The False Dichotomy of Left vs Right

Why is it that we use the physical layout of the French revolutionary assembly to define the political divisions in most countries today? The political terms "right" and "left" originated in the fact that the supporters of the monarchy sat to the right of the assembly president and those who supported the revolution to the president's left. They ceased to have much relevance even in France as the monarchy was abolished and the revolution fractured into factions that settled their internecine scores with the guillotine. 

Wikipedia, that ultimate source of fake news, would have you believe that the modern left represents "ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism", whereas the right represents "notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism". You need to read no further than the use of the term "ideas" to describe the left and the more derogatory "notions" for the right to know the political sympathies of those who edited the article. It is so biased you could be forgiven for thinking it first appeared in The Onion or Babylon Bee. One thing the Wikipedia article does get right is that it lists libertarianism on both sides of the left-right divide, which suggests that even the lefties who dominate Wikipedia editing realise that libertarianism doesn't fit the dichotomy.

The respectability of the left and the vilification of the right in the West today is inconsistent and highly hypocritical. The extreme left, in the form of Marxist-Leninism, Maoism, and other forms of Communism, has been responsible for far more human misery and deaths in the last century than the extreme right, and they are indistinguishable in their means and ends. The Chinese Communist Party today, for example, fits Wikipedia's definition of Fascism precisely: dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society and of the economy. The only real point of difference between Fascism and Communism in practice is that the former tolerates private ownership so long as it serves the purposes of the state - and this is also true of the Chinese political system today. Both Hitler and Mussolini saw themselves as socialists, and the left's casting of them at the opposite end of the political spectrum is a very successful piece of historic revisionism.

The real philosophical antipodes are totalitarianism and freedom, with extreme right and extreme left on the totalitarian end of the spectrum. Both are about using human characteristics to categorise people into groups that are set in opposition to one another. The extreme right uses nationality and race, whereas the extreme left has traditionally used class - but now also race, sex or gender, and sexuality. It's classic divide-and-rule and scapegoat tactics. Blaming the "other" for one group's misfortunes is the despot's oldest trick, whether it is the Nazis vilifying the Jews for Germany's misfortunes following World War One or Black Lives Matter blaming white people for the situation of African-Americans today.

The true contemporary Fascists are Antifa. You only need to look at them in their black outfits and masks, carrying weapons and beating up innocent people on the streets, to appreciate the parallels with Mussolini's blackshirts or Hitler's Brownshirts. The smashing and looting of businesses is a mirror of the events of Kristallnacht. The Black Lives Matter protestors who recently marched in cities all over the world are their "useful idiots", having been co-opted to their cause but perhaps not fully understanding what they are supporting.

The true liberals (in the classical sense of the word rather than the perverted American appropriation of it) are libertarians like me, who believe in individual rights and maximum freedom in all spheres of life - political, social and economic. We understand that you cannot have a big state proscribing freedom in one area without it affecting every other area of life. The desire of the left to have maximum freedom in the social sphere, such as the freedom to marry whoever you want, is incompatible with their desire to have the state dominate the economic sphere. Likewise, the right is contradictory when it (often somewhat selectively) advocates for free markets while trying to limit political or religious freedom.

Libertarians can be defined by their opposition to the use of force in political, social and economic relations. We believe individuals are sovereign and that governments derive their legitimate authority only from the consent of the governed. We believe that the legitimate purpose of government is to protect individual rights and that the role of government should be limited to activities that are consistent with this. That means the state ought not to interfere with who you marry or with whom you trade. It also means we are in opposition with big state advocates on the right or the left.

The Real Problem with Police Violence in America

My last post was a fairly pessimistic epistle entitled "The End of the World as We Know It" in which I lamented the fact that the four greatest decades in human history were over and we were at risk of throwing away everything we had gained. But even I could not have predicted what has transpired over the last month. I imagined the Covid-19 lockdown would see a newfound respect for individual freedom and the wonders of free enterprise as the most important factor in improving human wellbeing over the last two centuries. I was wrong - the pandemic has only served to give strength to the arms of those who believe that the only way to improve human existence is for them to impose their authoritarian will on the rest of us.

The death in the United States of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer, was the match that lit a tinder-dry kindling of carefully-nurtured resentments and manufactured grievances. Under the banner of "Black Lives Matter", thousands of protestors took to the streets not only in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, but in cities across America and the world. Even Auckland had a mass gathering. Political leaders, reading the mood of the crowd, turned a blind eye to the massive flouting of the Covid-19 lockdowns that they had hitherto enforced with pedantic officiousness. In some places the protests turned violent, with vandalism and looting of shops (the targets invariably being the stores with the most desirable consumer products), and assaults on innocent bystanders and property-owners. 

I think a degree of outrage is justified by the death of Floyd and others at the hands of American police, but the problem is not, as claimed, primarily one of institutional racism. When you examine the statistics, as Heather MacDonald does in this Wall Street Journal article [sub. required], white Americans are as likely to be killed in a encounter with police as blacks, and in this article, Coleman Hughes lists many cases of white victims who died in equivalent circumstances to George Floyd in recent years. In this part of the world, we were appalled to hear of the case of Justine Damond, the Australian women who was also shot by a Minneapolis police officer after she had summoned the police to investigate screams she had heard near her house. The case demonstrated that anyone, even a law-abiding Antipodean, could be the innocent victim of police violence in America.

The real problem is the unrestrained nature of the US Government. Other countries may have far more authoritarian regimes, but America's position as the most powerful state on Earth means it can bring to heel not only its own citizens but any person, anywhere in the world. It can force other governments or global institutions to comply with its wishes and has come to regard the entire world as being subject to its jurisdiction. The result of this virtual omnipotence is that American officials have an arrogance that is rare even in totalitarian regimes. Like the great imperial powers of history, the American state regards itself as towering above the people it rules, and its satraps and panjandrums are so estranged from those they are meant to serve that they act like a separate tribe - and as is customary in tribal engagements, violence is the norm.

I have been to the United States many times, and every time I go there I am more incredulous at the attitude of officialdom to the public. There is none of the courtesy or humour that is characteristic of public officials in New Zealand. The normal demeanour of American officials is haughty high-handedness and surly suspicion. The last time I went to the US was on the way to Mexico, and in spite of the latter country's immense problems with violent crime, I felt safer talking to a Mexican police officer than any of the American officials with whom I had to deal.

Notwithstanding the merits of the original cause, it is apparent that the outrage over George Floyd's death is being exploited by some pretty cynical and dishonourable groups for their own political ends. The more extreme protest actions on the streets of American cities have been organised and coordinated by the loose affiliation of extreme-left-wing groups known as Antifa. Today's Antifa is the philosophical successor to the original Antifaschistische Aktion, which was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Germany in the early 1930s. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Antifa "proactively seek[s] physical confrontations with [its] perceived fascist adversaries" and should not be confused with other, non-violent, anti-fascist groups.

I have always been able to imagine the sort of society the likes of Antifa want to create, but you don't need to imagine it - this week they have created a small example of it in Seattle. The so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or "CHAZ" was formed after police and city officials abandoned the East Precinct area of Seattle to the protestors. It didn't take long for a leader to emerge - a former rapper named Raz Simone, armed with an AK-47 and accompanied by equally well-tooled paramilitaries, announced that he was the police now and was filmed allegedly assaulting multiple protestors who disobeyed his orders. The citizens of CHAZ began to experience economic life as it would inevitably be in their imagined utopia - they were soon begging for donations of food (vegan fare, no less) from supporters outside the zone. Communism always looks like this - violence and starvation - although not even I expected that that they would get to the end state so quickly.

Protestors are now calling for the abolition of the police, and in Minneapolis the city council has acceded to their demands, but if the alternative is the sort of anarchy that now exists in Seattle, I think most people would vote to stick with the devil they know. And besides, the city council is responsible for the police and must accept blame for its dysfunction - I would be more impressed if they were to vote to abolish their own council.

Robert Peel, the British prime minister who established the Metropolitan Police Service, which is considered the template for the modern civilian law enforcement authority, said, "The police are the public and the public are the police." He meant that they should be an integral part of the community to which they belong, and he would have been horrified at the division that has arisen between his progeny in America and the people they are meant to serve. We shouldn't stand for an out-of-control police, but we should realise that it is merely the symptom of an out-of-control government.

Black Lives Matter leads to Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen

Identity politics is a big thing these days and no flavour of identity is bigger than race. The victimhood-mongers focus on other identities such as gender, sexuality, disability and religion, but race trumps them all. When the other victim identities are discussed, they are often combined with race (or confused with it - witness the labelling of anti-Muslim sentiment as racism) to greater effect. Nowhere is this more true than in America, where, a century and a half after 750,000 Americans died to abolish slavery, race relations remain a festering sore. The polarised political discourse there has got to the point where people of European descent are not even allowed to have opinions because those opinions are deemed to be the product of 'white privilege'. Unfortunately this form of intolerance is creeping into the conversation here in New Zealand, where any criticism of successive governments' preferential treatment of Maori is considered racism.

We are meant to accept that race is the most important determinant in someone's success or lack of it but, somewhat perversely, that the sole reason for differences in social or economic outcomes for different racial groups is discrimination. Except, of course, when those differences are in favour of the victim groups - for example, it is acceptable to say that African-Americans are better at sports such as basketball because of common physical traits but not to contend that people of Jewish descent are better at mathematics and finance because of inherited characteristics they might have.

Scientists such as Charles Murray of 'The Bell Curve' and Nicholas Wade* of 'A Troublesome Inheritance' fame have become persona non grata for publishing research suggesting that human performance in a range of areas is in part linked to genetic factors. Neither claims that race is a significant determinant in any area of human performance at an individual level and Murray's bell curves show that the performance of all races largely overlap - that there are many African-Americans who are poor at sports and Jewish people who are inept at maths. But those who criticize their books don't concern themselves with reading them.

Individual human performance in every sphere is overwhelmingly due to individual traits, most particularly the propensity to think and act rationally, rather than to any common genetic attributes. Even those individuals blessed with outstanding physical and mental abilities must work hard and focus their efforts on personal goals to reach the pinnacle of achievement in their fields. It is ridiculous to say Usain Bolt is the fastest runner or that Einstein was the greatest scientist primarily because of their race.

Racism and its close cousin tribalism are the scourge of our world, but not in the way that the victimhood-mongers would have us believe. Pre-judging people on the basis of race is foolish not only because it disadvantages the individuals that are pre-judged but also because it deprives the person making the judgement of the value that may be derived from interaction with those individuals. It is equally as foolish (and as insulting to the individuals concerned) if that discrimination is positive because it denies individual potential just as surely as if the discrimination is negative.

The Western world seems hellbent on returning to a time when people were primarily judged on their race. Whether this is well-intentioned or not, it is an anathema to classical liberal values of individual freedom and rights and is a very slippery slope that inevitably leads to greater racial conflict. Black Lives Matter leads to Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen as assuredly as night follows day.

*I reviewed Wade's book here.