If we’re using a linear spectrum of left to right, how far left am I? I would consider myself on the left end of politics and was thinking of joining the Green Party in the U.S.
Here are some of the things I believe in:
Homeless people should get free housing. If I were in charge, they would live in shelters or big buildings like hotels.
Rights for all!
We should make countries better for all and not just go along with whatever the politician says, specifically where I live in the United States. Real patriotism is trying to make a better, for example, United States for everyone and not just going along with whatever our President says and defending his corrupt ideas.
Climate change is a real issue that needs to be taken care of.
LGBTQ+ people deserve representation completely and everyone should be free of discrimination.
Immigration is what shapes the United States (I use a lot of American examples because that’s where I live, sorry!) and they should not be tortured, deported, discriminated against, anything. It should be a free country and the borders should be less strict.
Weapons should be banned and crime should somehow become a very rare thing to deal with.
I don’t think it’s helpful to think in terms of left and right. That presumes that each side is roughly a mirror analogue of the other.
Think in terms of forward and backward. Will your ideas and political leanings push society forward? Will you be making the world better than you found it? Or are you trying to resist change, fighting against progress because the status quo, or the recent past, benefits you in some way?
That’s better than thinking in terms of rigid spectrums, but I still ultimately think the division between socialism and capitalism is useful, ie the PRC is socialist while the US Empire is capitalist. Progressing forward requires socialism, but beyond that we can get lost in trying to compare how “left” people are as though that genuinely corresponds to material reality in a quantifiable manner.
Strictly speaking, forwards and backwards can only be applied if one has both awareness and a realistic plan to help change the larger situation.
I would argue that it would impact the effectiveness of the effort, but the intention is just as important.
Like if you want to make the world a better place, you can pick up litter in your local area. You could volunteer at the library or conserve energy in whatever way is easiest for you. The desire to move forward is critical, because nobody has all the information. Nobody can know all the angles, and be aware of every impact. Everyone is just doing the best they can with the information they have.
Wanting to be better informed is also a progressive ideal. Know better, do better. We might discover that something we thought was beneficial is actually harmful. The difference between a conservative choice and a progressive choice is that when new information demonstrates that behaviors conflicts with values, the progressive changes their behaviors while a conservative changes their values.
I think what they’re getting at is that everyone is in favor of crime reduction, as an example, but that doesn’t make crime go down. It’s how you answer the how of that question that actually makes a material difference.