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  • I left my heart in San Francis-...

  • Hi. James from engVid.

  • I'd like to do a lesson today with you on politics.

  • I know, you're used to grammar and vocabulary, but it's always good to expand your horizons,

  • that means your learning abilities and look at things that you may not need today but

  • you will need in the future, especially when you have, you know, educated conversations.

  • In your own languages you often speak about religion, politics, sexual relations, and

  • in this lesson what I want to teach you is a way to understand English terms, what they

  • mean to us when we hear them and what we're trying to tell you when we're saying them.

  • That way you can get into political conversations, and that doesn't mean, you know, who's right,

  • who's wrong, but be able to explain where you're from, what it's like, and where we're

  • from and maybe understand each other a little better.

  • Are you ready?

  • Let's go to the board.

  • I said I left my heart in San Francisco.

  • There's a reason for it.

  • Notice E says: "I'm a lefty."

  • Quick story for you so you understand.

  • A long time ago back in England there were two houses.

  • There's the queen, I'm sure you probably know that England has a queen, and they let the

  • common people vote and there would be one side where the people with title, or princes,

  • and counts, and dukes would sit; another side where the common people would sit.

  • I'm wondering if you can figure out which side which sat.

  • Blah, blah, blah, blah.

  • Yeah, I know, difficult.

  • Let me explain.

  • So if you were the king or queen you sat in the middle, and you'd have your nobles, that's

  • your knights, your kings, your dukes, your princes, barons; on the other side the common people.

  • Well, I'll let you know.

  • This is my right side.

  • On the right side the barons, and the kings, and the dukes would sit; on the left side

  • would be the common people.

  • After a while what happened was people started referring to people on politics as right and left.

  • Why?

  • Because on the right side, the nobles, the kings, the princes, they wanted things to

  • stay the same.

  • They liked what they had, they didn't want to have anything to change.

  • Of course, the common people who are on the left side, they were the ones who had money

  • and they were paying for things and not really seeing things change, and they were like:

  • "Hey, if we're paying, we should get to change things."

  • So this became known as "left wing" and "right wing" because it was in the house of politics

  • where the king would sit, there was a left side and a right side.

  • Today's lesson is going to explain to you what that old way of thinking has changed

  • into in the modern day, and where we sit now.

  • You ready?

  • Let's go to the board.

  • Okay.

  • You see this thing here?

  • It's called a pendulum.

  • A pendulum is basically you can have a string with a rock, and once you move it, it goes

  • back and forward, back and forward, and swings.

  • Politics, which is the business of people being together, "polis" meaning people.

  • That's what it means.

  • Politics.

  • The people choose, and often sometimes they change in the way they look at things.

  • Center is when the pendulum isn't moving.

  • Center.

  • And as you can think, it's probably a nice place to be.

  • But there's more movement or activity when the pendulum goes up to the right or up to

  • the left.

  • That's when we see a lot of changes.

  • And it's good to understand what terms are used and how they affect us.

  • So let's start with...

  • Well, let's start with the left, the common people.

  • All right?

  • Most of you would know the extreme version if you've heard of it...

  • Or let's go here first.

  • When we talk about left, we talk about all for one and one for all.

  • If you're French, it's the three musketeers.

  • One for one and one for all.

  • It means we all work together for a good community or a better community.

  • No one person is above the community.

  • No one person is better than the community.

  • Okay?

  • So that's all for one.

  • But we all will work for the individual, but the community is the most important part.

  • And that will help you understand the most extreme form of left, left-sided politics

  • which is communism, which is communityism.

  • Right?

  • This is the most extreme form.

  • An example of this would be in 1918 to 1991 in the U.S.S.R.

  • We now call it Russia.

  • Okay?

  • What this means is the government is in control of everything; the economy, how people make

  • money, and how land is given out.

  • And the government tries to give everybody the same amount of land.

  • Everybody, I know it's crazy, but hey, that's what they're supposed to do.

  • Everybody gets the same amount of land, the same amount of money, and everybody gets jobs,

  • and everybody does what they like to do to help the community get better.

  • That's the book communism, by the way.

  • Real communism doesn't work that way, but that's the way it should be.

  • Normally when we think of communism we think of the economy and how things work, which

  • is the government controls how things are made and what gets made.

  • Okay?

  • There's no private business or enterprise.

  • You don't have your own company.

  • It belongs to the government, which belongs to the community, which belongs to everyone.

  • That's the most extreme.

  • As you can see, they tried this experiment from 1918 to 1991, and other countries have tried it.

  • Didn't quite work as well as we thought, so people have kind of backed away from that.

  • A lesser form or something not as serious we have called socialism.

  • Socialism is existing right now in France.

  • A country in Europe, in the middle of Europe, nice, little country, and it's a little different.

  • They like some of the ideas of communism, but they were like:

  • "Dude, you gone too far. Sometimes I want to go to Jeremy's Bakery and eat from Jeremy's.

  • I don't want state-run bakery goods."

  • So what they said and what socialism is about is we have to be social.

  • Yes, we're a community, but it's more of our interaction, how we work together, we're social.

  • All right?

  • We're not always one community.

  • And what they say is: "Look, the government runs a lot of the social programs."

  • In this case, things like daycare where babies get taken care of or children get taken care

  • of; medicine, when you go to the hospital; social welfare, if you lose your job, the

  • government gives you money; and retirement, when you work no more and you don't...

  • You're too old to work, they give you money.

  • In socialism what they say is very big and important things-medicine, communications,

  • roads-those are government things.

  • Business should have no business in business.

  • Or in other words: Business is not allowed to be in because this is too important to

  • the society.

  • So this is about the community, this is about the society.

  • So you're allowed to have your own private business.

  • So if you want to have a little English school, no problem, have an English school.

  • If you want to start your own video company, go ahead.

  • You want to start a hospital?

  • Sorry, that's the French Government, not you.

  • So they separate by saying the most important things are run by the government, but you

  • can have some private companies.

  • So some private companies are allowed.

  • Cool?

  • All right.

  • Let's go to my favourite place.

  • Ta-da, it's Canada.

  • What?

  • It's in the center.

  • That's right, eh?

  • Canada is central because they believe social programs are necessary, so a little socialist,

  • but they think sometimes people can make good decisions and governments shouldn't always

  • tell you what to do.

  • So they're right in the middle.

  • They've decided that we should have more private business and social programs.

  • So while in France you'll notice medicine is run by the government, in Canada you can

  • have the government which does take care of its people, but you can also have a private

  • industry that can take care of people.

  • So if you don't like the government's business, you can go out of it and say: "You know what?

  • I want to go to a doctor."

  • In fact, we have our medicine paid for in Canada, but you have to pay for a dentist.

  • And in some cases the government will pay for a dentist for you, so they balance or

  • try to balance private with social.

  • Cool? All right.

  • Okay, so when we...

  • The pendulum swings to the right we go up to conservatism, and we're going to look at

  • the United States of America.

  • Sorry, Latin America, I know that you're Americans as well, but generally we consider in Canada

  • "The United States of America" its official title. Okay?

  • So we're not insulting you.

  • In conservatism...

  • Do you remember I talked about the rights, they like things to stay the same?

  • Well, also they like to be able to do their own business.

  • That's part of being conservative.

  • And if we look up here, we'll go here, conservatism it starts one before all.

  • They really care about the individual.

  • They want individual rights, not to have government tell them what to do.

  • They prefer lower taxes.

  • They don't want to pay taxes for a government that's not doing anything for them.

  • They like less regulation, that means less laws telling them what to do.

  • It makes them a bit freer to do what they wanted to do.

  • And you have to remember if the people who originally wanted this were knights, barons,

  • and dukes who were independent people, who had their own way of making money and took

  • care of their own things, so they didn't see why a government or a king should be able

  • to tell them what to do.

  • And that's where we have American on conservatism.

  • Some people would say it's actually more moderate than a lot of other countries, but when you

  • think about it, most Americans will tell you private business can do the job better than

  • government and that's why they're here over here.

  • For instance, in America, private healthcare, well, healthcare is done by insurance companies

  • which people pay for.

  • And I've made a small mistake, here.

  • When I said "medicine", in Canada, we pay for medicine.

  • That's in case... That's drugs.

  • We pay for our drugs.

  • What we don't pay for is healthcare.

  • Healthcare are your doctors.

  • Okay? So healthcare.

  • We don't pay for our healthcare or our doctors.

  • United States, you do.

  • Okay?

  • Sorry, a little mistake there.

  • But in the US you do pay for this.

  • We do pay for our drugs.

  • Now, if we skip over here and we let the pendulum go a little bit further, we go to the highest

  • form of conservatism, and that's fascism.

  • We can look here at Italy from 1922 to 1945.

  • Fascism is really interesting because, well, in communism, the government runs everything.

  • In Fascism the government doesn't run everything.

  • They work with business so they like the idea of business, but they do it for the country,

  • for the nation because fascism has a lot to do with what we call nationalism, caring about

  • more the nation.

  • In communism they care more about the community.

  • Fascism is more about the nation, not necessarily the individual people.

  • That's why they can have business in fascist states or fascist countries.

  • Italy was a fascist country for a pretty long time, 1922 to 1945.

  • Yeah?

  • Some people would say that there's not much of a difference between communism and fascism,

  • and there is.

  • Fascism is more national, so they do whatever they're doing is for the country.

  • Remember, not necessarily the people but the country itself, and they will do whatever

  • to make the country great.

  • Communism tends to want to spread, it's more international looking.

  • All right?

  • So now that we understand the pendulum and how it swings, let's see how well you understand

  • left wing and right wing.

  • One for all or one before all?

  • Ready?

  • Okay, so we talked before, we're going to do our quiz, and just a little hint for you

  • on some things you've heard before and may be confused by.

  • Political systems and economic systems go together.

  • So many times when you hear communism, sometimes you're talking about the political system,

  • sometimes they're talking about the economic system.

  • Generally if you're talking about communism, as you can see here, they go hand in hand.

  • If you have a communist government, you'll have a communist economic system because the

  • economics of communism is to be in control, the government controls how things are made,

  • who makes them, and where they're made.

  • Well, that's going to have to have a political system that follows that because you can't

  • really have a democracy where people vote, and then the government tell them what's going

  • to be done and how.

  • So generally, communism will be economics and politics together, but people can refer

  • or talk about them separately as different things.

  • So don't get confused with the two.

  • You have to understand if they're talking about how things are done or how things are run.

  • Okay?

  • Socialism also has politics and economics.

  • In socialism for the politics, the government-once again, notice how I talk about the government-gets

  • to decide which is...

  • Which things that they are in control of, from healthcare, education, communications. Yeah.

  • You think: "That's private."

  • Some countries, no.

  • The government decides what gets put on and who gets to do it because they think it's

  • important for the society more than the individual.

  • Okay?

  • And economics is the same thing.

  • Well, if someone is making those decisions, then they usually start telling people, who

  • and what to do, who to do it, and how to do it or when to do it.

  • So these two tend to go together, but they can be separate. Okay?

  • Finally, this one is actually easy, capitalism and conservatism usually go together.

  • Capitalism, though, has the belief that private hands or private companies make the best decisions

  • better than governments.

  • In conservative politics they think the individual should be free to make the decision and that's

  • why these two go together rather well because you get the individual who happens to be a

  • private business owner, they work well together.

  • So, and sometimes these couples go together.

  • Not always, but you'll find they generally do, and you have to listen carefully sometimes

  • because it can be confusing if you're having an economic conversation or political one.

  • Okay?

  • Let's go to the board and do a very quick test to see how well you understood before.

  • What is communism and which one's capitalism?

  • And if you notice my Star Wars' figures.

  • I want you to take a good look here. You go: "Which one's which?

  • Why are you using them? Why are you using them?"

  • Well, when we think more of the fascist kind of governments, think more like a Darth Sidious.

  • Okay?

  • Individuals.

  • Remember we talked about the individual is more important?

  • I'm not saying they're all evil. Okay?

  • Fascism did have its time, it wasn't a good place, or it wasn't a good thing.

  • And you can think it's a little dark, but it's about the individual.

  • When we talk about communism, this piece of...

  • It's more about the collective of the community.

  • You can see how communism is about the community.

  • Individual versus community. Right?

  • Okay, cool.

  • I hope you got the visuals, that'll help you.

  • Communism is a big piece of...

  • Well, fascism can be a little bit evil sometimes, it's about the individual.

  • The collective, the individual.

  • Ready for your test?

  • Let's go.

  • And those of you who are Star Wars fans are like: "I think, I think not."

  • Well, that's my... That's Yoda. Sorry.

  • [Laughs]

  • "Do not think. Think..." Whatever.

  • Let's go to the board for your quick quiz. Okay?

  • Let's talk about social...

  • Okay, first one:

  • "Communism and socialism are on the __________ of the political pendulum."

  • Would that be the left or the right?

  • Communism and socialism.

  • A bit tricky on that one, but think about it.

  • Na, na, na, na-na, na, na, na, na.

  • Hint, hint.

  • Okay.

  • Remember we talked about the left in politics?

  • It was for the people, the common people.

  • In "communism" we have community, and in "socialism" we have social, which are people.

  • So we would say it was on the left.

  • Yes, I know I put that piece on my right shoulder, but it's on the left.

  • Left. All right? Good.

  • Let's try the next one. You ready?

  • "Moderate countries __________ social programs.

  • Moderate countries __________ social programs."

  • Do they have them or don't they have them?

  • O Canada.

  • We're so proud of that song.

  • Yeah, some of you went: "Oh yeah, Canada is central and moderate,

  • and they have social programs." Right?

  • They have social programs because moderate means basically middle, so they'll have some.

  • Not everything, but some.

  • A little less, well, much less in many cases than the communism or socialist brothers, there.

  • And the final question:

  • "In countries that are conservative, private businesses __________ allowed."

  • Are they allowed or not allowed, what do you think?

  • Hmm, well, here, let's take a look.

  • We said conservative, and earlier on I told you about capitalism and conservatism.

  • If you put that that would be this, they are allowed because capitalism usually goes with

  • conservative countries. Right?

  • Private business, private entities or business for you. Cool?

  • Anyway, I hope you enjoyed our little chat together on politics.

  • As I said before, it's a bit of an advanced lesson because some of you are still working

  • on basic grammar or vocabulary.

  • But you have to understand that you have to grow and go.

  • Right?

  • So you may be here, but later on you'll be using these terms if you go to school or you

  • have to take an IELTS exam or something like that, these terms will be brought up.

  • So if you have an understanding now, it'll be easier to deal with it later.

  • All right?

  • Anyway, look, you have a good day.

  • But before we go anywhere I want you to go to my favourite place in the universe:

  • www, what? eng, and I always get this wrong,

  • this one.

  • Okay, got it right this time.

  • eng as in engVid, eng as English, v as in vid.com (www.engvid.com).

  • Okay?

  • Don't forget to subscribe, and as the pendulum swings, it could be here, here, or here.

  • I'm sure one day it'll be down here as well.

  • But don't forget to subscribe, and I look forward to chatting with you soon. All right?

  • Have a good one.

  • And thanks, as always, for being on engVid.

I left my heart in San Francis-...

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