Rocking Philosophy: Why the Right is Right
The bombardment of left-wing ideology in my early years had a major effect on the person I used to be. I recall environmentalist hysteria like the greenhouse effect, followed by global warming, and what we now call climate change. There’s historical revisionism about Marxism having nothing to do with regimes like the USSR, or feminist mendacity about women being inherently oppressed. Economic propaganda suggests Roosevelt’s New Deal was a success, or that free markets cannot work.
The horizontal line defines economic stance (communism/collectivism – neo-liberalism/libertarianism), and the vertical line defines social views (authoritarian/fascism – libertarian/anarchism). The Nazis were economically central, and socially fascist. The suggestion of Nazis as far right has been repeatedly used to describe Nazi sympathisers, or those that share similarities, like Anders Breivik. This is not accurate. It’s interesting to note however that nobody ever talks about the far left. In fact that term is never used to describe modern extremists.
Now that I am free of leftist indoctrination I find myself relishing the classical liberalism at the centre of the enlightenment and industrial revolution. As a result the Austrian School, Rand’s Objectivism, or the Chicago School, among other philosophies of similar vein, now inspire me. I am fascinated by the question of minarchism versus anarcho-capitalism, where like-minded individuals debate the shape of a classically liberal government.
The bombardment of left-wing ideology in my early years had a major effect on the person I used to be. I recall environmentalist hysteria like the greenhouse effect, followed by global warming, and what we now call climate change. There’s historical revisionism about Marxism having nothing to do with regimes like the USSR, or feminist mendacity about women being inherently oppressed. Economic propaganda suggests Roosevelt’s New Deal was a success, or that free markets cannot work.
As a result of this early conditioning I spent the majority of my life believing that leftist ideology was right about basically everything. I believed it to be the embodiment of fairness, justice, virtue, and a better all-round society. I cringe at how I believed feminist agnotology, or how I respected people like Michael Moore. But by the time I hit my 30’s I was independently studying, reading, watching videos and documentaries, looking at websites, and examining the alternative – the other argument - the one that is heavily suppressed by the mainstream.
It took me to a wonderful world of classically liberal philosophy championed by Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Ludwig Von Mises, and many more. It showed me that a limited government protects the liberty of the individual and wider society. It showed me that government suffers from the knowledge problem, where the state is unable to react to the needs of the public rationally and efficiently, while a free market adapts to the needs of society through consumer demand.
I have learnt that there is credence in social conservatism seeking to protect society from cultural degradation, or that equality is really a buzzword that denies practical reality. In other words, we are all free, but we are not all equally capable. This is what the left does not understand, and this is why Marxian inspired social warfare is so short-sighted and destructive. It fails to conceive that human beings are victims of circumstance, and are only every able to enact equality when there is no threat to survival. But even when people are able to relax their social boundaries they cannot do this without a strong foundation within society, and this must occur within a sustainable framework.
I wouldn’t call myself a social conservative – I am more of a right-wing libertarian. But to even utter the word ‘right’ in our present western culture is often a recipe for automatic criticism. In the US one has to be very careful which state they are in if they are going to be open about political affiliation. In Texas Republicans are dominant, while in California it is the Democrats. In the UK there is basically no right, since leftist parties like Labour and the Liberal Democrats quell the opposition. All that remains is a mere shadow of conservative values, cocooned in a shell of religiosity.
One of the ways that the right has been smeared is an alleged associated with Nazism. First, it always amuses me that people gloss over the fact that Nazism is short for ‘National Socialism’ in German. What’s more the Nazis controlled society through central planning, a socialist philosophy, albeit Nazis did not abolish property rights altogether, like the communists. Social conservatism also has nothing to do with Nazi style mass genocide either, but can be isolationist at its extreme. The confusion regarding Nazi alignment can be solved with the political compass:
The horizontal line defines economic stance (communism/collectivism – neo-liberalism/libertarianism), and the vertical line defines social views (authoritarian/fascism – libertarian/anarchism). The Nazis were economically central, and socially fascist. The suggestion of Nazis as far right has been repeatedly used to describe Nazi sympathisers, or those that share similarities, like Anders Breivik. This is not accurate. It’s interesting to note however that nobody ever talks about the far left. In fact that term is never used to describe modern extremists.
This is where we truly begin to see the reason why Nazism has been thrown at the lap of the right, while the destructive nature of communism has been ignored. Since the civil rights movement of the 60’s there has been a radical transformation of the left of the political spectrum in democratic countries. While the political paradigm was once broken down into classical liberalism on one end, and conservatism on the other, there has been a push even further left, to what is now called the ‘New Left’. Through Soviet style ideological subversion this has led to far-left radicals gaining positions of influence in society. In particular this occurred in academia, where Marxian inspired lecturers now promoting their leftist critique.
What didn’t help in averting this were the policies of Joseph McCarthy during the 1950’s. This led to the term McCarthyism to describe those who accuse others of being communist subversives. But we do know from defectors from the USSR that ideological subversion was very much at the forefront of Soviet espionage during the cold war. One such example is Yuri Bezmenov, an ex-KGB defector. But this didn’t prevent paranoia from kicking in, where people were in danger of becoming what they were fighting against, much like the ‘war on terror’ today.
Now that I am free of leftist indoctrination I find myself relishing the classical liberalism at the centre of the enlightenment and industrial revolution. As a result the Austrian School, Rand’s Objectivism, or the Chicago School, among other philosophies of similar vein, now inspire me. I am fascinated by the question of minarchism versus anarcho-capitalism, where like-minded individuals debate the shape of a classically liberal government.
The minarchist desires a minimal state, where the government simply protects the people via police and military, and where courts are also provided for arbitration. Meanwhile the anarcho-capitalist feels that the state is inefficient in every sense, monopolising force by its mere existence. Both ideologies however espouse free markets, property rights, and non-aggression, all fundamental to classical liberalism.
Fiscal conservatism is also a core value of the right, not to be mistaken with social conservatism. While socialists feel that everything should operate via state redistribution, fiscal conservatives understand that this is expensive, inefficient, and leads to a loss of individual liberty. This is precisely why the larger the state becomes, the more national debt increases. The US started out as a minimal government based on pioneering philosophy of individual liberty and unalienable rights, and has turned out to be the largest state in history, with huge national debts of around 16 trillion.
This is one of the reasons why anarcho-capitalists feel that the state cannot exist, since it will inevitably grow over time. I am inclined to believe that the real conundrum is whether it is feasible to make it impossible for the state to grow once it is minimised. Minimal state or no state it truly is a matter of healthy rhetoric among fellow classical liberals, who realise that socialism has led to inherited national debt by the unborn, a nanny state, intrusive government that meddles with every facet of life, and a push towards totalitarianism. The right seeks to prevent this, and this is why the right is right.
