The Left-Right Fallacy

[Chris]

Christopher Dawson addresses the The Left-Right Fallacy. I removed the religious aspects of this because it's more general this way. If you're interested in more, please follow the link. I left the conservative elements.

...The tactics of totalitarianism are to weld every difference of opinion and tradition and every conflict of economic interests into an absolute ideological opposition which disintegrates society into hostile factions bent on destroying one another.

In this campaign of disintegration the Right-Left mythology is a perfect god-send to the forces of destruction. It provides them with a crude and simple but highly effective instrument which can be applied to almost any situation and by which any number of different issues can be merged together in a mass of confusion and ideological clap-trap.

For example, there are Liberals and Conservatives, there are Republicans and Monarchists, there are anti-clericals and clericals, there are Communists and Fascists, there are Socialist and Individualists, there are Semites and anti-Semites. All of these are different oppositions, which have no necessary connection with one another, yet all of them are brought under the Left-Right headings and thus forced into ideological alliances which may be unnecessary and absurd. Moreover, when you have got your opponents all neatly ticketed you can then repeat the same process on any section of them—dividing the Socialists into Socialists of the Left Center in Socialists of the Extreme Left, or the Liberals into Moderates or Progressives, so as to submit them to the same process of confusion and disintegration.

Now the fault—or, if you like, the advantage, of the method of division is that it has no rational basis. It grades men and ideas according to their relation to a central point, which, as a rule, has no existence.

Yet in spite of this irrational character, Left and Right become the center of fierce ideological loyalties and enmities which overpower men’s reason and sense of judgment and drive them to acts of violence and inhumanity which would disgrace a tribe of cannibals.

The process of social disintegration by political faction has been spreading like an epidemic in modern society....

[Mister D]

I'm a big Dawson fan.

[Chris]

I'm a big Dawson fan.

You'll probably like this then: T.S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson on Religion and Culture.

[Mister D]

I do! Printing this out for Friday Happy Hour.

[Captdon]

So, I'm only right to the left? How does that matter?

[Chris]

So, I'm only right to the left? How does that matter?

To me the point of the OP is you're right of some imaginary center.

Take the Small's discussion on education. All sides see the value of standards even though Who on the left seeks to implement them top-down and we on the right seek to implement them at the state or even more local level bottom up, which may in time evolve federal standards.

American politics can be seen as two sides vying for democratic control of the same capitalist wealth.

[Mister D]

And imagine ourselves in existential conflict with people who we probably have a great deal in common with and allies with those we have serious differences with.

[Mister D]

IMO, this is more obvious on the "left" where, for example, you have feminists and homosexual activists allied with immigrants from patriarchal and "homophobic" societies, wealthy white women allied with poor colored women, Latinos allied with blacks etc.

[Chris]

And imagine ourselves in existential conflict with people who we probably have a great deal in common with and allies with those we have serious differences with.

I'm trying to imagine a civil war in my neighborhood between lefties and righties, whites, blacks, Hispanics and the Chise family down the street.

With the world becoming ever more democratic and capitalism, other than some resistance in Eastern Europe, it's hard to imagine any real conflict.

We're too closely divided.

And yet we argue daily like we're far apart.

In the thread on the outcome of the Arizona midterm outcome, @jimmyz, perhaps some others, have the right idea, a lefty took office, but the nation will survive, and certainly the people.

[Mister D]

I'm trying to imagine a civil war in my neighborhood between lefties and righties, whites, blacks, Hispanics and the Chise family down the street.

With the world becoming ever more democratic and capitalism, other than some resistance in Eastern Europe, it's hard to imagine any real conflict.

We're too closely divided.

And yet we argue daily like we're far apart.

In the thread on the outcome of the Arizona midterm outcome, @jimmyz, perhaps some others, have the right idea, a lefty took office, but the nation will survive, and certainly the people.

I would only caution that men were never more optimistic than they were in 1913.