So, anyone going to vote today?

My vote will be on no party at all (though I will vote) because there is currently no party I agree with...

Elections are always held on Sundays here, so I won't vote today.

I will go on Sunday, but I'm not sure whom to vote for yet. I've read the programs of most of the parties which are running here, but they all seem to fall into the same few (unacceptable) categories:

-losers who have proven to be incompetent for decades (CDU, SPD, Green, FDP, PDS)
-extremist hotheads (nationalists, communists,...)
-esotheric looneys (trying to save the world by mass medidation and so on)

I can't see myself voting for any of those parties, so I'll probably do the same thing as you: go voting, but not vote for anybody.

I am going to vote for sure, but I haven't decided either. When I was checking the programmes, I was missing precise proposals for reforming the EU institutions, which is necessary in order to make them more democratic.

Edit: As in Russia, we need the choice "against all".

Edited by Tapuak at 19:52 on June, 10th 2004

I don't think these people/parties are more extremist than others. Something "extreme" requires the existence of something "normal", and I don't see why the policies of the larger parties should be judged by different standards. The NPD policy is one point of view, the one of the SPD is another, but none of the two is "normal" for me.

I do agree with that, however, for the sake of making complicated things short, I prefer sticking to commonly understood terms usually

Funny, I can categorize the parties of Turkey pretty much the same way Creosote did. Although contents change, groups persist.:P

Credit where credit is due - Tapuak came up with this distinction when we talked about it a little earlier, and I found it very convincing

I think there are more parties with distinct religious roots in Turkey than in middle and western Europe, though.


True, that makes it easier at first, but it can become very confusing. For example, people often say "left" and "right" to categorize political views, although these terms are not clearly defined. Don't tell me you can explain them...

I can define what has been generally considered 'left' and 'right' in the different stages of history as well as today. However, that doesn't mean I agree with those definitions...

Tapuak, I think you'd be surprised how many parties here have religious roots-even though not all of them are still religious today.

At least two of them still want a Christian church-based state.

And I'd like to add a category to the distinctions proposed by Tapuak:
The one-campaign-point-only parties with a nothing-else-matters attitude.
Example: the Party for Animals.

Edited by Johann67 at 11:08 on June, 11th 2004

Funny you say that. Just last night, I was telling Tapuak that I think there are way too few parties which just want to care about one single point. Not necessarily with a 'nothing-else-matters' attitude, but people who just don't want to care of other topics themselves. There isn't a single party like this in the race in Germany. Instead, everyone seems to think it's a good idea to have an opinion about everything. I absolutely hate how some topics seem to be a 'must'!

There are two "radical" religious parties here as well, but they are nearly irrelevant. Then there's the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), the second largest party according to their members. But they don't really have religious roots, nor do they represent significantly "christian" policies - well, whatever that would be. They only support certain privileges for the christian churches (financing), but that's what the other main parties do as well. Therefore "christian" is not much more than a name. I guess they are somewhat comparable to the CDA in the Netherlands, which I wouldn't call religious either.


Well, there's the "Animal Protection Party" here as well. I'd say that is only one point.


I think that putting the parties on a left-right-scale was easier in certain historical periods, for example the Weimar Republic. As for today, there's only one method that could work. You have to take certain political views and pre-define them as "left" or "right".

Left: disarmament / -1
Right: military security / 1
Other: 0

Then repeat this method in any political field, add the numbers, and you know whether a party is "left" or "right".

However, I doubt that this really helps, because if a party would score "-1" in 50% of the cases and "1" in the rest, the result would be 0 ("middle"), although they represent many positions that have been considered "left" or "right" in fact...

Well a solution to figuring out which party is left and right is to only have two parties to vote for. This way you can compare them to each other, and most likely one will be more left of the other, or vice versa. (Certain situations show though, that sometimes both parties have exactly the same view, or have slightly different views, but go about the same business when elected)
This way, you can have two parties to the right when compared to the rest of the world, but at the same time fool everybody in thinking that they actually have a choice!

Have you actually read their program? They have the whole political spectrum covered - from economics to military issues. Very, very silly.

Left/right scale: It is of course almost impossible to classify a party 'on the whole' on such a scale. However, it's still fairly easy to classify individual points of view. You mentioned one example yourself, so every party's program can easily be classified as 'left' or 'right' concerning military issues. Same with most other questions.

There are issues which are totally above this scale, of course. Take environmental questions, for example. Is it 'left-winged' or 'right-winged' to be against/for nuclear power? Basically, all political fields which didn't even exist when the left-right-scale was first come up with don't fit in there at all.

That's right, but you need absolute criteria in order to find out where they are on a "global" left/right scale.


You're right, their basic program (http://www.tierschutzpartei.de/downloads/files/mut_grundsatzprogramm.pdf) covers some more issues; so they just seem to have a different hierarchy of issues than most others.


But there are issue that were already there when the scale was used at the beginning. Even concerning economy, the scale doesn't really work. Usually, an interventionist policy is considered to be left. But what is a right economic policy? As for the classic German parties in the 1920s, the nationalists and monarchists (right) prefered a pretty strong economic government as well.

Presuming Tuss meant the actual American parties, I agree that most people would rather put them on the right side of such a scale. However, the current American government follows a economic paradigma that opposes an interventionist state. So what is left, what is right?

Edited by Tapuak at 22:52 on June, 11th 2004

The classic economic 'right' means governmental backing of industrialists (or more generally spoken: the 'owners'), the classic economic 'left' is supporting workers' rights (generalisation: people employed by other people). The government not intervening in economics at all is a modern form of the first case, however, it's just one example. A government which actively intervenes in favour of the 'owners' is located on the same spot on the scale.

Also take into account that a government can never actually be 'neutral' towards economy. After all, they have to take the basic decisions what kind of economical system should be used in the 'country'. That alone is already 'taking sides'.

There are other examples in which this scale has been completely turned around in the course of history, of course. Take nationalism. That was a standpoint of the Liberals in the 19th century, and it was considered left-winged. In the 20th century, it became a very right-winged position. So, of course the system is flawed. It still works to some extent, though.

Edited by Mr Creosote at 23:03 on June, 11th 2004

That makes sense, I agree. So concerning ecnomy, the distinction between left and right would not be "the government does everything" and "the government does nothing", but rather "the government supports group A" and "the government supports group B" instead.


I think here you can distinguish between the motifs (?) for nationalism. In the 19th century, liberals were convinced that a state or a "nation" was necessary to protect certain individual rights. So the state was an instrument, not the purpose. In contrast to that, 20th century nationalism was based on common identities, or even supremacy over other nations. To some degree, the state was the purpose itself. Both are called "nationalism", but they have very different meanings.

Btw, I just read some works about classic 19th century Liberals such as J.S. Mill and A. de Tocqueville. Quite telling if one's interested in political philosophy.

I've just read something by Johann Gottfried Seume (the irony... ), and 'his' nationalism is based on 'common identity', too, in spite of him being quite left-winged and liberal for his time (early 19th century). It's just that he says having a 'nation' would put an end to random oppression by lords (or whatever), so that fits in with the 'rights' idea again.

However, the meanings of 'both nationalisms' aren't fully different, as pointed out. It's just that when the 'common identity' was defined by racist/imperialist ideas that it was viewed upon from a different angle.

Edited by Mr Creosote at 23:43 on June, 11th 2004

Well, just went to vote myself (ugh, why do they have to do 'em on a sunday morning ) and as usual went with the larger parties as I can nolonger vote on nobody thanks to the entire electronic voting system and all our smaller parties (except the really ridiculous ones) are going into "Cartels" (funny, last time I heard this word it was usually drug-related) with the larger ones (whatever happened to my right to choose I wonder). Seeing as I think our current government is doing a decent job (could always be better but hey, at least they ain't "het vlaams blok" yet and they do seem to be doing their best to promote economic growth and so forth), I decided to send our liberals to Europe seeing as they have the best international ties and relations (Verhofstadt and Michel are 2 of our better known political exports as far as I can tell and they both seem competent enough) and despite my current objections to some policies of our "socialist" party I gave them my vote on a regional level seeing as on the whole they are doing a good job as far as I can tell. If they however stab us in the back one more time like they did with that "right to vote for immigrants" they can forget my vote next federal elections in 2006.

Just returned from voting. For the lack of alternatives, I indeed voted 'against all', meaning I wrote 'against all' on the bottom of the sheet, drew a circle next to it and made a cross there.

A little observation: At the same time as me, there was an elderly couple (my guess is they were close to 100 years old) there to vote. The woman seemed to be sane enough at least to keep quiet, but the man was raving incomprehensibly about someone being put into a gas chamber. I'm not sure whether he meant someone should be put into a gas chamber or if he was telling a story from his 'glorious' youth, but I tend towards the latter. Then again, I'm not sure whether he himself knew what he was shouting about.

Anyway, his wife literally dragged him into the voting booth, he was shouting stuff like "what am I supposed to do here", making it clear he didn't even have the slightest clue where he was. The wife told him to make a cross, apparantely pointing him to the 'right' spot. It still took a long time for him to finish, all the time still mumbling to himself.

He then had what seemed to be a light heart attack, the election officials had to drag him to a chair where he slumped down nearly unconcious, face in pain. I was already finished with giving my vote then, so I left.

I can't say anything about the woman, but that man was obviously not only very ill, but also completely insane! Nevermind his apparant nazi views (that's just a matter of subjective opinion, no matter how despictable these 'views' are), he didn't even have the slightest clue what he was doing when he was making his cross! And this guy's vote is worth the same as mine or anyone else's. Something's very wrong there...