The Vision of the Left

If you happen to believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values and other features of the tragic vision, then you are just someone who believes in free markets, judicial restraint and traditional values.  There is no personal exaltation inherent in those beliefs.  But to be for “social justice” and “saving the environment,” or to be “anti-war” is more than just a set of hypotheses about empirical facts.  This vision puts you on a higher moral plane as someone concerned and compassionate, someone who is for peace in the world, a defender of the downtrodden, and someone who wants to preserve the beauty of nature and save the planet from being polluted by others less caring.  In short, one vision makes you somebody special and the other vision does not. …

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the left and the right is that only the former has even a rough definition.  What is called “the right” are simply the various and disparate opponents of the left.  These opponents of the left may share no particular principle, much less a common agenda, and they can range from free-market libertarians to advocates of monarchy, theocracy, military dictatorship or innumerable other principles, systems and agendas. ...

A rough summary of the vision of the political left today is that of collective decision-making through government, directed toward - or at least rationalized by - the goal of reducing economic and social inequalities.  There may be moderate or extreme versions of the left vision or agenda but, among those designated as “the right,” the difference between free market libertarians and military juntas is not simply one of degree pursuing a common vision, because there is no common vision among these and other disparate groups opposed to the left - which is to say, there is no such definable thing as “the right,” though there are various segments of that omnibus category, such as free market advocates, which can be defined.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.98