 So here's some concepts from politics, the basic concepts that there seems to be some disagreement among objectivists about. So left and right, for example. So some would like, and I read, really made the argument that right represents individual rights and capitalism. And left is the opposition to it. And she seems to embrace, to some extent, right as being that. I've taken the stand recently. You can correct me in a minute. But I've taken the stand recently that, no. I mean, even if that was what it meant, I don't even believe it was. Even if that's what it should have meant at some point, it doesn't mean it anymore. And it's one of these terms that is not worth fighting for over. And we should just identify it as the collectivist that it really is. Or the package deal that it really is. I'm curious what you think. Really overstating it to say that Rand made an argument to that effect. Any time she would use terms like this, conservative, liberal, left, right, she would always, in her mature work, like after the, in the 60s, 70s. She would always preface it with things like all political terms today are dangerously undefined and switch meaning at any moment. Today, right, she's taken to mean, such and such and such and such so we can say she does a song and dance basically every time she does it and is super hedged and qualified and right is understood to mean pro-capitalist in this context, therefore we can't say, but she never said I'm on the right or I'm of the right. She would say it's understood to mean, and so those of us who could, precisely, and she was always very temporal about it. Like right now, today, next week, who knows, because it's this kind of shifting undefined term and she was aware of that. So what's going on with right and left? Well, if you, the people who want to use the term and adopt it and say, here's the real political spectrum and here's what's on the right and here's what's on the left, Craig Biddle sometimes does this kind of thing, is they're taking what they think is the fundamental political alternative, the fundamental axis in politics on which we can evaluate things and then they're saying, well, here's the fundamental axis and therefore any two directional words we have in politics have to mean this side versus that side. And so if the fundamental axis is statism versus liberty, statism versus freedom, capitalism, in other words, on the one hand versus statism, then one of them's gonna be the left and one of them's gonna be the right and somehow or other they pick right for capitalism because left is more associated with a particular form of statism, namely socialism. And then you get these arguments, well, the Nazis were leftists because they were social. And I think it's right that there's a spectrum like that that you can draw and should draw and need to draw. But why think of it as left, right versus up and down or north, south or east, west? And there's no, these words, they're convenient words but they're, they don't actually have that meaning in the culture and there's no particular reason to use these two directional terms that way. And there is another way, and here's what matters, where it, where we do need them. So if there was no other, if you think about how does left and what does left to right mean to normal people? It does have a meaning, right? And it has a meaning, basically the right is the people who think that the Democratic Party is worse than the Republican Party and the left is the people who think that the Republican Party is worse than the Democratic Party in America, right? And these people are at war with one another. Some of them think of themselves as thinking that the, they think of them as more to the left than the Democrats and some of them think of themselves as more to the right than the Republicans. But it's, if you have this opposition, there's the Democrats versus the Republicans and these are the real bad guys or these are the real bad guys, you think of yourself as on the left and the right. And it's natural that there should be a kind of sociological term like that because in any society, particularly with any kind of representative form of government, but even with not out one, there's going to be the main arguments that are happening in that society at that time. The main kind of tension points and factions politically at that time. And those people are gonna need to think about one another and about themselves. And if you look at the history of the usage of the terms left and right in politics, going back to where they came about in the French Revolution, that's always what they've been. The right has been sort of more the older regime and the left, some new direction they wanna bring in, but they've always sort of referred to two factions in politics, not really to two fundamental ideas. And then there have been periods when the two factions either really did or thought they did align around fundamental ideas. And you might think that in the mid 20th century was one of those periods where that it came sort of close to doing that in so far as the left was quasi-socialist in America or in some periods communist. And the right then was anti-communist, but then anti-communist isn't always anti-statist. It's best moments it was, but in its worst moments it wasn't. So if you happen to be living in a period where the fundamental political divide that's going, the main political divide that's going on, the main factions are aligned around fundamental issues. Then I think you can say, well now right means this and left means that, but usually we're not. And it's not just a kind of horrible thing about our culture today that we're not. So if you go back to like, the very early Republic, were the Jeffersonian party or the Hamiltonian party, the left or the right party? I guess you would say the Jeffersonians were the left and the Hamiltonians were the right or something because the Hamiltonians were seen as nearer to being monarchical. But which one of those was the correct party? And it turns out the Jeffersonians were really right on some things. The Hamiltonians were right on others. And basically they were both good and they had some differences between them. Now we have two parties who are both bad and have some differences between them. And yet you have to know that there were those differences and that some people are more aligned with one or the other or in the middle in the sense of trying to be neutral compromises between them to understand contemporary politics. And so I think you need a concept whether you want to call it left or right or whatever to denote alignment to these parties, but not to denote alignment to an ideology because there is no ideology that's coherent behind these parties insofar as they think there is that is insofar as people on the right think there's a coherent ideology of the right are there in the grips of a package deal and likewise for the left. So explain that. Why is it that they're in the grips of a package deal? So why is right a package deal to the extent that people think it represents an ideology? So what does it mean to be on the right? Here are the kind of political positions that are generally thought of on the right. You are generally not in favor of economic regulation. That's the one that people see zone when they want to see the right as pro-freedom. You now as of a few years ago don't like immigration and immigrants and free trade. So you're opposed to economic regulation except when it has to do with trading outside the borders of a country. And so maybe the issue is your pro-religion basically and are worried about religion being pushed out of the public square, they're not being enough religion and politics. What do those three things have to do with one another? Being against economic regulation has nothing to do with being against immigration and trade, quite the opposite, those are not consistent positions. And it doesn't have anything to do with wanting more religion in government. Indeed, those also are conflicting positions. Then you go to the left. What do people on the left want? Well, they are concerned with minority rights or they pose themselves as so being. Well, that sounds like that should go with being pro-freedom and anti-immigration. Oh, but they wanna control all of your economic life including in such ways that they think will help you interact more justly with immigrants or minorities, although it won't. Their pro-socialism at least, but again, not everyone on the left or the right is pro-all of these things, but these are the, there's four more immigration, there are four more socialism, there are four more immigration and trade today but not two days ago, right? That just changed and now it's changing again because Biden is now got this nationalist anti-trade policy that he's picked up from Trump who stole it from Bernie Sanders and a million other leftists that hold it before Trump did. So there's no actual coherence to these policies. And then if you go back in history and you think about what policies were advocated by what groups of people at former times, they also didn't go together. Like there's no real reason why were the abolitionists or many abolitionists and suffragists also in favor of prohibition of alcohol. Like those things don't have to, like if you think of someone today who's more concerned about race issues or whatever, he's likely to be more pro-drug legalization. So why did those go together? It just, there were accidental features of how you could build a coalition at the time and it turned out like a lot of women were beat up by their drunk husbands and they couldn't vote so they thought maybe we can get women together over this issue. Those kind of accidents have a lot to do with how political factions get developed and then if you start thinking of your political identity as I'm a leftist or rightist of whatever year, you start thinking of those things as going together and they go together only sociologically. Only in that if you're hanging out with a whole bunch of people on the right and you're reading the books they read and the recommendations, maybe you're gonna start to become more religious even if you got into it because you were put off by people calling you a racist when you're not. Or maybe you'll start to become more racist because you're so put off by that which I think is happening a lot actually. And likewise on the left if you're very concerned about the racism you see in the society until you start going to left wing groups and maybe also you're very pro-choice and so you start going there, maybe you'll start thinking, boy these corporations like Walmart are screwing us all because that's the rhetoric you hear there. But it's, and likewise if you go to a libertarian group because you're say pro-business and admire characters like Hank Reardon, maybe you'll start thinking we shouldn't have an army anymore because of the rhetoric you hear there even though that has nothing to do with defending a businessman and indeed would result in horrific consequences. And so do you think it's people's attempt to demonize the other side in kind of trying to associate them with more ideology than in a sense they deserve. So the left is all Marxists and the right is all fascist or whatever to try to kind of make it simple and coherent? I think that's how it functions in a lot of people's psychology. And people tend to be very nuanced and over nuanced and unable to or unwilling to integrate or generalize with respect to the faction that they see themselves as a part of and oblivious to distinctions with respect to the other faction. So if you hang out with a lot of liberal college professors and so forth which I do part of my day, right? You'll see like, you know, there's Zyne Rand and Donald Trump and the KKK and all these people are more or less alike. I mean, I'm sure there are some subtle differences you can find between them but basically there's that kind of thing versus us and on the left, I mean, I'm not, I believe in this but not that, of course I'm not a socialist although I am abolished the police but I don't mean the same thing by abolish the police as that guy and there were three million different things. How could you lump us all together? And then if you go hang out with right-wingers, everybody's identical with Bernie Sanders who's somehow identical with Noam Chomsky even though they disagree on half the things and somehow identical with the name person I don't remember who's running BLM or the woman who describes herself with the police abolitionist. All these people are the same but on the right, of course, I mean, I voted for Donald Trump but I don't like him as much as I like Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz is very, very different from Paul Ryan and there's nothing, you know and none of those people have anything to do with those crazies who, there are racists and so forth who are crazies and militias but we have nothing to do with them but of course Nancy Pelosi's like the president of Antifa which of course is not true. So there's this sort of seeing the other side as a point and your side as this vast array that you don't wanna be lumped with the other people in and neither view of either side is accurate that is Nancy Pelosi has a little bit more to do with Antifa and the black blocs than the leftists wanna think but not as much as the rightists wanna think and likewise, Mitch McConnell has more to do with the proud boys than rightists wanna think but not quite so much as a lot of leftists are gonna think. Do you think it's always been like this or is it getting worse? In terms of the kind of the tribalistic simplest? I think it's gotten worse in my, it's hard to compare times you weren't alive in or weren't politically aware into times you were so whether it was better or worse than this in 1968 I don't know I was born in 1978 whether it was better or worse than this in 1850 you can try to figure it out but I think yeah it's worse than it was in the 90s it's worse than it was in the early 2000s in terms of the extent to which people are aligned by political factions and their attachment to the factions is not really about ideas but about personality and fear of the other faction I think we've seen a real growth of that in the last 20 years and it's hard to tell exactly why I mean we could list a number of contributing factors but to say which is the strongest I'm not sure Well and it definitely seemed and again you'd have to study it carefully it seemed to have gotten worse with the election of Obama and then take another dramatic turn to the worst with the election of Trump so it seems to have gone step function and Obama and Trump seemed to be really catalysts for this getting much much worse Yeah I started noticing it early in the Obama presidency as something's shifted here and but then when I think back I think it was probably around before it was probably growing before and these were rallying points for it but yeah I remember starting noticing it early in the Obama presidency and I think also social media has a big factor here there's a kind of democratization of media of who has a voice of who's able to say things things aren't going through as many different gatekeepers and at least that changes the form in which these kinds of things take and it makes it it makes it more visible so you know people might have been thinking this 20 years ago but who knew and now you can see it and you can see it in real numbers and it also makes it more there's more opportunity for kind of agit prop propaganda things coming from other countries and so forth to catch on it's hard to say how much that happens I mean it's clear that it's an aim of Russia and some other autocratic nations to sow this kind of thinking and divisiveness in American political discourse in other countries to what extent what we and that they're trying to do it via social media and so forth to what extent we're seeing the results of that and to what extent it's happening independently it's very hard to predict and I'm not just saying you know the the Russians or whatever left Donald Trump or something although they had some role in that but it's also if I look at really hyper leftist people that I know I mean people I went to graduate school or whatever you see this kind of thing they're upset Twitter banned banned my black divists group which is it turns out with a group that was started by some you know Russian the same Russian agency that people were worried had all this pro-Trump stuff to get capitalized on discontent in the black community and turn it in an anti-American direction and this kind of thing has always been going on I mean the Soviets were doing it particularly around race issues in America capitalizing on what were real problems and then turning them trying to distort the movements created to address them going back to the early going back to the 20s there were attempts to do it and they were less they how successful they were it's a question that's made it but you know this is not new but I think social media provides new opportunities for good and bad actors and it strikes me that the actors might be American that is it doesn't have to be foreign actors the plenty actors within the U.S. whether it's Alex Jones others who would like to you know left or right have an agenda and spread this kind of false information I think that's true so it allows this kind of thing by people who are Alex Jones sorts or whatever who really believe what they believe but they're kind of nutty and conspiracy thinkers and it also creates an opportunity for people who want to seed nutty conspiracy thinkers because they know what the effect of it what we need today what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason by the intellect not by feelings wishes women's or mystic revelations any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought all right before we go on reminder please like the show we've got 163 live listeners right now 30 likes that should be at least 100 I figured at least 100 of you actually like the show maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it but at least the people who are liking it you know I want to see I want to see a thumbs up there you go start liking it I want to see that go to 100 all it takes is a click of a click of a thing whether you're 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