Are You Right Wing or Left Wing?

Are You Right Wing or Left Wing?
Keep track of your disposition on the issues below and you will find out if your political philosophy is right wing or left wing. As used here the terms have the news media created meanings that left wing is a blend of socialism and liberalism and right wing is everything else.

Basic philosophy
Left– Every person is born into a club. The club is called society and it has rules.
Right– A person is born as a free agent into a situation. He/she belongs to any club by volition only.
Political philosophy
Left- a democratic government is an historical organization that has inherited unlimited power to control everything and everybody in the jurisdiction. It takes direction from the will of the majority.
Right- in principle, a democratic government is a creation of the people, so the government is accountable to them and its power is limited by fundamental rights and possibly a written constitution.
Economic philosophy
Left- an economy provides the means for everyone to obtain a minimum standard of living.
Right- an economy provides everyone with their subsistence needs and the opportunity for more, based on merit.
Social philosophy
Left- there are no differences between persons that justify discriminating selection. All identifiable groups should be proportionately represented in most institutions.
Right- there are some important differences between persons that justify discriminating selection. Selection of a person for a job role should be based on merit, not a social design.
Fundamental rights
Left- there are no ‘a priori’ rights, only the rights granted by government or espoused by the United Nations.
Need begets a right to have the needs provided by everyone else.
Right- there are ‘a priori’ rights and they come before governments and their laws and before the UN. Governments are at fault if they are violated.
Need does not beget a right.
Consequentialism
Left- the right action is that which does the most amount of good for the most number of people. The rights of individuals come second.
Right- rights of individuals come first and the most amount of good for the most number of people second.

Immigration policy
Left- our borders should be open, not barring anyone but criminals.
Right- the people of a country must control who crosses the borders or else there is no real country.
Justice
Left- everyone should get about the same because he/she is a human being. This applies, in particular, to all race and ethnic groups. It is called “social justice” and is measured on a group basis.
Right- justice means that a person should get what he/she deserves. It is therefore meaningful on the basis of the individual, not the group.
Crime and punishment
Left- crime is, for the most part, the result of living conditions. Punishment should be based on social values.
Right- crime is the manifestation of personal morality. Punishment should accord with what the convicted person deserves.
Science
Left- science should be corrected to include the latest liberal thinking.
Right- science must remain objective and protected as a believable store of knowledge.
Gender orientation
Left– gender is a spectrum from extreme male to extreme female and one’s position in this spectrum is by personal inclination, not necessarily by anatomy.
All sexual orientations have the same value for society.
Right- gender is related to anatomy and a person is typical to his/her sex or atypical. Male-female coupling is the obvious pattern in nature and is necessary to procreate the species.
Homosexuality does not have that value but is allowable by fundamental rights.
Education system
Left- all students, from university down to kindergarten, should be indoctrinated in left wing ideology because it is undeniably true.
Right- education should not include indoctrination of any kind, particularly in an optional political ideology. Religious indoctrination in schools is losing enthusiasm.
Free Speech
Left- when speech and writing contradict politically correct ideology it has gone too far and should be silenced.
Right- there should be no censoring of ideas, only communication that advocates violence or law breaking.
Abortion
Left- a woman may choose to abort a baby in her womb at any time up to birth and this choice should be protected by law.
Right- the baby in the womb is a new human being and therefore has the fundamental rights that all human beings have. The first is security of his/her life and this should be protected by law.
Desired future society
Left- a steady, completely undifferentiated society of people with all having approximately the same standard of living and access to all institutions.
Right- a dynamic society of people with opportunity and justice, and many projects underway, driven by the twenty percent who take responsibility, risk their assets in business, and do eighty percent of the work.

In the United States the Democrat Party is left wing, the Libertarian Party right wing and the Republican Party mostly right wing. In Canada, all the parties represented in Parliament are left wing. Outside of Parliament, the People’s Party of Canada offers an alternative.

A personal view by RS Higgins, 2021 January

Filed under: Poliitical and social comments, Uncategorized | January 17th, 2021