Beyond Left and Right
Stephen Tootle, “Beyond Left and Right,” The Vital Center 1, no. 1 (Fall 2023): 70–73.
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The use of left-right terms provides a double benefit. The speaker need not advocate anything specific and can claim victory over an opponent.
Any political model that puts Adolf Hitler and Milton Friedman on the “same side” is absurd. Yet this is exactly what the left-right political spectrum does. In The Myth of Left and Right, historian Hyrum Lewis and political scientist Verlan Lewis surveyed contemporary political science data, applied the data to American political history, and in the end reveal just how outdated this dichotomy has become. They argue that although institutional and cultural incentives may drive people to keep perpetuating these myths, we should reflect upon our beliefs and alter our practices when something is both harmful and untrue. Their thesis is bold, plain, and clear: what we perceive as left-right ideologies are nothing more than unrelated bundles of tribal political positions.
In one hundred tightly argued and heavily annotated pages, Lewis and Lewis do not deny that Americans have political beliefs and that those beliefs once clustered into ideologies. Instead, the authors deny that those ideologies currently reflect an essence that exists within a left-right spectrum. Now, when put to the test, Americans change their views based on social cues rather than on ideologies. Some contemporary social science even suggests that clinging to an ideological label correlates with the abandonment of political principles. These ideologically committed Americans condone violence and sometimes practice it. As the use of violence makes politics impossible, this growing threat makes an ideological nation-state such as the United States particularly vulnerable. Commitment to a left-right model turns people into violent, America-destroying hypocrites. As Jonah Goldberg likes to say, “Big if true.”
The brothers first turn their attention to outlining the history of the terms left and right. They show that this now ubiquitous expression emerged during the French Revolution, and the usage spread across Europe throughout the nineteenth century. By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, egalitarian revolutionaries regularly identified with the leftists of the French Revolution. Americans rarely used the terms and never thought of themselves as being on any kind of political spectrum. Only after the Russian Revolution did some identifiable grouping of Americans regularly identify as belonging to the “left.” At that time, the term had a clear and specific meaning. In 1919, the terms “left” and “right” described only the various forms of socialism.
Throughout the 1920s, progressive historians and a handful of politicians began applying the terms “liberal” and “conservative” to people in the American past. What began with academics, activists, and intellectuals in the 1920s took hold during the 1930s. Support for the New Deal became associated with the Democrats, the left, and liberals. Opposition to the New Deal came from the Republicans, the right, and conservatives. Intellectuals such as Willmore Kendall and Russell Kirk helped William F. Buckley, Jr. create a narrative to match the one created by their opponents. During this time, the political spectrum made a certain amount of sense. It somewhat reflected reality from the 1930s through the middle of the 1950s.
Between the middle of the 1950s and the 1970s, political realities put an end to the usefulness of a model based on a left-right spectrum. The Cold War, anti-communism, civil rights, Vietnam, court decisions, and a host of other issues added dimensions to American politics that a left-right spectrum could not account for. Describing policy positions or politicians as being on the left or the right became absurd. From the 1980s to the present day, the model has been neither descriptive nor predictive. As the Lewis brothers recount the major political events and movements of the recent past, it is hard to find flaws in their logic. The model has been wrong and useless for almost a half-century.
They anticipated the criticism that they were not describing the “authentic” left and right by recounting the most common modern descriptions of the left-right dichotomy and refuting each one. Of course, to attempt to knock down every attempted descriptor of the “real” left and right would require (in their words), “a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, since new [political] essences pop up every day.” Instead, they examined the most popular attempts to describe the authentic political ideas behind the left-right models and find that they all fall apart pretty quickly. Intellectuals were inconsistent. Some correlations were irrelevant. Other correlations had a strong causal relationship to a single issue, but not to a bundle of traits that one would call an “authentic” left or right. With no meaningful political ideals underlying the model, one might expect that the model itself would collapse. But it was not so.
The stories we have told ourselves about politics have utility, incentives, and social rewards. According to the Lewis brothers, the left-right model makes us feel good. It is simple. It hides our tribal identities and feeds our egos. Scapegoats, satisfying stories, and moral superiority free us from complex dilemmas or thinking about long-term consequences. In practical terms, our two-party structure has firmly embedded and incentivized the left-right model in political culture and law. Of course, choosing to satisfy our desires rather than face reality on its own terms has some long-term downsides that we already see.
They sketched out some of the most important problems with building a political culture on a faulty model. Believing in false ideologies deludes us, introduces powerful biases, hides important truths, and prevents social and political progress. We have become intellectually rigid and less humble, and we are better advocates for illusions and falsehoods. Under these circumstances, the application of our skills leaves us morally debauched. We have become political bigots engaged in destroying the political institutions we claim to love. Anyone who finds those consequences unacceptable might grasp solutions.
“Pluralism is a long-forgotten ideological framework that suited Americans just fine before politically motivated ideologues successfully wiped it from our elite institutions.”
Lewis and Lewis gave straightforward advice about what we would need to do to turn things around: admit that currently the left and right are nothing more than tribes; test assertions, instead of rushing to defend them; insist on more specific and meaningful political questions; stop describing people as being on the left or right; seek identity in things other than ideological labels; and cherish and nurture intellectual diversity. Modern social science research reaffirms time and again that the best results come from honest and authentic disagreement from people seeking honest answers. If we choose to do these things, they think we will start moving in the right direction. Abandoning the geocentric model of the universe is a good indication that we are at least capable of dropping the fantasies of scientists—political or otherwise.
The Myth of Left and Right should provoke thoughtful responses, launch a thousand dissertations, and give writers, editors, and commentators pause about deploying terms and models that harm America. In some cases, the arguments of the Lewis brothers are bracing and bold, yet they may not go far enough.
In addition to the suggestions they made in their concluding chapters, some other paths are available to us. We could learn history. Pluralism is a long-forgotten ideological framework that suited Americans just fine before politically motivated ideologues successfully wiped it from our elite institutions. From the founding through the 1990s, patriotic Americans understood that our system protects many rights. Human beings care about many things. We could all care about the same rights and merely prioritize them differently. In that sense, America did have (and could potentially recover) meaningful political traditions. But the founders created systems of political contests between points of emphasis that do not require the wholesale rejection of rights. Americans created the United States as an ideological nation-state opposed to a monarchy that embraces universal individual liberty. In other words, a conservative who wishes to preserve the ideals of the founding would reject both “right” and “left.”
Lewis and Lewis are also a little too skeptical of the idea of Americans having discernable ideological differences within the pluralistic framework outlined by the founders. One could trace a through line from the 1770s to the 1970s and find politicians and thinkers who argued for the rejection of fixed truths, generational redefinitions of the American purpose, a government acting as a broker between interest groups, a majoritarian ethos over the preservation of individual liberty, and the use of politics to change the culture. Until recently, we would call that person a Jeffersonian, a Jacksonian, a Democrat, or a liberal. We could find another group of Americans connecting ideas present in the political thoughts of George Washington and George W. Bush. Washington and Bush agreed that the flaws of humanity are eternal, governments should secure rights, the practicing of positive liberties at the local level, opportunity over equality of condition, America’s example to the world, slow progress, and that politics should reflect culture. These ideals are not on a left-right spectrum, but they exist nonetheless.
Or to use another example, Americans may have important clusters of ideological differences that are not necessarily opposed to one another. We might find one group of people who call themselves conservatives because they primarily care about issues of governance out of a commitment to the founding principles; another group of people might care about achieving specific results. We seem to have difficulty in describing opposing viewpoints that are not necessarily reactionary positions. People can have different reasons why they disagree.
We could also advocate for returning “left” and “right” to something closer to their original meanings. Writers and thinkers could again use them as a shorthand for people who want to destroy the United States. A modern-day fascist or monarchist who would destroy our system in the service of a leader or a mythical natural law paradise is on the “right.” Someone who would deny individual liberty and welcome the destruction of our Constitution out of a belief in social rights is on the “left.” Someone who loves the liberties outlined in the Declaration as enshrined in the Constitution is a patriot. Simple.
The Lewis brothers will fail in the short term. The use of the terms “left” and “right” will persist for the same reason that sarcasm works; instead of describing complicated concepts in plain language, one can claim a moral and intellectual victory and imply that the opposite of an assertion is true. The use of left-right terms provides a double benefit. The speaker need not advocate anything specific and can claim victory over an opponent.
Nonetheless, we should join the Lewis brothers in their project knowing that we will all fail together. Their big idea is correct. They value truth, America, and the perpetuation of free institutions in the world. Prioritizing our fleeting feelings, money, social approval, or all of these, is a fool’s errand. The Lewis brothers are right because Calvin Coolidge was right: “truth and freedom are inseparable.” Building a society upon lies, “has always been the method of privilege, the method of class and caste, the method of master and slave.” It can be no other way.
French Premier Georges Clemenceau once said of Woodrow Wilson, “God gave us the Ten Commandments and we broke them. Wilson gives us the Fourteen Points. We shall see.” Hyrum and Verlan Lewis have given us a densely argued book on political theory asking us to abandon how we have discussed politics for over a half-century. We shall see.
This essay is a review of The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis. You can purchase the book for yourself here.
