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Entry: Why the Right Moves Left Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/why_the_right_moves_left#12914 Post contents: Paul Gottfried's fine thinking -- and there is little in this article that I disagree with -- continues to be burdened with the outdated Left-Right spectrum. Such an outdated metaphor, besides not corresponding to reality, also gives the illusion that because another ideology is grafted on near another on the spectrum, it also can serve the basis of a coalition. But in fact: We Real Conservatives (Burkean-Kirkan) know that we have nothing to do with the "Neoconservatives". We also have nothing to do with the other Faux Conservatism: be they called Fascists, racialists, or extremist nationalists. Both faux conservatism aren't even close to us. The Neo-Conservatives are neither neo or conservative, but they are also neither "right" or "left". They've been around since 1688, and they are correctly called "Whigs", or "Hamitonians". The Social Democrats, what Americans mistakenly call "liberals", shed themselves of Classic Marxism (and thus "the Left") with Bad Godesberg in Germany and similar programs in other countries. They reject class struggle and support a modified captialism. Their chief ideologue is Rawls. They are best called "social-welfare" democrats. They and the Whigs are statists and superstatists. The Cultural Marxists are really not Marxist anymore, Marxism having died a strange death indeed! They've become nationalists, celebrating the race and the ethnic identity of some groups against the race and ethnicity of others. True, some of the ethnic groups are a bit odd: sodomites, lesbians, and women. Yet in their deep structure, they are indistinguishable from the "the far right". They really don't even believe in "equality", and certainly not "liberty" or "fraternity". Imagine Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse whooping for a race, an ethnos, or for sexual perversions! These men were against and economic system, captitalism. And what about the environmentalists? Are they "Left" or "Right"? Or the Austrian School libertarians? or Classic Christian Democracy? And in Huckabee we're discovering that Evangelical Christians aren't "Left" or "Right" either. The Austrian Schoolmen have suggest a better metaphor, with statists on one end, and anti-statists on the other. It's an improvement, but not much. Brian Patrick Mitchell's <i>Eight Way to Run the Country</i> is a definite step in the right direction. He's terms need to be corrected to historical terms ("Communitarian" to the correct "Social Democrat"), and his scheme might need some adjustment, but he's on the right track. Why Paul Gottfried, who favorably reviewed Mitchell's book, still clings to the outdated metaphor of "left-right" is beyond me. To abandon the Left/Right metaphor is political wisdom. Political ideology looks more like a Chinese Checkers board or a Jackson Pollack painting. American Conservatism, as Paul Gottfried's latest book demonstrates, really isn't conservatism. It really is either libertarianism or Jeffersonianism or Fascism or racialism or nationalism or Kirkan Anglophilia. One of the jobs of Taki Top Drawer is to define Real Conservatism correctly, as a unique movement with its own deep structure, and then see to it that it have a speakers' corner in the forum. Sent at: 2008 07 09