House of Eratosthenes

This thing at about 2:00 has always bugged me. The idea of a “guy who can do no wrong” at the very apex of a nation’s power-pyramid; to believe Nazis were right-wingers, you have to believe that configuration is left-wing here, here, here, there, there, there and over there too…but with that guy with the tiny mustache, suddenly that’s right-wing.

From the comments:

I think the problem we have is that people have no idea what Conservatism is. It’s baffling to think that someone could even associate Conservatism with the Nazi’s, when we support limited government, and we’re against socialism.

I thought the Nazis were right wing because they “favor increased inequality” or some such horseshit.

This is why I maintain that the terms “Left” and “Right” are functionally meaningless these days. “Left” used to mean “international socialism;” “Right” used to mean “constitutional liberty.” The people who used to be “Left” are still internationalists, all right, but nowadays they consider themselves a technocratic priestly caste — jet-setting Jesuits flying around to rule us (and, of course, conduct autos-da-fe) as needed.

The former “Right,” meanwhile, have gone corporatist in a way that must be giving Mussolini wood from beyond the grave. Like the “Left,” they see themselves as our zookeepers; the only difference is, they want the company to get paid (as opposed to the “Left’s” insistence on installing cults of personality everywhere). Neither of them sees the nation-state as anything other than an impediment to their glorious plans for our future; neither of them considers culture as anything but a relic of the dark ages.
- Severian | 11/03/2015 @ 15:19
Please provide a brief definition of political left and political right.
- Zachriel | 11/05/2015 @ 08:07
I think last we were discussing this with y’all, we were waiting on y’all to acknowledge, or deny, that these definitions change over time. We’re still waiting on that, true?
- mkfreeberg | 11/05/2015 @ 13:03
That is my understanding also.
- Severian | 11/05/2015 @ 13:52
mkfreeberg: I think last we were discussing this with y’all, we were waiting on y’all to acknowledge, or deny, that these definitions change over time.

Of course definitions can and do change over time. For instance, gay used to mean happy. On the other hand, the political terms left and right have been relatively stable over the last two centuries, the changes having more to do with degree rather than kind.

However, we weren’t asking how most people use the terms, but how you are using the terms. Please provide a brief definition of political left and political right.
- Zachriel | 11/06/2015 @ 07:09
the political terms left and right have been relatively stable over the last two centuries, the changes having more to do with degree rather than kind.

False. Not sure where y’all heard that. There just isn’t anything to that.
- mkfreeberg | 11/06/2015 @ 07:52
mkfreeberg: False. Not sure where y’all heard that. There just isn’t anything to that.

You didn’t answer the question. Please provide a brief definition of political left and political right.
- Zachriel | 11/06/2015 @ 08:27
The question is based on a premise that is not true.

Do y’all understand the ramifications?
- mkfreeberg | 11/06/2015 @ 08:33
mkfreeberg: The question is based on a premise that is not true.

What is the false premise of please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms left and right?
- Zachriel | 11/06/2015 @ 08:47
At 7:09 y’all claim that “the political terms left and right have been relatively stable over the last two centuries.” Here, y’all claim that Greg Gutfeld “supports the standard usage” of the term “left.”

How has the “standard usage” of the term changed over 200 years?
- Severian | 11/06/2015 @ 16:49
Gutfeld — like me, but quite unlike The Zachriel — uses the term “left” as practically synonymous with the term “liberal,” and “right” as practically synonymous with the term “conservative.” This would pose a lot more problems in Europe, than it does in America.

I don’t think they thought through that particular comment (“Gutfeld supports the standard usage”) very well. It’s often seemed as if there is one within their collective who grasps the keyboard when none of the others are looking, and enters something inconsistent with the sensibilities of the collective as a whole. It’s awkward, because while that’s going on they’ve got this weird “Never Concede Anything” working as well, so they paint themselves into a corner, this way. Often.

The false premises of Please provide a brief definition of how you are using left and right, is a) that my usage is any more of an anomaly than anybody else’s usage, and b) that the meaning of such terms has remained static with the passage of time. What is the “left” attitude about: Marriage is between a man and a woman? That question had a different answer in 2008 than in 2011. How about: Saddam Hussein is being a problem again? That question had a different answer in 1998 than it did in 2002.
- mkfreeberg | 11/07/2015 @ 06:24
Yup. As we know, ignorance of history is liberalism’s flux capacitor — it’s what makes faith in socialism possible. And, it seems, ignorance of what other members of the collective have said is what makes Zachriel possible — playing the “Never Concede Anything” game is so much easier if you can ignore everything you said before.

Troll infestation aside, this is why I maintain that the terms “Left” and “Right” remain useful only as shorthand for a particular set of attitudes. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago that the American “Left” was vehemently anti-immigration — all those illegal Mexicans, driving down wages for the American workers. These days, though, “the workers” all have guns, drive pickups, watch NASCAR, and listen to Toby Keith. How gauche!! Our “liberals” wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near them. Lenin would laugh himself into a stroke if you handed him Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform and said she’s the vanguard of the proletariat. Attitude-wise, though, she’s left as left can be….

Similarly, Marco fuckin’ Rubio isn’t on a conservataive… not on any metric that makes sense to me, or would’ve made sense to Barry Goldwater, or to National Review as late as the mid-1990s. But with !Yeb! collapsing, that guy’s gonna be the GOP nominee for president. He’s no conservative, but he’s on the “right,” all right — “we’ll caress the knobs and levers of the entitlement state a bit more gently than our good friends in the other party.”
- Severian | 11/07/2015 @ 06:58
mkfreeberg: Gutfeld — like me, but quite unlike The Zachriel — uses the term “left” as practically synonymous with the term “liberal,” and “right” as practically synonymous with the term “conservative.”

A synonym is brief, though perhaps not very informative. But let’s go with it. Now we just have to determine the meanings of liberal and conservative. As you seem to be most concerned with American usage, let’s check with the practical lexicographers at the American Heritage Dictionary.
https://www.ahdictionary.com

left wing: The liberal or radical faction of a group.

Liberal is a subset of left wing, not quite a synonym, but you’re close on that point.

liberal: Favoring reform, open to new ideas, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; not bound by traditional thinking; broad-minded.

Now, for the other side.

right wing: The conservative or reactionary faction of a group.

Again, you are close. Conservative is a subset of right wing.

conservative: Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.

There’s some flavors involved in common usage, but that’s the gist of it.
- Zachriel | 11/07/2015 @ 08:03
And — those definitions encounter conflict, when they come into contact with reality. Our disagreement is there. Does the pursuit of the true meaning of a word end with a dictionary definition, or does it start with that?

I find it telling that so many self-identifying conservatives do it my way, observing reality, taking note of the reality/dictionary conflicts, forming rational theories about how these conflicts came to be and reasonable strategies about what to do with them; and, so many self-identifying liberals do it y’all’s way, placing infinite influential weight on the textbook and zero weight on reality — merely to avoid conflict. That, in itself, ironically, poses yet another problem with the definitions y’all are considering to be the final word.

Y’all have every right to end the search there. Others choose to proceed, onward, in the pursuit of truth.
- mkfreeberg | 11/07/2015 @ 08:46
mkfreeberg: placing infinite influential weight on the textbook and zero weight on reality

Practical lexicographers study word usage empirically, a.k.a. “reality”.

mkfreeberg: And — those definitions encounter conflict, when they come into contact with reality.

Then you still haven’t answered the question. Please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms, left and right.
- Zachriel | 11/07/2015 @ 08:51
Practical lexicographers study word usage empirically, a.k.a. “reality”.

Then, y’all don’t need to crawl onto these pages to find conflict; y’all could find plenty with them. Example:

conservative: Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.

As Gutfeld noted, school choice is just one of many issues in which that does not hold. “What do I think of the voucher plan? Figure it out for yourself — I’m a liberal!!” Would that mean this person is welcoming the change, according to popular word usage?
- mkfreeberg | 11/07/2015 @ 09:01
mkfreeberg: As Gutfeld noted, school choice is just one of many issues in which that does not hold. “What do I think of the voucher plan?

Returning to a more traditional model, such as vouchers, is certainly within the dictionary definition of conservative.

You still haven’t answered the question. Please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms, left and right.
- Zachriel | 11/07/2015 @ 09:11
Vouchers are traditional?

When, specifically, has that been American educational policy? Please detail for us the long and storied American tradition of school vouchers.

Do y’all ever get together and talk about things before one of y’all straps on the Special Keyboarding Helmet and rolls over to the computer?
- Severian | 11/07/2015 @ 10:30
You still haven’t answered the question. Please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms, left and right.

For the record, I acknowledge the question remains to be answered. We’re still in the process of figuring out whether the inquiring mind is capable of properly comprehending an answer.

The challenge here was to reconcile reality with the textbook catechism, and recognize the specified conflict which is produced as a result of this reconciliation. The challenge was not met. Once again, we’re dealing with a special “mighty morphin’ reality” brand of reality, which is squeezed and stretched and stenciled to match the textbook. As I said previously, this is the real focus of disagreement, what kind of reality should we be recognizing. The kind that’s real, but necessarily must pose some occasional conflicts that have to be resolved, or the kind that is not real but comfortable, and never poses these conflicts, since it is constantly tailored to match the catechism.
- mkfreeberg | 11/07/2015 @ 15:29
mkfreeberg: I acknowledge the question remains to be answered.

Let us know when you decide to respond. Please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms, left and right.
- Zachriel | 11/08/2015 @ 08:07
As I said, we need to first make sure y’all can properly comprehend the answer. It would require the ability to acknowledge that definitions from the dictionary sometimes do not work.

Y’all have yet to demonstrate this ability.
- mkfreeberg | 11/08/2015 @ 09:03
Hmmm…. questions unanswered by Morgan: “provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms, left and right.” That’s really more of a demand, but still — Morgan owes us one.

Questions unanswered by Zachriel:

–“Does the pursuit of the true meaning of a word end with a dictionary definition, or does it start with that?” (- mkfreeberg | 11/07/2015 @ 08:46)

— “Would that mean this person is welcoming the change, according to popular word usage? [re: school vouchers:” (- mkfreeberg | 11/07/2015 @ 09:01)

— “Vouchers are traditional? When, specifically, has that been American educational policy? Please detail for us the long and storied American tradition of school vouchers.” (- Severian | 11/07/2015 @ 10:30)

Looks like it’s three to one (four to one if we count “vouchers are traditional?” and the long and storied history of American school vouchers as separate queries). If I were our gracious host, I’d ration y’all

[I’ll give you a pass on “Do y’all ever get together and talk about things before one of y’all straps on the Special Keyboarding Helmet and rolls over to the computer?,” because the answer to that one is pretty obviously “no.”]
- Severian | 11/08/2015 @ 11:21
The problem with giving them an answer is that they’re only going to do one thing with it: Compare it to the dictionary definition. Just like validating a digital signature. They’ve in effect confessed to this already, with the circus act of comparing how I use the term, with how “people” use the terms. And yes it is a circus act, nothing more than that, because I provided (or rather Gutfeld provided) one example in which I use the term the way most people do, with the dictionary definition being the outlying metric. They’re not prepared to receive that example, which means they’re not prepared to receive any other. There’s no use providing them with a second or a third one.

We have general agreement, along with agreement from me, that the French Revolution was leftist. Disagreement on that point would not be reasonable, in fact, since that is how the term came into being. If one goes back and looks at the ensuing events, one sees that “The Left” cannot be distilled down into a single objective, or even a single conglomerate of objectives. It’s a bad, deceptive sale, so this would be like distilling a car sale into a crisp, unambiguous statement of what it is you’re supposed to be getting when you buy the car. If it were that simple, it wouldn’t be a bad sale, it would be a good one. But — how many miles are really on the car, when the odometer’s been rolled? There’s the problem with defining leftism. Odometer says 55k, you can go “Oh, silly conservative, that’s the end of the matter because we know the reading is 55k!” Sure…if you ignore the documented fact that the odometer was registering 80k five years ago. That’s the situation with leftism.

Words, in fact, are not defined by common use. They are defined by characteristic. Common use, for example, is pretty darn confused about whether to call a tomato a fruit or a vegetable — or, how to pronounce the word “tomato.” We don’t categorize tomatoes that way, we categorize them by characteristic.

Characteristics of the left: From the storming of the Bastille, to today, and every day in between, it has promised a diminution of difference in standard of living between political and economic classes. That’s when they’re not yet in power, though. Once they were in power, Maximilien Robespierre sat in judgment of who should be beheaded next, until he suffered the same fate. Much like Barack Obama sits in judgment of which laws will and will not be enforced. That is not equality among the classes. The odometer has been rolled. It was rolled in the 18th century, this year, all the time in between. The Left is about a false promise.

Leftist regimes consistently champion a satrap, a one-man apex atop the power pyramid.

The Right believes in, and upholds, natural law. In the case of the American Revolution, they delivered on the promise but only partially. The leftists contaminated the revolution, playing the same games they play today with “You can’t get this passed unless you compromise with us, and to do that you have to change a definition and help us play this game of pretend.” Pretending, in that case, that slaves were property and not people, so “All men are created equal” did not apply to them. Just like Affordable Care Act supporters play games with the definition of “tax.”

It really comes down to defining things. It always has. The dictionary does not reflect this, because the dictionary’s job isn’t merely to define things, it also has a job of staying out of whatever would be controversial — so, it doesn’t define things that might, by being defined, cause a fight. But definitions can be tested. Dictionary definitions of “left wing” do not reconcile with reality, for the reasons already discussed here, along with many other examples left unmentioned.

As Ludwig von Mises said,

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.

Von Mises noticed when textbook definitions didn’t work, when they failed to mesh with reality. He understood that the definition of a word was a task that began with a check on the reference material, not one that concluded with it.
- mkfreeberg | 11/08/2015 @ 11:44
Let us know when you decide to respond. Please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms, left and right.
- Zachriel | 11/08/2015 @ 12:27
The problem with giving them an answer is that they’re only going to do one thing with it: Compare it to the dictionary definition.

Well said!! It’d be interesting to see what they make of Obama’s famous argument with the dictionary in re: taxes. Was the dictionary wrong, or was Obama? Bzzzt….bzzzt…. does not compute….err-ror….err-ror…..

One does wonder about this dictionary fetish. Is it in the DSM-V? Surely anyone with the chutzpah to cite “practical lexicographers” knows that all kinds of big important words — not just political ones — change their meanings all the time. This is why one can’t read, say, Chaucer without special training — his English bears only a faint resemblance to the modern version. It takes a very special kind of ignorance to claim otherwise.

It’s similarly pig-butt ignorant to claim that only the details of political terms have changed in two hundred years. Just for giggles, here are the first five articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen:

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.

Now, let’s throw Robespierre into the time machine and sit him down in front of the Rachel Maddow show, where property is a crime, national sovereignty is “hate,” the Twitter mob extrajudicially prohibits just about everything, and you’re taxed for not buying health insurance. Is he going to feel right at home on the “Left” — which we ALL agree he was in his day?

This “arguing with the dictionary” bit is great for filling up comment sections, I guess, but at the cost of looking completely retarded.
- Severian | 11/08/2015 @ 12:37
Let us know when you decide to respond. Please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms, left and right.

And, let me know when y’all are ready to step out of your small cloister.

You can’t explain to a man how the large boat he’s riding is moving away from the dock, while the dock is stationary, when he’s convinced it is the dock that is moving. He has to be ready to handle the truth.
- mkfreeberg | 11/08/2015 @ 12:37
Heh…. run away and declare victory. I’m sure their “readers” are impressed.

Now that the adults can resume the conversation, I’m interested in hearing your opinion on if the terms “left” and “right” still have any real meaning at all. As I’ve said, I myself tend to use them historically, or as descriptors of a set of attitudes, not as political positions. Referring to their policies, these days I take a page from the Z Man and just call them The Cult or The Church of Modern Liberalism (I prefer CML to “The Cult” because The Cult was also a band that kicked ass).
- Severian | 11/09/2015 @ 05:43
mkfreeberg: And, let me know when y’all are ready to step out of your small cloister.

1. This post concerns the distinction between the political left and right.
2. We asked you to provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms left and right.
3. You insisted we acknowledge the obvious point that definitions can change over time.
4. We did.
5. We asked you to provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms left and right.
6. You provided a synonym.
7. We looked up synonym in dictionary to determine what that word meant. It directly contradicted your claim.
8. You then acknowledged you didn’t answer the question.
9. We asked you to provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms left and right.
10. You made more demands before answering.

For most readers it should be clear that you are avoiding an answer because it would reveal a lack of precision in your understanding of the issues; but one learns to be precise by working at being precise.

Please provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms left and right.
- Zachriel | 11/09/2015 @ 06:59
Heh…. run away and declare victory. I’m sure their “readers” are impressed.

Yeah, weird. They want me to provide “my” definition of the terms, but within the constraint that any definition provided should produce zero conflicts with their mighty-morphin’ reality. They just can’t get jiggy with the idea that practice should ever prevail over theory. Too much time in class, I guess.

Now that the adults can resume the conversation, I’m interested in hearing your opinion on if the terms “left” and “right” still have any real meaning at all.

Was mulling this over on Saturday morning. Came up with three broad areas of disagreement:

1. Cultural drive. Is work for suckers?
2. Relationship between people and government. Do our rights come from government?
3. Foreign policy. Is war always unnecessary? Can we get rid of it forever? Is it pointless to even have a military?

I’ve worded the questions in such a way that someone on the “right” would answer “no” to all of them, and someone on the “left” would answer “yes” to all of them. But those are just the thee biggies, the three high-altitude questions. There are many others that deal more with the bothersome details.

Lefties perceive that the Third Right was right wing, because — well, they like to think of it that way. It makes them happy. That’s how they perceive all “reality,” and that’s why they never build anything useful. But also, they’re focused on that third bullet, the foreign relations, the nationalism. Hitler, of course, would have answered “no” to all the questions.

But what really makes the Nazis an historical abomination, is the second bullet, not the third. And my point is, if you go around the world, in all sorts of different chapters of history, at least in this modern post-Renaissance era, when you inspect what are undoubtedly leftist regimes, you’ll see this is what they have in common. They see their people as barely-tolerable parasites. They believe in Ayn Rand’s Ultimate Inversion, that the people may act only with permission, while the government can do as it pleases.

You go back further than that, and you get into the medieval era, when all governments were that way. But back then they weren’t using the terms “left wing” and “right wing.” The left wing was about dangling in front of the proles the promise of ending that style of governance — and then, failing to deliver. They’re still about that now. Dangling the promise, and failing to deliver.

EDIT: The second bullet is far more important than the third, especially if we’re answering the question of why, exactly, the Nazi regime is so morally opprobrious to us. Leftists don’t like to think about that, because it doesn’t make them happy. But the “right wing” has always been associated with a belief in Natural Law, and that’s not consistent with Hitler of course.

It also makes The Left happy to think of the American revolution and the French revolution as two fronts in a common cause, like two fronts of a forest fire springing from a common point of ignition. Thomas Sowell has explained in edifying detail why that’s not the case, in his Conflict of Visions book. Sarah Palin makes reference to this in her own book. Of course, that means the Tundra Terror can read and write, so good luck getting this across to your favorite frenzied leftist. But this is a case in which practice and theory really do fit each other, because the theory is based on perceptive observations of reality: The Left really does think people’s rights come from government, along with people’s value systems. They really do think, if we put angelic people in charge, not only will things get better but we’ll all get better, too.

The Right, on the other hand, thinks government does the people’s bidding. We are shopkeepers and farmers and laborers working away within a region, which we figured out has to be protected; and we need a system of laws, that have to be enforced and occasionally adjudicated. So we have tasked this servant to get that done for us, so that we can concentrate on the day-to-day work, which produces the assets that (minimally) fund this government. Government comes from us. Its relationship with us is a symbiotic relationship or a parasitic one, and anytime it turns parasitic we are to dissolve it and start a new one. America is an experiment in which we decided to make that dissolution a regular occurrence, so that the planet can finally see a right-wing government such as has never existed before.
- mkfreeberg | 11/09/2015 @ 07:16
They see their people as barely-tolerable parasites.

Then, can we boil it down to Leftism = Godlessness?

That sounds trite, but if you start from the assumption that Man is an animal like any other, people have no rights their rulers are honor-bound to respect. Does the alpha gorilla refrain from doing anything to a lesser gorilla because he respects the beta monkey’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? The alpha is acting for the good of the troop; individuals can be sacrificed for the common good.

Christian leaders don’t always follow the constraints, but they at least acknowledge there are some. Leftists don’t. There are no theoretical constraints on the power of leftist governments at all. How could there be? Whatever they decide is necessary is right, because any “rights” the people may think they have are just “social constructions,” and what society giveth, society can take away (Rousseau called this the “General Will” — when Robespierre sent you to the guillotine, you were actually beheading yourself. For your own good, of course).
- Severian | 11/09/2015 @ 07:32
Perhaps within this modern era we can do that. But if we were to compare, let’s say, the regimes of the mighty pharoahs we would find them not only left-wing, but archetypal examples of left wing governments that came later. One country existing solely for a single man’s amusement == left wing. But, they had their deities. They operated within a rubric of, I’m king, my children will be kings after I’m gone, because God willed it so. That’s how it was done.

That’s what “the left,” in France, promised to end. It only gets complicated because they failed the promise. Napoleon was as mighty and as superior a king as any other.

Obama claims to believe in God. So if we are to believe Him, then no, there can be some left-wingers who believe in, and perhaps derive their authority from, a deity. And then there’s ISIS and all the other whack-job regimes out in the Eastern half of the world. They’re not impressed with our American and French revolutions, they’re still living in the seventh century, with dictators deriving their dictatorial powers from a deity…
- mkfreeberg | 11/09/2015 @ 07:39
But if that’s the case, then there have only been one or two “right-wing” regimes in all of human history: The antebellum (hell, probably the ante-Andrew Jackson) USA and…. a few Whig governments in Britain? I’m honestly not sure, because if the pharaohs were “left-wing” because they exercised theoretically unlimited power, then everything from caveman days to Runnymede was left wing.

I’d argue that the “Left” is a product of the Enlightenment. It’s only when you use man as the measure of all things that you see a Robespierre, a Lenin, a Stalin, a Hitler, an Obama. People who can’t find meaning in a transcendent God don’t say “life has no meaning. Instead, they invest all meaning in a transcendent State.

Or, to put it another way, pharaoh exercised total power, but you wouldn’t call Ramses II a “totalitarian.” Ramses was a god among gods; his government was a small part of a holistic religious universe. It takes Modernity, capital M, to say “all within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

That would be my working definition of Leftism: state-worship. A man becomes sanctified by winning an election, or seizing power, or being appointed Postmaster General.
- Severian | 11/09/2015 @ 08:07
mkfreeberg: They want me to provide “my” definition of the terms

Yes, that’s right. You seem to be providing a three-point test.

1. Cultural drive. Is work for suckers?
2. Relationship between people and government. Do our rights come from government?
3. Foreign policy. Is war always unnecessary? Can we get rid of it forever? Is it pointless to even have a military?

The Nazis would answer:

1. No. The Nazis had a strong work ethic, and considered work essential to the state and the well-being of society.
2. Yes. The Nazis claimed rights came from the government, and that individual rights only existed to serve the state.
3. No. The Nazis were very militaristic, and military power was at the core of their belief system.

You might try to provide a brief definition of how you are using the political terms left and right.
- Zachriel | 11/09/2015 @ 08:09
But if that’s the case, then there have only been one or two “right-wing” regimes in all of human history…

Can you have any at all? “Right Wing” == belief in Natural Law; “regime” == “A government, esp. an authoritarian one.” Authoritarian == “Favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.”

It is necessary to ask, just what exactly is it we’re discussing here. I believe in Natural Law, and that among other things this means I have a right to property. Those meddling kids better not be tearing down my fence! And so I’m all for attacking the “personal freedom” of others to: Walk on my lawn, stomp on my fence, drop litter on my South strip, throw beer cans into my bushes…but that isn’t really “at the expense of personal freedom,” I really just don’t want them messing with my stuff. If we get into “What brands of beer should they be allowed to drink before they have to look for a place to dispose of the can,” I am decidedly uninterested.

When Barack Obama wants to pass laws telling me what kind of health insurance to buy, and what kind of fine I have to pay if I don’t buy any, He isn’t passing laws against throwing beer cans into His bushes or anything of the like. He’s meddling. And the only way you can start meddling that way, is if you believe rights come from government.
- mkfreeberg | 11/09/2015 @ 17:48
mkfreeberg: Right Wing” == belief in Natural Law

Is that your definition?

“Natural law is a philosophy that certain rights or values are inherent by virtue of human nature, and universally cognizable through human reason. Historically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze both social and personal human nature to deduce binding rules of moral behavior.”
- Zachriel | 11/10/2015 @ 07:45
I agree that “regime” was a poor choice of words. But I disagree that any pre-modern government could be called “Leftist.” The notion that, as you say, “rights come from the government” is a pretty good working definition of “Leftism”…. but no pre-modern thinker believed that, and no pre-modern state was governed that way to my knowledge. The pharaohs and the Confucian emperors of China were absolute rulers, but their rule was a necessary part of a larger cosmology — if pharaoh doesn’t appease the sun god, the Nile doesn’t rise. Louis XIV might have really believed that God ordained him as King of France, but that same God placed limits on what he could and couldn’t do to his subjects.

If we define “right wing” as “upholding natural law” — which, again, seems like a pretty good working definition — we’re still looking at a very limited set of examples. England post-Magna Carta, the antebellum US… it gets dicey when we come to things like the Roman Republic and Classical Greece, but for argument’s sake let’s throw them in, too. That gives us four… and the only other example I can think of, Revolutionary France pre-Terror, talked perhaps the best game about Natural Law before devolving into a brutal Leftwing dictatorship.

Modernity makes man part of nature (or just part of nature, as opposed to “natural + a divine soul”). That’s where the distinction lies, I think.
- Severian | 11/10/2015 @ 08:59
My two cents … although, I didn’t really build that, so are they really MY two cents? But I digress.

Total state control is on the left. Anarchy on the right. A spectrum in between.

Though Communism in theory is harmonic anarchy — it is completely incompatible with human nature and takes full state control of everything to implement in practice. Still, it pretends to be the will of everyone, and therefore there should be no borders. Pure communism is harmonic global anarchy. And the first step to it is Socialism (I didn’t say it, Marx did).

Nazis and Fascists were not globalists, they were nationalists … but they were nationalist socialists — as evidenced by the name “Nazi” — short for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Worker’s Party. They were not “pure”. And therefore they were to the right of the purists. And the purists referred to them as being on the “right”. Well, it is true they were to the right of the global communists. And the global communists hated the national socialists like other Semites hate the Jews. There’s no hate like intra-family hate.

So the “right wing” socialists at least acknowledged the concept of nation and culture and attempted to build the camaraderie necessary to implement socialism to the extent that it can be implemented. But they were still statist bully redistributionists bent on tight control of people’s economic activity.

Economic activity, in its base form, being how people interact with each other when they want to trade goods for goods, goods for labor, or labor for labor and how they go about getting the things they want for the life they want to live.

What is considered “right wing” in America today is far to the right of that in the direction of real anarchy, but is by no means there. It is much further to the right of Communism than National Socialism. It does entertain the concept of national identity, though, and this is what gets it erroneously equated with Nazism … that and it is far to the right of socialism.

America in fact tried a government farther to the right to begin with — under the Articles of Confederation the states basically had an unenforceable agreement. Which is why the Constitutional Convention was called and they came up with something that gave the central government more control than the Articles — some considered it too much control…. and the Federalist Papers series was basically an attempt by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay to explain why it wasn’t. Which is why the Federalist Papers remain the key to interpreting the Constitution. Without them, it is really too vague.

We’re digressing a little again.

Ultimately, the left-right spectrum is insufficient to accurately describe political system dynamics — but it is a bit of a simple useful transform from two dimensions into one, which is why it is used when talking in a conversation from the 30,000 foot view.

I think when we on what is called “The Right” today talk about it, we see it this way

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

0 is total anarchy
10 is total state control, which is what Communism ends up being in practice
9 is nazism/fascism
7.5 is about where the Democratic Party is today
6.5 is about where the Republican Party is today
4.5 is about where Tea Partiers average
3.5 is about where the Constitution put us
2 is about where the Articles put us, and where your hard core libertarians are
0 is anarchy – where the strongest get their way all the time, literally “Might Makes Right”
- philmon | 11/10/2015 @ 12:57
Ugh!

That scale should look like this … I guess HTML killed the scale itself due to me using gt/lt for arrows. Maybe someone can edit it in….

(————————————————————————————————-)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
- philmon | 11/10/2015 @ 12:59
Aw, forget it. need nbsp’s I guess to keeep html from killing the spacing.
- philmon | 11/10/2015 @ 12:59
Phil,

I really like your scale. I’d add that the further to the right you go, the more “natural” the worldview is.

Out there on the Left, both on your scale and the “traditional” Left/Right divide, they’re with Protagoras — Man is the measure of all things. [Now, Marx himself wouldn’t agree with that. He thought that the State, which was a way station on the road to Utopia, was a creation of History, i.e. a vast Hegelian force incomprehensible to mere mortals (except himself)]. But in practice, the Left sees only Man, of which the State is the apotheosis; individual men are just woefully defective examples of the Idea. So in practice all “rights” come from the State and, as such, can be changed or canceled without notice as the Central Committee requires. As for nature, well, it doesn’t even hardly rate as a tool. Lenin famously defined communism as “Soviet power plus electrification,” and no communist propaganda picture was complete without a factory or two belching huge clouds of smoke into the atmosphere.

The Right, by contrast, sees Man as an important, but still subordinate, part of the whole of Creation. Man is the creature dearest to the Creator’s heart, true, but the great religions explicitly deny that Man can perfect Creation. In fact, as a consequence of Sin, nature is implacably hostile to us — we can tame parts of it through science (originally seen as the systematic understanding of God’s handiwork), or government, or through ritual appeasement. That being the case, I’d put states like Pharaonic Egypt, Confucian China, etc. at about 1.5 on your scale. The ruler needs to do certain things to keep the universe in order, otherwise Nature gets out of whack; hence Pharaoh has absolute power. At point 0 on your scale, there is nothing but Nature, red in tooth and claw — the Darwinian struggle of all against all.
- Severian | 11/11/2015 @ 06:34
philmon: Total state control is on the left. Anarchy on the right. A spectrum in between.

The problem with that, of course, is that your usage is contrary to historical usage, and contrary to current usage. For instance, per your definition, Louis XVI would be on the far left. And as far as current usage, you don’t have to look far to see people talking about right wing parties that advocate militarism and national exceptionalism.
- Zachriel | 11/11/2015 @ 06:44
And as far as current usage, you don’t have to look far to see people talking about right wing parties that advocate militarism and national exceptionalism.

Not within left-wing echo chambers you don’t. But see, this is why we wanted to test y’all before allowing y’all to discuss the issue. Two things required, are still missing:

1. Awareness of reality and practice, and how theory must yield if theory is to do anyone any good at all;
2. Awareness of the passage of time, events that reshape the definitions here & there, like, since 1793.

That being the case, I’d put states like Pharaonic Egypt, Confucian China, etc. at about 1.5 on your scale. The ruler needs to do certain things to keep the universe in order, otherwise Nature gets out of whack; hence Pharaoh has absolute power. At point 0 on your scale, there is nothing but Nature, red in tooth and claw — the Darwinian struggle of all against all.

Now this is interesting. The Pharaoh of Egypt had absolute power, so I would think of that as 10. Am I misunderstanding what you’re doing with the scale? You seem to be moving the needle 85% of the way to the right. Is this an effect of technology that has not yet been developed?
- mkfreeberg | 11/11/2015 @ 06:54
mkfreeberg: 1. Awareness of reality and practice, and how theory must yield if theory is to do anyone any good at all;

In practice, people refer to political parties that advocate militarism and national exceptionalism as being on the right.

mkfreeberg: 2. Awareness of the passage of time, events that reshape the definitions here & there, like, since 1793.

We’re aware that definitions change, but that would still mean you would say, per philmon’s definition, that King Louis XVI was on the far left, and that hippy communes are on the political right. It doesn’t comport to how people use the terms.
- Zachriel | 11/11/2015 @ 08:23
Yeah that didn’t make any sense at all. The Pharaoh was literally God on Earth, and the supreme ruler of the state. If that doesn’t describe total state control to you, I’m pretty sure we can’t even have a discussion about it.

Also, as I pointed out, the two-dimensional spectrum is really not sufficient. The thing that allows it to work is the singularity caused by the fact that being forbidden to act in your own self interest without acting equally in everyone else’s self-interest runs directly opposite to human (and pretty much every other living thing’s) nature. This precipitates the necessity of total state control in reality, while in theory communism is a kind of anarchy where everybody just “gets along”. Because love, or something.

Interesting to note — this is why socialistic models have a better chance of not completely cratering the smaller the society is. As the society gets larger, your return on bettering everyone else’s life at the same rate as yours goes to zero. As it gets smaller, it increases. But unless it is very small — small enough for each individual to actually have a personal relationship with at least most of the others … it has zero chance of working, for this reason:

“The first lie of Communism is that if it’s a cold night out and we’re in the plains of North Dakota, and it’s thirty-five degrees below zero, and we hear bleating out in the barn, and it turns out that one of our cows is sick — [] that one of us will go out there at four o’clock in the morning in thirty degree below zero to take care of a cow that doesn’t belong to us. That we would, in fact, all pitch in and work for the collective as hard as we would work for ourselves. And it just ain’t so.” – Bill Whittle

Which, again, is why total state control is necessary to enforce it.
- philmon | 11/11/2015 @ 08:56
It doesn’t comport to how people use the terms.

People are very often unsure of how to use the terms, so that’s not a good test. Also, whenever a democrat President in America is in favor of using military force, and the Republicans are opposed to it, y’all’s observation of “how people use the terms” essentially disintegrates for purposes of that situation, and usually for years afterward.

Furthermore, “comport to how people use the terms,” carried to its most absurd extremes — which is how y’all have been pressing it, pretty consistently — would, if enforced as a constraint against the discussion, pretty much prohibit the discussion from taking place at all, other than to notice things about this usage that have already been noticed before, and achieved consensus status before. Which is obviously the point. So y’all wait right here, while the rest of us continue to have our discussion. We get that it’s too big for y’all. That’s okay.

As the society gets larger, your return on bettering everyone else’s life at the same rate as yours goes to zero. As it gets smaller, it increases. But unless it is very small — small enough for each individual to actually have a personal relationship with at least most of the others … it has zero chance of working…

I would argue that as the collective shrinks to the level that everybody has a personal relationship with everybody else, the likelihood of the system working drops again, like a bell curve tapering off at both ends. Think of an extended family full of people helping each other out in times of need. Does this work with greater harmony, as people know each other better? Negatori. Because the benefactors have a more robust personal relationship with the person who is in material need, they also know more about why & how he is chronically coming into these material needs; they know he gambles and drinks. And then they know that he actually got a job offer last month, and declined.

You really need an optimum size and an optimum distance between givers and takers. The opacity has to be such that the party in need, and the “ringleader” coordinating this wealth transfer, can control the narrative. Make sure everyone is aware that the mortgage payment could not have been made, but at the same time, conceal the reason, make sure no one knows that this is the house that has the biggest teevee set in the whole family. So no living room pictures.
- mkfreeberg | 11/11/2015 @ 09:16
I guess I’m trying to add that second axis Phil was talking about to the scale. Would you really say that Pharaoh Ramses was Left-wing? Total state control, sure, but the state wasn’t withering away on the road to Utopia. If anything, it was the opposite of that — Pharaoh had total state control in order to support his ritual duties, which he had to perform to keep the natural world turning — if Pharaoh didn’t have the right stuff for the daily ritual, the Nile wouldn’t rise.

But then again, Marxists have always kinda wanted to claim ancient Egypt, Confucian China, etc. as their own. Karl Wittfogel was a communist when he started working on the idea of “hydraulic despotism,” which says that these states’ social structures were designed around control of irrigation. But then Wittfogel went anti-communist, so….

If we have to keep it on one axis, I’d prefer something like “total state control where Man is the sole standard of value” at 10 and “pure nature, absent any input from Man at all” at zero. The idea that rights come from Nature, i.e. God, and that government exists to preserve those rights, would, as Phil says, be somewhere in the 2-3 range. The idea that god and government are one, and that government exists to appease the gods, would therefore be a 1. The further you get into de-Natured state worship, the further to the Left you go.
- Severian | 11/11/2015 @ 09:49
mkfreeberg: People are very often unsure of how to use the terms, so that’s not a good test.

Just because a classification may not be perfect is no excuse to redefine words willy-nilly. At least philmon was willing to put a definition out there for discussion, even though it has the problems noted.
- Zachriel | 11/11/2015 @ 10:55
Just because a classification may not be perfect is no excuse to redefine words willy-nilly.

That’s just it, though. The words are not being re-defined “willy-nilly,” any more than a stranger admonishing you that the boat is moving away from the dock, even though you were SO sure it was the dock moving away from the boat, is re-defining physics willy-nilly. Now excuse me please, adults refine their theories according to what they learn from reality, and I only have a limited amount of time I can spend down here at the kiddie-table.

Would you really say that Pharaoh Ramses was Left-wing? Total state control, sure, but the state wasn’t withering away on the road to Utopia. If anything, it was the opposite of that — Pharaoh had total state control in order to support his ritual duties, which he had to perform to keep the natural world turning — if Pharaoh didn’t have the right stuff for the daily ritual, the Nile wouldn’t rise.

Emperor — oh sorry, President — Obama is left-wing, and He also requires total submission from everyone to keep the oceans from rising. It gets back to that second bullet,

2. Relationship between people and government. Do our rights come from government?

Hollywood, quite by accident, made a brilliant drama about the difference between right wing and left wing. I suspect all they were really trying to do is remind everybody how much Hollywood hates the English, and how much cool cred they think the Scots have by comparison. In Rob Roy, William Hurt hands in a stellar performance as the Earl of Montrose. Whom, if you ask me, was (at least depicted here, it’s not historically accurate as you know) a suitable archetype of a left-wing villain.

Montrose: So, how many men are you master of?

Rob Roy: Master of none, My Lord, but some 200 souls live close by Craigrostan, and they’re in my care.

You should rent it if you haven’t seen it yet. I’m sure there was a right-winger helping out with the writing of the script, smuggling a lot of political observations under the radar. Probably the same guy who was doctoring the script on The Incredibles (“And when everybody is super, then no one will be!”). The BigBad makes several references to knowing your PLACE. “Remember your place, sir!! That’s all I ask of any man!”

“Right wing” and “left wing” are complicated, confusing terms. They’re the way, I maintain, only because the left wing fails its promises; says one thing, does the exact opposite. Everyone being equal, for example. What they really mean by that is, everyone should be equally situated, relative to their PLACE. For example, they don’t really expect that Barack and Michelle Obama should stay in the same hotels as the rest of us. So the left AND the right actually believe in “inequality.” But the left believes in inequality as a result of what people are; the right believes in inequality as a result of what people do. Someone who’s been on welfare the entire year staying in a hotel for a vacation, and it’s a Red Roof Inn a or Days Inn, whereas their close relatives are staying in a Hyatt because they’ve been working their asses of that year. The lefties may be crying about such a discrepancy, but normal people aren’t going to be crying about it, they’ll see it as natural consequence.

By that measure, yes the Pharaoh’s regime was left wing. It would have been intemperate to ask if he, or any member of his household, had done some work to by worthy of the much higher standard of living. They were just supposed to have it, because of what they were.
- mkfreeberg | 11/11/2015 @ 13:00
mkfreeberg: The words are not being re-defined “willy-nilly,” any more than a stranger admonishing you that the boat is moving away from the dock, even though you were SO sure it was the dock moving away from the boat, is re-defining physics willy-nilly.

That’s fine. Then show us how and when usage changed. Did it change in the 1960s? And do you really think people now use political “left” to describe Louis XVI? Seriously? Does that even begin to make sense?
- Zachriel | 11/11/2015 @ 13:22
Then show us how and when usage changed.

That brings us back to the concern about y’all being able to perceive, react to, and revise theories as a result of, engagement with reality. Y’all have yet to demonstrate this, and have failed the standard repeatedly. I get the frustration. It seems y’all had the impression y’all could memorize the catechism, get the diploma, and from that point forward further learning would be unnecessary. So who cares if y’all’s notions of “right wing” and “left wing” come from 1793?

And do you really think people now use political “left” to describe Louis XVI? Seriously?

I actually don’t see anyone else discussing Louis XVI, other than y’all. Now excuse me I only have so much time I can spend, down here, at the kiddie table.
- mkfreeberg | 11/11/2015 @ 13:26
But the left believes in inequality as a result of what people are; the right believes in inequality as a result of what people do

I see where you’re going, but I respectfully disagree. Oh, I totally agree that the Left does this, of course, but so does everybody else — “believing in inequality as a result of what people are” is aristocracy, and it has been the default since caveman days. Labeling that “left wing” doesn’t get us any closer to understanding the unique awfulness of 19th-21st century Leftism; there’s more to leftism than being secret monarchists. That’s what I was trying to get to with that stuff about “Nature.” Thomas Hobbes, for instance, starts with Natural Law and ends up with the most absolute monarch that could ever possibly exist. Hobbes was a lot of things, and not all of them were coherent with each other, but left wing he was not.

Let me try a different metaphor: Purpose. Imagine that we set a whole bunch of famous leaders down and gave them a pop quiz: “What is the purpose of government? What is the State for> Then we sort them into buckets.

One common answer would be “the State exists to create Utopia here on earth,” and guys like Lenin, Hitler, Mao, and Obama would be in that bucket. Their Utopias would all look different, and they’d employ different means to get there, but all those guys would agree that their governments are trying to create a perfect world.

Another bucket contains guys like Oliver Cromwell, Suleiman the Magnificent, Charlemagne, and Ferdinand and Isabella. Their answer is something like “government exists to give greater glory to God, and/or punish His enemies.”

A third bucket is full of guys who answered “the purpose of the State is to give me and my entourage the highest possible standard of living” — Genghis Khan, Louis XVI, pick your ancient empire-builder.

A fourth bucket reads “the State exists to keep the natural world in balance.” Egyptian pharaohs and Confucian emperors fit here — they have to do their daily rituals or the world falls out of whack.

A fifth — very small — bucket reads “Government exists to protect its people’s life, liberty, and property.” Here you find George Washington, Jefferson Davis, William Pitt, and (arguably) guys like Pericles and the consuls of the Roman Republic.

I’d argue that the guys in the “state as utopia” bucket are the Left, and the “protect the people’s rights” bucket are the Right. That leaves the vast majority of all governments that have ever existed in the middle three buckets. Doing it this way, I think, helps clear up some of the confusion about behavior and attitudes — Obama, as you note, behaves as if he believes His presidency has kept the seas from rising, but I don’t think He actually does. Nor do His followers. How could they, when their very favorite word is “science”?

🙂
- Severian | 11/11/2015 @ 16:34
Okay, now I think I see where you’re going with that. Our disagreement is about Bucket #3 then. In the here & now, at least throughout the twentieth century, I maintain that this is a good practical definition of “left wing”: Government exists to revert us back to high school, in which we had a very tiny coterie of superstars, and then the upper layer of the socially privileged were their inner circle. The closer you were to the deities-on-Earth, the greater your privilege, irrespective of the amount of “real” work you got done.

But — this is how the grown-up world operates, too, is it not? And out of necessity? In a corporation there is a nexus of power, the veeps are closer to it than the directors, the directors are closer to it than the managers; Colonels are closer to it than Majors, Captains are closer to it than the Sergeants. Isn’t this just how an organizational hierarchy works? And the answer is yes, but in the case of high school this is what students do between classes, when they recreate. And this is what these piece of shit tinpot dictators do. The difference is whether these higher ranks represent gradients of privilege only to go with the authority, or whether they represent real responsibility. Sarah Palin nailed this when she was dishing some deserved abuse out to the “community organizing” profession: “Let me describe to you a job that has actual responsibilities!” or some such.

I think we’re mostly in agreement, but I see the mighty Pharaoh as like a little boy playing with a massive toy collection, just like Kim-Jong, et al.
- mkfreeberg | 11/11/2015 @ 19:04
I’m mostly with you, but I’d like to emphasize that intent matters. Until VERY recently, Leftism was explicitly sold to the people as an antidote to the guys in Bucket #3. That’s why your idiot Cuttlefish infestation is so hung up on Louis XVI — the idea that government can be anything other than a lifestyle enhancement racket for the bluebloods was new and exhilarating in 1793. (Well, that and autism, anyway). And it’s still sold that way in much of the world — even in Africa, the Big Man usually feels the need to legitimize his coup by holding an “election,” as do the Kims and Castros and whatnot.

They all claim to be doing the People’s work, in other words. Their unimaginably luxurious lifestyles are officially, indeed ostentatiously, divorced from that. Look at the way Hillary Clinton, a zillionaire several times over, claimed to be dead broke after leaving the White House… and all her sycophants claimed to believe her. To these people, making an honest buck is a crime, so they have to charge the private jet and the fleet of limos to the charitable foundation.

Hillary Clinton is, in fact, a great example of how recent this phenomenon is. Obama ran his share of “vote for the black guy!” ads, of course, but he also ran a very traditionally Leftist campaign. He shouted class warfare from the rooftops. Hillary can’t even be bothered with that, in part because she’s so spectacularly corrupt that not even the kinds of idiots who vote Democrat can swallow more than a few of her lies. She’s completely un-ideological. She’s as “Left” as Trump is “Right,” but those words only lost coherence in the last twenty years or so.

In fact, I’ve been saying for some time that it’s the lack of ideology that’s going to truly fuck us here in the near future. It used to be that there was a meaningful difference between not just parties, but ideologies. People were comfortable calling themselves “left” or “right,” and had a fairly coherent idea of what those meant. These days, it’s all just American Idol… and if that’s the case, why should anyone vote for any of these mediocrities? Trump’s riding that wave right now. I know lots of people who are fervent Trump guys, but — they have no idea why. They don’t know a thing about his positions (and Trump himself barely seems to, either). Done right, ideology is a valuable tool for critical thinking (yes, even Leftist ideology, long ago in a galaxy far far away). Without it, we’re left with this fucking clown show… and one of these wannabe cult-of-personality goons is going to have the nuclear launch codes.
- Severian | 11/11/2015 @ 19:54
I’m mostly with you, but I’d like to emphasize that intent matters. Until VERY recently, Leftism was explicitly sold to the people as an antidote to the guys in Bucket #3. That’s why your idiot Cuttlefish infestation is so hung up on Louis XVI — the idea that government can be anything other than a lifestyle enhancement racket for the bluebloods was new and exhilarating in 1793.

There’s the whole problem. Intent certainly could matter. That is really all that separates Louis XVI, who’s supposed to be on the right, from Robespierre and Napoleon on the left — since regime-result is nearly identical. I think in analyzing it, you have to proceed with that as a question: “Does intent matter?” And you have to study behavior to get an answer to that. The French Revolution, for example, failed because after the revolutionaries managed to replace one monarch with another monarch, there was no significant hue & cry rising up to say: Well that sucks, back to the drawing board. So when that happened — don’t tell our squid friends — this whole thing about “Louis XVI was on the right” completely crumbled, because to say Louis was on the right and the revolutionaries were on the left, is to reduce the entire spectrum down to an issue about whether there’s an actual crown involved. Oh wait, Napoleon had a crown too, didn’t he? Less than that then.

Just like now: Left-wing is about making health insurance affordable! When it doesn’t happen, you can say well, at least left-wing is all about the honest intent of making health insurance affordable…unless we get skyrocketing premiums everywhere, and when you bring it up to your “left wing” friends, rather than saying “Yes that does suck, back to the drawing board we go” or “Those dirty so-and-so’s fooled us,” they just change the subject and maybe call you a racist for calling any attention to it. At that point you can say, well no, maybe intent doesn’t matter because these people don’t really have any.

What we’re really talking about here is ways of thinking. Maturity levels, really. It isn’t hard to identify and define the left at all when one looks at their fantasies, and this part really has remained unchanged since 7/14/1789: We have these “haves” and “have nots,” and what has to happen is a revolutionary moment, after which we will have equality. Someone noble and brave will take an axe to the walls of the treasury, breach the coffers, and invite the paupers passing by to scoop up the ill-gotten gains in their aprons and carry as much loot as they can, back to their shanties. That’s the dream. And it’s embarrassing watching them live it and re-live it, with little or no appreciation for the passage of time. Is this revolutionary moment just around the corner? Or did it already happen? So there’s a little bit of lunacy going along with this as well…which makes The Left even easier to identify.

To harp on movies once again: The latest installment I recall that actually had this scene, didn’t even seem to realize it was a caricature of itself. But yeah, the plucky hero really did breach a wall, with a sledge hammer or axe or something, I forget which. And invited the oppressed passers-by to stop what they were doing, and scoop up double handfuls of…time.

In fact, I’ve been saying for some time that it’s the lack of ideology that’s going to truly fuck us here in the near future. It used to be that there was a meaningful difference between not just parties, but ideologies. People were comfortable calling themselves “left” or “right,” and had a fairly coherent idea of what those meant. These days, it’s all just American Idol… and if that’s the case, why should anyone vote for any of these mediocrities? Trump’s riding that wave right now. I know lots of people who are fervent Trump guys, but — they have no idea why. They don’t know a thing about his positions (and Trump himself barely seems to, either). Done right, ideology is a valuable tool for critical thinking (yes, even Leftist ideology, long ago in a galaxy far far away). Without it, we’re left with this fucking clown show… and one of these wannabe cult-of-personality goons is going to have the nuclear launch codes.

Well yes. The candidates hvae become as confused about ideology as the people who would be electing them, and the people aren’t really united on too much even when you filter the examinations, sampling only those who are likely to vote for Candidate X. The consensus seems to be “I’m for the guy who will do right by me, and Hell with everybody else.” It’s rather like rats deserting a sinking ship; if you could stop some of the rats long enough to conduct a poll, what course would you discover the rats would want to be set for the ship they’re deserting? The answer you’d get back, of course, wouldn’t be too definite. They wouldn’t care, because they’re deserting. Hope it’s not that simple.
- mkfreeberg | 11/11/2015 @ 22:11
So when that happened — don’t tell our squid friends — this whole thing about “Louis XVI was on the right” completely crumbled, because to say Louis was on the right and the revolutionaries were on the left, is to reduce the entire spectrum down to an issue about whether there’s an actual crown involved. Oh wait, Napoleon had a crown too, didn’t he? Less than that then.

That’s getting close to the heart of our disagreement, I think. The Revolution wouldn’t have proceeded the way it did were it not for the specific ideology of the revolutionaries, which was something new in the world. I’d go so far as to say the word “revolution” itself was a new thing in 1793. Previous changes of government were either palace coups or mass anarchy. With one exception, previous changes of government in Europe were either imposed externally through invasion, or merely swapped out one branch of the ruling family for another. And while medieval history is full of “rebellions,” they, too, were mostly concerned with switching aristocrats. Either that, or they were basically organized, society-wide riots — the “rebels” wanted to burn manorial records, hang absentee landowners, and pillage, not change the government.

The exception is the Puritan revolution in England. They wanted to abolish the whole institution of monarchy, and they did it in spectacularly odd fashion — they executed Charles I for treason. Somehow, the King was a traitor to the country he was king of. They had a radically different idea of what government was supposed to do, and how it came into being. They had, in short, the world’s first ideology.

That’s what motivated the French Revolutionaries. It ended with a crown on Napoleon’s head, true, but that was never the intention. If they merely wanted a better deal from their government, Louis XVI had gazillions of relatives who would’ve been happy to rule France in more congenial fashion. The Revolutionaries wanted to fundamentally alter the nature of government itself. It didn’t work — because what they wanted to alter it to was and is impossible — but their actions all stemmed from a very different answer to that question “what’s the purpose of the State?”

The French Revolution, for example, failed because after the revolutionaries managed to replace one monarch with another monarch, there was no significant hue & cry rising up to say: Well that sucks, back to the drawing board.

Is that specific to Leftism, though? Everyone we all agree are Lefties — Lenin, Robespierre — acts that way, but so do lots of others. Martin Luther saw the horrors his theology unleashed on the world, but he didn’t say “well, the Peasants’ War sure sucked, let’s all go back to Rome.” The Catholics never said “we sure have had a run of lousy Popes here; let’s go back to the drawing board and re-examine this whole ‘Vicar of Christ’ thing.” A totalizing vision, in other words, is a defining feature of Leftism, but not confined to Leftism — a necessary but not sufficient condition.
- Severian | 11/12/2015 @ 06:17
mkfreeberg: Now excuse me I only have so much time I can spend

Okay, that’s fine. The end result of the discussion is that you insist upon using your own special definitions. The usual way to do so, in order to avoid confusion, is to include scare-quotes, or coin a new term. So you might say “Nazis were ‘right-wingers’,” or “Nazis were mk-right-wing,” or even include a footnote “Nazis were right-wing.*”

* Not to be confused with how most people use the term.
- Zachriel | 11/12/2015 @ 06:40
Is that specific to Leftism, though? Everyone we all agree are Lefties — Lenin, Robespierre — acts that way, but so do lots of others. Martin Luther saw the horrors his theology unleashed on the world, but he didn’t say “well, the Peasants’ War sure sucked, let’s all go back to Rome.” The Catholics never said “we sure have had a run of lousy Popes here; let’s go back to the drawing board and re-examine this whole ‘Vicar of Christ’ thing.” A totalizing vision, in other words, is a defining feature of Leftism, but not confined to Leftism — a necessary but not sufficient condition.

The total failure of outcome against the stated objectives, combined with a total lack of ambition to re-examine where the movement might have gone awry, is what we might go so far as to call a “distinguishing characteristic” of leftism. Although I would certainly stop short of calling it “specific to” leftism. But you know, when we take all that into account, we should consider that maybe “specific to” does apply after all. I mean, think about it — here is an ideology that states a goal, it embarks on certain strategies to attain the goal time after time, century after century, in nation after nation, consistently failing at it, its latest advocates are seldom-to-never heard to say anything like “The difference between this latest attempt, and the ones that came previous, is X, therefore we have confidence in this latest go-round and you should too.” They’re much more often heard to hum cyclical homilies such as “Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet” as they sprint away like hamsters on a little wheel. Am I describing anything but leftism?

It is an ideology of darkness, of childishness. To make itself look reasonable, it has to avoid defining just about everything, on top of which it must remain completely irony-ignorant. Example: “Not to be confused with how most people use the term,” in & of itself, uses the phrase “how most people use the term” in a way irreconcilably inconsistent with what most people mean when they say “most people.”

Now if the style of government actually does succeed at what it’s trying to do, it might be sane or reasonable for the methods to remain stagnant across generations and centuries, the way leftism has. And this is where there is difficulty in defining the term — those who continue to adhere to it are either dishonest about their goals, if they’re being achieved, or if they’re honest about their goals then they’re fulfilling the classic definition of insanity by continuing to invest in processes and methods that have not worked for them, or for anybody else laboring toward the achievement of those stated goals. Dishonest, or insane, one or the other. Could be both. But it has to be at least one.

Orwell (writing as Emmanuel Goldstein) said it himself:

Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims.

Of course that’s a fictional book-within-a-book, not an actual, scholarly, “peer reviewed” narrative of actual history. But it still works, and the point still holds. Exercising a consistent behavior with the expectation of an inconsistent result…and that’s the charitable interpretation, the one that presumes practitioners of leftism are honest about what they say they want.
- mkfreeberg | 11/12/2015 @ 16:20
And this is where there is difficulty in defining the term — those who continue to adhere to it are either dishonest about their goals, if they’re being achieved, or if they’re honest about their goals then they’re fulfilling the classic definition of insanity by continuing to invest in processes and methods that have not worked for them, or for anybody else laboring toward the achievement of those stated goals.

I agree with you, and this is a perfect description of the modern Left. But that brings us around full circle: If that’s the definition of “Left,” then pretty much every government in the history of ever has been “Left.” Pharaoh’s rituals obviously had no effect on the Nile’s rise and fall, so he was either lying to maintain his power, or crazy. Was Pharaoh, then, a Leftist? How about the Crusader States? Again, either dishonest (too busy sacking Constantinople) or crazy (thinking that feudalism could be imposed on the Holy Land). The Aztecs? Cortez stopped them from ripping prisoners’ hearts out atop a ziggurat, but the sun didn’t go out. Those are “ideologies of darkness, of childishness,” as you say — literally magical thinking — but then “Right,” by extension, is “not magical thinking.” True enough as far as it goes, but it doesn’t really go very far.

[I’m proceeding as if the point of our debate is to define what “Left” and “Right” are, so that people can be persuaded to embrace the latter and eschew the former].

I’d argue that the characteristics of Leftism you’ve defined flow from two things:

1) belief that the world is perfectible, and
2) disbelief in one’s own lying eyes.

Point #1 rules out Pharaoh as Lenin’s spiritual forefather, since Pharaoh’s government rested on the assumption that the world was flawed beyond repair. All his rituals were (often losing) fights against entropy. Pharaoh could sometimes appease his fellow gods enough to keep them from fucking with the Nile’s annual rise, but he couldn’t fix it such that the Nile would always rise, irrespective of what he did or didn’t do.

Point #2 expains the childishness, and is recursive with Point #1. Like Ptolemy’s astronomy — it “works,” and you can make it keep “working” even as the evidence piles up that it’s fundamentally flawed. It’s not that the Earth really revolves around the Sun, you see; it’s just that this year, we have four epicycles’ worth of retrograde motion, while last year we had three, and we’ll have six next year. The theory is too precious to abandon, and if the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.

[They actually say a version of this very thing in ac ademia, by the way. I’ve seen monographs severely criticized for “lack of theory.” To normal people, that doesn’t make sense — you have a theory about something, and you write your book to prove your hypothesis. In academia, however, “theory” means stuff like “Postcolonialism” or “Marxism.” So, yeah — not having enough nods to Karl Marx or Frantz Fanon or whomever counts as a serious flaw, no matter what the book is actually about. There’s the stuff that happened in the matgerial world, and there’s what Michel Foucalt said should happen, and Frog beats Reality every time].
- Severian | 11/12/2015 @ 18:16
I’m not the least bit bothered by the observation that governments pre-1793 fell all to one side or the other, according to some finer definition being evaluated. “Right” and “left” came from that event, which as you point out was one of the first to involve some assertion that the proletariat were due some weightier influence upon the direction of government.

See the way I see it, this is about maturity. Nobody anywhere aspires to be proles, not even proles. But there are MANY proles. In generations past, that was not a factor. What changed was the ability to easily get messages to large numbers of people, so after that happened — presto, a new base of political power. Which means a new way to make promises, but of course making promises is not the same thing as keeping promises.

This initial wave of leftism began with the Storming of the Bastille, and ended with just another king with a different family name. So my point is simply, that’s what it is. Napoleon, Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Ils and Uns, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin. The simple situation of having a dictator. As I understand your objections, they have to do with things that didn’t exist before the Bastille event. If it’s a just-plain-dictator from the olden days, like William The Conqueror, Peter The Great, Ramses II, Louis XIV, that can’t be “left wing,” can it? It’s too simple.

Okay, they’re missing this fake-out “pretend to put the people in charge” maneuver. We could say that’s a defining distinction that is missing from those, if you like. For the reasons given already, I just don’t see how it matters. I’m left at the end of it wondering: What quality, substantive reasons can someone offer, why I should not associate “left wing” with celebrated, unchecked power? We don’t have the “left” saying after Clinton’s acquittal, “Aw too bad, so sad, we were REALLY rooting for those House Impeachment Managers, so the rule of law could be upheld…but President Clinton has his rights and they must be respected. Fail horn, wa wa.” That was not their attitude. Their attitude was “Hooray, he got away with it!!” Just like, “Hooray, FDR won four terms!!” Of course they have to concede some of FDR’s decisions were bad; as tolerant and patriotic Americans, they would have to further acknowledge it would have been good if President Roosevelt had been successfully resisted there. But at the end of it, party-first. FDR won every battle!! And if he could’ve lived to be 140 years old, he’d probably be President right now. Hooray!!

We could pretend that “left wing” is about something besides the celebration of unilateral, unchecked, dictatorial power vested in one man. But only by pretending, only by ignoring history.

Again: Maturity. Ask a nine-year-old who hasn’t been paying too much attention to how it all works, you might get something back like “Mommy and Daddy and the Teacher are my bosses, the Principal is the Teacher’s boss, then the Mayor, then the Governor and then President Obama is over everyone.” If the parents lean left, they’re just beaming with pride and “ain’t it cute”…if they lean right, on the other hand, they’re looking at each other saying something like “Okay, we’re fixing this soon, like tonight at dinner, right?” It doesn’t have to do with the fact that President Obama is a democrat. It has to do with maturity, sophistication, sharing of power. The left simply can’t grasp it, they haven’t had reason to do so. They really do think, if they’re tired of being overweight, maybe they can get elected to a high enough office and get a law passed that they only weigh 160 pounds. Change the freezing temperature of water, while they’re at it.

Certain people may object that this is “not how most people use the term(s)” left-wing and right-wing. Notice the careful phrasing, though; they do not say “most people have different things in mind when they use those terms.” If they said this, it would be provably untrue. Fact is, “most people” don’t have much meaning in mind for these terms at all, anymore. If they lean left, “right wing” is a pejorative term they use against people who disagree with them too much. Means rustic, uneducated, unsophisticated, retrosexual, too much testosterone, too biblical, maybe racist and sexist, thoroughly unpleasant people. If they lean right, “left wing” is, again, a generally pejorative term to describe people who, again, disagree too much. If we’re talking about “most people,” the definition ends there for the most part.

That’s why, when people try to define things accurately and functionally, they don’t pay too much attention to what “most people” think.
- mkfreeberg | 11/12/2015 @ 19:50
Okay, they’re missing this fake-out “pretend to put the people in charge” maneuver. We could say that’s a defining distinction that is missing from those, if you like. For the reasons given already, I just don’t see how it matters.

It matters because lots of people believe the con, and that matters because the believers can’t be reasoned with. I’d actually trust Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders on national security, for the simple reason that Hillary can be bought. She won’t unilaterally disarm the US, if only because the Army might prove useful as her own personal collection agency. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, really does think that the workers of the world are gonna unite any minute now. Ditto just about any other issue you care to name — you could get Hillary to sign an executive order mandating school prayer, concealed carry, and NASCAR attendance if she could make a few bucks off it. She won’t put people in camps, because she’s got the seasoned con man’s sense of how far one can push a mark before he starts fighting back.

The true believers don’t. Remember Boxer the cart-horse from Animal Farm? He fell for the con. He’d feel sad about machine-gunning a crowd of dissidents, but he’d do it, because the Leader is always right. If Napoleon the pig had come right out and said “I’m running Animal Farm for my own personal enrichment,” Boxer would’ve quit, and the whole thing would’ve collapsed. But because Napoleon talked a good game about social justice, Boxer worked himself to death for him.

I would argue that there is a human type — the Zealot — who will always fall for the con, whatever it happens to be. Torquemada would turn the thumbscrews with just as much relish for the Nazis, the Soviets, the Jacobins, or the Rotary Club as he would for the Inquisition. Had Lenin grown up in Japan, he’d have been one hell of a kamikaze pilot. But lots of other people only fall for the con because it’s well-crafted, perfectly pitched, and presented to them at just the right time.

Giving people the tools to recognize the con is probably the most vital task we have these days, when there are so many conmen out there, playing so many frankly terrifying games. Saying “leftism is just dictator-worship” won’t help those poor fools at the University of Missouri, for example. In fact, that Melissa Click person would insist she’s against dictatorship, and hates arbitrary force, even as she’s calling for “muscle” to beat up reporters. She’s conned herself as much as anyone else around her.
- Severian | 11/12/2015 @ 20:29
I certainly do see your point. And it certainly is a distinguishing characteristic of liberalism that those on the outside, are constantly left wondering “Is he dishonest or stupid? Is he falling for the bull, or is he pitching it to somebody else?” We wonder that constantly about both the politicians and those who support them.

But in my mind I’m thinking, “Now that the Bastille has been stormed, are there any just plain ol’ vanilla dictators anywhere?” Even dictators like The Gargoyle over in N. Korea, who have rendered their populations more-or-less powerless, they still have to tell bullshit stories to stay where they are. Even Saddam Hussein had to win his “elections” with 101% of the vote.

I can’t think of any who enjoy the luxury of simply dictating, l’Etat, c’Est Moi style. The desire to do so is certainly there. Castro, Gaddafi, even Obama and Bill Clinton. But they have this con game surrounding them, that Pharaoh Ramses didn’t have (outside of what was customary at the time, God Put Me In Charge) — and I’m offering the possibility that that’s because in this particular era of human development, that’s how it’s done.

That’s as distinguished from the right-wing view: It’s President Washington’s call to make, because it’s his turn in the barrel. He’s lifting the mantle of authority at the moment. It’s a burden, a pain-in-the-ass, like being “president” of the PTA or the neighborhood computer user’s group. President Washington isn’t privileged; President Washington has to get something done and can’t rely on anyone else to do it. Just like taking your turn standing watch for the platoon, while everyone else gets to sleep.
- mkfreeberg | 11/13/2015 @ 07:43
I see. So “the Left” appeared in 1793, talked a good game about social justice, but immediately transformed into nothing more than dictator-worship. Have I got that correct?

Makes sense to me. And it’s a wonderful bludgeon to use against non-aquatic types, i.e. the ones who might still be capable of learning: “You know your policies are just rationalizations for dictatorship, right?”
- Severian | 11/13/2015 @ 10:20
[…] at House of Eratosthenes, we’re having a discussion about the nature and history of Our Betters, the Liberals. While I think Morgan and I have reached broad agreement, there are a […]
- The Top Three Signs You Might be a Secret Leftist | Rotten Chestnuts | 11/13/2015 @ 11:45
So “the Left” appeared in 1793, talked a good game about social justice, but immediately transformed into nothing more than dictator-worship. Have I got that correct?

Correct. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” as they say.

America’s flirtation with the “labor movement” encapsulates this rather nicely. The Left, standing for elevating emotion above reason, intones that “these working conditions are intolerable!” As we study the examples of the argument they make, we find situations in which

1. The working conditions are, indeed intolerable;
2. The working conditions are, in fact, quite privileged compared to the conditions of other “workers” and the righteous indignation is nothing but theater, and a joke;
3. None of our damn business, just don’t cross the line!

So they install a whole new reporting structure, outside of capitalism itself, with the “real boss” being some organizational hierarchy in this labor union, and the “fake boss” being management — you don’t really have to listen to that guy. Just jump when the union tells you to jump. The union feeds off the company, in a purely parasitic relationship; everyone knows this, they aren’t allowed to say so. There is not much thought put into how this creates any sort of a sustainable entity, as a whole. When the costs of operating exceed the revenues, the company starts to collapse. Then the union, and those who support it, blame management for the failure. That’s leftism for you: Total, or near-total, lack of commitment to answering how this new structure will sustain itself over the long term, combined with complete abandonment of responsibility for the consequences.

It is not, or it may not, be how “most people use the term(s).” But we’re talking here more about a self-control problem than a real political ideology. And we don’t allow alcoholics to define what alcoholism is.
- mkfreeberg | 11/14/2015 @ 09:33
mkfreeberg: The Left, standing for elevating emotion above reason, intones that “these working conditions are intolerable!”

You mean the “Left”. Don’t forget the scare-quotes. As for working conditions during the rise of labor unions, it included children working long hours in coal mines in dangerous conditions.

mkfreeberg: So they install a whole new reporting structure, outside of capitalism itself, with the “real boss” being some organizational hierarchy in this labor union, and the “fake boss” being management

Labor unions didn’t replace the power of management, but acted as a counterpoint to the power of management. It distributed some power from the top, and led to a number of labor reforms, including child labor laws. However, labor never held the majority of the power.

mkfreeberg: Total, or near-total, lack of commitment to answering how this new structure will sustain itself over the long term, combined with complete abandonment of responsibility for the consequences.

In the U.S., confrontation was the norm. In Western Europe, labor and management have been more successful at working together.
- Zachriel | 11/15/2015 @ 08:48
[…] rather fascinating discussion unfolded this last week under the comment thread under the “Were the Nazis Right Wingers” post. Severian was challenging some of my definitions, trying to figure out where I stood, making me go […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/15/2015 @ 09:50
You mean the “Left”. Don’t forget the scare-quotes. As for working conditions during the rise of labor unions, it included children working long hours in coal mines in dangerous conditions.

The Left did so intone. No need for scare quotes.
- mkfreeberg | 11/15/2015 @ 11:41
mkfreeberg: The Left did so intone. No need for scare quotes.

“The Left” is not a proper noun. It is an abstraction of many different views based on the notion of political or social equality.
- Zachriel | 11/15/2015 @ 12:30
All nouns but proper nouns must be scare-quoted now? I must’ve missed that lesson back in elementary school…. but then again, I didn’t go to one of those traditional conservative voucher schools.

Free pro tip: If you’re resorting to quibbles about punctuation marks, you’ve lost. Time to declare victory and run away….again.
- Severian | 11/15/2015 @ 12:45
[…] can see a good example of it here. Observe the troll collective “Zachriel” freak out as Morgan, Phil, and I try to hash […]
- Work Sets You Free | Rotten Chestnuts | 02/07/2017 @ 05:24
[…] seen from the perspective of the ruling elite. I still think my “buckets” metaphor holds up, but since it’s only from the elite’s perspective, it doesn’t address the broader […]
- The Basics | Rotten Chestnuts | 04/29/2017 @ 03:38
[…] over on the Hello Kitty of Blogging, I made reference to Severian’s Bucket Theory, which is interesting enough that when I tried […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/26/2017 @ 06:29

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Were the Nazis “Right Wingers”?Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015

Were the Nazis “Right Wingers”?
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015