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.
