Defining the Left-Right Political Spectrum

Lack of clarity causes needless quarreling.

The Viennese philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, famously argued that many disagreements about philosophical, scientific, and personal matters arise from the use of language in an ill-defined way. People attribute different meanings to the same words without realizing they are doing it. This unwitting lack of agreement about definitions leads to unnecessary and unproductive quarreling.

I often think of Wittgenstein when I hear people squabbling about public affairs, in which we frequently make references to the Left-Right Political Spectrum. Most of us (myself included) are in the habit of referring to “Leftists” or “Liberals” or “Conservatives.” We often do this without first making sure that we agree on the definitions of these terms.

Most historians agree that the descriptive terms Left and Right began during the French Revolution in the summer of 1789, when the revolutionary faction in the National Assembly sat to the left of the presiding officer.

While the French revolutionaries at first seemed interested in constructing something along the lines of the new republic in America that was being founded at this same time, its leadership soon lapsed into tyranny and terror.

In the English speaking world, the foremost critic of the French Revolution was Edmund Burke—a prominent member of the Whig Party in Britain who had argued in Parliament that the British colonists in America had legitimate grievances that should be addressed.

In his day, Burke was considered a proponent of liberalism—that is, carefully defining and limiting the power of the state. However, in his 1790 book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, he argued that it is impossible for so-called revolutionaries to wipe the slate of society clean without destroying society. With astonishing prescience, Burke predicted the Terror and he predicted that order would ultimately be restored by a military commander.

Burke argued that existing institutions, customs, and habits can be gradually reformed, but not radically overthrown without turning society into “the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.” And so Burke—a famous liberal in his day—became known as the father of modern conservatism.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intellectuals who rejected Burke’s critique of the French Revolution became increasingly mesmerized by the writings of Karl Marx, who posited that the working class—or what he called the “proletariat”—was destined eventually to assume control of the means of economic production, thereby overthrowing the capitalist system based on private ownership of the means of production.

Marx’s ideas of “class consciousness” and “class struggle” continue to mesmerize university professors and their proteges among people who work in politics and the media, but this faction of society (which still defines itself as the Left) seems to have lost interest in the plight of working men, and is now primarily interested in race and gender. It is surely one of the great ironies of political history that many of today’s leftists are obsessed with defining humanity in racial categories, and attributing moral qualities to these categories. In other words, these people have become racists.

Over the last year I’ve been frequently prompted to reflect on the Left-Right Political Spectrum as it pertains to the Medical Freedom movement. While the Democratic Party and the mainstream media frequently refer to our movement as “right wing,” in fact our view of state power (its uses and its abuses) is rooted in 18th century liberalism, most notably the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I believe that the First Amendment is the key guiding principle of the Medical Freedom movement, and I hope that prominent members of our movement will bear this in mind whenever they are communicating with the public. What we are up against is increasingly authoritarian, ideological, and censoring state power, especially its Democratic Party officer holders.

The First Amendment recognizes that humans will always disagree about matters of religion, metaphysics, ideology, and empirical science. Civil debate about these matters is not only to be expected and accepted; it should be welcomed as a means of discovering the truth about complex matters.