Mr. Gottfried, your observations on the rise of “neo-Marxist” Left, which embraces the Corporate state as the tool to destroy the cultural values of the American middle class. Yourobservation that the Republican Party has abandoned it’s opposition to the cultural left, except rhetorically to grab votes on election day is equally valid. The Republican Party rose to power on the old Nixon “Silent Majority”, and the “Southern Strategy”, but from Reagan on, has done nothing substantial for this constituency, except cooperate with Wall Street to destroy the economic security of it’s base. As I’ve observed before, they talk like populists, but govern like plutocrats.

The Democrats---are also the party of Wall Street bankers, but practice an electoral strategy of appealing to “Identity Politics” to gather their votes. “Identity Politics” is in practice, a patronage system that hands out preferences in employment, housing and educational opportunities to “aggravated minorities” to win votes, but like the Republicans, cater to Wall Street on the economic issues.  They resemble the Republicans in their appeals to “social justice” and “equality” while pursuing the same economic---and foreign policy agenda---as the Republicans.

I dismiss the so-called “libertarian” right that befuddled Sid champions, as merely the blending of the “right” and the “left” on social and economic issues. They are the worst of the Republicans and the worst of the Democrats combined in one befuddled mess.

The war in Iraq is part of the larger effort to protect the international system of finance capitalism that has risen in the last 20 years under Greenspan, the rise of the World Bank, the IMF and the FED. So it’s not surprising that both parties share the same views on the occupation of Iraq.

Joe sed (heh ;-) “I dismiss the so-called “libertarian” right that befuddled Sid champions, as merely the blending of the “right” and the “left” on social and economic issues. They are the worst of the Republicans and the worst of the Democrats combined in one befuddled mess.”

I concur, and furthermore they’re not addressing America’s - and the world’s - ecological catastrophe in any realistic way.  If, as at least the less looney kinds of libertarians admit, “the government” does have a few limited roles including the role of national defense, then it has a duty to defend the country’s natural resources, defend the land against obscene and irreversible destruction (cf, strip mining, pouring concrete over precious arable land, etc), and to protect the citizens against “economic violence” (to use Wendell Berry’s phrase.)

“In Europe there is in fact a populist Right, which Sid may not approve of, but which functions as a serious oppositional force to the multicultural Left. As the adversaries of this European Left, the Vlaams Belang, the Lega Nord, and the British National Party belong to the Right.” ~ Gottfried

I completely agree.  While living in France, I attended some right-wing organizations, and the French conservatives were anything but politically correct in describing the type of nation they desire and the sort of people they want living there.  They rejected the tendencies of the multicultural Left in all its guises - in a manner that would have made Dinesh D’Souza, Ramesh Ponnuru, Bill Kristol or David Frum leave the room.  The fact that you see neocons attacking the European Right is further evidence (as if we need any) how far to the Left the neocons have moved.  It is unfortunate that the U.S. does not have, at the moment, any authentic Rightist parties.

One of the reasons, I think, you have more authentic Rightist movements in Europe is because they still possess a virile blood-and-soil patriotism that no longer exists in the United States, except perhaps in parts of the South and Midwest.  European Rightists fight to possess or reclaim their ancestral lands - not for a proposition.

Roger Scruton wrote that “the modern use of the term ‘left’ derives from the French Estates General of 1789, when the nobility sat on the King’s right, and the ‘third estate’ on the left. It might have been the other way round. Indeed, it WAS the other way round for everyone but the King”.

However arbitrary it may have been at the outset, the left-right dichotomy is still valid today. I disagree with Sid on this issue. If the GOP is not of the right anymore, it’s the GOP’s problem to get back on track. The right means:
a) submission to God and Christian values and tradition;
b) Greco-roman (Classic) culture;
c) Freedom of the market
d) Small government;
e) Non-interventionist foreign policies;

First we can dismiss the foolish idea that the libertarians are just a mixture of “Left” and “Right”.  The libertarians, be they of the “Austrian” School or Randian or just “rugged individualist”, have their own deep structure, one that is neither “Left” or “Right”.  John Ball is correct to call attention also to the environmental ideology, it also neither “Left” or “Right”.

An aside: Those who use the word “ideology” need to know what it means: The term, albeit used earlier, was really coined by Auguste Comte and by him contrasted to religion on one hand and “science” on the other.  Since Kuhn we all know that “science” isn’t all that “scientific” and is in fact very ideological.  Let Ideology mean the structure of ideas and the structure of their interrelation. Thus all political positions have an ideology, and it is right that they do so.

I thank Paul Gottfried for his gentle reply.  I agree with him that in Europe, the “Left” still understands itself as anti-nationalist, and still seeks a kind of homogenized human being, with no attachments to much of anything, utterly a product of déracinément (look that word up, Stormfronters!), anomie, alienation, etc. The same ideal is held by Social Democrats and Whigs (whom Americans call “liberals” and “neoconservatives”, respectively).

But give the European “Left” time.  My experience has been that Europe always is 10 years behind the Fed US, and that it copies reflexively all American trends.  For unanswered is my observation that the USA “Left” has become a collection of nationalist movements.  I give an example from my own home town.  That ethnic group which I call “First Blacks” (the pre-1808ers [not a “race” but an ethnic group]) even as late as 10 years ago wanted integration, de-emphasis of “race”, and a “Christian” society.  Now, in a complete about-face, they now want their own schools, only for their ethnic group, teaching their own program (paid for, of course, by the general taxpayer)—anything but “multiculturalism”, inclusiveness, social therapy, etc.  In this they are not joined by two other ethnic groups, West Indian Africans and African-Africans – and why should they so join?  They have a different history, and thus are different ethnic groups.  The pre-1808ers also show their thin skin, so to speak, as other nationalist groups in being completely unwilling to countenance any fault-finding, such as from Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Bill Cosby, and Juan Williams (himself West Indian).  That a certain Hispanic group as well as certain of Aboriginal Peoples (risibly called “native Americans”) are nationalist movements needs no comment.  If “Bede” wants “virile blood-and-soil patriotism”, he need only look “Leftward” to find it.

The “Left” will doubtless answer me that they are only in favor of oppressed ethnic groups, but this is a nuance quickly lost in the traffic.  Marxism died a strange death indeed!  It was all adumbrated over 40 years ago by Susan Sontag: “the truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.” —“What’s Happening in America (1966)” Note nothing about “civil rights”, nothing about Classic Marxism, such a dialectic materialism, class struggle, the labor theory of value, the Proletariat, etc.  Nothing even of the Frankfurter School.  Not even an emphasis on “The West vs. The Rest”. Instead, typically American, “race” is the issue.  Typically American also is the therapeutic terminology (“cancer”), a terminology to which Paul Gottfried rightly has called attention. Leftist Nationalism is just as nationalist as our own nationalist and racialist writebackers; it’s just for different “nations” and “races”, and against others. “Joe Populist” [sic] and his buddies need to start calling ol’Susan “sista”.

10 Bucks say the European “Left” will go the same way.  They did before.  In the 1970s the IRA had both a Marxist and a nationalist wing; the Marxist quickly disappeared.  Stalin loved Russian nationalism.  The “Left” in 1914 in Germany quickly united behind the Kaiser, as it did behind nationalists elsewhere in Europe. And roots of the “Left”, Jacobinism, gave birth to nationalism in the first place.

Paul, it would be wonderful if there were no vast gulf between your a&b;on on side and your c, d, and e. on the other. I wish it were not so, but it is.  Case in point, the falling apart of the John Randolph Club after Rothbard’s death, or how Meyer’s fusionism went nowhere. And this gulf exists because a&b;have different “deep structures” or ideologies than c, d, and e. Yet maybe for a time these two ideologies can work together.

Mr. Gottfried, your observations on the rise of “neo-Marxist” Left, which embraces the Corporate state as the tool to destroy the cultural values of the American middle class.

I have to respectfully disagree. Privitization, Corporate State as you say, is accomplished thru both the left and right. Lobbyists could care less about what party they deal with.

I know people of the left and they detest Marxist crappola. Its the neo-cons, who are today on the right, that embrace Marx, Spinoza, Strauss, Trotsky, Rand and the Hermaneutic crowd of Gott Ist Tot eternal war philosophy such as Christopher Hitchens spouts.

As in the case of Abramoff [lobbyist]and, the idea was to get the ‘wackos’, as he called the evangelists, to create controversy and to obfuscate the issues so complicated legislation could be slid under the peoples noses.

The politicians are basically engaging in a tactic of divide and conquer, the more people think of politica like football, and cheer for their team no matter what, the easier it is for the greedsters of the corporate state to bamboozle the people.

WASPs became insufferable masochists when they forgot that the Bible (at least the Old Testament) encourages a certain pride in one’s particularity, and not an unconditional embrace of moral universalism.  A biblical faith which is all universal love (minus a healthy dedication to protecting the walls of one’s city/nation/tribe) is doomed to suffering extinction, or at least the eternal love of Oprah (the same thing?). Cromwell must be spinning in his grave.

I once believed there was but “right” and left”.

Then I was educated, and came to believe the divisions were two dimensional rather than one.

Later in life I asked myself: why only two dimensions, why not three?  Four?  Five?  INFINITE?

At some point I realized that political allies are all about how much of your own individual beliefs you are willing to compromise.  For example, how much would I be willing to compromise by joining with, say, Sid Cundiff and supporting everything he states?  How much would I be willing to compromise in order to side with John Ball?  Joe Populist?  Scott Richert?  Even Ron Paul?

The American-individualist said “NO ONE”, the Catholic said “COMMUNION”!  With whom did I agree?  The Church, of course.  With whom do I commune?  The Church, of course.  For whom does the Church tell me to vote?  NO ONE, of course.  Ergo, will I even vote?  In a weird way, the Church and rampant American individualism comes together…

Perhaps I will not vote (again).  I will support Ron Paul, although I consider him an anti-Catholic candidate (after all, he has not had his campaign publicly united with the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts...), but not actively anti-Catholic, only passively.  Who is as an actively Catholic candidate?  Well, I’m not sure if there ever was one in the USofA…

But, this is all for naught.  As I’ve said before, the American public doesn’t want peace and freedom, they want WAR and COMMUNISM.

The next president will NOT be Ron Paul, and not because Americans are divided between “left and right”, but because they are wholly united in a front for WAR and COMMUNISM.

Oh, and a helluva headline for the editor!

“Gentle Readers”, not “Gentile”?

Don’t tell me this wasn’t on purpose.

John Ball sed: “the government” does have a few limited roles including the role of national defense, then it has a duty to defend the country’s natural resources, defend the land against obscene and irreversible destruction (cf, strip mining, pouring concrete over precious arable land, etc), and to protect the citizens against “economic violence” (to use Wendell Berry’s phrase.)”

I completely agree.

Notice last Sunday on ABC, we had George Will pointing out that “fusionism”---which he defined as the political strategy of combining economic “freedom” with appeals to tradition values in family and religious issues---as the basis of the Republican Party.

Yes, it is true.  The Republicans combine a Wall Street economic agenda (libertarianism) to get the huge campaign contributions from the Big Money Boys, while constantly yakking about destruction of family values, and abortion and racial quotas (Christian Right) to get the votes from the middle class.  Like I said, they talk like populists, but govern like plutocrats.

John Ball is right---”fusionism” will not work in the long run because they are contradictory.

Evidence of this is the fund raising of Clinton and Obama, who each have raised as practically as much money as all the Republican Presidential candidates combined.

The Democrats are the mirror image of the Repubicans…they pander to RACIAL and ethnic divisions to get votes will pursing the same Wall Street economic agenda as the Republicans.

As for “libertarians”, they have their heads so far stuck in the..uh…”ground” that they are virtually as screwed up as the Green Party or the ISO on the Left.

“Fusionism” is futile.

he Bible (at least the Old Testament) encourages a certain pride in one’s particularity, and not an unconditional embrace of moral universalism.  A biblical faith which is all universal love [...] is doomed to suffering extinction

Hardly.  The entire Book of Ruth was written to oppose “particularity” (a euphemism for racialism and nationalism).  Then there’s the view of Isaiah, e.g. (among other passages) 2:1-5.  The ethical ideal of the Tanakh is found in Job chap. 29-31. Everything there about “moral universalism”.

grant havers I invite to read the Bible, if he has a copy.  And I tell him, If morality isn’t universal, then it’s a human construct, and thus no morality at all, and would bind no one. As for “suffering extinction”, what a fine statement of Social Darwinism! For the “far right” as well as the “far left”, it’s all about power.

One way to make sense out of the ongoing chance in political categories is by comparing US and European conservatisms. 

The hallmark of traditional American conservatism was an emphasis on small government and an isolationist, pacifist foreign policy.  This political thinking does not exist in Europe; it is totally incomprehensible to most people there.  What Europeans call “conservatism” is characterized by strong nationalism in foreign policy and a paternalistic, essentially socialist state in domestic affairs.  The archetype of this kind of “conservatism” is Bismark. 

The change currently occurring in USA can be seen as the Republicans adopting the European style of conservatism.  This explains the “national greatness” in foreign affairs and “compassionate conservatism” at home.  The connection may be quite conscious, because much of the “selling” of European-style conservatism has been done by neoconservatives, and The Weekly Standard has several times praised Bismark—as well as Disraeli, whom they see as Bismark’s British equivalent.

The problem with adopting European ideas becomes obvious from the question:  This combination of nationalism and socialism, how’s that spelled?  In the 1930s Germans again chose a strong leader advocating “conservative” policies, because many of them saw him as a second Bismark.  This leader pushed the ideas of nationalistic foreign policies and domestic state control to their logical conclusions.

Undoubtedly, both Testaments of Scripture teach the paradoxical message of particularity and universality, though often with different emphasis.  I was simply critiquing “unconditional” moral universalism, which is a 20th century bastardized version of Christian ethics (or a heresy, if you will) which ignores questions and contexts of historicity.  If morality is completely universal, there is no need for the distinctiveness of either biblical religion.  True “universal love” in no way ignores historical particularity.  An ahistorical love (without any sense of place or context) is suitable for the GOP neocons and the Opraholics, but not for anyone who is serious about revelation.  It is not Social Darwinist to recognize that biblical truth can become extinct or at least lose influence; this thought is based on the experience of history (which the Bible reveals too).

“Fusionism” is a pox,.... the rush to the center while bellowing polar rhetoric is the emblem of the era. Intellectual candy, rotting the teeth of the intellect.

However, to characterize Wall Street as “Libertarian” and not part and parcel of this mongrel era is akin to calling Marx a champion of the “little guy” because he asserted “to each according to his needs and from each according to his abilities”.
If the lapsed Republic actually held onto any meaningful form of labor and production , we might still have the means to a right-left conversation but we do not and so are inundated by the happy-faced tyranny of the muddled center.

The scoffing dismissal of any kind of environmental ethos by the Libertarians is troubling.....but it would seem to be no less troubling than the totalitarian rhetoric of the Man as Cancer rhetoric of the Deep Environmental Movement and it’s affable dupe, the popular culture.....a culture that finds fear and paranoid self-loathing somehow meaningful.

Gottfried is spot on, the rush to the center is one of our biggest challenges to overcome if we expect to go forward. The kind of consensus we champion now is the kind of pleasure reserved for the suicidal with a full chamber in their gun. The Television Popular Culture is for the juvenile in all of us, and our bottomless appetite for pandering.

and as to the “Gentle Reader” title, I would doubt it’s as much of a sideways reference to “gentile” (even a jew is gentile in the land of the Mormon) than it is a kind of comment upon the nutcases and whack jobs , me amply included, that blow hard on this site . It is one of the more simultaneously tiresome and interesting things about it...this anarchic, un-gentle mob of resolute braying.

A universal moral ethic, an “’unconditional’” moral universalism","which ignores questions and contexts of historicity”, which in every way “ignores historical particularity” , which is utterly “ahistorical”, transhistorical, transethnic, transcultural, and which is to be believed by everyone, everywhere, at all times, is preached by the founder of a certain religion in Luke 10:25-37. grant havers, embrace your buddies Hegel, Nietzsche, and Göring’s plea at Nürmberg: “the victor makes the rules”.

There, There, Sid:  I shall try to use simple words here.  The Bible itself is a work of history, which celebrates the paradoxical relation of particularity AND universality.  Scripture came from a particular place after all--Roman Palestine.  It is not an either/or choice between particularity and universality.  The celebration of one’s particularity does not make one an admirer of Goering (!) The Good Samaritan did not stop being a Samaritan after his good deed.  If you have a copy of the Bible, I’d suggest that you look up I Timothy 5:8.  Also, please recognize that Hegel and Nietzsche are not proto-fascists: I’d expect more intelligence from a high school kid.

The terms left-wing and right-wing (used in the sense of left=bad and right=good) were first coined by a French nobleman around the time of the French Revolution. Initially the terms were used to differentiate those in parliament who supported retention of a role for the King in government from those who wanted the King removed. The terms thus came to be associated with support or opposition to the establishment. Because during the 19th century, socialism was the major anti-establishment movement, the term left-wing became associated with the various forms of socialism. These days, of course, socialism has become thoroughly integrated into the establishment of most/all western societies. IMO, the terms left-wing and right-wing retain almost no useful function, except providing convenient smear terms for the feeble-minded. German National Socialism, a movement rooted in socialist philosophy and with an anti-establisment outlook, provides a clear example of how these terms have been manipulated for deceptive purpose. Far better to try and describe what individuals/organisations really stand for rather than use thoroughly degraded terminology.

“A universal moral ethic, an “’unconditional’” moral universalism","which ignores questions and contexts of historicity”, which in every way “ignores historical particularity” , which is utterly “ahistorical”, transhistorical, transethnic, transcultural, and which is to be believed by everyone, everywhere, at all times” --- Sid “Mr. PC Enforcer” Cundiff

This is classical liberalism, not conservatism.

Douglas Davidson and grant havers have to face the logical consequence of their views:
—that killing children is OK in the USA and should not be punished there, but evil in a Catholic or Islamic country and should be punished there.
(morality as local)
-- that killing children is just fine today and should be allowed but was evil 100 years ago and was rightly punished (morality as historical)

The Nazis abused Hegel (Zeitgeist über Alles) and Nietzsche (the strong make their own morals).  They also used them.

In returning to the question of the Left/Right line and its utility, just where do we put the 19th and early 20th century “Radicals”, the English Radical Party, the French mouthful Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste, the Italian Partito Radicale?  Are Richard Cobden, Bentham, John Bright, Pierre Mendès-France, Georges Clemenceau, and Giovanni Giolitti “Left” or “Right”.  The Socialists and Marxists call them “Right” and the Torys “Left”, suggesting they are neither.  They were the party of secularism and the petty bourgeoisie.  This social class, once proclaimed dead, has come back with a vengeance with the Ron Paul movement.  That movement opposes Huckabee’s religiousity, the Whig Hamiltonian’s corporate welfare and warfare, and Nurse Ratched’s own social welfare/cultural Marxism. The classes that have diminished are the middle-middle class (office white collar workers, now mostly bureaucrats) and the proletariat.

And we Torys ("real conservatives") are interested in class.

It is also worth asking if Bonapartism is “Left” or “Right”.

I strongly agree that there needs to be a movement, party, ideology, or coalition that opposes firmly and resolutely the “Left” (Social Democrats, Cultural Marxism, and what I’ve called “Leftist-neonationalism").  I just don’t think “Right” is the best term for this opposition.  Maybe I’m wrong.

Hope all is well with you and yours, Paul, and that you’ll visit our site TheAmericanView.com