I'm not from a rich family, everything we got is product of hard work, but I was always oriented towards the right.

But this is also a product of my reality, in the early 80's universities were controlled by extreme communists for 20 years, Shinning Path was already a menace, there was not a semester that ended without a general strike, so careers lasted 9 or 10 years.

Some communist leaders were supported by communist parties who paidtheir careers, this guys took one or two classes each semester in order to remain as students for a decade, most of us couldn't afford this so we decided to regain control in democratic elections, we had to take a clear position against Communism, we were called Facists, extremist, Nazis (Funny because some of our candidates were Jewish), but we won, people started to worry about their studies, there was not a single strike after that.

So extreme communist positions were the ones that made us take right oriented positions.

But today most of us have ceter political orientations and the most liberals are precisely those who took the extreme communist postures.

Iván

You might want to check out the Political Compass Test thread in the discussions not related to music section ... more than 50 people took the test and the average progger seems to be moderate left supporter ... liberal/social democrat ...

In fact on the basis of that test, there are almost as many communists/Marxist socialists as conservatives here!

GoldenSpiral wrote: we are all card-carrying libertarians. end of story.

BS...I'm a hardcore Republican.

Here in Brazil, liberal and conservative are the two faces of the same coin: RIGHT-WING.

But "right" here is a bad word, so even the rightest party will deny they are in the right-wing... then everyone is leftist and we have a myriad of leftist-types from the extreme-right-leftist till the extreme-left-leftist.

That way I am a progressive-center-leftist

Paid up member of the Liberal Democrats (in Britain, a Centre-Left party) and proud to be so.

Pet hates: American neo-cons and European right wingers who use the word "Liberal" as an insult. Over this side of the pond it's highly respectable to be tolerant, believe in equality of opportunity and not to be selfish and short-sighted in one's outlook.

And Wakeman is a Tory, yes. Brian Eno is a very active Lib Dem.

GPFR wrote: Conservitive here, I think music and politics are two very unrelated topics.

 I think music and politics are two very unrelated topics, too.

I think that, among the musicians, there is a general tendency towards liberal/left leaning ideals.

I always used to think that prog fans were generally small 'c' conservatives, but the results of the political compass test show a definite tendency to the liberal left, though I think I'm further to the left than most. Still, it's nice to know I'm not the only one!

Again from an american view , liberal is left wing when the rest of the planets sees the libs as capitalists.

so from your list I chose other and pose myself and the vast majotity of progheads (check out the results of the political compass test) as left-wing with a fairly strong libertarian feel.

sleeper wrote: Am I the only one that thinks that poloyics is messed up in general

 Agreed.  I gave up caring about straight policital affliliations ahwile ago.  I'm trying my best to stay comfortably in the middle.

Another goofy post.  It's a shame to see something great and honorable (prog. music) get somehow mixed up with something that's often full of loathing and corruption (politics).

The Wizard wrote: Rock itself is liberal.

Tell Rush that. They have some very nasty right wing attitudes and Neil Peart is particularly neo con in his outlook. Strange when you consider that Geddy Lee is Jewish by descent.

It's really confusing that in America liberal signifies left-wing, in Denmark the liberal party is right-wing, and ideologically it belongs to the ideology entitled "liberalism" (not in reality but at least historically…) which I assume worldwide (incl. USA) corresponds to approximately the same thing, namely that the individual is solely responsible for his (or hers) own fortune and success, no collective responsibility what so ever. Liberalists also have full faith in the free market. This is clearly opposed to the collective ideologies as for instance socialism/communism whose supporters (generally considered left-wingers)  believe that it’s a collective responsibility to assure the well-being of people and to support those less-fortuned, they don’t believe in a strict free market etc… This is of course super superficially presented, there are of course many more facets to be taken into account, and it merely serves no other purpose than to express my slight annoyance concerning the term liberal used to denote “left-wing.”

But I must say that I believe all this talk of ideology and “left- vs. right-wing” is slightly dated, and today rather pointless… I myself isn’t that interested in practical politics, I don’t have a strong opinion about many things, but I must say that I sympathize a great deal with the general views of socialism, and I always vote for the Danish left-wing/socialist/red party.