Well, "conservative" is a really really relative term, you realize (ack, so many words we don't spell the same way), so I can't say just how conservative the German conservatives are by American standards.
I think that's precisely the point: what I found interesting about the test is that it - if it's an accurate depiction of what Americans think about politics - really highlights the difference between European and American politics.
Maybe one can justify labling HC as a (very moderate) socialist; but favouring nationalised medicine is a bad reason for doing so; or to put it another way, it's a way which is garunteed to confuse Europeans, since being pro the NHS or in the case of Germany universal health insurance isn't a mark of being left-wing, it's a mark of being part of the normal political discourse. Hence my amusement at the website I once read which argued that CS Lewis was a socialist because he thought the NHS was a good idea, on the whole.
The other issue is that the website graphic put HC right at the bottom of the socialist column, next to Gorbachev. Now I find it impossible to believe that Hillary is a communist; I can think of lots of people (all from a European context) who are clearly more left-wing than HC and yet are not communists, even a reforming Communist like the good Mikhail.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-09 10:24 am (UTC)I think that's precisely the point: what I found interesting about the test is that it - if it's an accurate depiction of what Americans think about politics - really highlights the difference between European and American politics.
Maybe one can justify labling HC as a (very moderate) socialist; but favouring nationalised medicine is a bad reason for doing so; or to put it another way, it's a way which is garunteed to confuse Europeans, since being pro the NHS or in the case of Germany universal health insurance isn't a mark of being left-wing, it's a mark of being part of the normal political discourse. Hence my amusement at the website I once read which argued that CS Lewis was a socialist because he thought the NHS was a good idea, on the whole.
The other issue is that the website graphic put HC right at the bottom of the socialist column, next to Gorbachev. Now I find it impossible to believe that Hillary is a communist; I can think of lots of people (all from a European context) who are clearly more left-wing than HC and yet are not communists, even a reforming Communist like the good Mikhail.