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Yes, yes, we've heard it a million times here. You can hold onto your own personal definition if you want, but the rest of us mean the term how it's consistently used -- even by those it defines.

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Thanks. I get so tired of going over this ground again and again.

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Well, you're using it exactly the way all corporate media use it. I don't have a "personal definition" of "the left." I try to stick to the historical definition, but if you insist that popular, uninformed, usage is superior, that Democrats are "the left", then I'm sure the obfuscating pundits at MSNBC and Fox alike will appreciate your contribution.

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Sounds like you should complain to them instead of spending your time bitching at me.

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I'm bitching at you because, like so many who do the same thing repeatedly, equating Democrats with the left is just another way of utterly erasing the left from the whole sordid picture of what this country's become. It's a rightwing tactic of eliminating any actual opposition to capitalism from the entire debate, a system the Democrats defend as fiercely and relentlessly as Republicans.

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So your definition of Left is anti capitalist?

If so IтАЩve known that for years. WhatтАЩs so new there?

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You've known if for years because you've absorbed enough actual history to know it. I'm not saying it's anything new; au contraire, I'm trying to say it's as old as any standard definition of much any political alignment could be. The problem is, so many these days are saying the Democrats are the left, and that erases any actual left from the whole scene. There are countless liberals and "conservatives" who have no idea that the left has always been totally opposed to capitalism, first and foremost. It's as if they deliberately ignore this fundamental aspect, so the left can be equated with capitalism-loving Democrats.

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I'm gonna try and turn the tables here a bit. Just as you and Art feel very strongly about the use of the word left to describe the Dems, I object to those who portray what the elite perpetrate here, as capitalism.

Further, I don't think that's true that the left have been historically opposed to capitalism. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that the left opposes crony capitalism and the use of government to condone and often enforce such deviance.

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Do note that leftists are NOT against commerce; capitalism is a system designed to exploit the masses. THAT is what we're against. We want a fair exchange between consenting parties...

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So why does the left insist on thieves overseeing that exchange?

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YOU GOT IT, buddy!

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Yep! Again, I've been telling 'em that for a while now. Dense!

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Yet the people you're talking about call themselves the left. Soooooooooooooo.............................

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YOU apparently - demonstrably - go by what people call themselves, and have no objective definition. And this is why you're coming to the wrong conclusions. ...Hitler called himself both a Christian and a Socialist and was so far from either one, yet you'd have believed him!

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Hitler was and is the quintessential Leftist. He was and is SO far left that he occupies the left endpoint called Fascism (100% State control).

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Look on the bright side. If we need a cheap laugh, we've got BOTH VF and Art.

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