To borrow (in part only) from writer Paul Berman: International socialism and national socialism are two branches of the same totalitarian impulse.
President Ronald Reagan reminds us:
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream–the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”
Originally posted at the Gates Of Vienna, one of the finest, most honest, intellectual blogs around:
The Left, the Right and the March of Death
Our Israeli correspondent MC takes a look at the traditional distinction between Right and Left, and what it has signified throughout the course of history.
The Left, the Right and the March of Death
by MC
We refer to the political ‘Left’ or the political ‘Right’ based upon an arbitrary division made during the French Revolution, but in reality there is a massive divide in humanity, pivoting upon whether a self-appointed elite have the right to dictate the ways and beliefs of all men, or whether all men are free to seek out the truths of this world for themselves.
The ‘Left’ proscribes what a man should do and think and how a man should live and worship. The right defines a set of shared common values and allows a man to worship, to think and to behave for himself within the boundaries of that set of values.
There is a huge gulf between these ideals, and it is further obfuscated by the idea that the values of the right are epitomised by the leftist national socialist values of the Nazis. The Nazis were a party of leftist values with a nationalist slant; but of a very proscribed ‘leftist’ way of life. That they are deemed ‘far right’ is a matter of fashion rather than fact.
‘Fashion’ describes a human social conditioning, the desire in the human psyche to appear to be different whilst, at the same time, conforming to a social norm. Fashion is arbitrary and can be manipulated, and it is the Left that is the current arbiter of fashion.
The ‘Left’ styles itself as ‘caring’ and ‘sharing’, and paints the Right as ‘hateful’ and ‘intolerant’. If we ignore the self-delusion inherent in this ‘sainthood’ of the left, the residue is of a ‘Left’ with a purpose that is more interested in violently attacking its opponents than in justifying its own ‘benevolent’ and ‘tolerant’ creed. Always remember that the KKK was a product of the left, not the right. The self-styled sainthood of the ‘Left’ leaves unheeded the Left’s sad history of failure, mayhem and murder.
The philosophy of ‘change’ is the philosophy of an ostrich mentality. The assumption is that we’ve got it all wrong, so we will leave it all behind and ‘hope’ that it will be better next time. Real progress is the process where one reviews one’s current position and learns from one’s mistakes and builds upon one’s successes.
The process of change (revolution) for the sake of changes is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is no ‘gain’ in arbitrary change, and there is a great danger of losing that which is desirable, even necessary. Also, because the ‘change’ in this context, has an unproven ‘random’ element about it, one has to ‘hope’ that things will get better. If the Left were capable of honest self-assessment they would understand that random change makes for chaos, not evolution.
The ‘Right’ tries to be more pragmatic, looking at history to see what has worked in the past (and maybe more importantly, what has not worked):
