The following might be an incorrect assumption on my part, I realize that. Still, has anyone else made the following observation? Keep in mind that the reason I support rightists more than leftists is purely because their policies are easier to undo (and don’t create perpetual votes):
Rightists want to tell people what they won’t do. In a rightist mind, individuals run the economy and run their own lives unless their actions disrespect the country and its culture. Of course, that philosophy isn’t consistent and it’s shown not to shrink government.
Leftist, on the other hand, want to tell people what they will do. In a leftist mind, the government manages the economy and ensures individuals act in a way that benefits the community.
I think that terrifying mindset is displayed in this column.
Take a look at this quote:
Capitalists, how on earth are we going to defeat their desire to control others?
The comments are encouraging. However, I do run into the following a lot: a friend who works at an investment bank is always going on and on about “liquidity,” and how the Apocalypse would be upon us if the Fed wasn’t around to supply this mysterious substance. Same with non-finance types. They cannot get their heads around the concept that money is just a commodity like any other that is in universal demand. The propaganda you’re fighting is that government has some mystically special role with money, like roads or the military.
I am glad someone posted this thread. I read this article in the newspaper the other day and I was truly disgusted by what I read. Anyway I completely agree with the assumption posted about the rightists versus the leftists.
Nobody knows. But I would point out that the right is just as destructive as the left. For instance, ‘right’ to me means nationalism. militarism, imperialism and financial monopolies. The right seems to support war even more than the left does, and war is just the opposite of ‘capitalism’ (a better term is of course ‘free society’)
It’s easier to end wars than to wean people off of welfare and privatize Social Security. Plus, any industry that becomes nationalized, a favorite tactic of the left, is by definition, a monopoly.
I think that the banking cartel and military contractors are harder to stop and way more dangerous than other branches of the state. Also, I don’t see why ending social security is any different than ending something like, say, the ‘war on drugs’. Personally I think that the right and its lip service to the ‘free-market’ go a long way to discredit the real free-market.
The war on drugs could be ended in a week. Just stop enforcing the laws! There would be practically no fallout.
Social Security, on the other hand, is nearly impossible to end (and FDR even gloated about this).
How is it possible to end a system where current workers are funding current retirees? Note only is it logistically difficult, it’s electorally impossible! It’s a system that creates voters who are dependent upon the system.
How can we wean people off of welfare(and all other social services) when they’ve become accustomed that money? Ignoring the logistical mess of cutting off millions of people’s main source of income (an income to which they’ve become accustom), it is nearly electorally possible. Not only will those using welfare be opposed to ending it, so will people who feel they might need to use it soon.
A welfare system create more poverty and more voters who want a welfare system, which in turn leads to an expansion of the welfare system, which leads to more poverty and more voters who want a welfare system, etc.
Leftist policies create perpetual votes, and that’s why they are biggest enemy. That, and the left’s ingrained arrogance and desire to control others, as I noted in the OP.
No, no, no. Rightist policies control people, there’s no doubt. Even the funding of rightist policies is coercive (taxation). What I’m saying is two-fold:
Leftist policies are still worse, more controlling, and more difficult to undo than rightist policies (especially if you consider the perpetual votes they create), and
The average self-identified leftist is rooted in the desire to control others and “make a difference in the world”, while the average self-identified rightist is rooted in individualism and a desire to be “tough”.
In my opinion, the average rightist is only a few conversations away from becoming capitalist, while leftists are rooted in anti-capitalism. And yes, there are exceptions.
It’s important to note that many policies define as “right-wing” are totally opposed by the average self-identified rightist (if you think that rightists love banking cartels, check freerepublic). I don’t know of any leftists who oppose Social Security (no, they want to remove caps on payroll taxes!).
Let’s see : Telling people what stuff they can smoke and what stuff they can’t smoke sounds to me like an attempt to control others. Do you agree ? On the other hand, SS is a system based on misguided altruism, or demagogical promises, if you will. People want social security or socialized medicine because they believe (or pretend to believe) that it’s free - not because they directly want to control others.
I’m not saying the left is any good, but trying to underline that a lot of policies advocated by the right rely on the same principle as those advocated by the left. Now, if you define ‘the right’ as people who actually believe in inalienable individual rights, then what I say is wrong, but I don’t think that’s the case.
As I mentioned in my first post, rightists want to tell people what they won’t do, leftists want to tell people what they will do. I don’t think that drug laws are rooted in a desire to control other people, I think they are rooted in a desire to preserve culture (and many rightists are against drug laws, anyways). Lefist policies are rooted in a desire to “make a difference”. I’ll try to explain:
Whenever you read leftist message boards or blogs, every post will talk about making the rich pay their fair share in taxes, requiring all business to pay a living wage, silencing hate-filled right-wingers on talk-radio, affirmative action to ensure particular races are fairly represented in business and education, setting maximum salaries to ensure fairness in pay, nationalizing businesses and industries (because profit-seeking individuals can’t be trusted as much as high-minded leftists), public funding of political races to ensure that no potential candidates are silenced and their desire to make a difference in the world.
When the left wants people to act a certain way, all they need to do (in their opinion) is to convince a majority of voters to go along with them! Instead of petitioning and raising money for programs they want, they petition and raise money forvotes. Most rightists, despite being statists, are appalled at that idea.
I’m in a hurry and I realize that this post is scattered, but it’s their intangible desire to “make a difference”, using someone else’s money, that puts the left at odds with rightists and capitalists.
Again, I’m not saying that rightists aren’t controlling statists; they are! But it’s the left’s snarky arrogance, like claiming that they’re open-minded for having certain views and expecting to get away with it, like telling us capitalists that taxes are actually voluntary because everyone votes on them, like claiming to be for free speech while shouting down and silencing dissenting views, like claiming to be compassionate with someone else’s money, etc. that makes them much more dangerous than the right.
In case you have started to respond to the previous post here, think about this:
Leftists fundamentally think that government (in other words: coercive force) is the sollution to all problems. Rightists most certainly do not hold that fundamental belief.
Education is the only way to defeat this. First, no, the free market would have probably not built a uniform system of roads on which thousands of people die each year in horrible car crashes. The free market also would have probably not built these roads out of asphalt that must be continuously maintained by government-paid, taxpayer-funded workers or contractors.
Of course, we all know that “free” education is not free in either sense of the word. The free market would have most definitely not created an government-run education system. The free market would not have created any system of education what so ever. Some individuals would have educated their own kids, and some would have sent them off to private schools, and some may have gotten together to form community schools. But regardless, the government would have not gotten involved in the education of our children. Look at what this “free:” education system has gotten us so far. I heard a report on the radio today that said 25% of the kids in the Austin, TX “ISD” were not graduating from high school. Besides the fact that 25% of the kids are not graduating, what kind of job can anyone get with a high school diploma now days?
The free market would have never set any kind of arbitrary minimum wage. The minimum wage, OSHA, and all these other laws and regulatory bodies only keep people unemployed. The capitalist are not pointing a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to work for low wages or under unsafe conditions, but the socialist and communists surely have and surely would if they got their way.
I don’t agree with the dychotomy or characterizations in the OP or the ones made afterwards either. “Rightists” also believe in forcing people to do certain things, and “leftists” also believe in forcing people to not do certain things. The only real difference is a matter of what they personally prefer to force people to do and not do and what their cultural outlook is. Not a significant difference over the means advocated (I.E. political ones). Also, the dychotomy between personal and economic liberty is of course fallacious in the first place. “Rightists” do not actually favor a free economy and “leftists” do not actually favor personal liberty. Furthermore, when I take a look at it, at least in America, “the right” has actually more often favored protectionism over free trade than “the left”. Nor do I buy into the notion that “the right” is individualist while “the left” is collectivist. “The right” has always believed in various forms of collectivism ranging from nationalism to racism to traditionalist communitarianism.
Rothbard’s essay “Left and Right: The Prospects For Liberty” addresses the history of these terms and movements and the fallacy of libertarians assuming that they have some sort of natural alliance with “the right” over “the left”. This assumption exists in part because around and soon after the turn of the 20th century, “the left” became increasingly statist so the old libertarian “left” sought refuge in the muddled “right”. “The right” then co-opted libertarian rhetoric, which it retains to this day, without actually representing the substance of it. The actual libertarian elements were of course quickly purged from “the right” in the 50’s and 60’s. Furthermore, the status quo in America has increasingly been in the direction of right-wing collectivism and economic fascism, not communism. Libertarians in America are fighting against what actually is a corporatist or “state-capitalist” system, not “communism” proper.
The economic system favored by most American “rightists” is not laissez-faire but a synthesis, collusion or patronage between the state and private entities (and an interesting observation that I saw made by Francious Tremblay is that state communism is the logical result of this synthesis between state and buisiness, taking it to the point where the state literally is big buisiness). “The left”, quite correctly, tends to identify the negative effects of this system and then goes on to blame it on a non-existant free market and advocate state-socialism. “The right” tends to either deny the negative effects of this system or engage in apologetics for them and then goes on to trumpet the current system as if it were a free market, defending the status quo and advocating state-socialism of a more corporate sort. The “vulgar libertarian” falls into the same trap that “the right” does sometimes. In either case, it seems clear to me that the American “right”, in large part, never really favored laissez-faire and has always more or less represented corporatism, communitarianism, authoritarianism, traditionalism, perpetual war and theocracy.
For all of the reasons outlined above, and much more, I feel safe in making the claim that libertarian philosophy and historical revisionism makes it quite clear that libertarians have no more reason to trust “the right” than “the left”.
Brainpolice, I actually agree with you more than I think you realize.
My least favorite radio-talkshow host is Neal Boortz, the self-described “libertarian” who is a huge supporter of the Iraq war and the Patriot Act. People like Boortz trash the libertarian brand with scummish policies and rhetoric. I agree than many advances of the state have been done by self-described rightists (Nixon, Reagan, Bush). Reagan aside, the methods that Nixon and Bush used were traditional left-wing, FDR/Obama-style left-wing policies.
At this point, you could easily counter me:
“I see what you’re doing, whenever a self-described rightist expands the government, you just call those policies leftist.” And you’d be right. This is why I don’t like attaching political labels to individuals… and why I prefer using them to describe policies.
And so I will rephrase my point, thanks to your excellent post:
When faced with the choice of expanding the welfare state or expanding the war on drugs, it’s best to expand the war on drugs.
When faced with the choice of nationalized health-care or war, choose war.
When faced with the Fairness Doctrine or a flag-burning ban, it’s best to ban flag-burning.
When faced with steeper progressive tax rates or increased military spending, choose military spending.
Basically, it’s best to look at it issue by issue, and you have to look at individuals on an issue by issue basis. Thanks for helping me clarify my position.
It still seems to me that you’re using a political spectrum that boils down to the idea that the farther right you go, the less government and the farther left you go, the more government. I think this is mistaken because much of what is considered to be “the right” would have to fall on “the left” under such a spectrum. It’s misleading because it still puts foreward the notion that conservatives favor smaller government, which I find only to be remotely true rhetorically rather than substantively. And I find it kind of silly to place people like Hitler on the “far left”. I also find it silly to place the entirety of anarchism on “the far right”, especially considering that it’s typically been a “leftist” movement. It doesn’t make any practical sense to place people like Pierre Joseph Proudhon and Benjamin Tucker on “the right”.
It seems to me that using a horizontal axis is a mistake. I prefer a diagnal one that measures the means advocated or persued (political and coercive and monocentric vs. voluntary and pluralistic/polycentric). “Left” and “right”, in contrast to this diagnal axis of means, are merely personal or cultural preferances. I don’t consider it to really be an axis at all, as the only true axis is the diagnal one measuring the way in which one’s preferances are approached. So my view of the political spectrum takes a neutral stance on “left” and “right” in that either of the two could be either statist or voluntaryist depending on the context. And I think that a diversity of preferances can peacefully co-exist in a voluntary context, while in a coercive and political context they inherently must be imposed from above.
Also, I don’t really understand your four statements there. How about not expanding any of them? Why make a mere comparative analysis and pragmatically pick one over the other when the point should be to reject all of the above? And I don’t necessarily agree with them. War is a very expensive endeavor for a government to engage in. I don’t see how it’s any better than nationalized healthcare. Arguably it’s worse, since it is mass-murder (funded through the same means as nationalized healthcare). It doesn’t make sense to me to side with foreign policy expansions over domestic policy expansions (isn’t that one of the main problems with the contemporary “right” in the first place, I.E. that they tend to have polar opposite positions between foreign and domestic policy?). In principle, both are bad.
I prefer ‘moretist’ and ‘lesstist’ over ‘rightist’ and ‘leftist’. When asked if I’m a ‘righty’ or a ‘lefty’ I tend to reply that I am a ‘lessty’. The question mark that almost invariably appears on the foreheads of others lends me plenty of time to preach the wonders of a truly free society.
BP, I think you mean vertical, not diagonal. The most useful graph I’ve seen is the political compass, which splits the spectrum into four quadrants. On such a graph, I’d definitely prefer voluntaryist capitalists to anything else, and even minarchists to most left-anarchists. As for thecapitalist’s point on those four programmes, I think he means it’s easier to abolish them once they’ve been instated, whereas leftist programmes are not (precisely because they create classes of dependents.) I disagree on both the war and the drug war; both programmes create massive classes of dependents.