The great circle of authoritarianism
I’ve heard this many times:
The Right is for freedom; the Left is for tyranny.
Even Austin Frank falls into that trap. I don’t blame him; he is a dedicated Republican.
Left and right are both for freedom
The distinction is very simple:
- The Left believes that true liberty for everyone can be achieved with basic support from the government. Not everyone has the boots or the straps to pull themselves up.
- The Right believes that only the individual can guarantee their own liberty and, therefore, the government should facilitate the individual determination.
Standard left-right spectrum
On the surface, all we have is political left and political right with political center being somewhere in between as a compromise between the two.
The collectivism of the left
Left has a tendency towards collectivism, populism, and forced equality. Not only everyone should have the same basic needs met, but everyone should also be forced to help meet everyone else’s needs. “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” said Karl Marx.
By forcing those better off to pay “their fair share” to support those less fortunate the government can create an equal playing field for everyone. By celebrating and promoting minority groups and their ways of life the government can encourage diversity and suppress the propensity of the majority to oppress the minority. Cultural and social cohesion can be enforced via coerced equality. The laws of the land should elevate the state above the individual for the benefit of all.
Forced military draft, the thinking goes, can compel everyone to sacrifice a few years of their lives for their country. Only if everyone has skin in the game will the citizenry make correct choices when it comes to war and peace.
The fascism of the right
The right has a propensity for fascism in the form of nationalism combined with populism. The minority religious groups, the disabled, the foreigners are all line cutters that get in the way of individuals among the majority. Being forced not to discriminate against gays, for example, is an affront to the individual religious liberty of the business owner.
By suppressing the rights of minorities, the right elevates the liberties of the majority. By elevating rootedness, social cohesion, the reverence for Blood and Soil, the individual among the majority is exalted and empowered. Humans are tribal species, and we should not fight it — we should celebrate our tribalism.
The laws don’t make the individual. The individual makes the laws. If a ruler emerges that ignores established law, it is a sign of strength.
The circle of tyranny
If we take the standard left-right spectrum I sketched out above and zoom out to a bird’s eye view we now see a circle. It looks like a clock, in fact.
At 12-o’clock we have political center. These are pragmatists who believe in politics as a compromise among various interests.
Just to the right of 6-o’clock we have fascism/authoritarianism. To the left of 6-o’clock we have collectivism/communism. The far right and the far left find common ground at exactly 6-o’clock. At that point the forces of tyranny agree on one thing and one thing only: the state can coerce people to live and behave in a certain way, and those that oppose the state are enemies.
On our way to the right of 12-o’clock we have people like Bush, Kasich, and Rubio, with Ted Cruz somewhere around 3-o’clock. Given the support from Alt-Right and White Nationalists, Trump is past 3-o’clock and is inching towards 6-o’clock. I would put him at about 5:00-o’clock.
Going to the left of noon, we find Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Bernie is somewhere between 9 and 6, and Jill Stein is probably at 6:05 right there to the left of 6-o’clock.
In my clock metaphor, the current state of political left seems to be right at about 7-o’clock moving towards 6. The political right is somewhere around 5-o’clock moving towards the 6.
The American political system is in a precarious state right now where we are closer to tyranny than we are to centrism. I fear we are past the point of no return.
