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Suppose I am a liberal, whatever that means. I hate militants/unions, so that rules me out as a leftie, and I hate racism, so I'm not right wing. I couldn't say if i was centre left or right, I'd have to let others be judge of that. Although I do have some totaltarian views in that detention centres should be built for non criminal crimes, such as caught carrying a knife, blocking roads and preventing people going about their business - I don't believe prison should be used in those circumstances. Organised protests I'm fine with, as long as it involves non criminal behaviour.
Being pro-capitalism and 'socially liberal' isn't that rare to be honest. We had Tony Blair as Prime Minister for a decade and he was exactly that. The Clintons and Biden are the exact same.
As far as unorthodox beliefs going together, I'm as far left as you can go but I support gun rights. In the US, the consensus is conservative = pro-gun and liberal = pro gun-control. In the UK, the only people who support gun rights are fringe right-libertarians and people in parts of Northern Ireland.
It’s a complete misnomer that you can’t be pro business and socially liberal. It’s been created by both ends of the spectrum, the far left pushing the notion you can’t be pro workers and supportive of the businesses that employ them ffs, and the far right try to posit the notion that if you’re socially liberal, you’re either a sandal wearing leftie and it’s the politics of envy or a champagne socialist who’s ‘virtue signalling’ by giving a toss about others less fortunate. 2 cheeks of the same arse. Centrist has become a dirty word, like seeing both sides and being understanding of the entire spectrum is somehow a weakness.
I'm anti guns, but that's probably because I'm British and wasn't brought up knowing people carried guns. Closest association my life had to guns was what you were taught from the wars at school or watching a western movie. I do feel safer when I see armed guards at airports and places where attacks are likely to happen. I don't want to see armed cops, I don't even like the fact that they now carry tasers, because it has become the 'go to' first choice of assisting any arrest. But I accept I'm old and that's the way things are today. Never even carried a knife in my life, wasn't how I dealt with things in my day, which was normally fisty cuffs on a designated green somewhere.
You can be pro-business and socially liberal. Being pro-worker and pro-business is more complicated. Marxists believe class conflict is an integral part of history, if not the driving force of it. It's impossible to reconcile the idea of workers and capitalists living harmoniously together under capitalism if you're a Marxist. I'm sure Starmer genuinely believes the Labour Party can be pro-worker and pro-business, but he's trying to sit on the fence too much to win back Labour voters from the Tories. Centrist politics were more palatable a decade or so ago when Blair won elections. These days, it isn't. I'll bet there's more Democrat voters who voted Biden as a 'lesser evil' to Trump than ones who genuinely liked his policies.
I never grew up around them either (also British), barring some relatives I barely saw who owned a few of them. My view of guns changed when I became a leftie, and they're based mostly on Marx's attitude towards them which is basically "coppers, soldiers and reactionaries have them, so workers should arm themselves as well". Ironically, the 2nd Amendment isn't an American invention. The Founding Fathers plucked it from the English Bill of Rights from 1689 which enshrined civilian ownership of firearms to prevent another Catholic tyrant like James II from seizing the throne.
First time I ever came close to a gun in the real sense of the word, was when I was visiting relatives in Jacksonville and there was a gun laying in the draw, I'm like wtf! Think I was just told everyone does, so just accepted it.
Any party standing on a platform of Marxism wouldn’t get anywhere near the levers of power, as the majority simply don’t want it. Politics has been poisoned by extremists in recent years, with divisive votes and a lying fascist in the White House driving both extremities. It’s a phase that’ll pass. Populism never lasts.
When i was a kid my mam ran two catalogues, Freemans and Littlewoods. You could order shotguns from both with no problem. Never knew anyone that did though or at least spoke about it.
The continent has more of a gun-culture than the UK. Czech Republic has a strong gun-culture with lax laws, and actually has fewer firearm related deaths per 100,000 than the UK iirc. You can own semi-auto rifles like AR-15s in the Czech Republic. There's also the likes of Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Croatia etc. where guns are in abundance in rural areas purely as a consequence of the conflicts there. A kid I knew from uni who's half-Albanian said a local variant of an AK costs the equivalent of £20 in the black market there and law enforcement just can't be arsed to enforce the laws because there's too many of them.
Populism generally ends when people are worse off financially . I don't understand how easily people falll for it anyway
