A fresh analysis of the political spectrum

In summer of 2000, I attended the LP convention in Anaheim, California.

A friend of mine from early days in the Objectivist--libertarian movement in Michigan—for all intents and purposes, an Objectivist-libertarian is someone who likes the ideas of Ayn Rand and is willing to perform unauthorized (i.e. unauthorized by Rand or Rand's "designated intellectual heirs") political acts to achieve them—was now living on the northern edge of the LA basin somewhere.  I phoned him.

We spoke briefly, I said, "Jack, you gotta come down here to the Marriott; looks like a solid candidate with Harry Browne again this year.  Plus, lots of hot chicks."  …which you have to realize is a joke if you know anything about the Libertarian Party.  (I do think the number of attractive, stimulating young women in the LP is increasing… not that there's anything right with that.)

Jack, unlike myself in the 70s, never jumped into the deep end of the Libertarian pool.  He held back, partly from anxiety of Randian "shunnings" and partly from discomfort with less-than-rational, anti-establishment Libertarians.  The establishment, unfortunately, was indistinguishable from the American State: the military industrial complex, Vietnam, the bonecrushing faux-crime megasystem arrayed against private consensual behavior, etc.

Speaking of which, the state had only recently put me through the wringer for defying some of its many prohibitions against peaceful, voluntary acts.  Though I suffered not nearly so much as most victims of the criminal injustice system, it was expensive, painful, and scary.  Despite public bravado, I came to California as a wounded duck.

Jack knew I'd been slammed pretty bad.  We were friends.  So what's his two cents of chitchat and simple human communication about today?

The Left.

"We must go forth and root out Leftists wherever found: Job 1, top priority, leaving no stone unturned.  These insidious beings lie behind every manifestation of evil on the planet, from Global Cooling to Jane Fonda.  If it's evil and unjust, it's from the Left."

Wha…?  I thought, "Geez, Mr. Sensitivity, thanks for the new Red Scare.  What about cops busting marijuana smokers?  How 'bout the federales who murdered Peter McWilliams?  What about me?  None of those guys on the outside of the bars wearing suits, robes, guns, and badges strike me as leftwingers."

Haven't seen any legislators, judges, prosecutors, cops, or jailers wearing armbands with a big 'L' on them.  If they were to wear armbands, I'm pretty sure they'd say 'M' for Moral Majority.

"What about the bastards who beat me up, Jack?"

Blankout.

And in the course of the next year we exchanged email discussing the modern Demonization of the Left (DOL) movement <—my term.  DOL Central can be found at the Front Page Magazine site associated with New Left apostate David Horowitz.  At best, DOL dilutes the cause of freedom.  At worst, it yields a primal, God-fearing, brutal American state to the Republicans.

To understand the error of DOL, of these new "Left Scare" intellectuals, we first need to do what all good Objectivists are encouraged to do: define our terms.  Since I'm writing this column to a general audience (I hope), I'll try to keep my definitions and discussion as down to earth as possible.

Whence Left and Right?

Murray Rothbard in his monograph, Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty(1), points out the Old Order or ancien régime—which consisted of feudalism, fixed castes, despotism, stagnation, and starvation for the bulk of the population—was the only political option for humankind up until The Enlightenment.  Conservatives wished to conserve the Old Order.  Liberals wanted to liberate people from the many "divine depredations of kings."

In 1789 (prerevolutionary France), the French National Assembly—a concession from the Old Order monarchy—was created as a parliamentary body to move control of many political functions from the king to the citizenry.  Members of the Second Estate, conservative noblemen, sat on the right side of the chamber while members of the Third Estate, anti-royalty liberals, sat on the left side of the chamber.

Hence Left and Right.

Old World rulers held unrepresentative, absolute political and economic power.  By the end of the 18^th century, liberal revolutionaries, e.g. the American Warriors for Independence, largely dethroned the ancien régime—at least removed the "absolute" from their power.  [Old World tyrants morphed to modern industrial state-power elites, which we'll see later.]

Distressingly, from the late 18^th through the late 19^th century, the Left split in two:

1. advocates of natural rights, especially property rights, and rational individualism such as implementers of the ideas of England's John Locke and thinkers associated with the Scottish Enlightenment—people who led to the founding of the United States, the libertarians
2. advocates of communal power and emotional collectivism, tending to reject material property as an unnatural privilege, such as Marx and other sociopathic descendents of Rousseau—people who led to the French Reign of Terror and, later, to Eurasian despots like Stalin and Chairman Mao, the socialists

Call them Left₁ and Left₂.  The distinctions persist to the present time.  When our DOL (Demonization of the Left) people decry the Left, they sometimes mean Left₂.  Indeed, Left₂ is what I mean when I refer to the Left—Left₂ is awful and, unchecked, leads to a horrifyingly deadly statism.  Most often, Left₂ is checked by being coopted by the Right.

Unfortunately, DOL smuggles into its concept of Left₂ influential personalities and intellectuals who are considered Left mainly by virtue of their opposition to some wretched excess of the Old Order (the Right).  DOL also tends to confuse the Good Left, i.e. Left₁ or the libertarians, with the Bad Left, Left₂.  Thus DOL often opposes liberty particularly by giving carte blanche to large connected corporations and to the war machinery.

Make no mistake, the Right did not die at the end of the Enlightenment.  Rather, over two centuries the power elite have reconfigured into a semi-fascist/socialist-Right/Left₂ coalition.  (The Left₂ ideology of "communal power" is a contradiction of reality that invariably leads to Rightist-analog structures of arbitrary power and privilege.)

We can discuss the characteristics of the Right and Left₂ at length… and in subsequent columns will undoubtedly return to the subject.  I believe the above scheme for understanding Left and Right makes the distinctions clearer.

What is important now, however, is to recognize that as unapologetic proponents of individual freedom we are implacable enemies of the state(2)… wherever manifested.  Whether our statist opponents are Right or Left, whether or not the terms are used properly, we oppose coercive government and stand for the nonaggression principle—life, liberty, and property—universally.

As libertarians, we are going to live to see the completion of the liberal revolution of our forefathers.

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[The DOL people are selective libertarians.  To the extent they're part of the freedom movement, it's aberrational.  On some matters, such as political correctness and free speech on campus, they make sense.  More often, they create straw men of noxious hard-Left₂ leaders to knock them down for the benefit of pretenders to liberty on the Right: such as power-elite marionettes and would-be tyrants George Bush and Dick Cheney.]