Discerning Left from Right

INTRODUCTION

 

Humanity is a social species with an innate drive and unmatched ability to dominate its immediate environment.  Evolving from small wandering groups to permanent settlements to modern nations, collective action has proved successful in a way an individual wandering alone in the wilderness could never equal.  And as people tamed the land to invent agriculture and animal life to create docile domestic herds, the ultimate ambition has always been to enlist the services of other people for personal benefit.

 

Unfortunately this evolution has not been smooth or uniformly beneficial.  From slaves to hired domestic labor to political power, society has been plagued with would be tyrants, petty and otherwise.  The difficult trick is to channel personal ambition to the needs of society at large.  Towards this end, social constructs in many forms have been attempted.  Stability for better or worse is ensured by the ultimate power of state which is to say the consensus of the group at large.

 

A perennial problem has been that we do not learn from our mistakes.  Political movements which seek to exploit an unwary populace need to disguise their self-serving aims.  A common strategy is to accuse political opponents of one’s own worst faults.  Public monies are used to buy personal loyalty creating supporters complicit in hiding the corruption.  And the propaganda from a bought and paid for press core can become so entrenched in the public mind as to be nearly uncorrectable.  

 

Fortunately, the histories of modern political disasters are well documented and common features apparent on any honest examination.  It is important therefore review the written record so as to avoid past mistakes.  Or, as was famously expressed

 

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it [1].”

 

ORIGIN OF LEFT AND RIGHT

 

The classical struggle between democracy and tyranny as in Greek and Roman civilizations, in which nearly all wealth was agricultural, was radically transformed both with the advent of Christian ethics and the associated concept of the “rights of man” as the industrial revolution (c. 1760-1820) created a large and stable middle class.  With technological progress leading to massive population increases, the last quarter of the 18th century witnessed the birth of two modern but diametrically opposed political movements with clearly defined principles and expressions.  These were the American and French Revolutions which today are framed as left wing and right wing.

 

Historically the political terms “right” and “left” originated in the 18th century French Parliament, les États Généraux, where those supporting the Church and King sat on the right and those supporting an overthrow of the established order sat on the left.

 

 

Policy disagreements involved state enforced atheism versus Christian moral principles, socialism versus private property rights, and whether to loot foreign nations to fund a burgeoning welfare state.  Despite the rhetoric, the cause of democratic liberties was not the pivotal issue. 

 

Although the revolutionary period lasted for 22 years (1792-1814), the original constitution citing a “rule of reason” and the “rights of man” was suspended by the socialists at the very beginning (1793) and never reinstituted.  Indeed, the left-wing French revolutionaries created a government undeniably more dictatorial and repressive than the right-wing monarchy it overthrew.   Nor did foreign victims fare much better.

 

In no small sense, the French Revolution was the template for the welfare-state experiments of the 20th century.  The horrors of late 18th century France were repeated in the 20^th century by identical far left-wing movements of National Socialism (Nazis), Italian Marxism (Fascists), and Communism.  In striking similarity, events unfolded roughly as follows [2].

 

1.  The French experiment in socialism began with an attack on religion and a denial of any absolute moral code.  Church property, to include 6-10% of all arable land, was confiscated and priests and nuns were expelled or executed (1789-1790).   The calendar was changed to a 10 day week eliminating Sundays.  Traditional names of Christian saints for children were forbidden and replaced with the names of vegetables and farm implements.

 

And finally to purge any remaining religious vestiges, the left wing French revolutionaries replaced Christian Sunday Services with an atheistic spectacle called a “Cult of Reason” complete with lewd displays of a living “goddess”.  Ironically, this reflexive attack on religion was the antithesis of reason.  But in any event, the sale of Church property reduced public debt permitting increases in welfare benefits.  This initially bought wide-spread support but also disrupted agricultural production.

 

2.  To combat the rising price of foodstuffs, price controls were established on most basic goods under the “General Maximum” (May, 1793) with violations punishable by death.

 

The immediate effect was hoarding and theft threatening public order and leading to wide spread famine.  The simple minded left-wing solution created an underground black market with skyrocketing prices.  Indeed, so severe was the result that even basic foodstuffs did not return to the public market for nearly a decade.

 

In an attempt to mitigate the policy failure, left-wing revolutionaries ordered the army into the countryside to confiscate farmers’ crops outright and to distribute “free” food to the starving masses especially in the cities.  The devastation of rural communities, not to mention the virtual elimination of “seed-corn” for the next planting, lead to a deeper collapse of the economy exacerbating the horror.

 

3.  The extreme level of unrest fostered the concentration of political power in the “Committee of Public Safety” (September, 1793) led by the left wing revolutionary socialist Maximilien Robespierre.

 

 

4.  The infamous historical period known as the “Reign of Terror” was instituted to silence political opposition from all sides.  Thousands of the most vocal opponents, of whom less than ten percent were right-wing aristocrats, were murdered in prison and in public circus beheadings that made previous repression by the monarchy look like a Sunday school picnic.

 

5.  To divert public attention from the failed experiment in socialism, no less than twenty-two years of unprovoked war was inflicted on neighboring countries (1792-1802 and 1802-1814).  Grain, clothing, art treasures, religious records and indeed anything of value was looted with joyous abandon [3a].   What couldn’t be easily transported was often destroyed in place. 

 

Armies were directed to live off the land with no provision for supplies from the government.  Revisionist left wing historians are wont to claim these unprovoked wars were motivated by an altruistic desire to spread French culture embodied in the “rights of man”.  But the unrestrained pillaging of neighboring lands, to include numerous examples of mass murder, so as to support the largesse of a domestic welfare state could only be viewed in a different light by foreign victims not eligible for such benefits.

 

6.   To support this military aggression, a universal draft of all young men aged 18 to 25 or “levée en masse” was instituted (August, 1793).  When rural populations revolted over the loss of farm labor, the death of loved ones in combat, and in a zeal of religious fervor, the left-wing government in Paris suppressed the civil uprising with the “War in the Vendée” and with unbridled barbarity. The final result was the gristly murder of no less than hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens by left-wing forces (Dec., 1793-March, 1796).

 

7.   Despite the manifest horrors and ultimate failure, the French revolution was both the inspiration and template for the no less disastrous experiment of the Russian Revolution [3b].

 

So what went wrong?  Why was the American Revolution so successful and the French Revolution only a decade later so monstrous? 

 

The obvious difference is that the French were left-wing atheistic socialists while the American Founding Fathers created a right-wing republic based on “laissez-faire” capitalism and Christian moral principles.  And the practical results were never more evident.  Nor have they been different in any subsequent and similar instance.  If this seems too simple a principle, there isn’t another easy answer.

 

LEFT WING PRINCIPLES

 

The defining feature of a left-wing ideology is a big-government welfare-state.   From first principles, characteristics of left wing socialism include

 

1.      Denial of any supernatural basis for the creation of the universe or individual souls.  A person only has value in proportion to their potential contribution.

2.      There is thus no logical basis for an absolute moral code as envisioned by religion, especially Christianity.  Ethics are relative and convenience is the only guiding principle. 

3.      All rights are granted by the state for its own purposes and can be removed at will for the greater good.  Everyone should be guided by enlightened politicians with a sense of the larger picture.

4.      Individual earnings and private property can be confiscated to support government welfare programs.

5.      Centralized governmental disbursement of the necessities of life equally to all citizens.

6.      Government should decide what is best.  Typically this translates to state control of the public narrative and suppression of dissent to maximize social harmony.   And especially criticism of those in power can be violently suppressed to maintain public order.

 

The defining principle is that government should use the absolute power of the state to regulate all aspects of life.  A defining motto [4] is

 

“From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.”

 

Political movements organized on left-wing principles have been Socialists, National Socialists (Nazis), Italian Marxists (Fascists), and Communists (Soviet collectivism).  Today they call themselves liberals or more self-servingly, progressives.  In the United States they form the democrat party.  Historically their domestic support has come from slave owners running large factory plantations, labor unions, immigrants, and anyone benefiting from government welfare.  The left wing view is that minority groups are unable to provide for themselves should be treated as children as permanent wards of the state.

 

Needless to say, considering their record of economic disaster and police state terror, left-wing movements expend considerable effort to obfuscate their philosophical and historical roots.

 

RIGHT WING PRINCIPLES

 

In contrast, a right-wing philosophy advocates small-government free-enterprise capitalism.   The logical progression of a right-wing philosophy includes

 

1.      God created every human soul in His likeness with self-awareness and free will.   Everyone is equally endowed with a conscience and innate dignity.

2.      Absolute moral standards thus exist as reflected in a universal sense of right and wrong especially as enshrined in the Ten Commandments.

3.      Each individual has inalienable rights granted by a supernatural Creator which cannot be abridged or removed by the state.  Everyone has a reciprocal duty to respect the rights of others.

4.      Private property rights are paramount especially being allowed to keep what one earns.

5.      Individual responsibility for one’s own welfare or at worst dependence on the voluntary charity of family, friends, and church groups.

6.      Government derives its rights only from the consent of the governed which naturally protects freedom of conscience and free speech.  Typically this means anyone has the right to say what their neighbors and especially those in power don’t like to hear.

 

The defining principle is that coercion by the state should be limited to protecting individual rights against predation by one’s neighbors.  The security this provides allows the individual to prosper according to their own ability and effort.  The corollary is individual responsibility for one’s own welfare without demanding handouts from neighbors enforced by the government which itself produces nothing.  A defining motto [5] might be

 

“Those who will not work, neither shall they eat.”

 

Political movements with a right-wing bent have been European settlers in North America and Christian religious congregations.  Today they are called conservatives (i.e. mainly conserving long standing religious tradition rather than resisting political improvement).  In the United States, they are Republicans.   Historically their domestic support came from abolitionists opposing slavery, families on small independent farms, entrepreneurs and small businesses, corporate interests, and Christian churches.

 

The founding principle of the Republican Party was that slavery was immoral and must be abolished.   The very first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln who famously opposed the democrat slave owners of the South and fought the Civil War to end the treatment of people as property.  And following this tradition today, Republicans believe that minorities are not best served by welfare and dependence on the modern-day slavery of trickle-down crumbs from the government table.

 

Rather the playing field should be leveled so everyone has an equal chance.  Note this emphatically does not mean an equal outcome.  But the right-wing concept of free market capitalism based on Christian moral principles has been the only system in history to provide unassailable freedom, to naturally eliminate inequities, and to maximize the standard of living for everyone.

 

COMPARISON OF LEFT AND RIGHT WING IDEOLOGIES

 

Some distinctions between left and right wing ideologies are given in the following table.

 

 

 

 

RELATIVE RANKINGS

 

Despite often confusing academic rhetoric, political ideologies can be easily classified in order from right to left.   Major modern movements differ in almost all respects a smooth linear progression.  These differences include holding religious principles versus a denial of any moral restrictions, respect for individual versus collective rights, preference for personal responsibility verses massive welfare services, belief in economic principles of free enterprise versus socialism, and the extent to which state police forces are thought necessary to ensure social order.

 

For all of the above clearly stated criteria, the relative and undisputed rankings are as follows:

 

Please note that while right and left wing societies have many superficial similarities, e.g. cities, modern technology, and people going about their daily lives, the founding principles and resultant policies are diametrically opposed.  

 

Again, the right wing is religious and the left wing is not.  The right wing believes in individual rights and the left in the collective good.  The right favors capitalistic free-enterprise and the left favors state regulation and outright ownership of industry.  The right believes in individual responsibility and the left in welfare state largess.  The right wants less government and the left wants more.   The right wing installs constitutional republics and the left wing typically devolves into totalitarian dictatorships.

 

At the root of these differences, is the denial by liberals of any absolute moral code.   This leads to a rejection of the right-wing concept of inalienable rights originating from God and instead believing that all rights are granted by the state.  As a direct consequence, sacrificing a few for the putative benefit of the many is considered morally acceptable. 

 

Left wing socialism also regards everyone’s wages as property of the state as opposed to the right wing principle of private property rights.  In practice the left wing has no scruples confiscating the accumulated wealth of a nation and lavishly redistributing it to buy political support.   Unfortunately, left wing politicians consequently need police state terror to retain power and the perks of privilege as the country sinks into economic ruin. This was certainly true of the socialistic Nazis, Fascists, and Communists whose left wing policy failures resulted in economic chaos and the unifying distraction of WWII.   These socialists eliminated ethnic minorities for political expediency, pursued aggressive war to acquire new territory as in North Africa, Poland and the Ukraine, and all had the same philosophical roots.

 

Indeed it was infamous left wing philosophies that led to victimizing racial minorities as with the democrat slave owners on plantations of the American south, foreign slave labor in left-wing Nazi concentration camps of WWII, domestic slave labor in the communistic gulags of the Soviet Union, and indeed to enslaving any foreigners not able to provide domestic political support.  Historically the left wing rationalization was that slavery was needed by the general population to make large cotton plantations profitable, demonizing minorities was necessary to unify the nation and confiscation of their savings necessary to pay for social services, and invading foreign nations needed to provide spoils of land and loot and slave labor. 

 

On the other hand, the right wing believes individual rights are “inalienable” given by God to each individual by sole virtue of their self-awareness and free will and which therefore cannot be arbitrarily removed by the state.   The right wing founding principle is that “all men are created equal” meaning equal rights and opportunity with government existing only to protect those rights on a level playing field.

 

So it is not reasonable to claim that left wing politicians, because they provide tons of free stuff, are all goodness and light; and then to claim in the same breath that the consequent overregulation, economic ruin, police state terror, and unprovoked foreign wars necessary to maintain these same left-wing politicians in power is a result of their simultaneous embodiment of right wing principles which are derived from the dignity of every human soul.  This is double-think and it is nonsensical.

  

And unbelievably, this is a widespread published claim and unthinking popular belief.  You just cannot make this stuff up.

 

HISTORICAL REVISIONISM

 

In the aftermath of WWII, American liberals began losing support due the similarity of their left-wing policies to the recently discredited National Socialists of Germany (Nazis), Italian Marxists (Fascists), and Communists of the Soviet Union.  And so they needed to change the public perception.

 

In an attempt to rewrite history, the confiscation of accumulated wealth and the subsequent redistribution to the masses was claimed to be a moral imperative.  The fundamental right wing principle of private property rights or being able to keep what one earns was redefined as “greed”.  The right wing concept of government existing only to protect individual rights from predation by one’s neighbors was replaced with the idea of a social safety net.   And right wing patriotism extolling the benefits of a unique national identity with equal opportunity for all on a level playing field was replaced with a left-wing call for “nationalization” of all aspects of life in an attempt to create a socialist paradise looking backwards to the utopian ideals of our hunter-gatherer origins.

 

And the fact that left-wing largess requires massive taxation, state control and outright ownership of industry, and especially the sacrifice of the few for the good of the many, was discounted as irrelevant.  The left-wing thinking was that the end justified the often violent and repressive means. And the consequent economic ruin attendant on lavish and counter-productive spending was blamed not on the natural course of socialism but rather on the opposition of right-wing opponents who frustratingly hindered a full implementation of left-wing policies.

 

In clear opposition, right-wing philosophies are based on Christian moral principles, the dignity of the individual, inalienable rights, lassie-faire capitalism, and small government republicanism. 

 

And so despite liberal claims that the further ideologies move apart on the political spectrum, the more similar they are, the obvious truth is that differences rather increase.  So the trick to hide these similarities is to claim that Nazis, who were Socialists based on Fascism, and the Fascists, who were unabashed Marxists, somehow had secret right wing sympathies.  Considering the historical record, this is not easy to demonstrate.

 

Nevertheless, by relocating National Socialists (German Nazis) and Marxists (Italian Fascists), who incidentally described themselves as left wing big government socialists, to the right side of the spectrum next to small government capitalists and ignoring the uncanny similarity of these left wing philosophies to Communism, which for some unknown reason remains on the left, an “amazing” illusion of a circular convergence was created.

 

 

In any event, a benefit of the liberal obfuscation of political differences is that distinctions between “left” and “right” dissolve in a mishmash of convoluted if erudite fuzzy-mindedness.   The only thing certain in this alternate universe is that whatever good happened was the result of left-wing benevolence.  And whatever bad things left wing psychopaths promoting socialism did to stay in power were the fault of their simultaneous embodiment of right wing principles.

 

Rather the truth is that the National Socialists (Nazis), Italian Marxists (Fascists), and Communists of the Soviet Union and China were, every one without exception, left wing radicals who came to power on extreme socialist agendas.  In their entire history not one of these liberal-progressives had the slightest tendency toward right-wing thinking as derived from the basic principles listed above.

 

CHANGE

 

Human societies are never static and each generation fashions its own mores.   But change is not always progress.  It can obviously be for better or worse.  So the direction is important.

 

Basically, left-wing liberalism seeks to revert to the dawn of humanity when society consisted of isolated families or small groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers.  Food and the basic necessities of life were shared more or less equally.  If a hunter was fortunate or a gatherer stumbled on an abundance of roots, these individually rare events were sufficient to sustain the group in aggregate.  Private property rights were practically unknown and everything was effectively held in common.  Indeed all foraging societies have strong taboos against private property ownership.

 

But for most of human history, we lived in small groups of closely related individuals.  This organization guided our evolution as a species and shaped our deepest instinctive responses.   Typically a single strong man or tribal leader would govern in an oligarchy resembling nothing so much as a modern cult.  Living on the edge, individual expression was discouraged.  All left wing movements express a yearning for and seek a return to these primitive forms.

 

Eventually humanity advanced to form permanent settlements and early civilizations. These city states found it necessary to invent a rule of law.  Natural rights of revenge were vested in an unassailable Prince who wielded the absolute power of the state to settle scores and prevent destructive civil strife.  Within this protective cocoon individuals were free to become specialists with greatly increased productivity and to trade their particular wares in a central marketplace which provided all other necessities.  In this environment, right-wing concepts of private property rights and self-reliance became an absolute necessity.   In time, the efficiency of vesting the power of the state in a single individual was found wanting.   Right wing thinking progressed to develop less efficient but constitutional democracies and republics in order to preserve individual freedoms [6]. 

 

Unfortunately as society becomes increasingly complex, individual rights to privacy, intellectual property, internet access, and a host of other novel challenges are endangered by the ever present greed of fellow citizens and especially power hungry politicians.  The challenge of a right-wing ideology has always been to look forward and to continuously adapt to protect individual rights against predation by one’s neighbors, foreign and domestic.

 

Liberalism on the other hand has a mantra that is static and looks backward to our earliest times.  The collective good is the sole unchanging and defining principle.  Unfortunately in practice this means an “enlightened” bureaucrat or dictator is necessary to enforce compliance.

 

The liberal illusion of progress is based on buying votes with a one-time gift to the poor.  Those, who by whatever means have acquired wealth, resist this redistribution.  Unfortunately it is the most productive citizens in a right wing capitalist society who accumulate the most wealth.   The forced and inefficient redistribution of goods destroys individual initiative, discourages investment, and of necessity reduces the total economic output forcing ever more people into poverty.  In fact, the number in need always increases exponentially.   The downward spiral is self reinforcing as left-wing socialists desperately confiscate ever more accumulated wealth in order to fund ever greater largess.

 

Basically the left looks backwards to simpler times while the right celebrates the increased complexity of modern society and looks forward to continuously adapt to protect individual rights.  The difference is that the left wing espouses unworkable and unsustainable equality of results while the right wing promotes equal opportunity which in practice is sustainable and which has always worked.

 

And the backward looking philosophy of the left to some imaginary and non-existent utopia where harmony rules in an elementary state of nature has invariably built a road to hell, paved with the well-known good intentions.

 

SIMILARITY OF LEFT WING MOVEMENTS

 

In a desperate attempt to distance modern liberalism from identical 20^th century left-wing ideologies, to wit National Socialists (Nazis), Marxists (Fascists), and Communists, fine distinctions were drawn but more to obfuscate than clarify.  Rather their similarities are more than obvious. 

 

All three were atheistic, massive welfare state, big government totalitarian regimes.  They all denied individual rights in favor of a collective good.  They came to power by confiscating the accumulated wealth of the nation and buying support with massive welfare excess.  And when the founding “seed-corn” money ran out and economic ruin was imminent, they persecuted domestic minorities and engaged in aggressive foreign wars to fund ever more free stuff.

 

Because any honest consideration of conscience would expose the horror of left-wing policies and practice, the liberal’s first choice is a violent repression of any criticism.  Fortunately this is not always possible in a free society.  So in a more subtle manner, liberals make the claim that their right wing opponents are somehow racists or war mongers wanting to pillage neighboring societies.  This of course is the exact opposite of what the history books record.

 

In desperation to continue unsustainable spending, left-wing victims typically extend beyond wealthy domestic classes and racial minorities treated as slaves (e.g. negroes on plantations of the American South, slave labor in German concentration camps, gulags of the Soviet union) to include non-voting populations in foreign nations.

 

Left-wing movements necessarily develop large bureaucracies to increase taxes and to expand social services.  Unfortunately, shifting resources from the productive to the unproductive, rationalized as compassion, nevertheless reduces total economic output.   The consequences of socialism are always a downward spiral of ever increasing numbers of the needy and an inability of the state to pay for it.

 

Again it is not reasonable to claim that the good things left wing dictators do, like distribute tons of free stuff and make the trains run on time [7], is because they are good, and then to say the bad things they do to stay in power like mass murder tens of millions or institute police state terror or invade other countries, are because of their simultaneous right wing beliefs, whose defining principle is a respect for inalienable individual rights based on the Christian concept of brotherly love.  And it was only in the decade after WWII, that revisionist liberal academics invented the theory that the largess of these left wing movements demonstrated inherent virtues while their murderous hubris demonstrated a simultaneous and incredible embodiment of right wing vices.  

 

Putative evidence for this nutty delusion is that while 20th century left wing dictators systematically eliminated right-wing opponents, they initially massacred their left-wing competition as well.   But this was only because, if the times and public mood favored the election of left-wing social saviors, other liberals were the greater immediate threat.  Nor were these tyrants any more accommodating to foreign nations especially if they espoused similar ideologies.  Communist dictator Vladimir Lenin in sentiment famously referred to his fellow left wing but non-communist colleagues as “useful idiots” who he ruthlessly removed in the early stages of his rise to power [8].    The Asian communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, routinely betrayed fellow anti-French revolutionaries for monetary reward and to eliminate competition.

 

As a consequence, apparent differences between Nazi Germany (National Socialists) and Marxist Italy (Fascists) on one hand and Communism as practiced by the USSR are only superficial. 

 

This is in dramatic contrast to the right-wing views of the first American President George Washington who noted in 1796 [9].

 

“Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

 

In 1798 John Adams echoing the right-wing Christian principles on which America was founded and which today form the bedrock of the Republican Party, put it more clearly [10]

 

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our [American] Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

 

NATIONALISM
 

“Nationalism” means very different things in left and right wing philosophies.

 

The left wing concept of “nationalism” historically means to confiscate all industry beginning with stifling overregulation.  It means the sacrifice of the few, e.g. minorities and foreigners, for the good of the many who share a national identity of language, cultural norms, and distinct racial profiles.  To the left-wing liberal, the state grants rights and can alter or remove them at any time.

 

The rationalization was used by democrat slave owners in pre-bellum American southern states.  Left wing liberals have always claimed that the Christian right wing principle that “all men are created equal” has no validity.  Rather outright racism inherent in left-wing thinking allowed, even demanded, the sacrificing of some (e.g. slaves, wealthy minorities, foreign nations, and anyone with a proclivity for hard work and attendant economic success) for the greater good of their domestic supporters.

 

Historically, early societies were governed by a tribal chieftain or king leading naturally to the nepotism of a dynasty.  In the first city states, the right wing concept of private property rights evolved from a more primitive left-wing hunter-gatherer collective socialism.   Unfortunately humans have fallen from grace and tend to indulge their baser instincts to take from others rather than to produce for themselves.    Left-wing socialists encourage these disordered appetites by confiscating goods from more productive citizens and engage in foreign wars to buy domestic support by the distribution of spoils. 

 

In stark contrast, the right-wing concept of “nationalism” means the creation of a society that respects the human rights of each and every individual because they originate from God and not the state.  These rights are a consequence of a soul having consciousness and a free will not strictly determined by natural law.   They include freedom of conscience, free speech, and especially the right to private property as in being able to keep what one earns free from the confiscatory taxation inherent in socialism.  In this right-wing sense, the sole purpose of government is not to provide basic necessities of life but rather to provide a level playing field with equal opportunity.  

 

And so the attendant slogan of “Making One’s Country Great” is the derived from the right wing principle that “all men are created equal” meaning a level playing field with equal opportunity The idea is that the nation as a whole can be made great by nurturing and protecting individual rights from predation by greedy neighbors and power hungry politicians.   Hopefully it is also apparent that artificially mandated “equal results” are entirely incompatible with right-wing thinking.

 

Indeed, a recurring nightmare of left-wing liberals is that right-wing charter schools will begin to educate minorities and break the liberal welfare mold of intergenerational poverty.  Newly educated minorities will start earning good salaries, start resenting taxes, and will start to vote for right-wing political parties respecting private property.  Literally trillions of dollars in government corruption of every description are at stake as the outpouring of vitriol from the liberal left-wing demonstrates.

 

As such, right wing “nationalism” is a fundamentally different concept than that of the left wing.  And so without qualification, the much abused term of “nationalism” is in no way descriptive of either philosophy. 

 

While antiquated systems of war lords and hereditary peerage had both left and right wing features, the left wing wants more government and the right wing wants as much independence from government as possible.  In practice this means the right-wing installs protective limits and structural barriers to governmental coercion while the left-wing installs outright or bureaucratic tyranny.  

  

To combat self-destructive left-wing forms of government, the right wing attempts to limit government, as in the Magna Carta or the English parliament to counter-balance the House of Lords, or the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution with its concept of inalienable rights, evolved to protect individual liberties.  In many societies, especially in Christian Europe, the authority of the Church acted as a brake on the excesses of the monarchy.   Indeed “clerical immunity” had protected religious scribes from the jurisdiction of civil courts and provided a moral standard which was often in conflict with royal prerogative.

 

While the right-wing French monarchy (Ancien Regime), and to some extent the French Cardinals and Bishops of the Catholic Church, might seem to have been national institutions, the left wing armed forces, "Armée Révolutionnaire Française”, which were intended to spread the benefits of liberal enlightenment and French culture to neighboring countries, was no less so.   And only the most confused thinking could deny this manifest truth.

 

In the last century socialistic governments sacrificed the wealthy, the unusually gifted and productive, and especially self-segregating minorities such as the Jews for the benefits of the greater numbers.   And in contradiction to right wing principles of inalienable rights granted by a supernatural Creator, extolled the absolute power of the state which alone was thought to be the source of all individual rights.  In due course this reckless and mostly wasteful largess proved unsustainable, and so the left-wing tyrants, (Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Mao-tesung, etc.) turned to loot the resources of neighboring countries as they had their own populations by initiating aggressive foreign wars. 

 

And so beginning with the American and French revolutions, the right wing continues to evolve towards free-market constitutional republics while the left wing reverts to communistic big government welfare-states typically run by a dictator.   Without a right-wing belief in a supernatural agency and an absolute standard of morality which underlies the universal moral code everyone feels in their heart and recognizes in their conscience, liberals have only the relative standard of what is convenient.  Unfortunately, with the absolute power of the state this always devolves into tyranny.

 

THE TRAGEDY OF FREE STUFF

 

The concept of ‘free” means very different things in left wing and right wing philosophies.

 

All left wing movements promote the comforting idea that socialism will reduce suffering.  Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth.  Government is by far the least efficient system to provide for the needs of the individual.  Politicians have not the slightest idea how to run a business and succeed on good looks and rabble rousing speeches that are as smooth and glitzy as they are vacuous.  What they are good at is confiscating money in taxes and spreading it around like drunken sailors rioting in the public square.

 

People are very hard to help and attempting to protect people from the consequences of bad choices is often a thankless and futile task.  It is a hard truth that no one who depends on charity, will ever have even approximately the same standard of living as those who provide for themselves.

 

Basically the left claims compassion and then enacts policies that destroy the very lives of those they claim to help.  The left wing philosophy of government is to take away from those who are successful, punish their industry and success, and give to those who are less successful.  If those who have painfully managed to accumulate wealth over a lifetime of effort have no rights to their earnings, which can be confiscated by the state and used to buy the support of those who have less, then no one has any rights at all.  Indeed any one to include any subset or cross section of the poor, can be sacrificed at will for the good of the many.

 

And liberal politicians always take the easiest path.  If a hard working supermarket has the best food at the lowest prices, they also tend to have the highest profits and tend to open more and more stores.  Left wing socialism preferentially confiscates wealth from the most productive workers and punishes their efforts.   Every tax or regulation means more stores are not opened, more jobs are not created, and prices for the necessities necessarily increase.

 

On the plus side, the poorest get a trickle down gift of crumbs from the government table.  This charity is admirable in its intent but because it is undeserved, i.e. not actually earned but gifted to the poor by virtue only of their existence, it reduces motivation for improvement which was previously in proportion to their need.   And the waste in left-wing socialism is legendary.   Typically liberal socialism distributes to the poor only 1/3^rd to 1/8^th of the monies actually collected.  No private charity could survive the publicity such waste would generate nor the criminal penalties for theft such fraud would entail.

 

Unfortunately those who are hurt the most by the reduction in economic efficiency are the poor.  Every exercise of government power for better or worse eliminates private sector jobs and raises private sector prices across the board.  In practice, the inherent inefficiencies of socialism does not improve the lives of the poor but rather brings the rest of society down to their miserable level.   Needless to say, left wing bureaucrats and politicians are extremely sensitive to such appearances which if publically appreciated would not permit their survival.  As a consequence, left-wing socialists always need to shut down reasoned dissent with brute force.

 

And as the economy crumbles, socialists need additional sources of wealth to loot to placate the ever increasing number of those in need.   Invariable they move to nationalize every aspect of society.    Indeed, all the great left-wing socialistic movements of the 20^th century all had nearly identical histories.  German National Socialism (Nazis), Italian Marxism (Fascists), and Soviet Collectivism (Communists) confiscated private bank accounts, took control of all private corporations in the nation, and in partial compensation attempted to provide the basic necessities people had heretofore provided for themselves.  The immediate consequence of this spending spree in all cases in Germany, Italy, and Russia, was a collapse of the economy.  But as the money ran out, left-wing governments facing a revolt at home in all cases launched unprovoked wars of aggression to hide their domestic failures.   But then theft has always been easier than doing hard work for a living.

 

The problem of left-wing ideologies is a fundamental denial of the existence of any religious basis for absolute moral standards substituting instead the relativism of the greatest good for the greatest number.  The right wing Christian concept of “inalienable” individual rights granted by a supernatural Creator as enshrined in the US Constitution is discarded in favor of the left-wing ideology of convenience and the sacrifice of the few for the good of the many.

 

LIBERTY IS NOT LICENSE

 

A lot of confusion in political discourse is associated with the word “free” which means very different things to democrats and Republicans.  Basically liberals want free access to someone else’s money collected by the government which produces nothing while conservatives want everyone to have the freedom and responsibility to pursue their own desires on a level playing field. 

 

In the world of the left-wing liberal, free means the unqualified distribution of nearly everything to each and every citizen by sole virtue of their existence.   The idea is that all food, housing, health care, education, a minimum hourly wage, guaranteed income for the unemployed, retirement benefits, free Obama-phones, and a whole host of luxuries should be gifted from the unlimited stocks of free money otherwise languishing in government warehouses.  What is missing of course is the fact that the government produces nothing but only taxes those who do produce the goods and services necessary for life.  Every government dollar gifted to the unemployed or the student or the lobbyist or politician comes directly out of the wallet of some working man or woman who necessarily has less of what they themselves earned.

 

On the other hand, the Republican concept of “free” is that every citizen has equal rights under the law and should be free to exercise those rights to the extent they do not harm others.  In practice this means everyone should have an equal opportunity to succeed and be happy to the extent their effort and ability and wit and luck takes them.  The right-wing is distinguished from the left by some the following precepts:

 

1.      The hardest path in the short run (e.g. staying in school, working hard, staying sober and drug free, etc.) is the easiest path in the long run.

2.      Not just the individual but society at large benefits from hard work and a moral attitude.

3.      Government bureaucrats are our hired servants and not our friends or our superiors or our masters. 

4.      Government has no inherent right to anyone’s money especially without our consent.  

5.      Nor can left-wing politicians spend our money better on our behalf than we would ourselves. 

6.      And fellow citizens who fail to provide for their retirement or home fire insurance or health care have no unqualified claim on the money of their neighbors who did so provide for themselves.  It is not practical, but might put things in perspective if those seeking welfare were required to first solicit a sufficient number of their immediate neighbor’s signatures.

 

The right wing point is that we may be and perhaps should be charitable but not coerced.  We only deserve what we ourselves earn, all else is a gift. 

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

In general, liberals trade individual freedom for the unconditional motherly care of the state while conservatives prefer individual rights and the attendant responsibility.

 

The appeal and problem of liberalism is that it wraps itself in the flag making grandiose promises impossible to fulfill.  It caters to the gullible, the young, the uneducated, and especially to the desperately downtrodden.  Unfortunately in practice, left-wing policies invariably destroy an economy uprooting the social structure, especially of that of the family.   The plight of the poor is not improved but rather everyone is reduced to poverty.  If promises are too good to be true, they usually are.  So to get and maintain power, liberals find it necessary to confuse the issues.   Some ubiquitous but absurdly false left-wing claims include

 

1.      The claim that liberalism improves the lives of the poor rather than impoverishing everyone.

2.      The claim that liberals are altruistic and want what is best for society rather than for an enlightened cadre of politicians and technocrats. 

3.      The claim that when liberals institute massive state welfare programs, the resulting regulation and control is somehow democratic rather than tyrannical.

4.      The claim that the liberal tendency to use the absolute power of the state to violently silence reasoned dissent is in the best interest of everyone.

5.      The claim that giving free stuff to everyone is a left wing virtue while the resultant economic ruin and police state terror necessary for left wing dictators to remain in power is because they have suddenly acquired right-wing proclivities.

6.      The claim that because left-wing governments invariably and preferentially eliminate competing left-wing demagogues, their police state abuses are a right-wing philosophy.

7.      The claim that left-wing police states which look backwards to a utopian ideal are “progressive”, akin to technological innovation, while conservatives who must continuously adapt to preserve individual freedoms are not.

 

The difficulty for liberals is that in youth the idealism of perfect forms is the enemy of many practical and beneficial endeavors.  Only as the realities of life sink in, are the simplistic assumptions of liberal left-wing ideologies found wanting.  Note that right-wing conservatives do not to say that solving problems is impossible or undesirable, just that it is hard.   In any event, some arrogant left wing assumptions that tend to fall by the wayside with maturity include

 

1.      The world is a simple place and age old problems can be easily solved.

2.      Liberals are smarter than everyone else and as a consequence should be put in absolute charge of everyone’s money and lives for efficiency.

3.      Liberals only want what is best so any opposition needs to be violently silenced or eliminated.

4.      There is a titanic struggle involving massive forces of good and evil so extreme measures are justified to make the world a better place in the end.

5.      Quick fix left-wing solutions, which have uniformly and disastrously failed throughout history, can be made to work this time by a new generation of smarter liberal-progressives.

 

Despite the differences between the American and French Revolutions, some convergent truths emerge.  The famous quote, originally from American Revolutionary and President John Adams (1735-1826) and independently expressed by French Premiers Francois Guizot (1787-1874) and Georges Clemenceau (1849-1929), can be paraphrased as [11]

 

“If you are not a left-wing liberal when you are young, it means you have no heart; but if you do not become a right-wing conservative as you get older, it means you have no brains.”

 

REFERENCES

 

1.      “The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress”, by George Santayana, (1905-1906).

2.      “The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802”, by T.C.W. Blanning,  St. Martins Press, New York, 1996, ISBN 978-0-340-56911-5; ISBN 978-0-340-64533-8.

3.      (a) “The Guillotine and the Cross”, by Warren Carroll, Christendom Press, (October, 1991).

The first ten years from 1792 to 1802 were known as the French Revolutionary Wars and the last eight from 1802 to 1814 as the Napoleonic Wars in which the gifted military genus operated at the direction of the French revolutionary socialist government.  In succession the history of the French Revolution included

a)      April, 1792                  - France declares unprovoked war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia

b)      November, 1792         - France occupies Belgium

c)      February, 1793            - France declares unprovoked war on Great Britain, Holland and various German States

d)      March, 1793               - France declares unprovoked war on Spain

e)      October, 1793             - Constitution suspended and left-wing Revolutionaries empowered for “the duration of the war”

f)       1794                            - Widespread famine throughout the entirety of France

g)      1796                            - France declares unprovoked war on Italian City States

h)      1798                            - France declares unprovoked war on Egypt with its abundant stores of grain

i)        etc.                              - and many more

(b) Ibid. pages 27, 198-201.

4.      Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program”, 1875.

5.      New Testament Bible, 2 Thessalonians 3:10.

6.      The quote by Winston Churchill (House of Com­mons, 11 Novem­ber 1947 as quoted in “Churchill by Himself” edited Richard Langworth (2008), page 574) comes to mind, to wit

 

“Many forms of Gov­ern­ment have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pre­tends that democ­ra­cy is per­fect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democ­ra­cy is the worst form of Gov­ern­ment, except for all those oth­er forms that have been tried …”

 

7.      Left-wing big government would want to nationalize railroads and transportation.  This is part and parcel of left wing thinking to let a central government control all aspects of life.  The right wing wants to let private industry compete in a free marketplace and believes that unaccountable government bureaucrats have no business or expertise or real interest in dictating train schedules.

8.      “The Khrushchev Pattern”, by Gibney, Frank (1961), published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce.  "Lenin's Private War" by Lesley Chamberlain (2007), published by St. Martin's Press.  Note that this quote is not literal but reflects a lifetime summary of writings and policies.

9.      “Farwell Address” by President George Washington given on September 19, 1796.

10.  “Address to Massachusetts Militia”, John Adams, 11 October 1798, given in Quincy, MA to the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts.

11.  President Thomas Jefferson recorded this quote by John Adams in personal correspondence.  It was also attributed to French Premiers in William Gurney Benham‘s Book of Quotations.

 

APPENDIX: ANARCHY

 

Anarchy (literally “without rulers”) is the result of moving to the far right sometimes called “rugged individualism”.   But because of left wing attempts to obfuscate their policies and especially their results with amorphous propaganda, it may be useful to consider the term in greater detail.

 

Strictly speaking, “anarchy” is a society without a formal structure of laws.  But to the extent this paucity of government is chaotic, that is a derived and not a primary meaning.   The point is that even though right-wing anarchy and left-wing socialism (e.g. Nazis, Fascists, and Communists) both create miserable living conditions, that does not make the two similar beyond the most superficial consideration.

 

If there is any doubt, consider the differences.  The right is deeply religious and the left is atheistic.  The right believes in inherent rights of the individual and the left denies them entirely.   The right-wing has few laws and fewer police and the left-wing supports massive bureaucracies that regulate every aspect of life with alphabet soup names like the KGB or FBI or CIA or MI6.  The remedy for the right is minimal taxes for the protection of individual rights and for the left is the elimination of regulation, confiscation of wealth, and secret police forces.

 

Only the fuzziest of thinking could equate the two.  What the left wing wants you to believe is that liberal-progressive policy disasters are not their fault because extremes on both sides, like left-wing socialism and right-wing anarchy, are somehow convergent.   Or that there are so many shades of grey that left and right wing differences are indistinguishable.  This is self-serving nonsense.

 

One attempt to confuse the issue is a fanciful left-wing theory called “anarchism” which sounds like right wing “anarchy” but is entirely different.  Basically anarchism is a rejection of government control for that of a less well structured but no less coercive collectivism as might in practice be experienced in an idealized labor union or hippy commune.   Basically laws would be not committed to writing but instead would depend on citizens of good will coming to harmonious and unanimous agreement as the need arises.   Note this does not mean coercion is absent but only that it is limited to those features of life in which one has a vested and perhaps transitory interest.

 

While small and isolated examples of both such societies have briefly existed, they were more idealized utopian experiments than any sustainable form of government.   The fundamental difference is the left wing’s rejection of any right wing religious basis for absolute individual rights and such concepts as private property, not to mention a fundamental disagreement over the perils of human failings.  The results are invariably divergent social norms and institutions.

 

APPENDIX:  CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES

 

Another misconception is to confuse early Christian communities with superficially similar Communist farming collectives.  Christians in small enclaves and subject to dedicated persecution by the state banded to together to share the necessities of life from common stores.   The communists on the collective also enforced the sharing of everything.   The crucial and deciding and profound difference was that the one believed in the dignity of the individual which no earthly force could remove and the other denied that entirely.   But this small spark of light made all the difference.  From this humble beginning the right-wing Christian community prospered and evolved into the American Constitutional Republic while left-wing socialism has always dissolved into dictatorships and police state terror not excluding the occasional mass genocide.