifted a little left, while still keeping a general civil libertarianism.

Both the Republicans and Democrats haven't moved from the Right and Right-of-centre (respectfully) for decades.

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Dirk said:

The Labour Party used to be centre-left. Similar position as the SPD. Not anymore.

The Republican Party is not centre-right.

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deanhills said:

What is the Republican Party then?

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Dirk said:

Well, it is right-wing, as far as "left-wing" or "right-wing" are applicable to reality. But centrism denotes moderation.

Does anyone care to claim the Republican Party is made up of moderates?

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Francisck said:

I'd like to know what you mean by anti-state socialist. How do you play to achieve socialism other than by force? and if you are planning on giving 1 entity the "right" to use force against others aren't they "the state"

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