When confused between left and right,
choose liberty
By Karen Horn
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When children are taught the difference between left and right, grown-ups like to make fun of them by saying that all they have to do is to look at their hands:
By Karen Horn
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- Forget left and right, apply the liberty test
- Russia = crony capitalism + dictatorship + nationalism + imperialism = not "leftist"
- Russia is an authoritarian extreme-right experiment. The US has disoriented left-wing government
When children are taught the difference between left and right, grown-ups like to make fun of them by saying that all they have to do is to look at their hands:
The left is in the direction of that hand on which the thumb is to the right of all other fingers, and vice versa.
This hint won’t fail to increase the child’s confusion, to the sardonic delight of the adults. In the grown-up world of politics, however, the distinction between left and right nowadays proves just as puzzling.
The traditional classifications are growing fuzzy.
The only conceptual rescue can come from a switch to an altogether different compass: the differentiation between policies that promote and those that suppress liberty.
The right-hand side of the political spectrum is traditionally the conceptual meeting-point for conservatives leaning either toward the civilized, moderate centre or toward the right-hand fringe, where odd nationalists, xenophobes and, at the very extreme, neo-Nazis (not only in Germany!) find their pastures. What unites them all in spite of their enormous differences in the detail is that they give priority to what they consider to be the inherited cultural norms, values, institutions and conventions of their countries.
The right-hand side of the political spectrum is traditionally the conceptual meeting-point for conservatives leaning either toward the civilized, moderate centre or toward the right-hand fringe, where odd nationalists, xenophobes and, at the very extreme, neo-Nazis (not only in Germany!) find their pastures. What unites them all in spite of their enormous differences in the detail is that they give priority to what they consider to be the inherited cultural norms, values, institutions and conventions of their countries.
The stereotypical “right” countries are the US, the UK and Switzerland. Economically, a right policy implies a business-friendly stance, with an emphasis on individual property rights and responsibility, leading to a – moderate – free-market approach, complemented with some elements of the welfare state.
“The right” is associated with an adherence to traditional values such as law and order, a strong state, bourgeois ethics and priority for the family as the nucleus of civil society.
This goes along with a call for protection against influences from abroad that might erode one’s own culture and the wish that one’s country should develop world importance.
As one moves further and further to the extreme right, the rightists, just as totalitarian in their hearts as their extreme leftist counterparts, even dream of a “racially clean” community.
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