Are you the soft or hard Left? (or both?)

[JanMichael]

By soft I mean the social/societal left. Drug legalization/rights, abortion, marriage/sex rights for all, etcetera.

By hard I mean the economic left. Leveling wages/wealth, class conflict, wages in general, labor rights/safety, health care as a right, etcetera.

Both would mean you argue for both types of the Left.

What sort of left are you then?

As for me I play and argue for both sides of the Left but I trend to the hard Left. Online I fight the hard Left fight but in person I always seem to find myself arguing the soft left with homophobes, racist and sexist asswipes. I suppose I don't wish to be a one trick Lefty.

[Horse with no Name]

1. Both.

And damned proud of it.:thumbsup:

[smokey nj]

2. Proudly both!!

[illinoisprogressive]

3. medium. definitely social but, also health care and labor rights, ect.

I'm not into the being so angry or wanting to overthrow society. I don't get into the angry stuff.
I like human rights and basic middle class rights and poor rights, ect.
Universal health care. along these lines.

[Phredicles]

4. Both: I want to let gay people get married and, if they so need,

get abortions via a single-payer health plan, taking time off from their unionized, $10/hr minimum-wage jobs to do so. And if their boss doesn't like that any better than his salary being legally capped at 20x that of his lowest-paid employee, he can puff away on some perfectly legal weed to take the sting off.:D

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Soft left. Although I am strongly for a SPHC system, labor rights & safety, liveable min. wage

I think I get off the boat at "class conflict" and "leveling wages and wealth". It's not either/or.

Everyone who thinks health care is a right and that labor should be protected and respected is not necessarily a hammer & sickle waving Marxist.

[TahitiNut]

6. Well, when I get excited ....

:evilgrin:

[Warren DeMontague]

7. STOP IT! That is not permitted!

Were you looking at someone's ass, again?

[TahitiNut]

9. Naww.. they're all stabled for the winter.

:silly:

[Warren DeMontague]

20. Whoa, There!

Too Much Information, Lone Ranger!

[Warren DeMontague]

8. I'm not sure why one is "hard" and one is "soft". It implies one is more important or "genuine".

I prefer the political compass model. For terms, I'd go with "socially libertarian" instead of "soft left" and "economic liberal" or "economic left" instead of "hard left".

[JanMichael]

25. Just words. They are also used for types of Atheists or Agnostics

And if we want to play with words the PC model uses "plus" and "minus". Positive and negative, right?

[Warren DeMontague]

30. Right, but "Hard" atheism equals a firm conviction that there is no God.

Therefore, Hard atheism could very well be argued to be the "real" atheism.

Calling traditionally economic left concerns "hard left" and socially libertarian concerns "soft" left implies -to me, at least- that the folks who spend their time worrying about such silly matters as womens' reproductive freedom, the separation of church and state, or the right of consenting adults to read, watch, or do whatever they damn well please so long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else... that those folks are busying themselves with time-wasters compared to important dialectical materialist issues like "class warfare" and "leveling income and wealth".

Frankly, I think the left-right axis doesn't really work for describing the full range of political opinions and agendas in this country. While no doubt Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly would describe me as a "leftist", I really consider myself more left-libertarian. (although past a certain point, all labels fall short) I support a SPHC system, but I don't think wealth ought to be across-the-board redistributed just because some people are "too rich". With an adequate social safety net in place and good public infrastructure taken care of, I don't have any problem with people being able to make money- even ridiculously large sums of money- off of their work, their ideas, or whatever else. I support strong, vigorous environmental protection, but I also believe in free enterprise and real, level playing field capitalism. Etc. etc.

[Bucky]

10. I don't believe in class conflict.... Republicans do.

I'd call myself economically liberal, but not left, since the phrase "left" makes me think of statist solutions. I don't like it when Cheney and Halliburton use the power of government to hijack the economomy and I don't like it when Fidel does, either. But the liberal model, which allows freedom within legal guidelines and appropreiate regulation of business to prevent the grotesque accumulation of wealth into few hands (as has been happening for the last thirty years) seems like the best way to achieve goals like a strong middle class, high social mobility, labor rights/safety, health care as a right, and decent working wages. Don't like leveling as a template, but I do like to see the prosperity spread as evenly as possible.

[alfredo]

11. OD'd-on-Viagra hard left -- when pushed.

[Eurobabe]

19. LOL

Alfredo!!!! :rofl:

[blm]

26. heheh..... OK... I'm with alfredo on this. ;)

Actually, I used to be soft left but have become harder left since Bush took office and steadily stripped away working class protections.

[alfredo]

27. Bingo!

The Army pushed me off of left center, but bush tipped me even further to the left.

[njdemocrat106]

12. I'm more hard than soft

I'm pro-gay rights all the way. I am pro-choice, but the abortion issue has never been something that's been a cause close to my heart, maybe because I'm a man; it's just never been an issue I've a real passion to fight for. I probably will take some heat for this, but I don't believe in drug legalization, though I do believe that the penalties for drug users are too severe.

[originalpckelly]

13. Leftagra?

:shrug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. BOTH

and that gets me in trouble regularly

[Selatius]

15. I am libertarian on social issues. I lean heavily towards socialism on economic issues.

While I do believe social issues such as women's rights and gay rights are concerned are important and that we should guard against "judicial activism" of the rightist persuasion, I believe economic issues take precedence for the fact that if you can't even put food on the table, nothing else matters except survival.

I invariably end up in the left-libertarian quadrant on www.politicalcompass.org.

[Unvanguard]

17. And when homophobia and sexism threaten someone's economic security?

Or when they marginalize and oppress someone to the point that he or she has more important worries than economic well-being?

Isn't the capability of same-sex couples to walk down the street without being bashed, the capability of poor, desperate women to receive abortions, the capability of women and LGBTs to resist harassment and discriminatory treatment by employers, just as materially important and relevant as those economic issues you speak of?

Edit: The distinction implied by the use of terms like "hard" and "soft" doesn't really exist.

[noamnety]

21. Exactly - it's a false distinction

You can't eliminate economic disparities without addressing the policies that discriminate against classes of people.

Corporate policies and power (dumping of toxic wastes, or gas prices) and drug policies (black male with pot vs. Limbaugh and his designer drugs) disproportionately harm People of Color and Women, and perpetuate class warfare.

[Unvanguard]

22. And conversely, you cannot ultimately bring about racial and sexual equality

without enough economic empowerment to put formerly marginalized groups on equal footing with formerly dominant ones.

The structures of class, racial, and sexual oppression have to be challenged simultaneously, because the struggles are ultimately inseparable.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. I just went there and it never ceases to amaze me how

much I have been radicalized and continue to be radicalized

Here is my score today

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -9.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.15

[Unvanguard]

16. I want to say that I'm more of a hard leftist

but there are some "soft left" issues that I feel very strongly about, too - I'm militantly anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and anti-sexist.

Essentially, my concern is the abolition of class society, and in the context of that struggle I support both "soft left" and "hard left" battles for equality.

[champt10]

18. Soft and Hard

I think I could be Hard left if I was a little more educated on the economic sides of politics. I will admit I know very little about it, just that I hate rich people :-)

But I am hard left when it comes to social issues. They are what really got me being interested in politics. Oh and this little war thing we have got me interested too.

[Hardrada]

24. Both strongly!

[GirlinContempt]

28. In my experience, most of the people I encounter on DU

are center-left.

I'm hard.

[leftofthedial]

29. both, but with an emphasis on the hard left issues

without which, none of us will live long enough for the soft left issues to matter much