The US Democrats are to the right of our Conservatives, comfortably.

Correct! People here ask me why I (mostly) support Democrats and I tell them "It's because I'm a European conservative". (Note the small "c".

Take Obamacare: it forces everyone to buy insurance, from for-profit insurance companies, who then use that insurance to get healthcare services from for-profit healthcare providers. The Act does give subsidies for those who can't afford the insurance, but this is taking tax-payer dollars and giving them to private businesses.

Could you imaging Thatcher trying to get away with passing anything that radically corporatist?

Until there is some kind of free state health service, everyone employed gets (and takes) holiday pay and someone bans guns, it's not even a debate.

It's a good and interesting question to try to define 'natural behaviours'. Mainly because it brings us back into reality on what can fairly asked of either sex in terms of behaviour adjustment.

Most importantly anything I or anyone else would say has to be filed under generalization because human beings are a spectrum of behaviours where exceptions to all behaviours will exist in varying percentages.

Having said that, it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots and understand that the primary roles nature designed for the human sexes was for males to be the hunters and risk takers and for females to be the child rearers and homemakers. The hormonal and biological functions all point to this. The statistics in so many areas bear this out.

While in the modern age....the west has made great strides in providing women with more equal opportunities to men I get greatly irritated at the harm done to both sexes by those who deny human nature and regard human behaviour is simply a social construct.....all based upon their own feelings rather than the science.

The half truths implicitly told to youth by both the media and educational institutions .....that males have 'tonic masculinity' and that women can 'do anything a male can do' aren't only harmful but have led to countless cases of guilt and self blame...all pushed by political ideology rather than science. I view the harm done as on a par with the harm done by religion in creating dysfunctional views of human behaviours.

It's certainly true that the natural 'hunter/risk taker' mentality given to males by hormones can and does led to anti social behaviours. But when directed usefully these same hormones have created the modern world and most of its wonders.....like most things in different hands these same drives can be used for societal good or harm.

They need to be directed....not denied or criticized as 'tonic'. Many of the great educational institutions of the past intrinsically knew this.

Females in my country have also been made to feel guilty for choosing to be 'homemakers' as if this was somehow a 'lower' life choice. Instead of being perhaps the most important job to society that a person should do well.

I think it's great that we, in the west, live in a society that provides women with a choice of professions. But I learnt during my time as a teacher that this doesn't mean that females are going to choose the same subjects and jobs that males do in anything like the same numbers and you know what.....if that is their choice...then surely that was the whole point and success of feminism....the actual feminism that most of us agree with.

I think it's fair to say there are limits to how much a social libertarian I am, but on the fundamental level of allowing you freedom of thought and action (action that doesn't physically harm others) yeah...I think I'm a social libertarian....how others feel is for them of course....the older I've got the more socially libertarian I've become.

Edited by Stirlingsays (22 Nov 2017 11.24am)

Bernie Sanders isn't a Democrat; he's an Independent.