How can someone with Aspergers be left-wing?

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Given that "why should the Nazis have all the good lines", "Might Makes Right", and "... slaughter your enemies" are some of your favoured catchphrases, not to mention your hatred of Mexico, claiming others are totalitarian is pretty ironic.

I'd be willing to suggest you're probably in the top-ten most totalitarian posters here.

Well, I'm that horrible anomaly... a left wing, born again Christian, vegan animal rights, anti war protesting aspie left winger. lol

I suppose there had to be at least one of me...

i always saw leftism as the belief that people should get along on their own accord and the belief that people should be nice to each other and take of each other and that there should be a group of people taking care of things like public transport public libraries parks etc. not necessarily having to do with a government enforcing taxes or people being forced to work in labour camps. but i guess thats just silly hippy talk and we shall have none of it.

Actually, I dunno, I suppose we'd have to look at common posters, but I think ruveyn escapes the list. I mean, we have the outright racist posters, along with xenon, who seems a bit too far off to ever be non-totalitarian, even if he did care about social issues. I mean, ruveyn, even if we hold that he is inconsistent, seems more explicitly not a totalitarian, thus preventing him from falling into that category, despite some of these statements.

Are you talking about this Xenon or Xenon13?

When it comes to posters who post more than 30 times a Month, ruveyn definitely makes the top 10.

I don't hate Mexico. It is a perfectly fine place as long as you don't drink the water. But I do wish the Mexicans would stay there.

ruveyn

Perhaps when US corporations are willing to accept the same terms it might be more acceptable to wish such things.

Well, I would consider him an odd sort of libertarian-totalitarian, if such can be said to exist. He has some clearly soft-fascist tendencies (extreme nationalism, distrust of other cultures, inclination towards violence as a solution to political disputes, mildly corporatist economic views) and yet seems also to adhere to a fairly rigid notion of civil rights along with an individualist mentality.

I might be misjudging, but I think MP's assessment is reasonable. Even among the outright racists, they generally just favor immigration restrictions or at the very far extreme Jim Crow segregationism while otherwise being relatively standard right-wingers, so it's hard to just call them "totalitarians." Xenon is very far left, but I suppose it depends on if you regard democratic socialism as totalitarian.

There are two posters here with some derivative of the username "Xenon". One is "Xenon" and he's a poster from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I don't know much about his political views, other than he supports the death penalty.

The other, of course, is Quebecois leftist Xenon13. I don't think AG was refering to him, although I may be wrong.

As for ruveyn, I'd say his views line up with classical Spencerian social darwinism - liberty for the "natural elite" (which *obviously* includes him), servitude for "the proles" (as he calls the working class).

The right-wing generally wants everyone to conform in their personal lives and supports an economic structure that keeps people in wage slavery where they will have limited choices in choosing employment, and leads to an ideology that pushes arbitrary notions of "success" and the idea that "happiness" means having more money and things and doing better at everything than everyone else around you. The very notion of trying to "keep up with the Jones'" makes me role my eyes. If the Jones got a new car, good for them I hope they enjoy it, but it's not going to make me feel like I have to run out and get a new car.

Capitalism promises individualism and opportunities for everyone to be successful if they put forth the effort. People often trot out that ideological stance of capitalism without ever thinking about whether it actually winds up this way in practice. People often say communism just looks good on paper but can never work in practice. Rarely do people stop and think about whether the same can be said of capitalism.

A logical person who looks at a system that is supposed to produce one thing but produces something else isn't going to just sit there and say "it's fine".

I also find that the flip-side to difficulties with change is that when we come up with ideas we find it frustrating when people don't want to go along with them. If a "change" is my idea I always want to see it happen. It's just changes that are suddenly imposed by the outside world I get upset with.

It actually makes a lot more sense for an Aspie to be a leftist. Economic decisions being made in common based on a rationally organized plan where everyone has input is both logical and takes care of the individual needs of everybody. Whereas from the "personal freedom" angle leftists tend to favor giving people great latitude to make their own decisions in their personal lives.

How can someone with AS like chocolate?

some Asperger traits:

-Perseveration and difficulties with change
-low agreeability
-logical thinking

Chocolate is not logical. And all the world agrees that chocolate pwns, so low agreeability also forces AS to hate chocolate.

Yes! Thank you for putting it so well.

The UN human development index has just ranked Norway, for the eighth year in a row, as the best country to live in. Norway is a left-leaning social democracy. Wouldn't it then be most logical to support a political system like Norway's?

To me, the society the Tea Party envisions is at least as much a change as the one the Left imagines. A country "taken back" to a 1950s-style culture with everyone attending church every week and pretending the poor did not exist is an unwelcome change and definitely one I would actively oppose. The Left proposes a more robust, adaptable, tolerant, free, and open society, which is much more appealing to me. For example, I am an atheist with no taste for god talk.

I would not agree that low agreeability (or high agreeability, for that matter) is a "trait" of Asperger's syndrome although I have certainly met a number of disagreeable aspies.

Deductive logic still depends on assumed premises, and these are usually more a matter of personal taste, upbringing/culture, priorities, etc. Finding one's values in a Christian god is a nonstarter, for example, if you're trying to discuss with people outside your religion.

Most people in the United States, Left or Right, do not want to live in a totalitarian state, but at the same time, I think our culture devalues helping one another too much.

Where is the topic starter?

In cynic topic

Bit jaded, our Ruveyn. I am well over fifty, and I still hold dear to some socialist ideals. If that makes me now brainless, then perhaps I do not want the kind of brains Mr. Churchill's ilk dishes out upon the half century mark.

Libertarians envision a country "taken back" to at least the mid-19th century.