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Comment by beedogs | Hacker News Reader

I really fucking hate the right wing and its authoritarian ideology. It's like there are two separate and distinct species of people on this planet: those with empathy and compassion for their fellow man, and these kinds of assholes who just want nothing but control.

It's one of the reasons I got out of the US. My worry is I won't be allowed to return one day.

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This isn't about the left wing or the right wing, it's the authoritarian wing. Jeff Flake, Ron Paul, Justin Amish, Gary Johnson, Rand Paul are all right wing and don't want to see you under the eye or chain.

On the authoritarian left, we have Obama:

- Ordered the killing of US citizens with no due process.

- Signed the National Defence Authorization Act, so now any American, at home or abroad, can be locked up with no trial at Guantanamo.

Many other examples. Not all the right is authoritarian and not all authoritarians are right.

I consider Obama right-wing. He's only left-wing compared to other American politicians, and he's really not all that left-wing even then.

If you really think this is the result of the right wing politicians you're kidding yourself.

I'd even claim that the left wing has a greater propensity to engage in this conduct, albeit more subtly. For example, one side effect of the Affordable Care Act is the federal government knowing which Americans have health insurance. While this doesn't prove they have access to your health records, it's nevertheless troubling that they have direct evidence of whether you're insured (and whether it's ``Cadillac'' insurance) simply by examining tax returns.

Sheesh, really? You're going to bring the Affordable Care Act into this? If wanting every citizen to have access to affordable health care and insurance and spreading the costs is some subtle way of intruding into their privacy, then I guess all they want to do is spy on you...

I spoke precisely, yet you managed to contort my statement into something that it's not: an expression of my opinion on universal health care. What I said was that other approaches exist that do not require marking tax returns in a way that reveals the existence of health insurance...

They also know what car insurance I have and if it's a "Cadillac." Heaven forbid!

Not the federal government...

You may be (roughly) correct about the two kinds of people, another way of saying that people are either "normal" or "sociopathic." But they don't cleave politically right and left on that basis. And there is plenty of empathy and compassion for one's fellow man on the political right, though there is a difference in philosophy about what helps him and what doesn't.

Worse, there a difference in philosophy about what is or isn't a problem, which is where most of the issues lie.

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