Neither Left Nor Right

"God's view of government dictates that it carries out a specified and limited role in human affairs. The church and civil government are made necessary by the same thing (sin), but do not have identical responsibilities (Matthew 22:15-21). The humanist view of the role of government is to perfect mankind. The Scriptural view of the role of government is to protect mankind. Throughout Scripture, God is clear that civil government is charged with a limited responsibility and that good leaders decide to take a Scriptural view of government's role. We also see in Scripture that God has a welfare plan—people are to look to the family, then the church, then the community (1 Timothy 5:3-16, Leviticus 19:9, 10, 23:22). The humanistic plan is publicly funded, coercive, and creates cycles of dependency. God's plan is community-oriented, voluntary, and empowers people."—Nathan Tabor

"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be—through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business."—Ronald Reagan

"Well, there's something known as American conservatism, though it does not even call itself that. It's been calling itself 'voting Republican' or 'not liking the New Deal.' But it is a very American approach to life, and it has to do with knowing that the government is not your master, that America is good, that freedom is good and must be defended, and communism is very, very bad."—William F. Buckley Jr.

"The government is best which governs least."—Thomas Jefferson

"The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The right subscribes to the American formula, 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.' The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions... The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality."—Dennis Prager

I have a strong aversion to labels. I think labels are used, far too often, to replace meaningful discussion and understanding of other people and their views. Many have the attitude, “I have my mind made up; don't bother me with the facts!” I think many are afraid to hear the reasons others might have for different positions and ideas. Undoubtedly, many conversations about Left and Right demonstrate that very problem. Those who have power use labels and name-calling to avoid real discussion of ideas. Ordinary people, led by ideological leaders, often echo this strategy. My personal preference is to discuss the issues, but that can be very difficult when people are accustomed to name-calling.

In mediation, an important part of facilitating reasoned discussion is to distinguish interests and issues. Ideologues and politicians intentionally confuse such distinctions, speaking of issues which conceal their own interests, such as gaining power.

I often wonder “Why do some prefer ‘the Left?’” Why do they say that they are “liberal?” Is it anything more than thinking the word itself sounds good? I observe that many people have such a preference because they perceive the choice as open-minded or progressive in contradistinction to the narrow-minded, reactionary Right, but many on the Left are no more open-minded than some on the Right. I hope those who know me personally realize that I am not narrow-minded or reactionary; I try very hard to avoid knee-jerk reactions or appeals to ideology for its own sake. I try to listen and consider thoughtful opinions, evidence, and logic.

To the extent that my views lean right, it is because I believe certain things, and people decided, at some point, to label them “right-wing.” Indeed, it seems to me that labeling is part of a strategy to demonize or marginalize those with conservative or, at least, non-Leftist beliefs (a strategy that may be used by either side although it seems to come much more from the Left).

The truth is that I am largely libertarian or classically liberal, because these descriptions have their roots in the word liberty. Unfortunately, both of those terms, as well as many other labels, simply enable people to pigeon-hole a person. I would rather explain what I think about specific issues rather than have people assume they know my views because of a label.

I favor individual freedom, and I have a healthy fear of anyone or any system that seeks or accrues great power, especially government. I believe humans are naturally sinful, and that any great source of power attracts the worse kinds of sinful people, who will use that power—at the least, to serve themselves, and, at the worst, to harm others. The greater the power, the greater is its potential for serious harm because “power corrupts.” One of the greatest threats is the restriction and destruction of individual liberty. Those with power cannot tolerate the threat posed by free people; the lessons of tyrants make that abundantly clear. “Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit” (Zechariah 4:6) also tells me that this has a spiritual dimension, and it means I favor power on the Right no more than I favor it on the Left. Earthly, political power is dangerous regardless of whose hands hold it, except for God himself.

So many of the issues, that seem to distinguish the Left from the Right, involve taking power, choice, and freedom from the individual. Perhaps, in some cases, this begins innocently enough when zealous people, believing in their cause so strongly, think they do right to make any other position illegal at the highest level of authority. Those who favor such issues enjoy the freedom to hear, evaluate, and choose what they wish to think and do; yet once they elect representatives who agree with them, they seem to prefer denying that same freedom to the rest of us. So many issues—abortion, global warming, evolution, poverty, economics, to name a few—involve “solutions” that take freedom away from individuals. Even worse, they don’t want free and open discussion; for them, the matter is settled, no one may make another choice, and freedom becomes a little less free.

One of the reasons that the Left seems to be more effective, many times, in winning elections or in winning support of unthinking people, is that it tends to be monolithic and cohesive. Against them, the so-called Right is made up, largely, of a diverse assortment of people and issues who often disagree among themselves. One clear division is between social and fiscal conservatives, between the religious, mostly Christian groups, on the one hand, and economic, pro-business concerns, on the other. While at times they have worked together, as when led by Reagan, at other times their diverse priorities enable the Left to gain an advantage.

Secular progressives, who make up the majority of the Left, dominate education, the media, and the Democratic Party, as well as the unions (although the Left's defense of illegals who are taking jobs from union workers has eroded union dominance), the environmental movement, universal health-care advocates, the pro-abortion feminists, and the LGBTQ rights movement. Their opponents are not correspondingly unified, even though they may agree on many conservative issues.

One of the popular myths of this polarized view of things is that the Right favors the rich while the Left cares for the poor. This view is largely rhetorical, but the class warfare, so created, has become very real. Reality suggests that there are calloused, greedy rich people on all sides, and in fact more honest charity occurs on the Right than on the Left. Furthermore, while I am closer to the poverty level, by far, than the rich, I still oppose the income tax, especially the graduated tax, not because I think rich people should keep their money (athough I do) but because high taxes destroy the economy, lower employment, eventually cause inflation, ultimately lower overall tax receipts to the government, and harm everyone. Even JFK understood this and lowered taxes. More fundamentally, I oppose confiscatory taxes because I don’t believe the government has the right to take anyone's money merely to support a bloated federal system that was not Constitutionally authorized nor should ever have been! Even more, I oppose the use of tax policy and government programs to redistribute wealth when the ultimate purpose is to empower the redistributors!!

I believe in “e pluribus unum,” that is, one out of many. This means I oppose both the divisive rhetoric of “hate the rich” and the multicultural agenda, which includes the race-baiting that has become so prevalent. I don’t accept the idea that America or any nation is nothing more than a collection of victims oppressed by a handful of wealthy victimizers; if there is any oppression it rests in the government more than in the wealth of private citizens or business, for the most part. I despise the tactics of the Left when it pits one group of Americans against another just to gain votes. That is sick at the least and evil at the worst. Even more, I despise those who call a person a racist, simply because they have an honest argument against their agenda (a not uncommon example of the name-calling I mentioned above).

This assault by personal attack has become the favored method of the Left in dealing with all who attempt to argue rationally against any of their favored views, whether it is global warming, environmentalism in general, capitalism, free trade, religious freedom, big government, race, open borders or illegal immigration, Islamist-led terrorism or the war on terror, or welfare. My views on each issue may place me to the right, but I have thought about and studied most of these issues. My positions are do not flow simply from a single ideological position. I think, investigate, and form my own opinions. As a result, I am neither Left nor Right. I am just me!

I would like to comment on one final matter. Those on the Left believe that the government is the answer to their concerns and look to the government to do what is necessary to achieve them. I suspect such people assume that those who oppose them also look to the government to achieve their goals. This is a huge difference between Left and Right. Many of us, presumed to be on the Right, want to reduce government, not empower government to achieve our wishes.

The idea that we are fascists comes from such thinking. I won’t deny that some fascists may hold seemingly conservative ideas, although many have more in common with the Left. However, true conservatives and certainly libertarians reject fascism because we reject powerful government. We want to take power and money away from politicians and bureaucrats and return them to the people, or at least to more local levels of government, where such power is better exercised. For me and those like me, fascists, communists, socialists, oligarchs, and dictators are equally objectionable, even if they attain power under the guise of democracy.  (Dinesh D'Souza's recent film Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time and book Death of a Nation: Plantation Politics and the Making of the Democratic Party provide clearly documented, historical evidence to how the Left has created a dichotomy that doesn't exist and has used propaganda to create a paper tiger they call the extreme Right.  I was delighted to see D'Souza's historical and documented support of ideas I had reached simply by recognizing the Left's criticisms of "the Right" failed to correspond to reality or to my own values and preferences).

By the way, the largely forgotten attack on so-called “Christianists,” Christians who wish to impose their beliefs and morality by way of government on everyone else, comes from a similar assumption, under the circumstances I’ve just described, a reasonable one but still as wrong. Few Christians want to impose or force their religion on anyone. In that sense, we are nothing like many Muslims who have a goal of universal shariah law throughout the entire world. For a genuine Christian, the hope is leading people to faith by persuasion, ending in a free choice without any coercion. We do want the freedom to do so, and that makes us political conservatives or libertarians, for the most part (To be honest, I do not understand evangelical Christians, Catholics, or Jews who find Leftist or socialist thinking acceptable).  Sadly, if you look at history, you will find many examples of nominal Christians fighting other nominal but slightly different Christians for power that, once gained, was often used to persecute the other side.  The "freedom of religion" created by the First Amendment was a wise solution to that problem (not freedom from religion, by the way).  Neither is charity work institutionalized in government a fulfillment of Christian duty to care for others; God gave that responsibility to the Church, not government.

Issues like abortion and gay marriage have challenged such Christians. Life, marriage, and family are sacred to us, and having our country move toward positions that endanger them is deeply troubling. We believe life begins at conception, and to destroy that life is murder. Male and female and the joining of them in marriage is one of God’s oldest creations, and redefining it to legitimize homosexual behavior is unacceptable, despite the uncertainty of the cause of homosexuality itself (as yet still unproven to be inborn or genetic). We regard a loving traditional family as the best place for the rearing and protection of children, and we see the increasing promiscuity in the culture to be offensive, degrading, and ultimately harmful to both men and women. Most of us would prefer to maintain the wholesome culture that characterized the United States and the West for most of its history. At the least, we demand the freedom to live and act as we believe without being forced to accept a morality contrary to our faith. Some would accuse us of imposing our values on everyone, and this is not altogether untrue. After all, every law is an imposition of someone’s values. In a democratic society, with the privilege of free speech, we merely have the chance to persuade our fellow citizens to our way of thinking.

In the end, regardless of the specific issue, I favor freedom and faith over an ever-increasingly powerful and ultimately oppressive government. That certainly doesn’t make me a fascist, and it generally means I’m not "right-wing" as many perceive such to be, in that I do not want government to impose my wishes on everyone else. In other words, I’m neither Left nor Right.