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Will, I take it "left" was meant as its colliquial meaning in the U.S., which is "liberal" or "Democrat." Most of us know that there are very few actual "leftists" with any power in the U.S. The furthest left the Democrats go are left-centre. This leaning happens as some members are more focused on social liberalism than others.
That said, it's a common trait of social liberals (and even classical liberals, from which the Republicans arose a long, long time ago) to be concerned about issues of human rights, civil liberties, etc., and have worked long and hard to create new rights regarding capital punishment, abortion, immigration, and same-sex marriage. They support a positive sense of liberty, which is why liberals (not just the left kind) are rather opposed to the idea of torture and it being trivialized by cases such as these.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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