My post “Political Ideologies” begins with this:
Political ideologies proceed in a circle. Beginning arbitrarily with conservatism and moving clockwise, there are roughly the following broad types of ideology: conservatism, anti-statism (libertarianism), and statism. Statism is roughly divided into left-statism and right-statism, which are distinguishable by their goals and constituencies.
By statism, I mean the idea that government should do more than merely defend the people from force and fraud. Conservatism and libertarianism are both anti-statist, but there is a subtle and crucial difference between them, which I will explain.
I later devoted a post to the subtle and crucial difference: “The Libertarian-Conservative Divide”.
What I aim to do here is expand on “statism”, for which a better word is “authoritarianism”.
Here’s what I say in “Political Ideologies” about left-statism:
Nothing is off the table for a left-statist. The state must bring everyone in line with whatever passes for “progressive” thinking at the moment: anti-religionism, same-sex marriage, gender fluidity, “women must be believed” (unless they challenge Democrats), untrammeled immigration, environmental extremism, the end of fossil fuels, socialized medicine, universal basic income, universal day-care, etc., etc., etc. Such things aren’t merely to be enacted, but transgressions against them must be punished by public shaming if not by criminal penalties. And nothing can stand in the way of the furtherance of the left-statist agenda — certainly not the Constitution. If Congress balks, use the courts, regulatory agencies, and left-dominated State and local governments. Above all, use public schools, universities, the media, and Big Tech to overwhelm the opposition by swaying public opinion and indoctrinating the next generation of voters.
If there is a distinction between “liberalism”, “progressivism”, and left-statism, it is one of attitude rather than aims. Many a “liberal” and “progressive” wants things that require oppressive state control, but is loath to admit the truth that oppressive state control is required to have such things. These naifs want to believe the impossible: that the accomplishment of the “progressive” agenda is compatible with the preservation of liberty. The left-statist simply doesn’t care about liberty; the accomplishment of the left-statist agenda is the end that justifies any and all means. Those “liberals” and “progressives” who aren’t left-statists by attitude are merely useful idiots to hard-core, Lenin-like left-statists.
Regarding the difference between left-statism and right-statism, I say:
Leftism is destructive of society and the economy, whether purposely or not. This is because the reigning disposition on the left is to hold and exercise power for the “greater good” — as the leftist sees it. The toll is heavy: the destruction of traditional social norms that bind and civilize society; the rejection of free markets because they “fail” to produce outcomes desired by the left; and on and on.
Rightism aims to preserve society and to ensure a robust economy.
I focus on what I call right-populism, about which I say:
A right-populist will not embrace conservative ideology because it implies smaller government, or because it fits his disposition. He will embrace conservative ideology as a protest against “progressivism”, while wanting government to do the things for him that government is perceived as doing for the left’s clients, and for the big corporations that are perceived as allied with the left and benefiting from government-granted privileges.
This isn’t to say, by any means, that right-populists are just as wrong-headed as the elitists they scorn. Right-populist instincts, if enacted, would result in much less costly and oppressive governance than elitist programs. There are vast and largely uncounted economic and social costs attached to the schemes hatched and enacted by elitists [examples follow]….
More than that, right-populist instincts include the preservation of the binding and civilizing social norms that “progressives” seek to subvert. That subversion has been so successful in wide swaths of government, business, the media, the academy, and public “education” that it can only be reversed by a state as powerful as the one that the left has erected.
I am too easy on right-statism, mainly because it currently represents no threat to liberty in America. But if it were somehow to arise as a threat (for the first time in America’s history) — and not a fear-fantasy promoted by the left — it would be a puritanically oppressive mirror-image of left-statism. To take one example: Religion might dominate the law, whereas, the law is now used to override religion.
In any event, both left-statism and right-statism are manifestations of authoritarianism. I can’t wholeheartedly endorse this article about the research of some psychologists at Emory University, but it offers some good insights about authoritarianism. Here are some of them:
[Right-wing and left-wing authoritarians] are almost like mirror images of one another that both share a common psychological core, the researchers conclude.
"Authoritarians have a predisposition for liking sameness and opposing differences among people in their environment," [lead author Thomas] Costello says. "They are submissive to people they perceive as authority figures, they are dominant and aggressive towards people they disagree with, and they are careful to obey what they consider the norms for their respective groups."…
"It's a mistake to think of authoritarianism as a right-wing concept, as some researchers have in the past," he says. "We found that ideology becomes secondary. Psychologically speaking, you're an authoritarian first, and an ideologue only as it serves the power structure that you support."
This is a refreshing change of tone from the decades-long proclivity of psychologists to label (wrongly) authoritarianism as a right-wing or conservative phenomenon.
Related posts:
Conservatism, Libertarianism, and the “Authoritarian Personality”