In American politics, the landscape is viewed as Left vs. Right, Liberal vs. Conservative, and Democrat vs. Republican. This idea is an anti-truth so great that it divides the American people. While it is true that we have two primary parties and that members of each party often conflict with each other in their stances on various issues, the underlying premise—that views fall along a spectrum between Left and Right—is utter nonsense meant to create opposition.
The Left-Right political spectrum makes two implicit assumptions, both of which I’ll cover. I’ll also touch on the origin of the idea and its inherent lack of definition. The thesis to keep in mind: there is no political spectrum of any kind, whether Left-Right or otherwise.
A Brief History
The idea of “left” and “right” originates from the French Revolution, which went from 1789 to 1799. This was a period of unprecedented turmoil in France, especially during the Reign of Terror between 1793 and 1794. For some added trivia, the French Revolution is why France is so well known for its use of the guillotine.
The issue that led up to and essentially started the revolution is we still hear about today: economic inequality. France was a Feudalistic Monarchy, meaning it was ruled by a king with a subordinate group of nobles who owned property. As is usually the case with feudal states, a group of the nobles felt they were getting shorted and demanded action. This eventually led to a national assembly to determine where everyone stood—both figuratively and literally. The ones whose allegiance remained with the King stood to his right and those in favor of revolution stood to his left—and the more radical their views, the further left they were.
This is how “the Left” and, later, the idea of “Progressive” came to be. Those who held a particular set of views, as defined by their desire for radical reform, were on the “left”, and everyone else who thought differently was on the “right.” This is why it’s a false dichotomy—it’s “those who are with us” on the “left” and “everyone else” on the “right.” Truly an incomplete definition with an “us vs. them” mentality.
American Left and Right
Some immediate parallels can be drawn between the origin of “Left” and “Right” and how they’re used today in modern American politics. People who tend to be Left-wing and call themselves either Liberal or Progressive hold similar views to the revolutionaries in France. They believe the systems and institutions within our country are inherently flawed and must be reformed to better suit the needs of the people. Note that I say reform, not improve, because the goal is to modify the entire structure, not simply build atop it.
In contrast, people who tend to be Right-wing and call themselves Conservative believe that American systems and institutions are largely fine and that any change should be small and incremental. The idea is that the foundational structure of the country is robust and reliable and that the problems we face today are cracks to be filled and rough edges to be smoothed.
Obviously, those are generalizations and they do not get into the details of any issue or set of issues. And that’s the point, because what classifies as Left-wing and Right-wing is not a stance on specific issues, but the underlying assumptions one holds and how those shape their views of the world.
Why the Spectrum Is Incorrect
There are two key assumptions implied by the Left-Right spectrum. They are:
The political world is divided into opposing forces
By virtue of it being a spectrum, there are multiple, equally valuable options
There are other assumptions involved in the spectrum, but those two are the most encompassing since all other assumptions follow from them. Let’s go through each one sequentially.
The Political World Divided Into Opposing Forces
This is naturally an antagonistic view that promotes political tribalism and pits us against one another. Moreover, the idea is dialectic in nature, meaning it asserts that the use of oppositional forces is necessary to create truth. Dialectical reasoning is the belief that everything contains its contradiction, and only through the collision of something and its contradiction is when truth is created. Simply put, it’s that history and truth only come into being through conflict.
That idea is not only harmful, it is false as well. We may hold different views, but we are all one American people with the same goal: to create the best lives that we can for ourselves, our families, and our friends. It is through the mechanism of dialogue—open discussion among multiple parties—that we have progressed as a society and made the world better. That discussion may contain disagreement, and that’s not only to be expected, it’s necessary. The difference is that dialogue implies a shared goal: the pursuit of a universal, objective truth and eventual agreement. Dialectic, however, is always antagonistic, because it implies that we must fight in order to get anywhere, and agreement is antithetical to dialectic—the goal is conflict itself, not some kind of resolution.Multiple Equally Valuable Options
This, unfortunately, has a subjectivist take on the world. It incorrectly stems from the idea that there are multiple equally viable options—though, “equally viable” doesn’t actually make sense. Viability is binary—something either works or doesn’t. How effective something is at getting the job done is a measure of value, not viability. As such, the existence of multiple ways to get the job done doesn’t imply they are all equal in value. In fact, there’s usually one that’s better than all of them. Sometimes, which one is better is contextual; other times, it isn’t.
In this case, there’s one option that is superior to all others irrespective of context: Liberal Democracy. All other forms of government are decidedly worse, and the reason is simple: Liberal Democracy limits the amount of harm that any one person or group of people can do to society. Every alternative has a more centralizing—or “socialized”—form, where more power is concentrated into the hands of the few. Moreover, Liberal Democracy maximizes the autonomy of the individual, which has historically led to unprecedented freedom and prosperity.
With both of those established, I’ll dive into each one with more detail.
The Dialectic of Left and Right
I mentioned that, with dialectic, the goal is conflict. That is to say, the end sought by using the dialectic method is conflict. That’s because it fundamentally asserts that conflict is the only way truth is produced. All other forms, like empiricism—which is observable information—and theoretical deduction—like logic and math—cannot be used to determine truth. If every idea contains its contradiction and the only way to create truth in the world is through the conflict of that idea and its contradiction, then conflict is itself the ultimate goal. The problem, however, is that it is infinitely recursive—there’s no actual end. If you produce some truth through the dialectic method, then that truth also contains its contradiction, so you must run it through the dialectic as well, and that produces a new truth that also contains its own contradiction. Repeat indefinitely until you wake up and realize how absurd this is.
The concept may seem a bit confusing, so to understand it, you need look no further than real world political discussion. How often have you seen Democrat and Republican candidates in a heated discussion with both participants talking past one another and never establishing any common ground? Likewise, how often have you seen regular citizens of opposing views do the same? Perhaps you have done this as well? And that’s the point—never-ending conflict with no resolution. That is what Left-Right politics—and partisan politics as a whole—does to society. If you’ve ever wondered why the country seems more politically polarized than ever before, this is why. Left-Right politics, and partisan politics as a whole, will never lead to resolution or agreement because it exists in a dialectical relationship. And if agreement cannot be reached, progress cannot be made.
Now let’s contrast that to dialogue. You may be wondering: doesn’t dialogue also involve conflict? And the answer is: yes, it does. The difference, however, is that conflict is a means to an end, and the end is resolution or agreement. When two people with differing—possibly even opposing—views engage in dialogue, they’re attempting to reach some kind of common understanding. From there, an agreement can be reached. Perhaps they find that one of them was right and the other was wrong, or that the truth exists somewhere between their two viewpoints. In either case, the end result is harmony, not discord, and that’s because the underlying assumption by both parties was that they wanted to establish rapport and reach an agreement.
As previously mentioned, that doesn’t mean there won’t be conflict. Discussions will likely contain a back-and-forth of opposing claims and they may very well become heated. That’s fine, and even to be expected. With the advent of Liberal Democracy, we replaced our swords with words and combat with open debate. Violence has, historically, been the way humans settled conflict, and now that dialogue has replaced it, it’s expected that there will still be tension. The difference is that the harm one can inflict with words is significantly less than with violence.
American society has only ever progressed through dialogue, and dialogue will always be the only mechanism through which progress is made.
The Illusion of Equally Valuable Options
The idea that all other forms of government used today are of equal value to Liberal Democracy indicates a misunderstanding of what Liberal Democracy is and why it came about. Let’s step through that.
First and foremost, Liberal Democracy is predicated on Individualism. Individualism is the belief that the individual is sovereign, the individual is the primary unit of society, government is subordinate to the individual, and individual autonomy must be maximized. Second, Liberal Democracy is the product of two core ideas (both of which are also predicated on Individualism): Classical Liberalism and Democracy.
Classical Liberalism, which was established by John Locke in 1689 and is what the United States is founded upon, is the doctrine of individual liberties, equality before the law, consent of the governed, secularism (the separation of church and state), and maximum economic and political freedom of the individual. Democracy is the form of government enacted by distributing the political authority to the individual. To quote Abraham Lincoln, it is, “…the system of government of the people, by the people, and for the people…” The U.S. also has a Republican form of government, which is where officials are elected by the citizens to represent them on their behalf. As such, we are Liberal, Democratic Republic.
The third component here is that Liberal Democracy, because it is a combination of Classical Liberalism and Individualism, necessitates free market Capitalism. Any other economic structure reduces the economic freedom, and therefore the autonomy, of the individual.
Why is understanding any of that important? Simple, it underlies the two key purposes of the entire system:
To allow as many individuals as possible to decide as much of their lives as possible with the minimum amount of constraint necessary to maintain civil order and keep society functioning
To minimize the amount of damage any one person or group of people can do to society by limiting the amount of authority or power each person can wield
All other forms of government are less effective at both functions. The first point is important because each person is responsible for their own decisions. The second point is important because, as history has shown repeatedly, people will seek power to control and tyrannize others.
Some counterarguments worth addressing:
Plenty of people make all sorts of bad decisions that destroy their own lives or worse. Shouldn’t we have mechanisms in place to prevent that?
To which I say: don’t be so arrogant. Who are you to say that you can make choices for someone else’s life better than they can? This is an incredibly foolish perspective and it demonstrates man’s hubris. There is a much greater probability you will do more damage to a person’s life by trying to intervene in their own decision making and autonomy. Yes, people will make bad decisions for themselves, and that very well may leave them in terrible situations or worse. That is the consequence we must bear with this system, because nothing in the world is without consequence.
Okay, fair enough, but surely we can do more good for society as a whole by pooling more resources and authority to the government. Why shouldn’t we do that?
With greater authority to do good comes greater authority to do evil. The probability that the government will do something harmful is significantly higher than the probability it will do something good. That’s human history in a nutshell. The collapse of the Soviet Union was little more than thirty years ago, and there are dictatorships still present across the globe today. Moreover, the rise of a new form of tyrannical government—totalitarianism—caused the deaths of over 100 million people, and that happened all in the span of the previous century. Let’s not be blind to history here.
As for pooling resources, I covered that briefly in my previous essay. I will also write a future essay about it in greater detail.
But this is the United States, not some developing country or even some place like the Soviet Union. Haven’t we learned how to be better people after all this time? That would mean we can more easily use the power for good.
The hubris of man shows its face once again. Human nature is the same no matter where or when in the world you are. It’s in our nature to be self-interested and desire more for ourselves. By themselves, both are fine, but they can be taken too far. Acting as though we are somehow a different and superior people is at the heart of American Exceptionalism. Our country and its systems aren’t better because our people are better—we simply got lucky with what our forefathers believed in and fought and died for. To think otherwise besmirches their legacy and sets us up for colossal downfall.
So you believe that people are just too evil to be trusted?
It’s not that I believe it, it’s that history has shown us time and again what happens when power is concentrated into the hands of the few. More importantly, this perspective asserts that the question needing to be answered is, “What allows tyranny to occur?” That’s completely backwards, because tyranny has been the norm. We should instead be asking, “What allowed freedom to be attained?” As far as we can tell, it’s the people banding together and creating systems and institutions that maximize individual autonomy and minimize the amount of harm the individual can do to society.
Tyranny and oppression are easy, and there are an infinite number of ways they can manifest. But freedom is finite, difficult, and costly, as is everything in life that we value. Anything less than unyielding effort leads to complacency, so one must remember: pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.