General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Should a Democrat always disagree with everything a Republican says? [View all]LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)I don't approve of what I call 'mirror-image-ism'; i.e. thinking that the people who are opposed to the current right wing are always the good guys (e.g. giving Mugabe a pass because he's opposed to Western imperialism, or liking the Iranian government because the American Right hate them, etc.)
Nor do I think that one should defend spying on citizens and restricting civil liberties just because Ron Paul or (in the UK) David Davis criticizes these things.
One should not rely on right-wingers to determine what one should think - even in the sense of automatically opposing their views.
However, the real problem in this area is that occasionally people have said that Dems/ left-wingers should actively collaborate with the Ron Pauls of the world, and that reducing the social safety net is an acceptable price to pay for preserving civil liberties. In fact, real civil liberties cannot exist without a social safety net.