Lately I’ve noticed a meme that’s growing in popularity, regarding the “left-right paradigm.” To reduce the meme to generality, many observers are becoming increasingly convinced that there is little to no difference between “left” and “right.”
As convoluted a language as English is, it still annoys me when people are lazy and sloppy in its use; refusing to employ what precision is available to them. When I hear phrases like “semiautomatic machinegun;” “irregardless;” “for future preference;” “conversate;” somebody referring to nitrous oxide as “noss,” or to the Marine Corps as “Special Forces” (somebody I work with does this on a regular basis); the Darth Vader in me threatens to take over.
Maybe what these people mean to say (or at least what they should understand) is that there’s little difference between the Democrat and Republican establishments. What difference there is between “liberals” and “conservatives” is in degrees; not in principle. Oh, they’ll bicker like crazy over those degrees–enough to really convince you they’re at odds. In the end they are no more opposed to each other than the two cops who take turns trying to charm/bully a confession out of a suspect.
It’s worthwhile to consider where the left/right designations came from, since we’ve all been misinformed by our teachers, professors, and the talking heads of television.
Centuries ago in the French parliament, the monarchists/collectivists sat on the left; the anarchists sat on the right. The moderates sat around the middle and the “leaners” sat left or right of center depending on whether they exalted the state or the individual.
Again, you’ve probably been taught that it was the other way around; and if you look it up online, chances are it will be described as the opposite of historical fact. And this makes perfect sense: Left-wingers don’t like be associated with Hitler, Mussolini and Ghengis Khan.
Two things you have to understand about leftists:
1. Right and wrong, truth and lies are dynamic. (Like how they envision the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.) Does it advance their agenda? Then it’s truth. Does it reflect negatively on their agenda? Then it’s a lie. That’s the criteria. Period.
This is an old Marxist/Leninist doctrine which provides a clue to how they can be so comfortable with their own blatant hypocrisy.
2. They agree with the National Socialist German Worker’s (Nazi) Party on all domestic issues: who controls industry; who controls the press; a progressive, graduated income tax; compulsory state-controlled education; civilian disarmament; pervasive regulation of speech and thought; reeducation of dissenters; etc. They do hide their anti-Semitism, though, whereas the Nazis didn’t. So far their hatred is focused on the Jewish state, rather than their Jewish neighbors.
Yes, the Nazis and all fascists are left-wing, if you want to be honest and accurate.
In fact, both Hitler and Mussolini were darlings of the press and the elitists of the left (sorry for the redundancy) when they first took power. It’s only after Adolf’s rash, rambunctious, too-blatant-to-whitewash behavior embarrassed them that the leftists disguised themselves in anti-fascist drag.
Now, not only do they have a conniption when somebody draws attention to their Nazi bedfellow status; they are infamous for accusing their political opposition of fascism.
Though the atrocities of Nazi Germany were dwarfed by those of Soviet Russia, and Red China (the most prolific mass murderers in recorded history), left-wing elitists have been much more successful in whitewashing the legacy of the Communist empires. Still, after suppressing the truth for 70 years, enough facts trickled down after the fall of the Soviet Union that they had to grudgingly admit that their Communist Bloc beneficiaries were bad guys, too.
But simultaneous with that grudging admission was another magic transposition–suddenly despotic Communists were “right-wing” too. And of course they weren’t called Communists or socialists anymore, either. Now they were merely “Stalinists.”
Abracadabra! Those big meanies are now all on the right, with the enemies of progress.
Those who still track the mainstream media can’t help but notice favorite Newspeak terms like “radical right,” “hardline right,” “new right,” “religious right,” “right-wing extremist” and so on. But you never hear the counterpart epithets…the implication being there’s no such thing as “radical left,” “hardline left,” etc. Which also makes perfect sense, since those very elements in the media are pretending to be objective, impartial messengers with no dog in this fight.
Back to the paradigm. When you take into account what left and right really mean, you quickly realize that very few Republicans even LEAN to the right. Democrats and Republicans (with few exceptions among the latter) are LEFT-WING. They don’t disagree about whether the USA should be fundamentally transformed into a third-world police state; only about how rapidly the transformation should occur.
Let’s briefly tackle “liberal” and “conservative.” A true liberal is somebody like Thomas Jefferson. Socialists hide behind the label in modern times because by simply using the semantic disguise of “liberal,” it soft-peddles their tyranical behavior and their despotic ambitions. There is nothing liberal about what they’re doing or what they intend to do.
“Conservative,” in modern parlance, is evidently the term for anyone to the right of Chris Matthews. What makes people assume “conservatives” are fundamentally different from the “liberals” is that they prefer lower taxes and want a significant portion of our suicidal deficit spending to go into the military. What their Facebook constituents seem most passionate about is Michelle Obama’s wardrobe choices and hip measurement.
My rough estimate is that 93% of the population, whichever party they vote for, completely accepts leftist Newspeak and the subliminal ideas it implants. That’s why I’m on the soapbox today.
The Democrat/Republican paradigm is a sham. The left/right paradigm is real, but the distortion of the facts has confused nearly everyone about what it actually is.
alker
The Renegade seduces more women in each novel than some men will in their entire life (women who shout lines like “Oh Deek, my great bull!” during the throes of passion), and Gaston feeds on his scraps without complaint.
Whoever wrote under the name “Craig Sargent” was probably a peacenik from the Vietnam era, because that’s how Martin Stone comes off–despite being raised and trained by a Special Forces officer. The series was published toward the end of the Cold War and left-leaning nuclear disarmament sentiments permeate.
It’s not the highbrow stuff you see touted on some manosphere blogs, though. Dude-lit isn’t for the wine-sipping, chess-playing side of your personality. It’s for the beer-slamming, ball-playing , trash-talking side.
