I feel like a bit of a semantic quibble today. It concerns the term “right-wing”.
As most of you are probably already aware, the terms “left-wing” and “right-wing” have their origins in the États Généraux, the old French Legislative Assembly, back in the days of the Revolution of the late 18th century. The revolutionaries, or republicans, generally of the Third Estate, sat on the left of the Chair, while the monarchists, clerics and other traditionalists were on the right. As I understand it, to prevent debate being interrupted, the more extreme one’s views, generally the further from the chair one was seated; hence centre-right, far-right, and so on.
But when you describe yourself as right-wing, or right-libertarian (a term of which, for reasons I’ve explained previously, I’m not particularly fond), you are placing yourself at the mercy of your audience’s definition of right. It means many different things to different people.
I’m thinking here particularly of a certain English journalist who has recently taken charge of the newly-formed British arm of a large American media organization, and who is in the habit of describing himself as being “right about everything”. If by right you mean correct, well that goes without saying, O God-emperor. But if you want to include the word right in a political self-description, you had better be careful to define your terms, or you’re liable to find yourself bracketed with some pretty nasty company.
Not Right at all.
Some conflate the political Right with conservatism. As I’ve explained, this is merely a function of the type of society we happen to be living in (but not for much longer, as many believe) and not a generic definition. I’m currently reading a recent book by a conservative Australian politician, which I’ll review here when I get the chance, and in which I’ll expand on the difference between conservatism and the political Right.
My own working definition of right-wing is best described by the Nolan Chart below. It speaks of a progressive state suppression of all personal freedom, and insofar as it can be compared to left-wing, it is really indistinguishable in terms of its end point: no state power that has stripped its citizens of either economic or personal freedoms is likely to stop there. Power over others is an addictive drug, and a hooked demagogue can never get enough.
Now, I happen to know James’ position on matters concerning personal freedom, such as drug laws and gay rights, and it is a world away from anything that could remotely be described as right-wing; quite the opposite, in fact.
Another of my preferred definitions includes the American Old Right, a movement which began in the United States a century ago as a broad-church opposition to America’s entry into the Great War and, fifteen years later, to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. It comprised mostly northern Republicans, most famously Ohio Senator Robert Taft, together with a smattering of southern Democrats. The policies they shared included non-interventionism, opposition to globalism, laissez-faire capitalism, social liberalism and small government. Ronald Reagan (in his older incarnation) would probably have felt very much at home among them, and as a young man quite possibly absorbed a good deal of his nascent political outlook from his experience of them. The Old Right stands in stark contrast to the neo-conservatism of the early 21st century, which is interventionist, big-government, and far closer to what I would classify as politically truly right-wing.
Certain acquaintances of mine, having discovered my scepticism of the science of CAGW, or attitudes towards citizenship, immigration, gun laws, the gold standard, among others, find it convenient to dismiss me as a denier, or even better, a far right-wing nut case. I usually respond along the following lines:
How would you characterize the politics of someone who is an environmental activist; who regularly writes to politicians expressing environmental concerns, and attends environmental rallies? How many did you attend last year? How many letters did you write? How many trees did you plant? How would you characterize someone who believes in drug law liberalization? Who opposes any legislation restricting the liberties of anyone based on their race, religion or sexual orientation? Who is largely self-sufficient in food, sources his own water from rain, uses renewable energy to heat and power his home, recycles his sewage onsite, and whose family is in fact a net carbon sequesterer? Right-wing??? (now f*** off, I don’t add.)
Of course, the terms left and right have been debased, and used basically as a catch-all to describe people whose views they don’t like. As I’ve mentioned here in the past, the left-right divide is a fiction. In describing Libertarianism for the first time to people, I’m forced to use the language of Left and Right, insofar as Libertarians adopt some views regarded as right-wing, and others regarded as left-wing. But I’d like to rotate the debate by 90°, hold up a Nolan chart and explain that both left- and right-wingers adopt some policies that are Libertarian, and others that are totalitarian; all those two are really squabbling about is which freedoms to rob you of first.
As someone here once remarked, far-left and far-right meet up around the back – try splitting the difference.
I’m going to write a lot more about this in future, but I believe the characterization Palaeo-libertarianism may be the meeting point we have been looking for with conservatives. The term was first coined in 1990 by Lew Rockwell in an essay published in Liberty magazine, which you can read here (page 34). In it, Rockwell sought to reach out to conservatives, and offered a vision of a political philosophy of shared beliefs, rooted in the American Old Right:
The Libertarian Party is probably irreformable – and irrelevant even if it weren’t. Libertarianism is neither. But unless we cleanse libertarianism of its cultural image, our movement will fail as miserably as the LP has. We will continue to be seen as a sect that “resists authority” and not just statism, that endorses the behaviors it would legalize, and that rejects the standards of Western civilization.
Arguments against the drug war, no matter how intellectually compelling, are undermined when they come from the party of the stoned. When the LP nominates a prostitute for lieutenant governor of California and she becomes a much-admired LP celebrity, how can regular Americans help but think that libertarianism is hostile to social norms, or that legalization of such acts as prostitution means moral approval? there could be no more politically suicidal or morally fallacious connection, but the LP has forged it.
With their counter-cultural beliefs, many libertarians have avoided issues of increasing importance to middle-class Americans, such as civil rights, crime, and environmentalism.
The only way to sever libertarianism’s link with libertinism is with a cleansing debate. I want to start that debate, and on the proper grounds. As G.K. Chesterton said, “We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each others eyes out.”
If you regard yourself as a conservative, you might be very pleasantly surprised by the content of this essay, particularly if you have till now (and quite understandably IMHO) associated Libertarianism such ideas as anarchy, militant atheism and rejection of all conventional social structures. Not that long, and definitely worth a read. And if you read in it some echo of this site’s writings over the years, well it is probably no coincidence.
That’ll do for today. I’m going to be rather busy elsewhere for a few weeks, but I will try and drop by at least once a day to respond to any comments. Juke box is free.
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
I think such charts are meaningless because they only have two axes, humans are never that simple and neither is politics.
Of course. But if you’re going to try and shoehorn all the degrees of freedom of human behaviour into something like a political categorization, you can forget all about descriptors, even before you start. At some point you have to simplify for the sake of brevity, or else give up trying to say anything in a million words or less – Oz
I have often been concerned about these terms as well.
Years ago one of my colleagues was oft criticised by the Left as being “a little to the right of Attila the Hun”. The Left often consider Hitler to have been “right wing”.
Someone sorted this out for me a long time ago, and it doesn’t resemble Nolan’s graph.
Consider that the continuum extending from totalitarian dictatorship to pure Liberty is not a straight line, but rather like a horse shoe. At one extreme is the “far right” as being Genghis Khan and at the other end of the horse shoe the “far left” being the extreme communism of Stalin or Nicolae Ceaușescu. The ends of the horse shoe are actually in close proximity. Liberty is located in the centre portion of this horse shoe.
The reason for this is that Marxism, Fascism, Communism, Socialism and several other “isms” are in fact all the same thing. They are not political ideologies at all. Rather, they are all representations of the same strategy to enable the control of the many by the few.
I believe that one of the biggest problems Australia faces is the fact that you couldn’t even squeeze a cigarette paper between the principles of the major political forces at work. Or sure, the present government has POLICIES which the rabid opposition is preventing or at least stalling until the first of July. Certainly the ALP is devoid of any rational thought and is obsessed with a vicious hatred of the other side. And the slimy greens of course are obsessed with the destruction of every tradition which has provided the country with the prosperity it enjoys for the time being. But the voters cannot seem to differentiate one from the other. Is this because the entire populace is unprincipled? Is this why it is nearly impossible to carry on any sort of debate in this country and have people explain their rationale rather than becoming emotionally charged with ad hominems and the lies the MSM has spread.
You are correct. Cory Bernardi is correct. The terms left” and “right” are nonsense. All people cherish freedom and liberty. Unfortunately far too many forget that individual freedom carries with it the requirements of responsibility and accountability. There is no free lunch. This clamouring for more and more government handouts, and the Robin Hood robbing of Peter to buy Paul’s vote is only playing into the hands of those who crave power. “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”….Lord Acton
As I mentioned, there are plenty of political descriptive hierarchies, or taxonomies, around, and the one I prefer to use—basically as a tool to describe Libertarianism to others—is no more definitive than any of the others; I do find it useful to get a concept across succinctly and without unnecessary diversions.
And yes, you guessed correctly, it’s Bernardi’s book I am planning to use as an illustration of the differences – Oz
Actually Ozboy you can do it in less than 20 axes more likely 12 which covers the majority of behaviour/ choices although to be really realistic you should throw in a time axis. 12 is the magic number beyond which the law of diminishing returns means that anything more than that is statistically insignificant as you have covered 98% to 99% of everything.
Or you can strip out the paradigm of “politics” and consider it from Darwinian biology and the allocation of resources to facilitate breeding opportunities or which monkey or group of monkeys gets the biggest bunch of bananas metaphorically speaking.
It seems worthwhile to pull a few quotes from L. Neil Smith here, regarding the “left” and “right” wings of America’s nominally bipartisan Boot-On-Your-Neck Party.
Aw, fuck. And absolutely no friggin’ “edit” function using this goddam WordPress system.
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Excellent article making an excellent case. I appreciate the comments about libertarianism and I agree that from a conservative’s point of view, it has something of an image problem (i.e. libertarianism = let it all hang out, man). The other thing is that I don’t understand how libertarianism sits with the idea of a commonweal, with patriotism and joint efforts. I don’t know what libertarianism has to say about that. I’m probably ignorant, but if there is a hole in libertarianism as a coherent political stance, who is libertarianism handing the reins to when it comes to this important part of politics? When it comes to building a navy or the town hall, who is libertarianism more sympathetic to: socialists or liberal classicals? Do libertarians qua libertarians build town haould assume the answer is the latter. (Do libertarians qua libertarians build town halls?) But then that raises the further question of why not be a liberal classical full stop, from beginning to end. For me, classical liberalism doesn’t have any holes as a political orientation.
As for right-wing, I could not agree more and I’ve been expressing skepticism about, and rejection of, the term for quite a while now. Whenever someone — as happened the other week on an English blog — brings up the spectre of ‘right-wing’ I correct him and reject the imputation. I was then asked whether I consider ‘right-wing’ to be a slur and I replied that I think it is. I always self-identify as a classical liberal, which is not only more thoroughly accurate in my case but, unlike ‘right-wiing’ or even ‘conservative’, is not a relative term and leaves no room for flights of imagination or false association. It is what it is. I nail my colours to the post and then we all know where we are. I’m very proud of being a classical liberal, by the way. It’s not a ‘confession’ that I have to be shy about making in certain company. Whereas I think that a lot of Leftists have to hide what they truly believe and routinely do — in the media, in politics, in life.
Oops let me re-post that without the tyops. (And I even read it through once! Don’t know what happened there.) Oz, would you mind deleting the faulty post above, please? Cheers. See below Tucci’s post – Oz
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Excellent article making an excellent case. I appreciate the comments about libertarianism and I agree that from a conservative’s point of view, it has something of an image problem (i.e. libertarianism = let it all hang out, man). The other thing is that I don’t understand how libertarianism sits with the idea of a commonweal, with patriotism and joint efforts. I don’t know what libertarianism has to say about that. I’m probably ignorant, but if there is a hole in libertarianism as a coherent political stance, who is libertarianism handing the reins to when it comes to this important part of politics? When it comes to building a navy or the town hall, who is libertarianism more sympathetic to: socialists or classical liberals? (Do libertarians qua libertarians build town halls?) But then that raises the further question of why not be a classical liberal full stop, from beginning to end. For me, classical liberalism doesn’t have any holes as a political orientation.
As for right-wing, I could not agree more and I’ve been expressing skepticism about, and rejection of, the term for quite a while now. Whenever someone — as happened the other week on an English blog — brings up the spectre of ‘right-wing’ I correct him and reject the imputation. I was then asked whether I consider ‘right-wing’ to be a slur and I replied that I think it is. I always self-identify as a classical liberal, which is not only more thoroughly accurate in my case but, unlike ‘right-wiing’ or even ‘conservative’, is not a relative term and leaves no room for flights of imagination or false association. It is what it is. I nail my colours to the post and then we all know where we are. I’m very proud of being a classical liberal, by the way. It’s not a ‘confession’ that I have to be shy about making in certain company. Whereas I think that a lot of Leftists have to hide what they truly believe and routinely do — in the media, in politics, in life.
Tucci78: We don’t see what you were wanting to edit. Did it just disappear? Anyway I sympathize, believe me. I can’t even get it right when I make the effort, so what does *that* tell you? It means that I know what I’m saying in my own head but when it comes to cutting, pasting, moving words around and such, the result looks like a sand castle the dog sat on. : )
At 4:31 AM on 3 March, Amanda had written:
HTML errors. Infuriating. There’s no “preview” or “edit” function in these WordPress sites, and inasmuch as the least little “fencepost” error destroys the cohesion of a post, the frustration level rises to the slagging point goddam fast.
What I’d meant to post went like so:
——————-
It seems worthwhile to pull a few quotes from L. Neil Smith here, regarding the “left” and “right” wings of America’s nominally bipartisan Boot-On-Your-Neck Party.
This applies to all nominally democratic forms of government everywhere. To quote yet one more time from the writings of our Mr. Smith:
With regard to Kitlerat 8:31 PM on 2 March, I can only evoke dialogue from Saturday Night Live, Season 1, Episode 15: |
————–
Now, let’s see how I’ve managed to fuck that up.
G’day Tucci and Amanda,
Best I leave the posts as is. Not sure what diverted your posts into the moderation queue (even the f-word is generally OK), but I’m normally around from 0600 AEDT (1400 EST) – Oz
Tucci78: Although I also use the word “fuck” under my breath, in private or when no other word will do: I suggest, in order to reach people who might have distorted ideas, we avoid it. I’m a rough character who chose that kind of language to communicate with people like myself. Now I’m married and it has enriched my life immensely. It has broadened my experience and also my influence. What is the point of communicating if it excludes some unnecessarily?
BTW, classical liberal does it for me as well.
G’day Fritz, and welcome to LibertyGibbert. Like your website – Oz
a) Bolta has an excellent article in The Australian today regarding the tendency for the Left to no longer admit they are left, they are “progressive”.
b) Amanda, Libertarians maintain that there is no good or service which can be provided by government which is superior to that provided by “the market”. Therefore, in an ideal world, if a community of citizens with real liberty decides it needs defense, it is provided by an organisation which is considered excellent in terms of providing defense, and does so with donations provided voluntarily, like the Sally Ann or the Red Cross.
d) Tucci78…try writing your contribution in a word processor of your choice then simply copy and paste.
Gotta run!
Hi Ozboy: My first post wasn’t moderated. It just has a sentence that ran into another wrong sentence like a runaway train. Rather than try everyone’s patience I thought I would just put an actually readable post below it and have the other one taken off stage left by a long cane…..
Karabar: Thanks for the clarification. I’m not sure that I agree with the libertarians, especially on a national scale and especially regarding things such as military technology.
Amanda, you might take note that I said “in an ideal world”.
That is the problem with ideologies. They only fit in a perfect world.
I think the point is that in this crazy age of entitlement, in which people and businesses continually run to government for goods and services or help, it is helpful to ask “Is this a legitimate role of government? Is government really the best entity to this product or assistance?”
While I believe that is SHOULD be possible for a community of intelligent, righteous, knowledgeable people to function in a situation in which the only legitimate role of government is to provide a legal system which is fair and just, I also realise that, homo sapiens being the split personality of good and evil that it is, the extreme is not only an ideology, but just an idea.
However, our lot in life became prosperous in times during which we were far closer to the ideal than we are today.
Hi Karabar: Can’t find anything to disagree with in your post, except that I think what you describe is classical liberalism : ). The attitude that all good offices must be government offices is particularly prevalent in Britain, but it must be said that America is in many areas not far behind — or at a par. I do think that the basic and true role of government is one of defence — defence of the physical realm, defence of the citizens, and defence of the economy they set up. The role of government is properly defensive. Instead, we see governments that want to be activists in all aspects of life. That way lies totalitarianism!
“We blame this in part on the absence of true intellectual and ideological diversity in so much of the academy, the policy world and the mainstream media. Most college kids at good schools today know many more people from different races and cultural groups than their grandparents did, but they are much less exposed to people who think outside the left-liberal box.”
http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/03/01/putin-smashes-washingtons-cocoon/
It’s not as if the Russian President has ever made any secret of his preferred negotiation strategy – Oz
Most high-school kids are being indoctrinated as a part of their education. Not only are their classes highly politicized, as mine were not, but special assemblies are held by teachers with political bees in their bonnets. Never mind that alternative views are not allowed to hold equal time on the floor. It is simply not appropriate for high schools to be political campaign grounds. The question of who gets what time to argue and counter-argue should not even arise. But it does, because the people that are wrong about day-to-day politics are also the people that are wrong about the role of schools and the goodness of Western civilization.
At 8:56 AM on 3 March, karabar had recommended:
That might work if the word processor of my choice were capable of recognizing hypertext mark-up language (HTML) errors and showing them so that they can be corrected.
True, there are task-dedicated HTML editors a-plenty (including freeware and shareware), but I’m reluctant to encumber myself with yet another executable program I’d only use occasionally. I’m not a Web page designer.
Nice suggestion. Not one that I haven’t already considered, and tried, and discovered not to work any better than does composing in these “Comments” boxes.
Given that other Web log (“blog”) site providers engage “preview” and/or “edit” functions now as a matter of course, it seems that WordPress is simply way to hellangone behind the curve.
One of the few drawbacks of WordPress. I’ll try to find out if any preview function is planned for the future – Oz
G’Day Oz, great blog by the way, and the Nolan Chart makes more and more sense as more understanding is gained.
G’day MRP,
Thanks. I’d be most interested in your reaction to the Rockwell essay, whenever you get a chance to look at it – Oz
Sorry to be a little off-topic, but I’m just copying and pasting a comment I left for msher on JD’s blog which relates to government sponsored internet trolls. I think it is an issue well worth looking into.
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msher, good, this issue about the trolls trying to present a problem for which we rationalists/realists have the best solution anyway, via. shale gas and nuclear, which happen to be the most effective means to reduce CO2 emissions, is one that must be pursued. They are obviously not genuine because if we have the best solution anyway, regardless of whether the problem they project is real or not, then why do they troll these blogs? Obviously we know the trolls are not genuine. Some of them are posting on behalf of wind and solar lobbies. Others may largely be propaganda merchants for a wider government agenda, in terms of permanently maintain the illusion of a crisis. Regarding the second of those factors you may want to look into a wider issue that I am gaining increasing awareness of, and that is government sponsored trolls. Couple of links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9845442/EU-to-set-up-euro-election-troll-patrol-to-tackle-Eurosceptic-surge.html
http://watchmen-news.com/2014/02/28/yes-there-are-paid-government-trolls-on-social-media-blogs-forums-and-websites/
I think this issue of government sponsored trolls, i.e. using our taxpayer money, is one that we may have underestimated to date. Indeed a challenge in unmasking the true extent could be that such trolls are highly paid and have signed official secrets acts.
Definitely worth looking into. One can join the dotted lines in terms of the Club of Rome agenda of creating and maintaining a state of crisis, where humanity is the enemy itself (as per the quote from the “First Global Revolution”)
Went to post this and only the weblink appeared… So we are having probs with the lack of preview….
As you can see here, the only embeds WordPress explicitly allows are tweets and YouTube videos. I can embed images manually, but I have to code in the HTML myself, which I’ve done for you above. The image will of course disappear if the link is ever broken in future – Oz
The topology of politics are never simple, although it is often forced into a simple binary dichotomy and polarised in ways that do great disservice to the realities of the political complexity.
When I get accused of being ‘left-wing’ I will try and point out that from my present standpoint the left-right divide is almost indistinguishable, they are both just arguing about the rules of the game. One side for a return to a fictive Golden Age when things were simpler, and one for adapting the rules to accommodate the progress in civilisation.
Neither side envisage a game-changing program.
But to define any political position it is often of some use to examine what features it has with its opposite. Assuming the opposite to libertarian ideals are fascist principles it is instructive to look at what features are generally agreed to be the defining characteristics of a fascistic government. Here are the common features;-
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military: Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism: The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media: Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined: Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected: The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment: Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections: Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
From Liberty Forum
I don’t want to imply that libertarianism is nothing more than opposition or carrying out the opposite of these government actions, but it does provide a first cut checklist to measure any government actions against.
I see that lately some are finding the recent new Australian administration less libertarian than they may like, but perhaps it isn’t that bad, …. yet. {grin}
Checklist for fascism? I guess. But how many of those also apply to communist dictatorships? You’re more or less proving my point, as you agree, the left-right divide is a fiction.
As for the new Australian government, I admit Abbott and Co. have some worrying big-government and social engineering tendencies – the proposed paid parental leave scheme being emblematic of this trait. But right now, we’re so relieved to be rid of Rudd/Gillard/Rudd (strewth – how many of your boxes did they check?) that we’re possibly just a little bit blind to the shortcomings of the new mob- Oz
Thanks for your list, Izen. Kim Jong Un check all the boxes.
As for your crack about the “new Australian administration”, you might not be aware that the system of half senate elections has left the present government hamstrung with a senate full of miscreants. I expect the Founding Fathers, in creating the constitution, intended this to avoid “radical change”. An unintended consequence is that it also prevents veering away from a previous radical rabble.
Applying the Nolan Chart, a good question for those who call themselves “left of centre” would be consideration of state run universal healthcare systems. It is very difficult to have market space for a private health care sector when there is a single payer / universal healthcare system, as people are paying mandatory taxes to support it (National Insurance in the U.K.) and most in middle/lower classes do not have enough left over in their take home pay to afford private health insurance on top of that.
As those on the “political left” see nationalised health care as their “baby”, one has to philosophically ask, looking at the Nolan Chart, even at the birth of the N.H.S., post WWII, was the U.K. already set on a path of reduced personal freedom?
Many who call themselves “left of centre” will not address the above in terms of whether personal freedom is immediately lost at conception of a state run universal healthcare system because their instant reaction is to talk about those who wouldn’t be able to afford private health insurance (i.e. the poor / less fortunate). Addressing health care as an “entitlement” for the less fortunate is a separate issue in of itself, and whether welfare support and social redistribution can be equated with personal freedom anyway. People *chronically* taking more from the state than paying in may be receiving entitlements to give them freedom to continue chronically being dependent on the state, but that can be a trap of dependence more than anything else.
An approach of those who call themselves “left of centre” will often be to conflate those chronically taking more out of the system than paying in (net +’ve benefiters from wealth redistribution) with the elderly, but the elderly have paid into the system during their working lives, and those payments for decades of their lives were *mandatory*. Regardless, the whole case of conflating with the elderly starts to falls apart in my opinion when one looks at the NHS with recent scandals uncovered in terms of the elderly being on the wrong end of rationing and discrimination of service provision. Long wait lists cannot be equated with personal freedom either. The problem in the U.K. is that the NHS is now so large that the only reaction tends to be to say throw more money into the system because fundamental reform is extremely difficult.
Note that the above focuses on single payer / universal healthcare, similar to the NHS in the UK. Many on the political left, including Harry Reid have admitted that Obamacare in the U.S. is a trojan horse for ultimate transition to a single payer system, i.e. the system which still largely operates via. private heath insurance companies, has been set up to fail, by gradually making private healthcare companies non-viable.
@-karabar
“Thanks for your list, Izen. Kim Jong Un check all the boxes.”
i Do not know enough about the North Korean regieme to be certain, but I doubt they conform to the 9th point. That is the usual means of differentiating between ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ authoritarian governments.
Kim Jong Un looks from outside more like a divine monarchy circa europe in the rococo period with such autocratic family rulers eventually succumbing to the English civil war, the French terror and the Russian revolution.
@-myrightpenguin
National ‘single payer’ state run healthcare is a pragmatic solution to a civilisational problem posed by the inability of the free market to provide an effective communal service.
The free market was incapable of rendering smallpox extinct.
Don’t be so sure about number 9. Just across the border with South Korea is the Kaesong manufacturing complex in which a number of South Korean manufacturing firms operate in concert with the North Korean regime. It serves to provide virtual slave labour for the South, while providing an ample return for the dictatorship in the North.
@ – Izen
Conflating a single payer system with eradicating smallpox holds no water. Eradicating smallpox entails vaccination. Mass vaccination programs are coordinated in the U.S. by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which operates independent of people’s wider general healthcare where they obtain private healthcare insurance [at the time of eradication Medicare had just got started in the 1960s and Medicaid was to follow later in the 1980s – both systems are safety nets, for elderly and poor respectively who cannot pay for their own private healthcare]. School vaccination programs to prevent many diseases are run at state level in the U.S. through the state budget, independent of people purchasing their own healthcare plans, either through their employers or individually.
Calling a single payer system “pragmatic” does not comport with considering *personal freedom* when considering the point I raised about long wait lists and discrimination against the elderly in terms of service provision and scandals that have come to light of hospitals neglecting them to be on the point of involuntary euthanasia.
Couple of Examples (NHS in the UK):
“A lack of treatment or insufficient treatment is contributing to 14,000 deaths a year in people over the age of 75, Macmillan Cancer Support has found, in what it called an ‘unacceptable act of discrimination.
Deaths from cancer are reducing in most age groups but at a slower rate in those aged 74 to 84 and are increasing in people aged 85 and over, the report said.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9165629/Elderly-dying-due-to-despicable-age-discrimination-in-NHS.html
—
“Older people are being denied vital surgery for cancer, hernia repairs and joint replacements because the NHS imposes “cutoffs” for treatment based on age discrimination, a report has warned.”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/oct/15/nhs-cancer-joints-surgery-age-discrimination
——–
When you see those examples do you see the elderly in the U.K. having “personal freedom”? Decisions are being made for them, not by them. Hence the term “Death Panels”.
Why couldn’t they have had the choice to opt out of paying the mandatory tax all their working lives, paying for private healthcare insurance instead? When younger and healthier private healthcare premiums can be low. Many people just opt for plans where they have a high deductible for catastrophic treatment in the event they require it. That way their premiums are low and they can build their personal savings by keeping more money from their pay cheques. The U.S. has Medicare and Medicaid as back stops for the elderly and poor. The U.S. system is *not* single payer. Therefore your catch all use of the single word “pragmatic” does not hold up when a single payer system is not the only answer and there are options where *personal freedom* is maintained.
Tucci78 and sometimes Freud is mostly this…..
http://knottedprop.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/sigmund-freud-song/
I posted the youtube video offsite because it’s a tad norty or if you want search on youtube itself search for Sigmund Freud – Mother Love Ballad, mildly amusing but it’s the core of his entire thesis.
Also saw your comment on relationships got whacked on Breitbart whatever happened to free speech, some people have no sense of humour.
“The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture. You hear it, not only when spotty students yell “fascist” at Tories, but when pundits talk of revolutionary anti-capitalist parties, such as the BNP and Golden Dawn, as “far Right”.
This article by Daniel Hannan is appropo to this discussion.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100260720/whenever-you-mention-fascisms-socialist-roots-left-wingers-become-incandescent-why/
@-myrightpenguin
“Why couldn’t they have had the choice to opt out of paying the mandatory tax all their working lives, paying for private healthcare insurance instead?”
Because it dosn’t work.
I can think of no extant or historical private healthcare care system which provided adequate provision for more than a minority of individuals. If you have an example you think refutes this I would be interested to hear it.
But it is very unlikely, private provision by free market healthcare is intrinsically unable to achieve Peto optimality.
@ – Izen
I’m sure Amanda and msher can fill you in to inform you of the U.S. healthcare system prior to Obamacare. Many people outside the U.S. do not realise that there was a safety net of Medicare and Medicaid. There were 30-40 million people uninsured out of a population of over 300 million, but CBO analysis of Obamacare shows that within a decade from now the number of people uninsured will remain at around 30 million. All of that for burdening one sixth of the national economy onto the state when there is already a large debt.
If you hadn’t noticed many European nations are in financial ruin, Italy now teetering on the edge also; Greece, Cyprus, and Spain already in the abyss. Large social programs burdened on the state are unsustainable, and only end up with rationing and discrimination of healthcare provision as I have pointed out. Prior to Obamacare over 85% of people in the U.S. were happy with their personal healthcare. All the system required were some tweaks, such as TORT reform and allowing insurance companies to operate across state lines to enable more competition, as opposed to a 2000+ page omnibus bill which was largely driven by special interest lobbyists and crony capitalism (e.g. the mechanism where there is a bail out mechanism for insurance companies, but of course the bail out is courtesy of the taxpayer). The insurance companies have been misguided in their greediness though because it was always the case that the system was set up to fail to create a crisis at a later date in which single payer would be pushed (as admitted by Harry Reid, and as admitted by Obama at an SEIU conference prior to being elected President).
I’m going to exit this thread for a while at least, but will keep an eye on it now and again, maybe to see if individuals such as Amanda and msher arrive to inform you on details that you don’t seem to be aware of. So far the discussion here has lacked a bit of depth and focus, but if that changes, as per Amanda, msher, and others, in exchanges with yourself as the resident “leftist”, then I may pop back in later when the conversation has advanced a little. There is a wider issue beyond healthcare, and that is on entitlements as a whole in the context of personal freedom (i.e. the dependency trap), but healthcare is a rich area for focus.
Glad to see Mises Institute has done a profile on Taft’s foreign policies today. He was in fact not an isolationist at all, for the same reasons I argued this about Ron Paul two years ago.