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Why the Left Thinks We’re Evil
I think that it’s easier for people on the right to understand that leftists mean well than it is for leftists to understand that people on the right also mean well. In his book, Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt wrote:
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
In Thomas Sowell’s phrase, a good economist must go beyond “stage one” thinking.
Unfortunately, people on the left tend to get stuck at stage one. They see, for example, that a high minimum wage will make minimum-wage workers better off. Additional thought is needed to understand that increasing the cost of low-skilled labor will reduce the demand for that labor.
Even more thought is required to see that the people helped by the increase – those who keep their jobs or can still find jobs after the increase – are likely to be the most employable. That is, they have the most knowledge and experience and they are the least discriminated against. Those hurt by the laws will be the least employable – the least educated, least skilled, and the most discriminated against. In other words, minimum wages help those who need help the least and hurt those who need help the most.
To someone who can’t, or won’t, go beyond stage one thinking, it’s so blindingly obvious that an increased minimum wage will help the poor that they believe that anyone who disagrees must hate poor people – that is, they must be evil. Someone who can see to stage two or three also understands stage one and is unlikely to believe that someone who can’t get beyond stage one is evil.
Moreover, people who truly believe that an election brought evil people into power are more likely to take to the streets than are those who believe that an election merely put stage one thinkers in office.
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That’s pretty profound stuff, start to end. Good on ya mate.
Do you know two more of you who would be willing to subscribe to Ricochet, write lots of good posts, and find two more of you, each?
Does the left think the right is evil? I’ve not been comfortable with the saying: “The Right thinks the Left are people with bad ideas, and the Left thinks the Right are bad people… with ideas.” I think that’s too generous to the Left.
As a Christian, I think – and more and more it’s true – that there is a strict and ineluctable separation between the Right and the Left in the West. We know that the Left is trying to build a (largely godless) eutopia. We know that gaia/mother earth is a de facto religion to the left. We know that Biblical morality is frowned upon by many vocal leaders. We know that sin and morality have been substituted with situation ethics. We know that there are those that say there is no divine Judgment. We know that self-defense and defending one’s family and neighbors is being taken away from individuals and taken over (fecklessly) by the government. We know that the right to life, only extends to certain class of people: those that have already been born. And we see that in society life has been cheapened. And we see power corrupting.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” I believe that’s what we are seeing today.
Godless Communism, and secular Socialism, has taken a foothold in Western culture and is deliberately tearing it apart.
When we try to make assessments like this and speak of the character of the Left and the Right, do we have any concept about what this means in numbers of people who subscribe to the ideologies of the Left and Right on the one hand and what are the numbers who follow with little or no understanding.
No.
But by speaking up, we get an idea of who has ears to hear.
Yeah, that’s what I think. And your point means access to communication platforms is vital to reach those ears. In my lifetime until very recently this has not been difficult. Things have changed.
No, but it’s less than you think on either side.:) One thing, people are naturally evil, and this has to be overcome by conditioning, in the home and by the culture more broadly, and, in the best case, by the Spirit. There is a diminution of Judeo-Christian moral culture in terms of individualism vs. state control and right and wrong vs. libertinism? or psychological anarchy? over the last 75 years. But God will save a country based on the prayers of a few. How few, I can’t say. But prayer for the population to repent couldn’t hurt.
Is Wall Street stuck on stage one?
“Wall Street” is a collective abstraction; it neither acts nor thinks. Probably some people who work on Wall Street are stage one thinkers, and no doubt others have a better understanding of economics.
But what if you know two things that conflict and you act on one?
I asked the question about Wall Street based on the following. Is corporate focus on maximizing profit comparable to the Left’s focus on having a living minimum wage?
I thought Stage One was throwing money at the banks and major corporations.
It could also be restated as “give a man a fish. . . teach a man to fish,” which has been around a long, long time.
The Left is power mad and prideful. It doesn’t suffer second thoughts.
Ah, okay. Great question. Yes, the focus should be on the customer and not on profits.
In a free market, if I maximize profits, I’m doing the best I can to benefit my customers, employees, and shareholders. The best way to maximize profits is to concentrate on providing the best goods and services to my customers that I can. To do that, I’ve got to concentrate on my customers and see the world from their viewpoint. I can measure my success by my profits and losses. Profits mean that I’m supplying goods and services that consumers want at prices they’re willing to pay. Profits also provide better wages for my employees and a return on investment for my shareholders. But I maximize profits by focusing, not on profits, but on my customers.
Things get murky if my goal is to maximize “stakeholder welfare.” First, the definition of stakeholders varies, but it typically includes collective abstractions such as “the community” and “society.” Second, what does “welfare” mean and how do I measure it?
How do I determine what a collective abstraction wants and whether I’m providing what it wants? Profit and losses provide a clear guide, but I have no such guide when the task is maximizing a vague and undefinable construct such as stakeholder welfare.
I pushed back on your original question regarding “Wall Street” because dealing with imaginary collectives gets us into trouble. Socialism can’t exist without the veil of the collective (e.g., “The People,” “The Proletariat,” “The Bourgeoise”) and the belief that the “Will” of this or that collective can be divined. Without the muddle-headed thinking engendered by dealing with categories rather than people, Socialism in theory would collapse as obviously and completely as does Socialism in practice.
Aside:
The free market qualification is important since it excludes the possibility that my profits come from rent seeking. Also, in a free market, government enforces property rights, so if my factory pollutes the air or water, I will be held liable for damages, so my incentive is to minimize environmental damage.
I think the basic difference is beyond economics. The world envisioned by the left requires full cooperation from the populace in order to work. Theoretically, ( since it’s impossible) once everyone acts in concert for the greater good, give up their individual goals, and ultimately their individuality, their vision can be enacted.
The ‘right’, recognizing these notions as impractical and dangerous, have agreed upon a system whereby differences are resolved by our political and institutional processes. It’s a game whereby the players can win, lose or draw. However, there are multiple games and a myriad of paths to success.
The right sees the value in competition and individualism and sees political disagreements as expected. They even see that disagreement is good and necessary, believing that the better ideas ultimately prevail. The only thing they are attached to is the process. The right believes that there is no ‘one’path or one result for a happy and healthy society. They are not attached to some outcome. They do not view disagreement as a threat. It’s part of the game.
The left have decided that eliminating economic ‘unfairness’ as they see it is the only way forward.
The left sees disagreement and dissent as a threat, because their Utopia requires the full agreement of everyone in order to work. People can’t work or save for themselves and families as this thwarts the plan. So, as we have seen in every socialist and communist experiment across many cultures, failures of the political leaders to transform the nation get blamed on those seen as uncooperative. These people are banished, imprisoned or murdered. This causes even more failures and encourages more people to ‘hoard’ to save themselves ( basic human nature!) and another iteration of blaming and scapegoating emerges.
Religion is seen as a competing belief system(s) that can easily undermine the state’s narrative, so they are controlled or banned.
A leftist sees an individualist as an obstacle. Then the question for him becomes, is he ignorant, stupid, propagandized by Fox; or knowingly selfish and greedy, therefore callous and uncaring? The latter to them is tantamount to being ‘evil’.
The multinational corporatism along with entrenched political interests gives the left giant openings to advance their arguments. But that’s another 500 word comment…
This is a profound point. The left is focused on achieving the goal of creating their singular vision of heaven on earth and will use any means necessary to reach that goal. Process is simply in the way and must be discarded.
The right believes that individuals have their own visions of heaven on earth (or, at least, of what constitutes a good life) and that they have the right to pursue those visions. To the right, then, the best that government can do is to enforce “the rules of the game” – that is, the processes by which people with wildly different ideas and goals can peacefully co-exist.
When the left tears down the guardrails, conflicts arise, and they discover in hindsight the purpose the guardrails served. Often, they try to fill the breach they created with laws and dictates that never work as well as did the guardrails that organically evolved with time and experience and that were enforced by custom and social pressure.
Wait…you are Australian?
I’m don’t think this is necessarily true. A company that’s focused on maximizing its profits isn’t necessarily doing things that benefit its customers and employees. Having customer service departments that are based in India may help maximize profits, but it’s often not beneficial to the customers. Cutting the workforce to the bare bones either through numbers or number of hours someone’s allowed to work may help maximize profits, but it’s often not beneficial to the employees.
Some American pharmaceutical companies come to mind. I suspect they just offer good examples.
That’s why I stated that companies should focus on their customers. That’s job 1. Do that right and profits will follow. Focus on profits and customers will leave.
American corporations have been doing this mostly wrong but with cooperation from our government which, in many cases, leaves customers without options to leave unless they are willing to do without.
Agreed. We need to abandon our crony capitalist system and move toward free markets. George Will stated the problem very well in his book, The Conservative Sensibility:
I think it goes down to intellectual sloth. If your opponent is evil you don’t have consider what he says. You don’t have to engage your brain at all. You don’t even have to consider his rights. You have permission to destroy him by any means necessary.
I, with respect, disagree.
This explanation is not consistent with observable behavior, in that, is doesn’t provide a mechanism for so many people, standing high upon a paragon of tolerance, to condemn anybody with a different opinion as evil, all together in lock step, without the tiniest morsel of cognitive dissonance. That doesn’t just happen.
The only explanation for that behavior is a well-disseminated talking point. They are told that the other side is evil, repeatedly and consistently. It’s drummed into their heads.
And it’s a very effective mechanism.
Please checkout Karlyn Borysenko’s article I’ve been a Democrat for 20 Years. Here’s what I experienced at a Trump Rally, and YouTube channel. She describes the situation from the inside very eloquently .
So what we’re seeing here, if I might coin a phrase, is Stage Zero Thinking. They’re not thinking, it’s a reflex, they have been conditioned.
That said, the solution is similar; higher stage thinking. Stage One Thinking at least gets one to notice the contradictions and paradoxes. Stage Two thinking resolves them.
Living in California, you are so right about Godless Communism.
As far as your statement that “We know that gaia/mother earth is a de facto religion to the left:” although that is true, the rank and file Lefties are unaware of how they are snookered.
No one inside the DNC or Dem leadership cares one whit about the environment. Those leaders just say they do. So much fracking went on under Jerry Brown that an entire portion of the earth east of LA is subsiding into the ground – on its own. However if the Left hears the word fracking, their immediate response is “Trump does it!”
But you would never hear that the Jerry Brown-instigated fracking occurred. Instead he is referred to as Mr Environment. All Dem political big shots are environmentalists, if you listen to Di Feinstein or Pelosi. They love the Earth; they worship the planet. (Just ignore the bulldozers owned by Richard Blum, Di Fi’s spouse.)
Yeah right.
I don’t think that stage one and stage zero thinking are mutually exclusive; the left includes a lot of people with different backgrounds. And there are likely additional explanations for the left’s mindset. Complex phenomena rarely have a single cause.
I think that’s about the size of it. And frankly, it’s not just the right that calls the left evil. I’ve seen plenty of it going the other way as well.
I suspect a big secret of the Left’s effectiveness is that they understand politics as good vs evil, rather than a conflict of differing ideas between two groups of well-meaning patriots. I think that’s one reason why they never stop pushing their agenda or trying to punish the evil-doers (you). I think it’s what makes them so good at framing narratives. The other side isn’t just mistaken, they’re also Nazis.
The Left’s mistake is that they’ve got the wrong polarity. Politics is good vs evil, as they believe it is, but they are “the baddies.” The Right will only prevail if we recognize that it’s an Axis & Allies fight, and we’re fighting the Reich.
That doesn’t mean our Democratic loved ones are monsters, guilty of war crimes. To further Godwinize this, we didn’t assume every member of the Nazi Party or the German military had committed atrocities. Hence the trials. Some of them are monsters, but some merely vote for the monsters, or follow orders.
That sounds like victory will require extra-constitutional subjugation. Is it time for that?
You rang?
I know the opposition, in aggregate, are evil precisely because I have considered what they say and do. If the Left wanted to prove their movement is evil, what more would they need to do than they’ve already done? How many more infants would they need to sacrifice?
As for the evil man having no rights, so we can “destroy him by any means” – nonsense. Sophomoric tripe. Again, what did we do at Nuremburg? What do we do with child molesters? Think about this, instead of just making things up.
Not in the least. It just means getting serious about using the legal and political system as it was meant to be used. Like, ya know, draining the swamp. For real. It means we would have to start our own campaigns to shame the moral monsters out of businesses and institutions, as they imagine they are doing.
It means we have to understand the moment of history we’re standing in.