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This is the objection to the Buckley quotation. If they are entirely different things, then why is this part of WikiProject Conservatism? Is it really deniable that in post-World War II America, the Right = Conservatism?
Yes, the Buckley quote is applicable mainly to the Right in countries like America, the UK, and Canada. So what? This is a huge part of Wikipedia's readership - I'm not saying we should devote the entire article to the Anglosphere, if someone wants to write a section about what the phrase "right wing" means in the Third World that's fine, but why can't the quote be there? It's a good illustration of right wingers believe.
And with all this concern about world wide application, why should the article focus so much on revolutionary-era France? The phrase "right-wing" may have originated there, but modern day right wing attitudes, what one editor called "liberal conservatism," like that of Edmund Burke (I read both liberal and conservative publications. Only conservatives offer paeans to Burke) did not. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 04:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Please avoid black and white thinking. Right-wing and Conservative are not completely different things. Nobody said they were. Neither are they identical things. This article should focus on Right-wing. The article Conservatism should focus on conservatism. Rick Norwood ( talk) 14:03, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Buckley's quotation is a useful counterweight to the fact that this article relies predominantly on left wing, anti-Right sources. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 04:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Clearly, there's no such thing as completely objective, undisputed facts about contentious areas of political science. Karl Marx and Buckley had different "facts." Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 08:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
From the article on conservatism: "Conservative liberalism is a variant of liberalism that combines liberal values and policies with conservative stances, or, more simply, the right wing of the liberal movement.[29][30][31] The roots of conservative liberalism are found at the beginning of the history of liberalism. Until the two World Wars, in most European countries the political class was formed by conservative liberals, from Germany to Italy. The events such as World War I occurring after 1917 brought the more radical version of classical liberalism to a more conservative (i.e. more moderate) type of liberalism.[32]" Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 08:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Some editors of this article want, for reasons I do not understand, Right-wing to equal Libertarian. But while they are willing to argue the point ad infinitum, they are not able to provide any references for this point of view. This renders the arguement pointless, since Wikipedia requires references. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Here is the sentence: "Historically they refer to support for a hierarchical society justified by an appeal to natural law or tradition." (Source: Smith, T. Alexander and Raymond Tatalovich. Cultures at War: Moral Conflicts in Western Democracies (Toronto, Canada: Broadview Press, Ltd., 2003) pp. 30. "That viewpoint is held by contemporary sociologists, for whom 'right-wing movements' are conceptualized as 'social movements whose stated goals are to maintain structures of order, status, honor, or traditional social differences or values' as compared to left-wing movements which seek 'greater equality or political participation.' In other words, the sociological perspective sees preservationist politics as a right-wing attempt to defend privilege within the social hierarchy.) The bolded world "historically" was added by a user that is not used in the reference that is talking about the left vs. right spectrum in general - not historically. Thus the inclusion of the word "historically" is a misrepresentation of this source.-- R-41 ( talk) 23:11, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Before I added material to the lead, it was being reverted back and forth several times a day between the "support for hierarchy" version and the "support for small government" version. The material I added is referenced, and covers both. Do you want to return to the revert war? Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm "suggesting" that referenced material is better than unsupported opinion. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:18, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I cannot help noticing that the article uses Leftists (such as Seymour Martin Lipset) as authorities. I am guessing that the Wikipedia article about the Left does not rely upon Right Wing critics of the Left to supply its definition.
It is pretty evident that most of the people on the political Left who are editing this article have very little conception of what it is to be on the Right politically.
They notice people who oppose them, and go in search of an explanation. Some Leftists believe that people on the Right fail to comprehend that things can be made better, others says that they resist change because they do not like change. Some say that the Right opposes progress on the grounds that it is in their self-interest to keep things the same, others conclude that people on the Right are bad people, and bad people do bad things.
When the Right talk about the Left they also often assume they are either idiots or bad people. They assume for example (to focus on the egalitarian argument for a moment) that when people say that everybody is equal they do this because they are stupid or because it helps them get political power.
The Right-Left dichotomy is too persistent for it not to mean something, but what? I wrote the original Wikipedia definitions for the Right and Left on Wikipedia, suggesting egalitarianism of the Left, and anti-egalitarianism of the Right. I notice that despite numerous changes these definitions have survived more or less intact, but I now think that they fail to go to the heart of the issue. When Bobbio (for some reason this Italian Leftist is viewed as an authority giving an "international" perspective) defines the Right as anti-egalitarian, he is framing what the Right believe in Leftist terms.
So what do the Right believe? Crudely, the Right believe that the universe not only has an order, but that this order has a moral dimension. Inequality is just ONE aspect of this order. In other words it is not the case that the world can be anything we want it to be, we are constrained by what is the case, and this constraint includes right and wrong. The Left on the other hand claim that we impose values (and for post-modernists this includes truth) upon the world. If values are created, why not re-form human societies so that everybody is equal, in accordance with principle that nobody is better than anybody else, because what everybody believes, achieves, or believes to be the case, is of equal value.
The point here is not equality v inequality it is (for the Right) accepting the world or trying to remake the world.
To put it like this implies that modernity is inherently Leftist, and to some extent this is true. It is possible to make a division on the Right between those who view Modernity as one a big (hubristic) mistake, and those who accept many of the criticisms which Moderns have made about the way in which previous societies were organised. To be on the Right in this second sense is to accept that it is possible to change the world for the better, but it is combined with opposition to the antinomian utopianism of the Left; whose false utopian assumptions generate bad societies. The politics of the Right in other words can be described as the politics of imperfection; if perfection can be achieved it exists in another reality.
If we view "modernity" as the rejection of tradition on the basis of an appeal to new knowledge, this explains why, as our assumptions have become more and more "modern", more and more views that were once on the Left are pushed to the Right. Some people therefore have objected to seeking to define the Right as believers in hierarchy. They say that because I am on the Right I believe in a society that rewards excellence, and this is best achieved in a free society. They oppose the Left because they see it as attempting to use the power of the State to impose utopian ideals that destroy a free society. For example, they claim that when Communists abolished free markets this led to the starvation of millions i.e. utopianism did not improve the world it made it worse.
Some on the Right believe in free markets others seeks to constrain markets, but what the Right have in common is the belief that while humans can know the difference between good and bad, to be human is to be finite, fallible, and "fallen". The more Right you are the more pessimistic you are about our capacity to change things for the better, but to claim that being on the Right (in it contemporary meaning) designates complete pessimism about social change is false. In the West we are (nearly) all moderns now, and so the Right-Left dispute is about where to draw the line between what we can change for the better, and what we should accept e.g. Is a society which accepts private property a better or worse society?
( ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 07:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)).
Right wing in the Anglophone world means conservative. They are one and the same. "William F. Buckley Jr. was an immodest man with much to be immodest about. Not only was he the high priest of the modern American conservative movement and the founding editor in chief of its leading intellectual publication, National Review; he was also a gifted polemicist, best-selling novelist, sesquipedalian speaker, television star, political candidate, yachtsman, harpsichordist, wit and bon vivant. Small wonder that I once saw him nod approvingly when a tongue-tied freshman referred to his 1951 autobiographical best seller as “God as Man at Yale.” He performed his many roles with such panache, and such obvious enjoyment of being William F. Buckley Jr., that he captivated people who otherwise would have despised someone who did much to move the United States politically to the right from the early 1950s until his death in 2008. But even liberals had to laugh when Buckley, asked whether he slouched in his chair as host of the TV program “Firing Line” because he couldn’t think on his feet, drawled, “It is hard . . . to stand up . . . under the weight . . . of all that I know.”
Of course the focus on equality vs. inequality is a leftist perspective. Rightists don't see it that way. Largely, they see it as government coercion vs. individual freedom, including economic freedom. Inequality isn't the issue for us. They don't advocate inequality. They advocate limited government when it comes to economics. The article, as written, might be appropriate for 18th century France, but not for the 21st century English Wikipedia.
I agree that the fact that an Italian leftist says something gives him an "international perspective" is hilarious. I also think calling these left wing academic hacks "scholars" is absurd as well, when they can't even talk about the Right in the terms that the Right uses.
If I had to pick one defining difference between the Left and the Right, it would be that the Left prioritizes economic equality, whereas the Right prioritizes economic freedom. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 08:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/review/buckley-william-f-buckley-jr-and-the-rise-of-american-conservatism-by-carl-t-bogus-book-review.html?pagewanted=all Buckley's National Review column was called "On the Right." Many scholars thought that the Soviet Union's massacres, mass murders, and starvations were overstated and that it was a fine place, until Gulag Archipelago came out. If Wikipedia published an article based on their scholarly work, Stalin would seem better than Roosevelt. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 15:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC) Also http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1717900,00.html Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 15:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Many people use "right-wing" and "conservative" and even "right-wing" and "Republican" as synonyms. More generally, many people use words badly. But if they were in fact synonyms, how are we to understand such common observations as contrasts between the right-wing and more moderate conservatives, or statements than in recent years the Republicans have swung far to the Right. If there words were synonyms, these phrases would be meaningless.
Libertarians think that the main difference between conservatives and liberals is economic, but the small percentage of votes Ron Paul has gotten in the Republican primaries is ample evidence that, at least in the US, that is not the main issue separating conservatives and liberals. The number one issue in the presidential race at the moment is birth-control.
Rick Norwood ( talk) 20:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
What is the purpose of this section? To deny that left-wing people can comprehend the right and that right-wing people cannot comprehend the left? One user has dismissed Norbeto Bobbio as just "some Italian leftist" - he is also a respected philosopher - and what exactly in what he says that has been included in the intro is so intolerable? If it is merely because someone discovered that he is "left-wing" and thus unreliable then this is idiotic Dark Ages black and white thinking prejudice of "oh he believes in such-and-such, thus he cannot be trusted". Christopher Hitchens was an athiest, but he was invited to lectures on religion to discuss his critique of religion side by side with religious proponents. Is this section proposing the censorship of people because of personal political beliefs? Should we only listen to fascists about fascism and communists about communism? People have differences of opinion and views - to say "ah this person is a stated left-winger and therefore they are completely unreliable for material on right-wing politics" is completely and idiotically prejudiced because it does not base its opposition upon the content of their work at all! Bobbio says that the right has a legitimate basis for its beliefs - in that the right believes that achieving complete social equality in society is impossible and that there will always be social hierarchy that is inevitable and natural - and this point is a very strong point for the right - because the left has been unable to concisely prove that social equality is natural - bear in mind that I am a centre-left social democrat saying this. I as a leftist believe that the right over its history has had many convincing views of society which is why people like Thomas Hobbes' view of society without law and order as leading to a natural state of all-out anarchic war, and Edmund Burke on the dangers of too much egalitarianism - especially revolutionary egalitarism; they are still discussed today and I agree with some right-wing ideas and I agree with a number of left-wing ideas. I do not want myself or anyone including scholars or philosophers like Bobbio or even ones I disagree with like Ayn Rand or Thomas Hobbes to be censored, ignored, or disregarded by idiotic Dark Ages prejudice involving suspicion of beliefs being of one group always being toxic to another and thus segregating them.-- R-41 ( talk) 21:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
It is perfectly reasonable to draw attention to the political affiliation of an author if they are being used as authoritative source in an article seeking to define what it is to be Right-Wing. R-41, you are either being naïve or disingenuous to claim otherwise. To answer your question, I would not use Christopher Hitchens as an as an authority on the Christian religion, and if reference was made to him in a Wikipedia article on Christianity, I think it is entirely reasonable to identify him as an atheist.
Advocating hierarchy is an odd way to define Right Wing politics, and only makes sense as a contrast to egalitarianism. I don't see much evidence that the Leftists who are contributing to this article have much understanding of the political Right, and I put forward the suggestion that this probably has something to do with their political assumptions.
The Right is (generally) not ideological, whereas the Left (generally) is ideological. A five year old could understand the ideology of The Communist Manifesto in about 5 minutes, but I very much doubt a five year old world be able to understand the political views being defended by Edmund Burke.
Neither Thomas Hobbes nor Ayn Rand are Right-Wing philosophers by the way. That fact that you believe them to be Right-Wing R-41 tells me more about your confusion than it tells me about Right Wing thought.
I think that Little Jerry makes a good point about how liberals and conservatives have a different undersanding of liberty. Freedom is not an end in itself for conservatives, it is a means to an end, the end of realising various ideals such as truth and justice. It is because our access to these ideals is fallible that some conservatives value liberty, not because they reject the objective validity of those ideals.
P.S. I appreciate you have have poor reading skills R-41, but I was seeking to articulate what somebody with Falconclaw's political assumptions might say. Given that you fail to quote what I said correctly, I am not sure why you feel the need to put quotation marks.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 04:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't define the Right as “inevitably supportive” of Classical Liberalism. I presume you are talking about Falconclaw, but he can answer for himself; unlike the person quoted as saying “we Rightists” - which of course is a quote you made up. ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 05:43, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Did you even read the article I posted? I'm sorry to say this, but only someone with the reading comprehension of a three year old can say that it is about the Right, not American Conservatism. American conservatives ARE right wing. They are one and the same. You cannot be a right wing liberal. You cannot be a left wing conservative. Liberals are on the Left. Conservaties are on the Right. These are some of the most basic concepts in existence. Again, this focus on inequality is inappropriate. Inequality does not feature much in right wing thought and ideology. The preservation of inequality is not a goal of the Right in it of itself. All major Communist regimes participated in widespread murder. By your logic, communism is all about murdering people. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 06:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
"You cannot be a right-wing liberal" - Have you ever heard of neoliberalism - British Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher advocated that, and present Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron regularly defines Britain in a positive way as a " liberal democracy". And if the issue of advocacy of social equality vs. acceptance of social hierarchy, social order vs. social justice are not the dichotomies, then what could possibly unite: conservatives, reactionaries, aristocrats, monarchists, mercantilists, capitalists, secular classical liberals, liberal conservatives, libertarian conservatives, conservative nationalists, conservative religious people, neoliberals, etc. into the definition "right-wing"?-- R-41 ( talk) 05:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
This is a different use of the word "liberal." Let's not pretend that the word "liberal" is universally used the same everywhere. Liberal used to mean, roughly, pro-laissez faire capitalism (see classical liberal.) It then switched to mean "progressive," in other words, a position in between socialism and capitalism. Neo-liberal does NOT mean politically liberal. Nothing unites all the various ideologies listed. Fascism is considered by many to be a right wing ideology; it has nothing in common with right wing libertarianism, and indeed has much more in common with communism, and, to an extent, leftism, which is almost always in favor of centralization of power in the hands of those who run the government. In other words, it may indeed be more accurate to say that leftists are more elitist - after all, who's the one always fetishizing about "experts?" Democrats or Republicans? Who's the one who believes in central planning? Rightists or leftists? The reality is, fascism is not really right wing - it's national socialism; it's left wing. Monarchists and liberal conservatives are not part of the same ideology, either. The historical Right is completely separate from the modern, especially American and British, Right. You say my definition ignores European Continental conservatism. Well, yours ignores American and British conservatism! Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 06:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I think it would be helpful if you focused on Falconclaws's key point:
"The preservation of inequality is not a goal of the Right in and of itself."
The Right oppose radical egalitarianism, but it is misleading to DEFINE the Right as those who seek to preserve inequality. This is to frame the Right in terms derived from the Left.
Acceptance of some inequality is a consequence of its other beliefs. It is these other beliefs that define the political Right.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 06:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Responding to Falconclaw, whose comment is quoted above.
1) It is not helpful to characterize everyone who disagrees with you as a Marxist. As far as I know, there are no Marxists editing this article. If they are, they do not let their Marxist beliefs color their edits.
2) The name you are groping for is Bobbio. Here is what one review says about the cited book: "Are contemporary political issues best understood in left-right terms? With his customary lucidity and wisdom, Professor Bobbio, Italy's most distinguished political thinker explains the persistence and defends the relevance of the distinction in the face of "the great problem of inequality between people and between the peoples of this world" in a short work that is far-reaching, simple and deep." Steven Lukes, European University Institute That seems to support Professor Bobbio's qualifications as a major writer, writing from an international perspective.
3) The most prominent Rightist of the 20th century by far is Adolph Hitler, which is one of many reasons I do not understand your efforts to identify Libertarianism with the usually perjorative phrase "right-wing".
Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Falconclaw: I just used Google scholar to search for the phrase "right-wing". The top three hits were: Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism B Altemeyer, 1988; The politics of unreason: Right-wing extremism in America, 1790-1977, SM Lipset, 1978; and Radical right-wing populism in Western Europe, HG Betz, 1994. The pharse "right-wing", outside modern US politics, does not mean what you think it means! Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Rick Norwood: Finding books written by Leftists with "Right-Wing" in the title which assert that it is wicked to be Right-Wing is hardly the find of the century. I have news for you. I can find three books with the word "Left-Wing" in the title, in which opponents of the Left claim that it is wicked to be Left-Wing.
Quite why you think a positive endorsement by the Leftist Steven Lukes of Bobbio's political claims changes anything is unclear.
The Four Deuces: You seem to think that if you repeat the claim that only "extremists" call themselves "Right-Wing" enough times, that will make it correct. Good luck with that one.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 19:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I was not expressing an opinion, I was citing a fact. The search of google scholar did, in fact, return the three titles I cited. These three titles used "right-wing" in the way it has been used for a very long time, and the way it is still used in academia, and still used internationally. Some editors want to purge this article of international or scholarly uses of the phrase, on the assertion that anyone who uses words correctly must be "Leftists", and that only the modern usage in the popular media is the correct usage. But they go beyond that, and want this article to assert that the "real" meaning of "right-wing" is not even the popular media usage, but the Libertarian media usage. As I've pointed out, this article is here to report how the phrase is used, not to change how the phrase is used. Why not call libertarian views "libertarian"? Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:21, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I appreciate Rick Norwood that only you know how the phrase "right-wing" should be used, but a few seconds Google search supplies this usage from Australia
http://www.actnow.com.au/Opinion/Whats_the_difference_between_left_and_right_wing.aspx
"Whats the difference between left and right wing?..To explain this I’ll compare and contrast the positions taken by the far left and the far right. Be aware that many people’s political beliefs are on a continuum between left and right.
1. Role of the individual and government
My friend used to have this analogy = left wingers believe that the state is more important than the individual, right wingers believe that the individual is more important than the state. That analogy is semi-true. Left wingers believe that governments are a force for social justice and change, and so should intervene in individual’s lives to ensure social justice is achieved. Right wingers believe that governments are big and unwieldy and so should not interfere with people’s lives at all. They believe that government interference contravenes an individual’s right to liberty. For this reason left wingers have traditionally favoured ‘big’ government while right wingers favoured ‘small’ government.
2. Formal versus substantial equality
Right wingers believe in formal equality. They believe that everyone should be treated equally under the law and should be treated equally by government. Examples of right wing formal equality include equal pay for equal work and civil and political rights. Left wingers believe in substantial equality. They argue that not every individual is the same and so government policy should be aimed to create substantial rather than just formal equality. Examples of left wing substantial equality include affirmative action and social and cultural rights.
3. Markets and the economy
Right wingers favour laissez-faire, free market economic policies. This is in line with individuals controlling their own lives, deciding their own version of the good life, and emphasises the role of individual initiative. Examples of right wing economic policy is Voluntary Student Unionism, emphasising a pay as you go approach so that students who want services should pay for them, and Work Choices legislation, which removes regulation and promotes the use of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). AWAs are designed to allow employers and employees to bargain with each other as individuals.
Left wingers favour interventionist, regulated market economic policies. In the past they have favoured publicisation of industries, of which extreme example is the command economy of the former USSR. Left wingers emphasise the importance of regulation, initiatives that allow employers and employees to bargain equally, and the dangers of free market exploitation. Examples of left wing economic policy would be supporting the role of unions in collective and enterprise bargaining, as this recognises the power employers have over employees in the bargaining process, and consumer protection legislation such as the Trade Practices Act.
Summary
Right wingers are libertarians. They believe in liberty for the individual as the most important fundamental principle society should be based on. This libertarianism has morphed into neo-liberalism, which emphasises individual initiative for all interactions with government. For example, Work for the Dole is neo-libertarian as it is trying to get people off the dole (which is funded by government acquisition of individual’s wealth (taxes)) and into work where they can work for themselves.
Left wingers are socialists. They believe that government should be doing things to help the entire society. This focus has lead them to focus on the disadvantaged peoples in our society as these peoples are often treated the worst. Socialists emphasise the ability of collective action in achieving outcomes in relation to equality and social justice. For example, universal education is a socialist objective because it would provide all people, irregardless of how much money they have, the opportunity to get an education and thus improve their lives.
And finally: As you can see, left and right wing doesn't encompass progressive or conservative. You can have conservative left wingers and progressive right wingers. Both major political parties in Australia, the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party of Australia, have progressive and conservative elements within them.
Examples of parties
Left / Environmental: Australian Greens http://www.greens.org.au/
Centre-left: Australian Labor Party http://www.alp.org.au/
Centre: Australian Democrats http://www.democrats.org.au/
Right: Liberal Party of Australia http://www.liberal.org.au/
Right: The Nationals http://www.nationals.org.au/
(
ERIDU-DREAMING (
talk)
14:48, 18 February 2012 (UTC)).
Insults do not advance your argument. I have never claimed to "know" what the phrases mean, only to have the ability to look things up and cite sources.
The article you quote seems to be a fairly accurate explanation of what libertarians mean by "right-wing". It doesn't explain why, during his lifetime, Francisco Franco was so often described as right-wing. In other words, the article you cite claims that the change in meaning over time is now complete. But that article is by its own description an opinion. I don't see that reflected in the books and articles I read.
Let me give you an example. The word "girl" used to mean "boy". Over the centuries, its meaning changed, to include all children of both sexes, and over more centuries, its meaning changed further to mean only female children. That change is now complete, and there is no reason in a modern article on the subject to even mention the old meaning except possibly as a historical footnote.
On the other hand, the word "literally" used to mean "in fact". In the past few decades, there has been some shift in meaning toward meaning "emphatically", as in "I'm literally drowning in paperwork." That shift is not complete, and so to define "literal" as meaning "emphatically" would not be correct in a modern article.
The subject under discussion here is whether the shift in meaning of "right-wing" is now so complete that the older meaning is obsolete. I can cite many examples to show that it is not. Here is one, picked more or less at random from the 2012 World Almanac, "...a July 1936 extreme right rebellion led by Gen. Francisco Franco and aided by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy succeeded..." I don't think you can made a case that the World Almanac is Marxist, or that they mean to say that Franco was an extreme supporter of small government and free enterprise.
Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:43, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I saw a comment about the tragedy of "censoring" Bobbio from this article. Well, I put him back in, and Bobbio is about the 20th leftist who's perspective given in this article. His perspective isn't international, it is Marxist. But there is not ONE perspective from the Right. So why censor Buckley? You don't think Buckley is a serious thinker? He is one of the most serious thinkers of the 20th century, admired from both the Left and the Right, and his stature certainly exceeds Mr. Bobbio. Just because something is an academic work, doesn't mean it isn't political propaganda, as Rick Norwood showed when he displayed the Google results for Right Wing (clearly, Norwood thinks Right Wing means "evil," while left wing means "good," (good like Stalin?)). Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 20:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Falconclaw5000: You are mind reading again. I have never said that "Right-wing" means evil nor that "left-wing" means good. Why is it so hard for you to deal with what I say, instead of putting words in my mouth. Bobbio is not a Marxist. He is an anti-Marxist, deploring the use by Marxists of violence to achieve thier ends. It does not advance your point of view to lable everyone you disagree with "Marxist". As for your assertion that 20 leftists have their views included in this article, please provide a list.
Collect: I agree, William F. Buckley, Jr. considered himself "On the Right". If this article was titled "The American Right in the second half of the 20th Century", it would be appropriate to use the Buckley quote as what "the Right" meant in that context. But note that TFD is not saying that Buckley did not self-describe himself as "On the Right", but is asking for a commentator who described his views as being "right-wing". It shouldn't be hard to find one.
Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:28, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
A rhetorical response to the statement above on Buckley. The intro already mentions the indivualist and libertarian right along with the collectivist right. Falconclaw, you should post that statement by Buckley on an article about American right-wing politics where it would be particularly useful. Here it is going against the worldview of right-wing politics, that is already described in the intro without that statement. If you emphasize one right-wing proponent like Buckley, then later someone will bring up Joseph De Maistre because his views are not accounted by Buckley, then someone will say that it is Eurocentric and want Asian political outlook, etc. etc. It is better without the statement and by focusing on the right-wing as a whole while mentioning internal differences and divisions on the right. The statement by Buckley in the lead intro emphasizes the Anglophone world's classical liberal-based right-wing politics of the recent past and present while deemphasizing others - thus it does not represent a world view.-- R-41 ( talk) 20:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
But preservation of inequality is not a goal of the Right in America or Britain. Rightists like Ronald Reagan sought to curb dependence on government programs by poor people, which actually increased wealth inequality. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 20:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Nowhere in the articles on Buckley you referenced does it state anything about "inequality" or "unequal" social circumstances, I pushed "CTRL-F" and searched "inequality", "unequal" etc. it appeared nowhere there. So it appears that you just made that up out of thin air. Plus the intro already says that the centre-right accepts society providing equality of opportunity but does not accept society providing equality of outcome. You still have failed to address why the sources in the intro's second sentence are wrong? And why have you failed to even acknowledge any other right-wing movements that I have informed you of, that are outside your ideal right-wing movement being a libertarian conservative movement based upon classical liberal conceptions of liberty (including individualism), politics, and the economy ( laissez-faire)? In answer to one of your comments earlier, as a centre-left social democrat, I can personally attest on behalf of myself and others to assure you that most reasonable centre-leftists that I have known accept that there were evil left-wing people like Maximilien Robespierre, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and others, in the case of Robbespierre he massacred thousands of people, the other three massacred and millions of people, out of psychopathy, narcissism, and ideological zeal. I am disgusted by Slobodan Milosevic - who as head of the left-wing Socialist Party of Serbia exploited ethnic nationalism to gain power, resulting in the Yugoslav civil wars. I admire George Bush Senior a man who is much underappreciated by both the right and left - Bush Senior pressed hard for the dismantlement of apartheid in South Africa and Africans who remember what he did tremendously respect him.-- R-41 ( talk) 00:12, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Good quote, Collect. Or should I say "Pip, pip, and cherrio"? Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
A new paragraph has been added to the lead. I don't dispute it, but I would like it to be supported, like the other citations in the lead, with a quote. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:45, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
In the hope of avoiding more edit wars, I've left the Buckley quote in, but changed the text to reflect that source, which says that Buckley was the "intellectual godfather" of the conservative movement, not of "the Right". On the one hand, certainly Buckley was an important figure among American Right-wing intellectuals. On the other, I would prefer a quote that actually uses the phrase "Right-wing" rather than the word "conservative". The important question here is the meaning of "right-wing", not whether the "right-wing" view is or is not the correct view, and the widely different ways the phrase is used make intelligent discourse difficult. Buckley is famous for nothing if not for proper use of words. I remember when he issued a ukase to the staff of National Review requiring the Oxford comma (I've corrected a comma error in the lead -- poets are people fascinated with death and commas). His reasoning was that a conjunction cannot replace a separator. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:59, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
As I said, there is no doubt that Buckley considered himself "On the Right", though I'm not sure he would have embraced the epithet "right-wing". I just said it should be easy to find a quote that used that phrase. Buckley valued words and would, I believe, have been disgusted by the misuse of words by the anti-intellectual Right of the twenty-first century. I'm certain he never called anyone a "Marxist" unless they were, in fact, a Marxist -- he would not use that as a general term of dislike or dismissal. I remember once when he debated a Marxist on Firing Line, and admitted on the air that it was the first time he had been totally defeated in a debate. The Marxist won by paying no attention to anything Buckley said, and simply reciting the Marxist Party line.
I suspect that one reason Buckley's son resigned from National Review is that the modern American Right has no respect for words, or for facts, but is only interested in winning votes for Republican candidates. I would love to read a column by Buckley on the distinction between "conservative" and "right-wing". I'm sure he would have had insights that this article could profit from. Is there a searchable database of National Review on-line? Rick Norwood ( talk) 14:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Why, if you admire Buckley (as I do) do you laugh at attempts to use words carefully, as he did. I agree, Buckley considered himself "on the Right". Do some research. Find a quote where he stated what the right-wing believed. He wrote a lot. Surely that is in there somewhere. Nobody is saying that there is not an overlap between right-wing beliefs and conservative beliefs. That does not imply that the two are identical, or even that William F. Buckley considered the two to be identical. Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
(od) IOW, by "world standards" it is silly to say that Buckley was not right wing at all. BTW, you again point out that there is no absolute "political spectrum" applicable to all eras and all places, or even to all issues. Collect ( talk) 15:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
In most of the world, yes, but not in the US. Here the Democratic Party is called the party of the Left, and its roots are not in socialism, but in liberalism. Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:33, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't see why people are obsessed with the lede when it is the body of the article that needs improving. It seems this consent editting is being done to please one editor. LittleJerry ( talk) 19:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with DanielRigal. The lead does not seem particularly long, for such a difficult and important topic. It is shorter than the lead for Conservatism in the United States, for example. But the second paragraph should be dealt with as DanielRigal suggests. Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
This isn't being done to please one editor - Collect, Eridu Dreaming, Boris, and I all believe that the article is biased towards a left wing worldview. That makes four editors. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 17:18, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
And your definition of left wing - having roots in socialism - is not even the definition provided in the left wing article. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 17:19, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
I said YOUR definition - the definition one of you left-leaning editors gave. I think it was TFD. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 20:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
The second paragraph of the lead has become a real mess, making statements about "conservatism" and assuming they automatically apply to the Right, and inserting before references ideas not included in the referenced work. Some people seem to think that right-wing always means conservative and conservative always means libertarian, while left-wing always means socialist, and socialist always means communist. This is siimplistic thinking unworthy of Wikipedia. Maybe the whole second paragraph should go. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
We do say that. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:43, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
"Right-Wing" does not "generally" refer to "acceptance or support of a hierarchical society" that is like defining a Muslim as generally meaning somebody who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. You will not find a single Right-Wing thinker who DEFINES Right-Wing as "acceptance or support of a hierarchical society" not a single one. Right-Wing thinkers reject radical egalitarianism (and consequently accept or support a "hierarchical" society) but to define the political Right in terms of that opposition is to frame the definition of what it is to be on the Right in terms derived from the political Left. It is as accurate as defining the Left as "Nihilists" or "Utopians" because that is how the "Right" comprehends the Left. You could just as accurately define the Right as anti-Nihilist or anti-Utopian, or to put it more positively, you could just as well define the Right as those who believe in the existence of objective values (truth - morality - excellence) but who combine that belief with a belief in human imperfection (error - evil - failure).
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 12:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 15:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
It depends which "Right" you are talking about. I would say trying to understand (for example) the American Right in terms of medieval feudalism is a very odd approach.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 15:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm baffled. Collect says "your stated dislike for those 'who already have wealth and power'". I have never stated any such thing in my life.
I said "I challenge you to give any example of any group described as right-wing whose policies do not have the effect of supporting those who already have wealth and power." ERIDU-REAMING seems to have skipped the important word "not". I'll restate my challenge in the affirmative. Groups described as Right-wing support those with wealth and power. Can you provide a counterexample?
Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Like the Soviet nomenklature? Show me a Left-Wing government that does not redistribute wealth and power to itself? Some on the Right however seek to redistribute wealth and power BACK to the people away from Left-Wing governments.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 15:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
ERIDU-DREAMING: I owe you an apology. I thought the sentence added by TFD above was yours.
The idea that people who object to the extreme concentration of wealth want an equal distribution of wealth is black and white thinking. Most reasonable people are happy for the rich to have everything they want, as long as the 99% have a safe and comfortable life. The rich can have mansions and banquets as long as the rest have a roof over their head and food to eat.
A left-wing movement that does not redistribute wealth and power to itself? How about the New Deal. Now it's your turn. You say "some on the Right". Name one. Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
The Catholic Church closes churches in poor neighborhoods that do not make a profit. Yes, the Catholic Church and many other organizations that might be described as "On the Right" gave money to charity, but not so much money that their wealth and power were put at risk. When various saints have recommended holy poverty, the Church honored them with sainthood but did not follow their advice. In any case, the Catholic Church has a long history of supporting its own wealth and power. I understand that Burke and others gave what seemed to them good and sufficient reasons for supporting a hierarchy. I'm not saying that the Right is wrong, I'm saying that the phrase "right-wing" is used to describe those who, rightly or wrongly, support established wealth and power. Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
The Right no more define themselves as seeking to support wealth and power than the Left define themselves as seeking to create poverty and destroy freedom. These may (or may not) be the consequences of their assumptions, but it is the assumptions which define what it is to be on the Right (or the Left) politically. The notion that wealth and power is ipso facto supported by the Right is incorrect. In fact it is an absurd claim.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 16:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I do not deny R-41 that ACCEPTANCE of inequality is a COMPONENT of what it is to be on the Right. I simply point out that acceptance of inequality is not the DEFINING quality of the Right. Inequality is a CONSEQUENCE of its assumptions. These assumptions include a commitment to value objectivity.
Value objectivity means that rightness and wrongness are not reducible to matters of preference. You are correct R-41 to draw attention to the importance of authority to the Right, but for the Right authority is not justified by power, on the contrary, power is justified by authority.
The term "hierarchy" has feudal implications that few on the Right these days would accept. So what grounds authority for the Right? It is belief in the RIGHTNESS of that authority.
What grounds rightness? It is that which accords with OBJECTIVE rightness. This is not to say that what is deemed to be morally justified is beyond dispute. All claims to justification can be questioned - and in a free society are questioned - but the recognition that authority is justified by something other than a de facto exercise of power is foundational to the Right.
In other words, there are mechanisms for determining what is right and what is wrong, but what is right and wrong is not settled by who has the power to decide.
To use the example of truth. What is true and what is false is determined by objective realities, but the reality of being human is such that we cannot jump out of the context from which we make our judgements, and so all of our judgements (including our moral judgements) are fallible.
In making these judgements (including moral judgements) some have more authority than others. All judgements are not equal. It is acceptance of value objectivity (and the situated and thus fallible nature of our judgements) that leads to an acceptance of inequality by the Right, not acceptance of inequality that leads to the assumption that values are objective. This is to put the cart before the horse. Acceptance of inequality is a CONSEQUENCE of more fundamental commitments.
It is these more fundamental commitments that define the Right. Not an acceptance of inequality.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 18:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I wish I understood why this is such a hard point for some people to understand. This article is not about how "right-wing" should be used in some ideal world. It is about how "right-wing" is used in this world. Until very recently, almost nobody would ever describe themselves as "right-wing" or "left-wing". Those words were insults. People called somebody "right-wing" because they supported the existing power structure. People called somebody left-wing to tar them with the communist brush. Neither was not a complement. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
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This is the objection to the Buckley quotation. If they are entirely different things, then why is this part of WikiProject Conservatism? Is it really deniable that in post-World War II America, the Right = Conservatism?
Yes, the Buckley quote is applicable mainly to the Right in countries like America, the UK, and Canada. So what? This is a huge part of Wikipedia's readership - I'm not saying we should devote the entire article to the Anglosphere, if someone wants to write a section about what the phrase "right wing" means in the Third World that's fine, but why can't the quote be there? It's a good illustration of right wingers believe.
And with all this concern about world wide application, why should the article focus so much on revolutionary-era France? The phrase "right-wing" may have originated there, but modern day right wing attitudes, what one editor called "liberal conservatism," like that of Edmund Burke (I read both liberal and conservative publications. Only conservatives offer paeans to Burke) did not. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 04:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Please avoid black and white thinking. Right-wing and Conservative are not completely different things. Nobody said they were. Neither are they identical things. This article should focus on Right-wing. The article Conservatism should focus on conservatism. Rick Norwood ( talk) 14:03, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Buckley's quotation is a useful counterweight to the fact that this article relies predominantly on left wing, anti-Right sources. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 04:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
Clearly, there's no such thing as completely objective, undisputed facts about contentious areas of political science. Karl Marx and Buckley had different "facts." Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 08:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
From the article on conservatism: "Conservative liberalism is a variant of liberalism that combines liberal values and policies with conservative stances, or, more simply, the right wing of the liberal movement.[29][30][31] The roots of conservative liberalism are found at the beginning of the history of liberalism. Until the two World Wars, in most European countries the political class was formed by conservative liberals, from Germany to Italy. The events such as World War I occurring after 1917 brought the more radical version of classical liberalism to a more conservative (i.e. more moderate) type of liberalism.[32]" Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 08:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Some editors of this article want, for reasons I do not understand, Right-wing to equal Libertarian. But while they are willing to argue the point ad infinitum, they are not able to provide any references for this point of view. This renders the arguement pointless, since Wikipedia requires references. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Here is the sentence: "Historically they refer to support for a hierarchical society justified by an appeal to natural law or tradition." (Source: Smith, T. Alexander and Raymond Tatalovich. Cultures at War: Moral Conflicts in Western Democracies (Toronto, Canada: Broadview Press, Ltd., 2003) pp. 30. "That viewpoint is held by contemporary sociologists, for whom 'right-wing movements' are conceptualized as 'social movements whose stated goals are to maintain structures of order, status, honor, or traditional social differences or values' as compared to left-wing movements which seek 'greater equality or political participation.' In other words, the sociological perspective sees preservationist politics as a right-wing attempt to defend privilege within the social hierarchy.) The bolded world "historically" was added by a user that is not used in the reference that is talking about the left vs. right spectrum in general - not historically. Thus the inclusion of the word "historically" is a misrepresentation of this source.-- R-41 ( talk) 23:11, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Before I added material to the lead, it was being reverted back and forth several times a day between the "support for hierarchy" version and the "support for small government" version. The material I added is referenced, and covers both. Do you want to return to the revert war? Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm "suggesting" that referenced material is better than unsupported opinion. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:18, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
I cannot help noticing that the article uses Leftists (such as Seymour Martin Lipset) as authorities. I am guessing that the Wikipedia article about the Left does not rely upon Right Wing critics of the Left to supply its definition.
It is pretty evident that most of the people on the political Left who are editing this article have very little conception of what it is to be on the Right politically.
They notice people who oppose them, and go in search of an explanation. Some Leftists believe that people on the Right fail to comprehend that things can be made better, others says that they resist change because they do not like change. Some say that the Right opposes progress on the grounds that it is in their self-interest to keep things the same, others conclude that people on the Right are bad people, and bad people do bad things.
When the Right talk about the Left they also often assume they are either idiots or bad people. They assume for example (to focus on the egalitarian argument for a moment) that when people say that everybody is equal they do this because they are stupid or because it helps them get political power.
The Right-Left dichotomy is too persistent for it not to mean something, but what? I wrote the original Wikipedia definitions for the Right and Left on Wikipedia, suggesting egalitarianism of the Left, and anti-egalitarianism of the Right. I notice that despite numerous changes these definitions have survived more or less intact, but I now think that they fail to go to the heart of the issue. When Bobbio (for some reason this Italian Leftist is viewed as an authority giving an "international" perspective) defines the Right as anti-egalitarian, he is framing what the Right believe in Leftist terms.
So what do the Right believe? Crudely, the Right believe that the universe not only has an order, but that this order has a moral dimension. Inequality is just ONE aspect of this order. In other words it is not the case that the world can be anything we want it to be, we are constrained by what is the case, and this constraint includes right and wrong. The Left on the other hand claim that we impose values (and for post-modernists this includes truth) upon the world. If values are created, why not re-form human societies so that everybody is equal, in accordance with principle that nobody is better than anybody else, because what everybody believes, achieves, or believes to be the case, is of equal value.
The point here is not equality v inequality it is (for the Right) accepting the world or trying to remake the world.
To put it like this implies that modernity is inherently Leftist, and to some extent this is true. It is possible to make a division on the Right between those who view Modernity as one a big (hubristic) mistake, and those who accept many of the criticisms which Moderns have made about the way in which previous societies were organised. To be on the Right in this second sense is to accept that it is possible to change the world for the better, but it is combined with opposition to the antinomian utopianism of the Left; whose false utopian assumptions generate bad societies. The politics of the Right in other words can be described as the politics of imperfection; if perfection can be achieved it exists in another reality.
If we view "modernity" as the rejection of tradition on the basis of an appeal to new knowledge, this explains why, as our assumptions have become more and more "modern", more and more views that were once on the Left are pushed to the Right. Some people therefore have objected to seeking to define the Right as believers in hierarchy. They say that because I am on the Right I believe in a society that rewards excellence, and this is best achieved in a free society. They oppose the Left because they see it as attempting to use the power of the State to impose utopian ideals that destroy a free society. For example, they claim that when Communists abolished free markets this led to the starvation of millions i.e. utopianism did not improve the world it made it worse.
Some on the Right believe in free markets others seeks to constrain markets, but what the Right have in common is the belief that while humans can know the difference between good and bad, to be human is to be finite, fallible, and "fallen". The more Right you are the more pessimistic you are about our capacity to change things for the better, but to claim that being on the Right (in it contemporary meaning) designates complete pessimism about social change is false. In the West we are (nearly) all moderns now, and so the Right-Left dispute is about where to draw the line between what we can change for the better, and what we should accept e.g. Is a society which accepts private property a better or worse society?
( ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 07:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)).
Right wing in the Anglophone world means conservative. They are one and the same. "William F. Buckley Jr. was an immodest man with much to be immodest about. Not only was he the high priest of the modern American conservative movement and the founding editor in chief of its leading intellectual publication, National Review; he was also a gifted polemicist, best-selling novelist, sesquipedalian speaker, television star, political candidate, yachtsman, harpsichordist, wit and bon vivant. Small wonder that I once saw him nod approvingly when a tongue-tied freshman referred to his 1951 autobiographical best seller as “God as Man at Yale.” He performed his many roles with such panache, and such obvious enjoyment of being William F. Buckley Jr., that he captivated people who otherwise would have despised someone who did much to move the United States politically to the right from the early 1950s until his death in 2008. But even liberals had to laugh when Buckley, asked whether he slouched in his chair as host of the TV program “Firing Line” because he couldn’t think on his feet, drawled, “It is hard . . . to stand up . . . under the weight . . . of all that I know.”
Of course the focus on equality vs. inequality is a leftist perspective. Rightists don't see it that way. Largely, they see it as government coercion vs. individual freedom, including economic freedom. Inequality isn't the issue for us. They don't advocate inequality. They advocate limited government when it comes to economics. The article, as written, might be appropriate for 18th century France, but not for the 21st century English Wikipedia.
I agree that the fact that an Italian leftist says something gives him an "international perspective" is hilarious. I also think calling these left wing academic hacks "scholars" is absurd as well, when they can't even talk about the Right in the terms that the Right uses.
If I had to pick one defining difference between the Left and the Right, it would be that the Left prioritizes economic equality, whereas the Right prioritizes economic freedom. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 08:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/review/buckley-william-f-buckley-jr-and-the-rise-of-american-conservatism-by-carl-t-bogus-book-review.html?pagewanted=all Buckley's National Review column was called "On the Right." Many scholars thought that the Soviet Union's massacres, mass murders, and starvations were overstated and that it was a fine place, until Gulag Archipelago came out. If Wikipedia published an article based on their scholarly work, Stalin would seem better than Roosevelt. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 15:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC) Also http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1717900,00.html Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 15:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Many people use "right-wing" and "conservative" and even "right-wing" and "Republican" as synonyms. More generally, many people use words badly. But if they were in fact synonyms, how are we to understand such common observations as contrasts between the right-wing and more moderate conservatives, or statements than in recent years the Republicans have swung far to the Right. If there words were synonyms, these phrases would be meaningless.
Libertarians think that the main difference between conservatives and liberals is economic, but the small percentage of votes Ron Paul has gotten in the Republican primaries is ample evidence that, at least in the US, that is not the main issue separating conservatives and liberals. The number one issue in the presidential race at the moment is birth-control.
Rick Norwood ( talk) 20:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
What is the purpose of this section? To deny that left-wing people can comprehend the right and that right-wing people cannot comprehend the left? One user has dismissed Norbeto Bobbio as just "some Italian leftist" - he is also a respected philosopher - and what exactly in what he says that has been included in the intro is so intolerable? If it is merely because someone discovered that he is "left-wing" and thus unreliable then this is idiotic Dark Ages black and white thinking prejudice of "oh he believes in such-and-such, thus he cannot be trusted". Christopher Hitchens was an athiest, but he was invited to lectures on religion to discuss his critique of religion side by side with religious proponents. Is this section proposing the censorship of people because of personal political beliefs? Should we only listen to fascists about fascism and communists about communism? People have differences of opinion and views - to say "ah this person is a stated left-winger and therefore they are completely unreliable for material on right-wing politics" is completely and idiotically prejudiced because it does not base its opposition upon the content of their work at all! Bobbio says that the right has a legitimate basis for its beliefs - in that the right believes that achieving complete social equality in society is impossible and that there will always be social hierarchy that is inevitable and natural - and this point is a very strong point for the right - because the left has been unable to concisely prove that social equality is natural - bear in mind that I am a centre-left social democrat saying this. I as a leftist believe that the right over its history has had many convincing views of society which is why people like Thomas Hobbes' view of society without law and order as leading to a natural state of all-out anarchic war, and Edmund Burke on the dangers of too much egalitarianism - especially revolutionary egalitarism; they are still discussed today and I agree with some right-wing ideas and I agree with a number of left-wing ideas. I do not want myself or anyone including scholars or philosophers like Bobbio or even ones I disagree with like Ayn Rand or Thomas Hobbes to be censored, ignored, or disregarded by idiotic Dark Ages prejudice involving suspicion of beliefs being of one group always being toxic to another and thus segregating them.-- R-41 ( talk) 21:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
It is perfectly reasonable to draw attention to the political affiliation of an author if they are being used as authoritative source in an article seeking to define what it is to be Right-Wing. R-41, you are either being naïve or disingenuous to claim otherwise. To answer your question, I would not use Christopher Hitchens as an as an authority on the Christian religion, and if reference was made to him in a Wikipedia article on Christianity, I think it is entirely reasonable to identify him as an atheist.
Advocating hierarchy is an odd way to define Right Wing politics, and only makes sense as a contrast to egalitarianism. I don't see much evidence that the Leftists who are contributing to this article have much understanding of the political Right, and I put forward the suggestion that this probably has something to do with their political assumptions.
The Right is (generally) not ideological, whereas the Left (generally) is ideological. A five year old could understand the ideology of The Communist Manifesto in about 5 minutes, but I very much doubt a five year old world be able to understand the political views being defended by Edmund Burke.
Neither Thomas Hobbes nor Ayn Rand are Right-Wing philosophers by the way. That fact that you believe them to be Right-Wing R-41 tells me more about your confusion than it tells me about Right Wing thought.
I think that Little Jerry makes a good point about how liberals and conservatives have a different undersanding of liberty. Freedom is not an end in itself for conservatives, it is a means to an end, the end of realising various ideals such as truth and justice. It is because our access to these ideals is fallible that some conservatives value liberty, not because they reject the objective validity of those ideals.
P.S. I appreciate you have have poor reading skills R-41, but I was seeking to articulate what somebody with Falconclaw's political assumptions might say. Given that you fail to quote what I said correctly, I am not sure why you feel the need to put quotation marks.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 04:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't define the Right as “inevitably supportive” of Classical Liberalism. I presume you are talking about Falconclaw, but he can answer for himself; unlike the person quoted as saying “we Rightists” - which of course is a quote you made up. ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 05:43, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Did you even read the article I posted? I'm sorry to say this, but only someone with the reading comprehension of a three year old can say that it is about the Right, not American Conservatism. American conservatives ARE right wing. They are one and the same. You cannot be a right wing liberal. You cannot be a left wing conservative. Liberals are on the Left. Conservaties are on the Right. These are some of the most basic concepts in existence. Again, this focus on inequality is inappropriate. Inequality does not feature much in right wing thought and ideology. The preservation of inequality is not a goal of the Right in it of itself. All major Communist regimes participated in widespread murder. By your logic, communism is all about murdering people. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 06:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
"You cannot be a right-wing liberal" - Have you ever heard of neoliberalism - British Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher advocated that, and present Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron regularly defines Britain in a positive way as a " liberal democracy". And if the issue of advocacy of social equality vs. acceptance of social hierarchy, social order vs. social justice are not the dichotomies, then what could possibly unite: conservatives, reactionaries, aristocrats, monarchists, mercantilists, capitalists, secular classical liberals, liberal conservatives, libertarian conservatives, conservative nationalists, conservative religious people, neoliberals, etc. into the definition "right-wing"?-- R-41 ( talk) 05:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
This is a different use of the word "liberal." Let's not pretend that the word "liberal" is universally used the same everywhere. Liberal used to mean, roughly, pro-laissez faire capitalism (see classical liberal.) It then switched to mean "progressive," in other words, a position in between socialism and capitalism. Neo-liberal does NOT mean politically liberal. Nothing unites all the various ideologies listed. Fascism is considered by many to be a right wing ideology; it has nothing in common with right wing libertarianism, and indeed has much more in common with communism, and, to an extent, leftism, which is almost always in favor of centralization of power in the hands of those who run the government. In other words, it may indeed be more accurate to say that leftists are more elitist - after all, who's the one always fetishizing about "experts?" Democrats or Republicans? Who's the one who believes in central planning? Rightists or leftists? The reality is, fascism is not really right wing - it's national socialism; it's left wing. Monarchists and liberal conservatives are not part of the same ideology, either. The historical Right is completely separate from the modern, especially American and British, Right. You say my definition ignores European Continental conservatism. Well, yours ignores American and British conservatism! Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 06:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I think it would be helpful if you focused on Falconclaws's key point:
"The preservation of inequality is not a goal of the Right in and of itself."
The Right oppose radical egalitarianism, but it is misleading to DEFINE the Right as those who seek to preserve inequality. This is to frame the Right in terms derived from the Left.
Acceptance of some inequality is a consequence of its other beliefs. It is these other beliefs that define the political Right.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 06:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Responding to Falconclaw, whose comment is quoted above.
1) It is not helpful to characterize everyone who disagrees with you as a Marxist. As far as I know, there are no Marxists editing this article. If they are, they do not let their Marxist beliefs color their edits.
2) The name you are groping for is Bobbio. Here is what one review says about the cited book: "Are contemporary political issues best understood in left-right terms? With his customary lucidity and wisdom, Professor Bobbio, Italy's most distinguished political thinker explains the persistence and defends the relevance of the distinction in the face of "the great problem of inequality between people and between the peoples of this world" in a short work that is far-reaching, simple and deep." Steven Lukes, European University Institute That seems to support Professor Bobbio's qualifications as a major writer, writing from an international perspective.
3) The most prominent Rightist of the 20th century by far is Adolph Hitler, which is one of many reasons I do not understand your efforts to identify Libertarianism with the usually perjorative phrase "right-wing".
Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Falconclaw: I just used Google scholar to search for the phrase "right-wing". The top three hits were: Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism B Altemeyer, 1988; The politics of unreason: Right-wing extremism in America, 1790-1977, SM Lipset, 1978; and Radical right-wing populism in Western Europe, HG Betz, 1994. The pharse "right-wing", outside modern US politics, does not mean what you think it means! Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Rick Norwood: Finding books written by Leftists with "Right-Wing" in the title which assert that it is wicked to be Right-Wing is hardly the find of the century. I have news for you. I can find three books with the word "Left-Wing" in the title, in which opponents of the Left claim that it is wicked to be Left-Wing.
Quite why you think a positive endorsement by the Leftist Steven Lukes of Bobbio's political claims changes anything is unclear.
The Four Deuces: You seem to think that if you repeat the claim that only "extremists" call themselves "Right-Wing" enough times, that will make it correct. Good luck with that one.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 19:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I was not expressing an opinion, I was citing a fact. The search of google scholar did, in fact, return the three titles I cited. These three titles used "right-wing" in the way it has been used for a very long time, and the way it is still used in academia, and still used internationally. Some editors want to purge this article of international or scholarly uses of the phrase, on the assertion that anyone who uses words correctly must be "Leftists", and that only the modern usage in the popular media is the correct usage. But they go beyond that, and want this article to assert that the "real" meaning of "right-wing" is not even the popular media usage, but the Libertarian media usage. As I've pointed out, this article is here to report how the phrase is used, not to change how the phrase is used. Why not call libertarian views "libertarian"? Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:21, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I appreciate Rick Norwood that only you know how the phrase "right-wing" should be used, but a few seconds Google search supplies this usage from Australia
http://www.actnow.com.au/Opinion/Whats_the_difference_between_left_and_right_wing.aspx
"Whats the difference between left and right wing?..To explain this I’ll compare and contrast the positions taken by the far left and the far right. Be aware that many people’s political beliefs are on a continuum between left and right.
1. Role of the individual and government
My friend used to have this analogy = left wingers believe that the state is more important than the individual, right wingers believe that the individual is more important than the state. That analogy is semi-true. Left wingers believe that governments are a force for social justice and change, and so should intervene in individual’s lives to ensure social justice is achieved. Right wingers believe that governments are big and unwieldy and so should not interfere with people’s lives at all. They believe that government interference contravenes an individual’s right to liberty. For this reason left wingers have traditionally favoured ‘big’ government while right wingers favoured ‘small’ government.
2. Formal versus substantial equality
Right wingers believe in formal equality. They believe that everyone should be treated equally under the law and should be treated equally by government. Examples of right wing formal equality include equal pay for equal work and civil and political rights. Left wingers believe in substantial equality. They argue that not every individual is the same and so government policy should be aimed to create substantial rather than just formal equality. Examples of left wing substantial equality include affirmative action and social and cultural rights.
3. Markets and the economy
Right wingers favour laissez-faire, free market economic policies. This is in line with individuals controlling their own lives, deciding their own version of the good life, and emphasises the role of individual initiative. Examples of right wing economic policy is Voluntary Student Unionism, emphasising a pay as you go approach so that students who want services should pay for them, and Work Choices legislation, which removes regulation and promotes the use of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). AWAs are designed to allow employers and employees to bargain with each other as individuals.
Left wingers favour interventionist, regulated market economic policies. In the past they have favoured publicisation of industries, of which extreme example is the command economy of the former USSR. Left wingers emphasise the importance of regulation, initiatives that allow employers and employees to bargain equally, and the dangers of free market exploitation. Examples of left wing economic policy would be supporting the role of unions in collective and enterprise bargaining, as this recognises the power employers have over employees in the bargaining process, and consumer protection legislation such as the Trade Practices Act.
Summary
Right wingers are libertarians. They believe in liberty for the individual as the most important fundamental principle society should be based on. This libertarianism has morphed into neo-liberalism, which emphasises individual initiative for all interactions with government. For example, Work for the Dole is neo-libertarian as it is trying to get people off the dole (which is funded by government acquisition of individual’s wealth (taxes)) and into work where they can work for themselves.
Left wingers are socialists. They believe that government should be doing things to help the entire society. This focus has lead them to focus on the disadvantaged peoples in our society as these peoples are often treated the worst. Socialists emphasise the ability of collective action in achieving outcomes in relation to equality and social justice. For example, universal education is a socialist objective because it would provide all people, irregardless of how much money they have, the opportunity to get an education and thus improve their lives.
And finally: As you can see, left and right wing doesn't encompass progressive or conservative. You can have conservative left wingers and progressive right wingers. Both major political parties in Australia, the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party of Australia, have progressive and conservative elements within them.
Examples of parties
Left / Environmental: Australian Greens http://www.greens.org.au/
Centre-left: Australian Labor Party http://www.alp.org.au/
Centre: Australian Democrats http://www.democrats.org.au/
Right: Liberal Party of Australia http://www.liberal.org.au/
Right: The Nationals http://www.nationals.org.au/
(
ERIDU-DREAMING (
talk)
14:48, 18 February 2012 (UTC)).
Insults do not advance your argument. I have never claimed to "know" what the phrases mean, only to have the ability to look things up and cite sources.
The article you quote seems to be a fairly accurate explanation of what libertarians mean by "right-wing". It doesn't explain why, during his lifetime, Francisco Franco was so often described as right-wing. In other words, the article you cite claims that the change in meaning over time is now complete. But that article is by its own description an opinion. I don't see that reflected in the books and articles I read.
Let me give you an example. The word "girl" used to mean "boy". Over the centuries, its meaning changed, to include all children of both sexes, and over more centuries, its meaning changed further to mean only female children. That change is now complete, and there is no reason in a modern article on the subject to even mention the old meaning except possibly as a historical footnote.
On the other hand, the word "literally" used to mean "in fact". In the past few decades, there has been some shift in meaning toward meaning "emphatically", as in "I'm literally drowning in paperwork." That shift is not complete, and so to define "literal" as meaning "emphatically" would not be correct in a modern article.
The subject under discussion here is whether the shift in meaning of "right-wing" is now so complete that the older meaning is obsolete. I can cite many examples to show that it is not. Here is one, picked more or less at random from the 2012 World Almanac, "...a July 1936 extreme right rebellion led by Gen. Francisco Franco and aided by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy succeeded..." I don't think you can made a case that the World Almanac is Marxist, or that they mean to say that Franco was an extreme supporter of small government and free enterprise.
Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:43, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I saw a comment about the tragedy of "censoring" Bobbio from this article. Well, I put him back in, and Bobbio is about the 20th leftist who's perspective given in this article. His perspective isn't international, it is Marxist. But there is not ONE perspective from the Right. So why censor Buckley? You don't think Buckley is a serious thinker? He is one of the most serious thinkers of the 20th century, admired from both the Left and the Right, and his stature certainly exceeds Mr. Bobbio. Just because something is an academic work, doesn't mean it isn't political propaganda, as Rick Norwood showed when he displayed the Google results for Right Wing (clearly, Norwood thinks Right Wing means "evil," while left wing means "good," (good like Stalin?)). Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 20:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Falconclaw5000: You are mind reading again. I have never said that "Right-wing" means evil nor that "left-wing" means good. Why is it so hard for you to deal with what I say, instead of putting words in my mouth. Bobbio is not a Marxist. He is an anti-Marxist, deploring the use by Marxists of violence to achieve thier ends. It does not advance your point of view to lable everyone you disagree with "Marxist". As for your assertion that 20 leftists have their views included in this article, please provide a list.
Collect: I agree, William F. Buckley, Jr. considered himself "On the Right". If this article was titled "The American Right in the second half of the 20th Century", it would be appropriate to use the Buckley quote as what "the Right" meant in that context. But note that TFD is not saying that Buckley did not self-describe himself as "On the Right", but is asking for a commentator who described his views as being "right-wing". It shouldn't be hard to find one.
Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:28, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
A rhetorical response to the statement above on Buckley. The intro already mentions the indivualist and libertarian right along with the collectivist right. Falconclaw, you should post that statement by Buckley on an article about American right-wing politics where it would be particularly useful. Here it is going against the worldview of right-wing politics, that is already described in the intro without that statement. If you emphasize one right-wing proponent like Buckley, then later someone will bring up Joseph De Maistre because his views are not accounted by Buckley, then someone will say that it is Eurocentric and want Asian political outlook, etc. etc. It is better without the statement and by focusing on the right-wing as a whole while mentioning internal differences and divisions on the right. The statement by Buckley in the lead intro emphasizes the Anglophone world's classical liberal-based right-wing politics of the recent past and present while deemphasizing others - thus it does not represent a world view.-- R-41 ( talk) 20:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
But preservation of inequality is not a goal of the Right in America or Britain. Rightists like Ronald Reagan sought to curb dependence on government programs by poor people, which actually increased wealth inequality. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 20:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Nowhere in the articles on Buckley you referenced does it state anything about "inequality" or "unequal" social circumstances, I pushed "CTRL-F" and searched "inequality", "unequal" etc. it appeared nowhere there. So it appears that you just made that up out of thin air. Plus the intro already says that the centre-right accepts society providing equality of opportunity but does not accept society providing equality of outcome. You still have failed to address why the sources in the intro's second sentence are wrong? And why have you failed to even acknowledge any other right-wing movements that I have informed you of, that are outside your ideal right-wing movement being a libertarian conservative movement based upon classical liberal conceptions of liberty (including individualism), politics, and the economy ( laissez-faire)? In answer to one of your comments earlier, as a centre-left social democrat, I can personally attest on behalf of myself and others to assure you that most reasonable centre-leftists that I have known accept that there were evil left-wing people like Maximilien Robespierre, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and others, in the case of Robbespierre he massacred thousands of people, the other three massacred and millions of people, out of psychopathy, narcissism, and ideological zeal. I am disgusted by Slobodan Milosevic - who as head of the left-wing Socialist Party of Serbia exploited ethnic nationalism to gain power, resulting in the Yugoslav civil wars. I admire George Bush Senior a man who is much underappreciated by both the right and left - Bush Senior pressed hard for the dismantlement of apartheid in South Africa and Africans who remember what he did tremendously respect him.-- R-41 ( talk) 00:12, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Good quote, Collect. Or should I say "Pip, pip, and cherrio"? Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
A new paragraph has been added to the lead. I don't dispute it, but I would like it to be supported, like the other citations in the lead, with a quote. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:45, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
In the hope of avoiding more edit wars, I've left the Buckley quote in, but changed the text to reflect that source, which says that Buckley was the "intellectual godfather" of the conservative movement, not of "the Right". On the one hand, certainly Buckley was an important figure among American Right-wing intellectuals. On the other, I would prefer a quote that actually uses the phrase "Right-wing" rather than the word "conservative". The important question here is the meaning of "right-wing", not whether the "right-wing" view is or is not the correct view, and the widely different ways the phrase is used make intelligent discourse difficult. Buckley is famous for nothing if not for proper use of words. I remember when he issued a ukase to the staff of National Review requiring the Oxford comma (I've corrected a comma error in the lead -- poets are people fascinated with death and commas). His reasoning was that a conjunction cannot replace a separator. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:59, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
As I said, there is no doubt that Buckley considered himself "On the Right", though I'm not sure he would have embraced the epithet "right-wing". I just said it should be easy to find a quote that used that phrase. Buckley valued words and would, I believe, have been disgusted by the misuse of words by the anti-intellectual Right of the twenty-first century. I'm certain he never called anyone a "Marxist" unless they were, in fact, a Marxist -- he would not use that as a general term of dislike or dismissal. I remember once when he debated a Marxist on Firing Line, and admitted on the air that it was the first time he had been totally defeated in a debate. The Marxist won by paying no attention to anything Buckley said, and simply reciting the Marxist Party line.
I suspect that one reason Buckley's son resigned from National Review is that the modern American Right has no respect for words, or for facts, but is only interested in winning votes for Republican candidates. I would love to read a column by Buckley on the distinction between "conservative" and "right-wing". I'm sure he would have had insights that this article could profit from. Is there a searchable database of National Review on-line? Rick Norwood ( talk) 14:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Why, if you admire Buckley (as I do) do you laugh at attempts to use words carefully, as he did. I agree, Buckley considered himself "on the Right". Do some research. Find a quote where he stated what the right-wing believed. He wrote a lot. Surely that is in there somewhere. Nobody is saying that there is not an overlap between right-wing beliefs and conservative beliefs. That does not imply that the two are identical, or even that William F. Buckley considered the two to be identical. Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
(od) IOW, by "world standards" it is silly to say that Buckley was not right wing at all. BTW, you again point out that there is no absolute "political spectrum" applicable to all eras and all places, or even to all issues. Collect ( talk) 15:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
In most of the world, yes, but not in the US. Here the Democratic Party is called the party of the Left, and its roots are not in socialism, but in liberalism. Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:33, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't see why people are obsessed with the lede when it is the body of the article that needs improving. It seems this consent editting is being done to please one editor. LittleJerry ( talk) 19:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with DanielRigal. The lead does not seem particularly long, for such a difficult and important topic. It is shorter than the lead for Conservatism in the United States, for example. But the second paragraph should be dealt with as DanielRigal suggests. Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
This isn't being done to please one editor - Collect, Eridu Dreaming, Boris, and I all believe that the article is biased towards a left wing worldview. That makes four editors. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 17:18, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
And your definition of left wing - having roots in socialism - is not even the definition provided in the left wing article. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 17:19, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
I said YOUR definition - the definition one of you left-leaning editors gave. I think it was TFD. Falconclaw5000 ( talk) 20:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
The second paragraph of the lead has become a real mess, making statements about "conservatism" and assuming they automatically apply to the Right, and inserting before references ideas not included in the referenced work. Some people seem to think that right-wing always means conservative and conservative always means libertarian, while left-wing always means socialist, and socialist always means communist. This is siimplistic thinking unworthy of Wikipedia. Maybe the whole second paragraph should go. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
We do say that. Rick Norwood ( talk) 13:43, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
"Right-Wing" does not "generally" refer to "acceptance or support of a hierarchical society" that is like defining a Muslim as generally meaning somebody who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. You will not find a single Right-Wing thinker who DEFINES Right-Wing as "acceptance or support of a hierarchical society" not a single one. Right-Wing thinkers reject radical egalitarianism (and consequently accept or support a "hierarchical" society) but to define the political Right in terms of that opposition is to frame the definition of what it is to be on the Right in terms derived from the political Left. It is as accurate as defining the Left as "Nihilists" or "Utopians" because that is how the "Right" comprehends the Left. You could just as accurately define the Right as anti-Nihilist or anti-Utopian, or to put it more positively, you could just as well define the Right as those who believe in the existence of objective values (truth - morality - excellence) but who combine that belief with a belief in human imperfection (error - evil - failure).
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 12:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 15:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
It depends which "Right" you are talking about. I would say trying to understand (for example) the American Right in terms of medieval feudalism is a very odd approach.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 15:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm baffled. Collect says "your stated dislike for those 'who already have wealth and power'". I have never stated any such thing in my life.
I said "I challenge you to give any example of any group described as right-wing whose policies do not have the effect of supporting those who already have wealth and power." ERIDU-REAMING seems to have skipped the important word "not". I'll restate my challenge in the affirmative. Groups described as Right-wing support those with wealth and power. Can you provide a counterexample?
Rick Norwood ( talk) 15:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Like the Soviet nomenklature? Show me a Left-Wing government that does not redistribute wealth and power to itself? Some on the Right however seek to redistribute wealth and power BACK to the people away from Left-Wing governments.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 15:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
ERIDU-DREAMING: I owe you an apology. I thought the sentence added by TFD above was yours.
The idea that people who object to the extreme concentration of wealth want an equal distribution of wealth is black and white thinking. Most reasonable people are happy for the rich to have everything they want, as long as the 99% have a safe and comfortable life. The rich can have mansions and banquets as long as the rest have a roof over their head and food to eat.
A left-wing movement that does not redistribute wealth and power to itself? How about the New Deal. Now it's your turn. You say "some on the Right". Name one. Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
The Catholic Church closes churches in poor neighborhoods that do not make a profit. Yes, the Catholic Church and many other organizations that might be described as "On the Right" gave money to charity, but not so much money that their wealth and power were put at risk. When various saints have recommended holy poverty, the Church honored them with sainthood but did not follow their advice. In any case, the Catholic Church has a long history of supporting its own wealth and power. I understand that Burke and others gave what seemed to them good and sufficient reasons for supporting a hierarchy. I'm not saying that the Right is wrong, I'm saying that the phrase "right-wing" is used to describe those who, rightly or wrongly, support established wealth and power. Rick Norwood ( talk) 16:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
The Right no more define themselves as seeking to support wealth and power than the Left define themselves as seeking to create poverty and destroy freedom. These may (or may not) be the consequences of their assumptions, but it is the assumptions which define what it is to be on the Right (or the Left) politically. The notion that wealth and power is ipso facto supported by the Right is incorrect. In fact it is an absurd claim.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 16:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I do not deny R-41 that ACCEPTANCE of inequality is a COMPONENT of what it is to be on the Right. I simply point out that acceptance of inequality is not the DEFINING quality of the Right. Inequality is a CONSEQUENCE of its assumptions. These assumptions include a commitment to value objectivity.
Value objectivity means that rightness and wrongness are not reducible to matters of preference. You are correct R-41 to draw attention to the importance of authority to the Right, but for the Right authority is not justified by power, on the contrary, power is justified by authority.
The term "hierarchy" has feudal implications that few on the Right these days would accept. So what grounds authority for the Right? It is belief in the RIGHTNESS of that authority.
What grounds rightness? It is that which accords with OBJECTIVE rightness. This is not to say that what is deemed to be morally justified is beyond dispute. All claims to justification can be questioned - and in a free society are questioned - but the recognition that authority is justified by something other than a de facto exercise of power is foundational to the Right.
In other words, there are mechanisms for determining what is right and what is wrong, but what is right and wrong is not settled by who has the power to decide.
To use the example of truth. What is true and what is false is determined by objective realities, but the reality of being human is such that we cannot jump out of the context from which we make our judgements, and so all of our judgements (including our moral judgements) are fallible.
In making these judgements (including moral judgements) some have more authority than others. All judgements are not equal. It is acceptance of value objectivity (and the situated and thus fallible nature of our judgements) that leads to an acceptance of inequality by the Right, not acceptance of inequality that leads to the assumption that values are objective. This is to put the cart before the horse. Acceptance of inequality is a CONSEQUENCE of more fundamental commitments.
It is these more fundamental commitments that define the Right. Not an acceptance of inequality.
ERIDU-DREAMING ( talk) 18:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I wish I understood why this is such a hard point for some people to understand. This article is not about how "right-wing" should be used in some ideal world. It is about how "right-wing" is used in this world. Until very recently, almost nobody would ever describe themselves as "right-wing" or "left-wing". Those words were insults. People called somebody "right-wing" because they supported the existing power structure. People called somebody left-wing to tar them with the communist brush. Neither was not a complement. Rick Norwood ( talk) 21:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)