sideline view..
Best one so far

I recall mentioning collectivist conservative asian cultures a few months back but don't recall where that discussion ended up.

Left = striving for distributional justice
Right = striving for performance-based justice

The best way to tell left and right apart is probably to look at who considers inequality of outcomes to automatically imply an underlying injustice or discrimination.

Asian countries tend to be more left than the west, but in many ways just as authoritarian. That doesn't mean they are on the left, like that they are socialist or communist, just that they would tend to be further in favor of collective benefits than the west, especially America where we will basically just let you die on the street.

The most fundamental aspect of left vs right is hierarchy. The right is about having more hierarchy. Fascism is about racial hierarchy, monarchy is about birthright hierarchy, corporatism is about market hierarchy. The further left you go the more it's about flattening hierarchy, to the point where the ultimate goal of communism is a stateless and classless society.

The political compass tests are written by leftist hacks. Listen to the wording. Did any of the people that wrote the tests ever vote for a Republican?

Meritocracy is far more pronounced in East Asia though. And no one in these countries would entertain the idea that one's mere existence entitles him or her to be provided for by the state. In this sense, I actually consider places like Vietnam to be further to the right than the West, at least in terms of economic and welfare policy.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 16 2021 03:33pm

I'm likely over-generalizing about Asia. It's a continent that contains like half the world's population, so any general statement is bound to be incorrect.

In many ways the Asian countries I think of, mostly being Japan because I'm a weeb, have such a strong sense of collective that suicide after not getting into a good school is a major source of death in the country.

I think this fits in nicely with the second framework I proposed. Leftists think that hierarchies are detrimental and shall be overcome, rightists consider some form of social hierarchy to be the natural state of things.

holy mother of copium...

maybe start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum

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