A Key Difference Between Right and Left

I haven’t written on this here blog in quite a while. I just haven’t felt like it.

However, the president’s Afghanistan speech last night put me back in the mood. He talked about summoning unity. He also said:

We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes.

I want to say a few things about “right makes might” and unity.

I think what the president intended to communicate here was that because our cause is just and good, that we will prevail. But I think that is a naive attitude. Goodness in no way guarantees success. Although it feels nice to understand that good should always overcome bad, it doesn’t, and it never will in this world.

I picked out that quote because it is illustrative of an important thing to understand about Obama and people on the left who think like him. People to the left of the political spectrum live in what is very much a dream world. They imagine what that they can create a perfect world if they try hard enough. John Lennon is a case in point:

And also Robert and Ted Kennedy, who both said:

Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why’? I dream things that never were and say ‘Why Not’?

The Kennedy brothers have never been more correct about anything. This is a key difference between the right and the left. People on the left dream naive dreams that never were (and never will be). They live in a dream world.

People to the right of the spectrum do indeed see things as they are and say “Why?” We acknowledge that the world will never be even close to perfect, and the best we can do is restrain gratuitous evil and assuage gratuitous pain as best we can. We ask “Why are things this way?” and then we try to make things better.

As for unity, it is true that everyone can unify around the idea of living in a better world than the one today. But there are different ways of going about getting a better world.

John Lennon, Barack Obama, the Kennedys and those like them have a way. They dream of a world with “no possessions… No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man… Sharing all the world”, and try to make that world a reality.

People on the right, in contrast, have another way. We take the world we have today at face value and say, “ok- what can we do to make this a little bit better for the most people?”

But are these two approaches mutually exclusive? Yes, they are. What the left always does is 1. identify something that is broken or imperfect, 2. imagine something better, 3. completely abolish the imperfect thing, and 4. replace it with their imagined perfect replacement. The right seeks to 1. identify something broken or imperfect, 2. ask why it is this way, 3. think of ways to improve, and 4. try out the best solution.

The left and right can’t have unity. The left wants to destroy and replace flawed institutions. The right wants to fix them, and maintain them. True unity is a myth. What unity really means is “Unity behind my values”- the values of the person preaching unity.

So when the president gets on stage and talks about unity and right making might, please forgive me if I don’t fall all over myself in adoration for these wonderful words. The man lives in a dream world. I have no desire be in unity with someone who lives in a dream world. His words are just air. They sound nice, and they mean nothing.