How true is this observation? I mean honestly when leftism appeals to tolerance, peace, and brotherhood but has socialism working for it and rightists appeals to authority, force, imperialism, and talks about the free market; could the free market get a worse wrap when it comes to mainstream appeal?
This is very true. I fully believe that making the simple distinction between so called corporatism and capitalism would make many of the left more tolerant towards libertarian views. Right now I think the majority of the left rejects capitalism because of corporatism.
The left rejects capitalism because it means inequality of outcomes, which violates their most treasured shibboleth.
I have yet to hear anyone (left or right) feel bad for the millionaire who lacks the wealth of a billionaire.
That’s quite a straw man. Where do leftist sympathies lie in the following relationships: management-labor, ethnic minority-ethnic majority, homosexual-heterosexual, criminal-law abiding, welfare queen-suburban housewife?
The EIC, civil rights laws, the progressive income tax, the inheritance tax, public edumacation, CBA’s, etc. are all attempts to force equality of outcomes and a “flat” society.
The welfare state is simply the warfare state turned in on itself. Under movement conservatism, the enemy is Ay-rabs, Chi-Coms, the “Soviet Union” (I still hear people call Russians "Soviets’), etc. Under cultural/classical Marxism, the enemy is the Church, the bourgeoisie, white heterosexual males, etc. It is simply a question of whose ox is getting gored.
Increasingly though, it has become a war of the mandarin class of both conservative and leftist leanings against everybody else. Immigration and civil rights are examples of this left-right confluence, where the elite are united against bourgeois interests. Environmentalism is the next such area. Al Gore is poised to make millions from the cap-and-trade system. Huge companies like ALCOA are poised to do the same as the barriers to entry will be so high in manufacturing that competition will vanish.
Liberal and conservative elites live in the same gated communities and buy the same thousand-acre spreads in the western United States to insulate themselves from the chaos and poverty enabled by their own policies.