Ladies and Gentlemen,
INTRODUCTION
The distinction of left vs right is becoming utterly useless. The one thing we can safely say from the Roman event is that the establishment over uses the term, ‘far right’. This is not entirely limited to him. The AFD just won a major victory in Germany and the media proclaimed – the far right win their first major victory since the Nazis – the implication being, they’re now Nazi. Funny how the media frames things.
LEFT VS RIGHT
In a modern fashion, the left vs right split is typically divided as:
Right = notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism
Left = ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism
But it was not always so. The classical divide is typically considered the Overton Window. The Overton Window typically seeks to split the political spectrum between policy positions that are more free, and those that are less free, from government intervention.
The Overton Window typically seeks to define the spectrum of acceptability of government policy. The window was traditionally used to consider where we were in terms of forms of Government overreach in order to avoid the adoption of extreme policy proposals which over favour Government control. The basic rationality behind this is that government cannot be trusted, so you don’t want to outsource all your faculties to it least we find ourselves in a totalitarian state.
Examples of this type of ‘leftist’ position, i.e. pure government control, would be NHI where the government can decide the sole policy positions on health, or the idea that only the government should have guns thereby allowing the government to solely define what self-defence looks like and who can engage in it. These types of positions deny the individual any form of autonomy.
The window presumes that citizens of the state wish to remain in a state of freedom, with minimal government intervention, and that the default position of most is a kind of centralist position, which is neither far left (pure Government control) nor far right (pure Libertarian), its somewhere in between.
The problem now is that due to moral relativism we find ourselves in a state of creeping normality whereby things in the past that we would have said no to, we now say yes to – on the basis of ‘live and let live’. This degree of libertarianism has become so free that it requires government intervention. That government intervention is now so prevalent that we are less free due to constant creeping government control. In effect we're in a state of leftism based on both definitions. Free but controlled.
Ironically the left tend to claim that the right overuse George Orwell’s 1984 line “'War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”. The problem is, they famously misunderstand why. It should be easy to see that the modern version of the right as authoritarian conflicts between the classical definition of the right as being those who advocate for less government intervention. Essentially the definition of left vs right has been redefined. More government intervention is now freedom, less government intervention is tyrannical, hence freedom is slavery.
Coming back to the start, the left/right paradigm is now useless. It fails to address what exactly freedom is from, and rather now addresses what you are free to do. You're never free from the state, but you're free to wear a dress. You're never free from the states control over whether you can smoke or not, but you are free to be healthy. What you are free from has become, to a degree, farcical. It's simply put, never the state and the state itself is the problem.
MURRAY'S MODEL
Economist Murray Rothbard puts forward theories of what he sees as being wrong with the individual and the state.
A summary of these are as follows:
1. “The more the state plans the more difficult planning becomes for the individual”. Do you want centralised decision making or individual decision making?
2. “The greatest danger to the state is independent intellectual criticism”. Depending on the government to think for us, is to handicap ourselves.
3. “Why do people obey the government”. Individuals tend to want to enslave themselves rather than take individual responsibility for their own life.
4. “Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure”. The government always seeks a problem to which it alone can fix.
5. “The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else”. To consider the government is doing things for your best interest is to be naïve.
6. “The state is a gang of thieves writ large”. The government will always strong arm its citizens for resources, to which it alone has the monopoly on – look at Eskom.
7. “Liberty is not built upon narrow self-interest”. Self-interest relies on the dependence of government to provide for us, which ultimately dissolves freedom.
CONCLUSION
I am not suggesting that a 100% libertarian state is the best ideal, but I am an advocate for liberty. I myself see nothing wrong with being a nationalist who loves his country but advocates for liberty from the state. States are not synonymous with it's people. They are not the same. The traditions of the people do not require state sanction nor state enforcement. I do tend to agree that the state causes more problems than it solves, but I do agree that the state should be there to act as the arbiter of disputes between citizens and may occasionally perform functions that are for the common good, rather than capitalistic gain.
Because of this I don't think it's fitting to use the descriptor 'right wing', when referencing myself. A nationalist who loves his country and loves liberty is perhaps more fitting. If you must force me into the box of 'right wing' because of your narrow ability to self categorise, that's more a reflection on you than me. I don't find that categorisation fitting anymore.
But that's just my views. Please feel free to tell me what you think in the comment section below.
Have a blessed day.