My children are reaching the age when they need to gain a deeper understanding of the world in which they live. They certainly need to know about politics. An understanding of politics leads to a better understanding of the self since knowing how you stand on political issues will highlight those issues that are important to you.
I’ve been thinking how I could best explain the differences between The Left and The Right. As always, I knew that writing a blog on the subject would help me clarify my own understanding.
Firstly, however, I need to lay out some groundrules: This blog will describe the differences between Left and Right as they exhibit themselves today. I am not referring to the Tories of the 18th century. Nor am I referring to the Left at the start of the Labour movement in the 20th century. Furthermore, some people say that ‘left’ and ‘right’ are meaningless terms these days. They say “well, I am right wing on some things and left wing on other things”. I would respond that you are just trying to make yourself sound interesting. Either that or you’re too embarrassed to admit you’re right wing. There are fundamental differences between how those from the left and right think. Michael Malice asks a single question to determine if someone is left or right wing:
‘Do you think that some people are better than others?’
If you answer ‘Yes’, you are right wing.
If you answer with a speech, you are left wing.
I thought that was a great way of getting to the heart of the matter. All the rest is just chaff.
Here we go:
Government:
The Right believes in small government, i.e. a government that doesn’t put its nose into all aspects of our lives. We believe everyone should be free to live their lives with the minimum of intervention from the government. The Right will shy away from rules and regulations. The Right believe in personal responsibility.
The Left wants Big Government. The Left like to be told what to do. As such, Leftists will always look to The State to solve the big problems of the day. An example of this was evident during the 2020 Covid19 calamity: the Left wanted the government to step in and impose restrictions. The Left supported firmer restrictions at every step of the process. The Left put a great deal of trust in governments to fix things because the Left believe that everything that is wrong with society can be corrected by government regulation. This is why Socialism is so appealing to Leftists because it is a system of total government control that can be designed to create utopia. However, I am reminded of something I heard Bret Weinstein say during a podcast:
“The future cannot be designed, it must be discovered”.
The Left also have controlling tendencies which they satisfy by having a government that sticks its nose into everyone’s business. The Left love regulation: it’s their way of imposing conformity.
An example of the Left’s belief that the State us the answer to all our problems is this: the Blair / Brown government of 1997 – 2010 employed 950,000 more public sector workers in 2010 than it inherited in 1997. How else were the many rules and regulations introduced by this Government to be overseen?
Insecurity is a common theme with Leftists which is one of the reasons why young people are Leftists but are likely to become Rightists with age (as they become more confident dealing with the world around them).
The Poor:
The Right believes that the rising tide lifts all boats. This translates into giving a free hand to the wealth creators to create wealth. Increasing wealth leads to increased jobs and increased standards of living for everyone. Also, the Right realise there are optimal tax rates that maximise tax revenue. Once taxes increase beyond certain rates, the tax revenue declines. See ‘Laffer Curve’. The Right also believe that reward should be earned, that people shouldn’t be given something for nothing, that people should be motivated to strive for a better life and that welfare payments destroy such motivation. In effect, I like to believe that all Rightists believe in ‘equality of opportunity’.
The Left go further than supporting ‘equality of opportunity’. They largely support ‘equality of outcome’. To that end, The Left believes that the rich should be clobbered financially to fund the poor, preferably through the Welfare State. A free market economy creates large wealth inequalities. Leftists don’t like this because their philosophy is that everyone should be equal. The Left would always prefer a lower average standard of living with less wealth ineqality than a higher standard of living allied to greater wealth inequality. The lower standard of living is always the result because the Left’s tax policies are a disincentive to wealth creation: the rich move to other countries and the future entrepreneurs are not as successful at creating new products due to the combination of the punishing tax regime and the increased rules and regulations implemented by Leftist governments that increase costs and make profits hard to come by.
However, the Left used to support the white working class. They no longer care about the white working class. In fact they now dislike this demographic because this group do not buy into the identity politics that the Left has embraced.
The Blank Slate:
The Right believe that people are different: differing intelligence; differing conscientiousness; differing levels of ambition; differing levels of imagination; differing physical abilities. These differences cause the different levels of success amongst people. The Right recognise that inequalities of human aptitude exist and those with more aptitude should be allowed to benefit from those qualities. It is fair and correct that people should be able to benefit if they have good ideas or they want to work harder etc. Recognition and reward of talent allows more successful products and services to be produced which raises the standard of living for everyone.
The Left start with the premise that everyone is the same and that it is only life experiences that create differences. The Left believe that we all have the same potential. They believe that nurture, not nature, is responsible for any and all differences. This is the ‘Blank Slate’ philosophy. Steven Pinker destroyed the ‘Blank Slate’ philosophy in his eponymous book.
The Left believes that certain people do less well at life because they have not had the same opportunities as other people. The Left also believe that structural biases mean that women and minority groups suffer from prejudices that hold them back. The Left believe that the poor are held back by growing up in poverty. Or blacks are disadvantaged because they have to deal with racism. Using this philosophy, leftists can excuse any group that isn’t successful and blame it on ‘structural’ issues. The Left avoids discussing why East Asians and Jews aren’t affected by racism.
Personal Responsibility:
The Right take responsibility for their actions.
The Left do not take responsibility for their actions because they believe in the Blank Slate (see above). Since they believe they absorb and are moulded by societal pressures, Leftists blame those societal pressures when they do something wrong. Nothing is ever their fault. There’s always something they try to hang their bad behaviour on. My wife just angrily told me that major Hollywood libtard Ben Affleck has just blamed his recent months-long period of alcohol fuelled debauchery and degeneracy on feeling trapped as a husband and father. You see, it wasn’t his fault: it was his family’s fault. And with one leap he was free. Check it out with other celebrity lefties: they always play the blame game.
Inequality:
The Right accepts that Successful people will – and should – earn more money than unsuccessful people. The Right adjusts for this by claiming more tax from successful people. This is the basis of progressive tax rates. This is why in UK, 29% of ALL income tax is paid by the top 1% of earners. However, the Right accepts that successful people deserve to have a better quality of life than less successful people because they are the income generators. Successful people run the businesses that employ people and so grow the economy. This is the carrot offered by the Right: work hard and do well and you can enjoy a good lifestyle.
The Left is inclined towards imposing equality on everyone because they believe that is ‘fair’. What they don’t appreciate is that people are not equal and never will be. If you make everyone the same, then there are no longer incentives for working harder or for having good ideas. So people will stop doing this. This is why Eastern Europe fared so badly, economically, under Socialism: incentive had been removed. This is a refusal to accept innate differences among humans.
Moral Codes
Jonathan Haidt, in his book ‘The Righteous Mind’, described how he had discovered 6 moral foundations that guide people’s political beliefs:
1. Care/ harm foundation
2. Liberty/ oppression foundation
3. Fairness / cheating foundation
4. Loyalty / betrayal foundation
5. Authority / subversion foundation
6. Sanctity / degradation foundation
Haidt showed that liberals, i.e. The Left, only use 3 of the 6 moral foundations in their morality (Care, Liberty and Fairness) whereas conservatives have a morality built on all 6 moral foundations. In effect, The Left abide by a narrower moral code than The Right.
Haidt further concludes that this means that conservatives can understand the political positions of liberals much better than liberals are able to understand the positions adopted by conservatives.
The Family:
The Right believe the family is the basic social unit. The family is a strong, stable unit that supports everyone in it and that members of a family can look out for each other. The strength of families mean that The Right do not look to the Government as their primary means of support.
The Left believe in individualism and, therefore are often found trying to undermine the family unit. The Left realise that single people are much more likely to look to The State for security. The Left want individuals to be reliant on the State for support, rather than each other. As such, the Left make divorce ever easier to encourage families to break down, and increase welfare so that the government can fulfill the role of ‘husband’ for single mothers. They also try to prevent families occurring by encouraging women to work so they are not dependent on a man. Once in work The Left will give women the message that if they give up work to have a baby they will be missing out on their career. The Left also makes abortion ever easier. It is no coincidence that Marxist organisations like Black Lives Matter declare their intention to destroy the nuclear family as per this text that appears on the BLM website:
‘We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable’
Tradition:
The Right has a strong attachment to tradition and history. Rightists agree with the sentiment that
‘Unless we learn the lessons from history, we are condemned to repeat its mistakes’.
Everything that Western culture has achieved has been built upon the efforts of previous generations.
The traditions that have passed to us are the connection we have to our ancestors. Those traditions ground us. Those traditions are part of our shared history. Those traditions encapsulate the culture of the country.
The Left hates tradition because tradition acts as a brake on the change they want to instill on society. The Left is always trying to re-interprete history for political gain. Leftists always try to destroy statues and call for changes to the way history is taught in order to break those connections to our past and facilitate the process of change that they promise will make everything better, but never does. We saw this during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 where protesters immediately turned to pulling down or defacing statues and other historical monuments.
The left is for everything that divides us — multiculturalism, critical race theory, sexual indoctrination in the schools and unisex bathrooms — and against everything that unites us.
Change:
The Right support slow, gradual changes that are carefully considered and will deliver benefits for the greater good. The changes that are introduced by the Right build on what came before.
The Left are very dissatisfied with the institutations and traditions that, they believe, act as a brake on the radical change that, they believe is needed. You see, the only type of change the Left believe in is radical change. The Left want to destroy everything in order to rebuild everything in the progressive manner that will finally deliver Leftist heaven here on Earth. This is why Leftists have no respect for any of the institutions and traditions that define the country: in their view it all needs to go.
Immigration:
The Right believe that immigration must be controlled to ensure that only people that can make a positve contribution to the country are allowed to move here. Also, the Right is interested in protecting the cultural traditions of the indigenous population. As such, the Right believe that immigrants should assimilate the culture of their adopted country. Commonality of culture in a country ensures high levels of social cohesion and social trust. Hence, Rightists support the concept of a multi-ethnic society but not a multi-cultural one.
The Left believe that everyone who wants to move here should be allowed because that is ‘fair’ . Also the Left are petrified of being thought racist. As such, they feel that allowing all race and cultures to move to UK proves how not racist they are. Also, the Left knows that immigrants from 2nd and 3rd world countries are more likely to vote for Leftist parties. The Left also appreciates that mass immigration gives them a chance to portray national history and traditions as racist and so downplay these cultural markers. The Left can use immigration to change the national culture in the name of ‘inclusiveness’ and, thereby, implement their progressive agenda. Leftists love to promote foreign cultures but rarely their own culture because they dislike their own culture.
Multiculturalism:
The Right recognises that multiculturalism leads to tensions: differences between groups of people – religion, food, language, colour – lead to wars. Look at the wars over the last 500 years between Catholics and Protestants: a small difference of religious doctrine leading to confrontation and persecution on a massive scale. That is just one small example of the trouble caused by different cultures. Now what’s going to happen if we force lots of different cultures to live side by side within the same country? Even Angela Merkel said, in 2010, that multiculturalism had failed.
The Left don’t study history very much so they don’t understand the reasons for most wars. Leftists believe that wars are caused by ignorance and so if people of different cultures could live side by side, tensions would reduce as people saw that different cultures are nothing to be fearful of. It’s a nice idea but, as usual with Leftist philosophy, detached from reality. The fact that social cohesion is very low in multicultural regions is evidence that people do not trust people from different cultures. That lack of trust causes tensions. Humans have evolved to want to be around like-minded people.
Meritocracy:
The Right believe that everyone should be free to reach their potential and that opportunities should be offered to the best person based on work and qualifications.
The Left believe that meritocracy cannot be left to its own devices. Instead, the normal processes must be engineered to take account of the struggles that certain victim groups have had to overcome. Therefore, we see the Left impose targets and ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ officers to ensure that all groups are proportionally represented. The Left would not necessarily want the right person to get the job, or university place or research grant etc but the right type of person to keep things ‘fair’. This is typical Leftism: The belief that more rules and regulations can correct for the defects of human behaviour. This belief also requires the huge government infrastructure, so beloved by Leftists, to manage. Ultimately, The Left doesn’t trust people. People need to be managed. That’s why socialist states are so joyless: the people know they are not trusted by the governing class.
Work:
The Right believe that people need to work in order to provide for themselves. Work is very important for the Right, as it is in Christiantity whereby a man finds satisfaction in his work and also a sense of purpose. The Right believes that without the sense of purpose provided by work, man becomes listless. We are, in effect, Beasts of Burden: the more we work, the more capable of work we become. But do not overlook the need for people to work in order to provide for their families and the satisfaction that comes with that: man providing for his family is an instinct that goes back to the earliest primates.
The Left feel that work is a burden and that if people were freed of this burden, people would then have the opportunity to reach their utmost potential. This is why the Left are always looking at UBI and welfare and other ways whereby a minority of taxpayers can pay for the rest of us to sit around working on our pottery. Or our baking. Or becoming actors. The Left believes that, freed from the constraints of work, everyone will become an artist. They also believe that the world needs a 1000 fold increase in the numbers of artists. As I’ve written before, the 80 year history of the welfare state shows us that freed from the inconvenience of work, people do not perfect their lace-making: instead they choose to spend all day watching TV and eating too much processed food.
- People and Planet
- Women Are Instructed To Ignore Their Natural Instincts
- The Decline of the West – Oswald Spengler
- How Bad Is the UK Labour Government? Let Me Count The Ways…
- Unsatisfactory Communications with a Politician
Tolerence:
The Right have a ‘live and let live’ attitude to other people. Keep out of my way and I’ll keep out of yours.
The Left believe only their view is the correct one and are unbelievably intolerant of anyone with different views. We only have to remember the reaction to the Brexit vote for evidence of the infamous tolerence of the left. Or the reaction to Trump’s election victory in 2016. Or the efforts to ruin the careers of anyone that does not adhere to Leftist orthodoxy. Leftists do like diversity of opinions because, as we saw in the section on moral codes, they often can’t relate to the thinking that underpins different opinions. As such, they are driven to destroy what they don’t understand.
Human Nature:
The Right: The Right realises that human nature is a complex thing. People are very different and have very different motivations in life. The best thing that can be done is to let people be who they want to be, as long as their actions do not have a detrimental impact on anyone else.
The Left: The Left have an idealised view of human behaviour. Leftists feel that human behaviour can be moulded to fit with their vision of ideal human behaviour. They think that if you subject people to enough propaganda and scream at them if they don’t behave the way they want you to behave, that they will eventually come round to Leftist thinking. This is why Leftists want to control children as they feel that children can be moulded to accept Leftist ideas. As mentioned previously, Leftists cannot accept opinions and moral codes that are different from theirs so they try to force their cookie-cutter view of human behaviour on everyone.
Childhood Sexuality:
The Right: The Right do not like to expose children to sexuality. The innocence of chidren needs to be protected. Adult sexuality can be frightening to children.
The Left: The Left are always angling to expose children to adult sexuality and to encourage sexuality in children. It’s always Leftists that want to lower the age of sexual consent. It’s always Leftists that protect and support paedophiles. It’s always Leftists that are overjoyed to see toddlers twerking or pre-pubescent boys becoming drag queens.
It’s always the Left that think its healthy for children to be exposed to adult sexuality:
In the article referenced in the tweet above, the author writes:
‘Children who witness kink culture are reassured that alternative experiences of sexuality and expression are valid—no matter who they become as they mature, helping them recognize that their personal experiences aren’t bad or wrong’.
‘Kink visibility is a reminder that any person can and should shamelessly explore what brings joy and excitement,” the writer added. “We don’t talk to our children enough about pursuing sex to fulfill carnal needs that delight and captivate us in the moment.’
Leftist politicians regularly try to test the boundaries of the public’s attitude to paedophilia. In the UK, there was an organisation called the ‘Paedophilia Information Exchange’ (PIE). This group had affiliations with the National Council on Civil Liberties (NCCL), later known as ‘Liberty’. Two women who later become Cabinet members of the Labour Party – Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt – both had senior roles in NCCL during the affiliation with PIE.
Not every Leftist is a paedophile but every paedophile is a Leftist.
Atticus Fox 