Obviously, calling oneself right or left means nothing. Beyond this, talking as well might give someone an insight into a person being “right” or “left”. Actions speak the loudest however, and in tough times it is one’s actions that create a legacy between “right” and “left”.
From Bionic Mosquito’s article comes some interesting thoughts on past and present efforts involving society and individuals, the relationships therein and the role of “right” or left”. Bionic starts off with this quote that I love:
As long as you’re living right, then you don’t have to worry about what people see.
– Clay Aiken
So true. I learned at an early age, I think age 5, that to lie I had to remember not only the lie itself, but who I told it to, and when .. and so I settled on just telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may. I sleep good at night.
Bionic has been spending some time with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s work called: ” Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse ” that is online courtesy of the Mises Institute. He quotes Erik in saying:
.. In all European languages (including the Slavic idioms and Hungarian) right is connected with “right” (ius), rightly, rightful, in German gerecht (just), the Russian pravo (law),pravda (truth) ..
This is just the way the European’s organized things .. maybe based on:
On The Day of Judgment, the righteous are to be on the right, and the punished on the left; Christ, of course, sits on the right.
The Bible. In any case, once we have a definition that can be agreed upon, we can compare it with experience. So let us start looking at that it all means.
So, what is “right” for man? Man – each one a unique individual – needs room; room to grow, room to be left alone, room to think, room to thrive. Much of political reality over the course of a few centuries has been to crush this:
“…all the great dynamic isms of the last 200 years have been mass movements attacking – even when they had the word “freedom” on their lips – the liberty, the independence of the person.”
Individual-based, not the collective. So how free were those before and after the Revolutionary War? Well, truth be known, any freedoms gained were quickly evaporated by a centrist agenda early before the Constitution was created (even though the Articles of Confederation were SUPPOSED to be modified by the convention in Philadelphia). The “fear” that the British Empire might again have eyes on this young republic made people opt for the collective again and freedoms were picked off one by one.
Bionic quotes Erik once more:
“The right has to be identified with personal freedom, with the absence of utopian visions whose realization – even if it were possible – would need tremendous collective efforts; it stands for free, organically grown forms of life.”
I do believe that the influence of Jesus and His followers had an impact on furthering the natural rights of individuals regardless of their class or skin color (i.e. Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”)
While the leftist dreams of restoring some mythical golden age, the rightest looks to the past to find what is eternally true, and build on this:
“The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete, whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, “ultramodern.”..”
The right recognizes the uniqueness in each individual; the left dreams of uniformity. Politically…
“… [t]he leftists believe in strong centralization. The rightists are “federalists” (in the European sense), “states’ righters” since they believe in local rights and privileges, they stand for the principle of subsidiarity.”
The left cannot stand for competing authority or allegiance:
“Leftism does not like religion for a variety of causes. Its ideologies, its omnipotent, all-permeating state wants undivided allegiance. With religion at least one other allegiance (to God), if not also allegiance to a Church, is interposed.”
OK, so let us unpack this .. know that Republicans are not “right” (since they crushed the peaceful attempt at an exit of sever southern states in 1861) and the German National Socialist (Nazi) regime was not “right” either ..
What does true conservatism support?
“All conservative movements in Europe are federalistic and opposed to centralization. Thus we encounter in Catalonia, for instance, a desire for autonomy and the cultivation of the Catalan language among the supporters of the extreme right as well as the left”
With this understanding, the way one approaches history can be greatly enhanced, especially understanding the hate that developed of the Jews during the 1920s and 1930s as shared by Thomas Dilorenzo in his Lew Rockwell article today:
The economic policies of the Nazis, wrote Hayek, are “full of ideas resembling those of the early socialists.” The dominant feature of Nazism was a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic — “individual profit seeking, large-scale enterprise, banks, joint stock companies, department stores, international fiance and loan capital, the system of ‘interest slavery,’ in general.” Nazi policy, wrote Hayek, was nothing less than “a violent anti-capitalistic attack.” “It is not even denied, wrote the Nobel Prize-winning economist, that “many of the young men who today [1943] play a prominent part [in the Nazi Party] have previously been communists or socialists.”
The “common trend” of German journalists and others who supported the Nazis “was their anti-liberal and anti-capitalist” beliefs. The even adopted as their “accepted dogma” the phrase “the end of capitalism.”
The Jews were singled out for special hatred by the Nazis, who viewed them as symbols of capitalism. “The party . . . combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us,” they wrote in their “25-Point Platform of the Nazi Party.” And as Nazi apologist Paul Lensch wrote in his book, Three Years of World Revolution (p. 176), the ideas of “freedom and civic right, of constitutionalism and parliamentarianism . . . derived from that individualistic conception of the world,” must be gotten “rid of to assist in the growth of a new conception of State and Society. In this sphere also Socialism must present a conscious and determined opposition to individualism”
So let us be clear, the left’s socialism is much closer to the Nazi state than efforts of decentralization like what happened to the USSR and what is happening in Spain with Catalonia.
So in summary, those that call themselves “conservatives” or “right” these days are usually not. Listen to their words BUT inspect their actions. As Tom Woods pointed out in his article on Woodrow Wilson back in 2003:
There is the prudence and perspective of the conservative. No conservative, whose hallmark is a disposition toward stability, would risk his own country’s well being, both financial and moral, in a ceaseless crusade of visionary schemes. A real sense of history, as well as an appreciation of what is possible in this fallen world, should sober us up from the utopian fantasies of liberalism. Great American statesmen of the past understood this: we can be an example to the world, but beyond that we dare not go. No mother should ever have to be told that her sons died trying to straighten out the political situation in Nigeria. As Lord Byron said, “Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.”
It is NOT America that must go abroad to bomb nations into democracy, America would have done better to be a model group of republics much like what is seen around Russia these days as they already have seen the bad side of collectivism in the USSR.
History helps one from repeating the mistakes of others .. just do your own research!
SF1