Some journalists are saying that while the left currently holds sway in the United States, it is collapsing in foreign lands. Yet, what is the left? What is the right? Do we really know our right from our left?

It has long been observed that the easiest way to be a giant among men is to live in a land of Lilliputians. You see, so many things in this world are actually relative: a big mosquito is quite a bit smaller than a small donkey, and a big donkey is quite a bit smaller than a small elephant. Yet they are all thought “big” in a certain context. But because we understand those contexts, we don’t expect a big cockroach to knock over the refrigerator. This perspective, however, is sorely lacking when the matter is political parties.

A case in point is the conflation of rightists and leftists with all those wearing the same label. As examples, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (from the land of hyphenated last names, England) writes an article entitled “Europe swings Right as depression deepens,” while Bruce Walker — whose work often appears at my site — penned a much more cerebral presentation called “The Collapsing Global Left.”

Let’s examine a truly ridiculous statement in Pritchard’s piece. He writes, “We have seen the ultimate crisis of capitalism — what Marxist-historian Eric Hobsbawm calls the ‘dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union’ — yet socialists have completely failed to reap any gain from the seeming vindication of their views.”

There is a good reason for this, Mr. Pritchard: de facto socialists have largely been running Western Europe for many years now. I would think you’d have noticed, unless you’ve taken a leaf out of Hobsbawm’s manifest . . . er, book. He is, after all, a man who would view anything to the right of Mao Tse-tung as intolerably rightist.

Yet “view” is the operative word. You see, “right” and “left” tell you little about what they describe unless you know the context. For example, the terms right and left originated with the French Revolution; the rightists wanted to preserve the monarchy while the leftists wanted to overthrow it and create a republic. Thus, the leftists at the time, such as the Jacobins, were republicans. Then, Europe’s “right” is much to the “left” of ours, while the communists were the “rightists” in the Soviet Union. Clearly, if “right” could characterize both doctrinaire Marxists in Russia and their opponents here in the States, both Republicans today and their opponents in revolutionary France, it does not have a consistent definition that is ideology or issues-based.

While not all rightists diverge from ours to the extent of the Soviets, the differences still are often profound. Are the rightists in Europe adamantly pro-life and anti-gun control? Then, Bruce Walker mentions how the ruling Congress Party in India recently beat back a leftist challenge, but how right is this “rightist” party? After all, its platform advocates quotas for women and Moslems. Bruce also cites the recent Kuwaiti election, writing, “The lesser story was that non-religious political parties – political parties that look more like what a party in Holland or Canada would look like – finally gained a majority in the Kuwaiti Parliament.” Are we to now consider the embrace of secular, Canadian-style parties to be a move toward the right? Well, I suppose it might be — some conception of the right, anyway.

Then there are those who claim that a distinguishing characteristic of the right is nationalism. Nonsense. The Soviets were gung-ho nationalistic, as are the small-c communist Chinese and big-C communist North Koreans. It’s simply man’s nature — only deviated from by those awash in our uniquely Western brand of self-loathing — to exalt one’s own group.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not here and now trying to tell you what does or doesn’t, should or shouldn’t constitute a rightist platform. I’m also not so intellectually sloppy as to sing that modern cynic’s song about how there is no difference between left and right. The truth is that there are profound differences, between left and right, right and right, and left and left, depending on time and place. The point is that the designations have no consistent definitions historically or geographically. They are relative terms.

This is why it’s not surprising that, in these relativistic times, each would be applied sloppily and with little regard for the actual beliefs of those being labeled. For a relativist (to be fair, I must point out that Bruce isn’t one and likely understands these matters) will miss the most significant point when talking about politics, social issues, religion or anything else. And this is that, ultimately, there isn’t right and left, conservative and liberal.

There is only Truth and everything else.

And everything else is a lie.

Our goal in government — as in all things — should be to discover Truth and put it into action. And when this is your perspective, all becomes clear. You won’t conflate, let’s say, Pim Fortuyn with Pat Buchanan, and Indian, European and American “conservatives” with each other simply because someone somewhere decided to brand them identically. You will use Truth as the yardstick and judge each entity under its light, revealing the entity’s true nature. You won’t believe that Nazis and communists are profoundly different simply because some distinctions can be drawn between them and relativists have placed them on opposite sides of the political spectrum. You’ll understand that they are united in a most important and diabolical sense: they both persecuted the Church, they both suppressed the Truth. In other words, it isn’t very significant that two groups may embrace different fleeting things called different lies, but it’s truly significant that they reject the same unchanging thing called the Truth.

But a relativist believes what the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras did, that “Man is the measure of all things.” Thus, it’s not the Truth that is his yardstick, but man. Then, when a group is on what man calls the right side of man’s political spectrum, the designation takes on greater significance. Moreover, the relativist will use man as his yardstick, but what man? Others are mere mortals just like he, so why should he defer to their judgments? So, ultimately, he takes that modern advice and looks within, but what does he look at? Since there is no Truth and thus no answers to be found within or without, there is no reason to look to that which could help find those answers: reason. The relativist then uses the only logical yardstick he has left: emotion. (If it feels good, do it, anyone?) And he knows that when he hears about people on the “right,” he hates them. And that’s good enough for him.

This is one reason why our secularists demonized George W. Bush as a hardcore rightist. If they had viewed him objectively for even a few moments, they might have realized that he was quite the statist, a philosophical soul mate of theirs in many ways. But objectivity finds no home in a relativistic mind.

As for our world today, the only thing worth cheering would be a collapse of vice and a return to virtue, but this cannot happen as long as the West is awash in relativism. As long as it’s in this degraded spiritual state, it won’t put the Truth into action because it won’t search for it. Thus, we can move “right,” “left” or some other way, but unless that movement is on balance toward the Truth, our continued decline is a foregone conclusion. 
 

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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Pat Henry said:

Right on Only Bush was not seen a rightist by leftists - he was rhetorically called rightist by leftists in order to dupe the right into thinking he was right as he forwarded left. Right-Left. Green, White, Red in Bolshevik-turmoiled Russia (and now Red and Blue in the US). The "fall of communism" -- in line with "one step forward, two steps back" as Lenin strategized -- worked well before, so why not do it again? Mr. Duke is ri... um, correct. We need discourse about principle, not labels that hide agendas. Onward!

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June 11, 2009
Votes: +2

Beacon said:

	Right/Left Defined Left = Socialism, Marxism, Communism (all socialistic & government control in slightly different degrees) Right = Anarchy (No government at all) Democracy = Some government, but Majority 50% +1 = (Mob) rule Republic = Minimal government (Only enough to protect the people and their God-given inalienable rights)
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June 11, 2009
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MarkGlen said:

	The New World Order (NWO) in the making The reason Obama has ordered our troops to read the enemy the Miranda Rights is because Obama is a one worlder. He is setting the stage for the NWO--Laws are to be world-wide laws.
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June 14, 2009 | url
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D. Whitehead said:

In a word - - - Once again, and as always, Mr. Duke has hit the nail right square on the head. I'd like to go one step further and say that the whole mess can pretty much be summed up in one single word: CONFUSION. The entire world, in general, is wallowing in it and Western Cuture, in particular, is dying from it. Confusion is the one and only thing that satan can actually create, and it would appear that he and his minions have been working in overdrive and overtime in the past few decades. There is one solution and one only: a return to the Lord and to Bible doctrine, but I don't see that happening (at least not any time soon). When the blessed day finally arrives that the Lord Jesus Christ that old liar/loser/trouble-maker satan into the lake of fire, I'm going to dance a jig on top of the walls of Heaven.

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June 15, 2009
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D. Whitehead said:

	Correction - - - I meant to say: that the Lord Jesus Christ throws. I inadvertantly left out the word "throws".
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June 15, 2009
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