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The Best of the Worst and the Worst of the Best....

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:32 / 27.09.02

From another thread, where I was asked a question so good it deserves a wider audience:

What do you see as the greatest weakness of the political left and the greatest strength of the political right, and vice versa?

I thought we could broaden it out and kick a few things around. Basically, what do you think is the weak point of an ideology you really believe in, and the strongest point about its opposite?

Anyone care to start the ball rolling?

15:02 / 27.09.02

An ideology needs a clear goal; I was just having this discussion elsewhere earlier today, and it was also a big theme in this thread I started a while back.

The tabloid soul; the right's construction of itself as "jes' folks" being oppressed by a liberal elite - that's both the weakness of the left (which has alienated itself from the uneducated, unwashed masses) and the strength of the right.

I also find the multiplicity of goals on the left-hand side, with all the attendant squabbles (think there are any Free Mumia posters at today's protests in Washington? think they'll do any good?), to be a weakness, while the right-hand side is really seen as concentrating on one thing at a time. Whether or not it actually is.

15:18 / 27.09.02

I'll timidly bite. I consider myself fairly Left to moderate in my politics. Raised by labor union parents who pretty much seeded my political views but let me water them myself, I guess I've always had a soft spot for the Left. But, as much as I love and support it, there are times when it drives me insane. Your interview, Haus, brought up some old issues of the lack of solidarity by the Left when combatting the Right and I felt myself become really bothered by your reminders of that, as it's ALWAYS been a problem. The hesitancy, disorganization and utter paralysis in the face of stronger opposition, especially of late, has really been infuriating and only recently, with Daschle and Gore's vocal protests, have I seen some semblance of a chance that the Left isn't going to just roll over and play dead until the storm that is the Bush New World Order passes. I fail to understand it other than to imagine that most people do grow silent when the other guy has a particularly big fucking stick. But is there no fight in us whatsoever?

That and the fact that (and I'm egregiously guilty of this myself more times than I wish to count) most Leftists have a slightly delusional view of other people and their capability for just being utter fucking monsters to one another. If we just give a man a decent wage, health care and a good education, we won't need law that's punitive and we'll all hold hands & sing Kumbaya. Feh. I'll always default to compassion over draconian iron-fisting but there has to be some semblace of protection from one another. It's a tightrope that I'm terrified to walk.

As for the Right, it's a sort of staunch black-and-white absolute-filled view of the world that I honestly wish I had. There's a determination there that I'm absolutely fascinated by. Selfish, survivalist worldviews are extremely resilient to opposition and pretty damn effective to getting the job done, dirty though the job may be.

I d'know. This turned into more of a rant than I wanted it to. But that's my non-caffeinated, bleary eyed two cents on it.

No star here laces

15:25 / 27.09.02

In my personal political universe:

Left = give people a chance and they'll be nice to each other

Weakness = unscrupulous individuals will always abuse the system

Right = everyone is a shit at heart so we have to stop them from being too shitty to each other

Strength = less potential for colossal fuckups

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:57 / 27.09.02

Although the last twenty years have shown that when the people in question are powerful, there's no-one who can prevent the fuck-ups occuring.

Sorry, too bunged up to think intelligently right now.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:24 / 28.09.02

The thing is, are we talking about movements or ideologies here? There's a difference. For example, to my mind the greatest strength of the Right as a movement must be the rhetoric, the incredibly skillful use of language - skillful in a purely functional sense. For example, the much-discussed term 'political correctness' - a two-word phrase that has single-handedly enabled anyone who uses it to smear opposition to discrimation, oppression and inequality as those very things themselves... You have to admire the genius of this as an ontological exercise even as you deplore the idea behind it.

Conversely, the Left have a tendency to score massive own goals in this department. Did no-one realise, for example, that if you take up the mantle of 'anti-globalization' then it's going to be very, very easy for politicians etc to make globalization sound like a warm and cosy and lovely thing? And then you have to explain "well it's not so much that we're anti-globalization as that when they say globalization what they mean is etc etc...", which takes time. Even 'anti-capitalist' is a bit sucky. How about we just say we're pro-people, and anti-folk-getting-fucked-over? Tsk.

But I'd say both of these, and many of the above, are weaknesses of movements - they'e not inherent to the ideology. That's another question.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:23 / 28.09.02

Left = give people a chance and they'll be nice to each other

Weakness = unscrupulous individuals will always abuse the system

Right = everyone is a shit at heart so we have to stop them from being too shitty to each other

Strength = less potential for colossal fuckups

My flatmate, who is the kind of radical supporter of the free market with Randian overtones that the United Kingdom is generally blessedly free of, would argue instead that the Left, with its collectivism, social funds and taxation, is far more about preventing the individual from expressing hirself, and the Right a champion of individual liberties and freedoms.

Which is another thing - I suspect that the UK's idea of the Right is paternalistic and authoritarian, and of the Left communitarian and liberal, whereas the authoritarian Left (Communism) and the non-authoritarian Right (libertarianism) could both also be worth considering. Possibly this means that Left and Right are increasingly fuzzy distinctors...