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Now that I have long-form, how can I explain this better?
What is the key difference between right and left? How can we discern whether an ideology is right or left?
The key is who they say will make the world better. Government or individuals?
Communism, fascism, naziism, other forms of tyranny, and even lesser forms of leftism such as progressivism, all hold that the People are beholden to the state to make their lives better.
Our #Founders and #Framers, today’s conservatives, Madisonians (me), libertarians, and true liberals (not leftists who call themselves liberals) believe that the state only has the authority conceded by the People and that those authorities should be limited.
With leftism, the state is responsible, even to the point of allowing criminals to blame the state and society for their wrongdoing, meaning that they should be punished less—or not at all. The gravest sin to a leftist is defiance of the state. That cannot be forgiven. Punishment for that should be harsh. Even if defiance of the state is not a black-letter crime, those who defy will be investigated until something, anything can be used as an excuse to charge them.
Folks on the right place responsibility with the individual. Violent crimes, violating the #Rights of others, rioting, burning, looting must be punished so that criminals (and everyone else) are clearly given the message that they will be held to account for their chosen behavior.
Folks on the left believe that authority devolves from the state, that individuals must sacrifice their #Liberty “for the greater good”.
Those on the right believe that authority comes from the People, that they best know how to make their lives better, how to pursue happiness. They believe that government exists solely to protect their most fundamental Rights, among them, #Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When government takes an action that does not protect Rights, it is overstepping its bounds.
To put these ideas on a spectrum in a way that is not arbitrary (most spectra are drawn arbitrarily to push a political ideology), we must employ a variable, just as the electro-magnetic spectrum employs frequency or wavelength.
The variable that best distinguishes left and right is the amount of Liberty a particular ideology allows the People.
Starting from the right (Liberty) and proceeding left (authoritarianism), I propose the following ordering of ideologies:
True anarchy, libertarianism, American conservatism, Madisonianism, American liberalism, socialism, progressivism, tyranny (including communism, naziism, and fascism).
True anarchy refers to zero government, not to the attempt to tear down an existing government (usually to replace it with a leftist government).
American conservatism is not the same as the conservatism that attempts to preserve an authoritarian state. It is not the same thing as conservatism during the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, or during the communist regime in the USSR. American conservatism seeks to conserve the ideals of the Founders and Framers.
Madisonians trust in the precise balance of Liberty of the People and authority of the state that Madison envisioned when he authored the #Constitution. We value the vertical (federalism, invented by our Framers) and horizontal (the three branches) separation of powers. We feel that our government has strayed from these principles, usurping power it never was intended to possess.
Progressivism and fascism both hold that the state is the ultimate authority and that the people should be willing to cede Liberty, the only real difference being the willingness to shoot non-compilers.
This is my take. Accept it or not. But is does explain leftist better than anything else I have encountered.
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