Wednesday, April 05, 2023

Left versus right rivalry political lie

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for March 5, 2023)




The whole "conservative" versus "liberal", "Left" versus "Right", rivalry is a lie.

In the ridiculous political world where most people view each idea as either "conservative" or "liberal" (or whichever word the political left prefers at the moment), those who love liberty confuse everyone.

In the real world, though, there is only liberty versus authoritarianism. The rest is a diversion.

Often one part of the political divide supports me on one topic while disagreeing with me on another. As a consequence, I continually get slandered as both a "far-right extremist" and a "bleeding heart liberal". Often on the same day. Yes, it's a crazy world.

The reaction depends entirely on the views of the person who is trying to discredit me. When you see everything through the distorting lens of politics, you aren't seeing clearly and will misjudge what you think you are seeing.

I value liberty, so I oppose anything which chips away at it. Some of those things are endorsed by conservatives while others are favored by liberals. 

The supporters and detractors may switch sides from one topic to the next, but I won't participate in silent acceptance of any sort of authoritarianism. This confuses people.

I don't believe government has any political authority to ban or regulate anything-- not guns, drugs, speech, or anything else. I consider corporations to be inseparable from government-- not "private companies" as some characterize them. So censorship, from a corporation or government, is something I will always oppose.

Yet, those on the Left have accused me of thinking corporations should run the world since I deny the authority of government to do anything. It's a delusional misrepresentation.

In a similar way, the Right accuses me of neglecting private property rights and the right to lock the doors on your own home when I point out that government has no ethical or constitutional authority to control the movement of people across imaginary government borders-- called "immigration" by politically brainwashed people. Again, this characterization isn't even close to true.

People who have been trained to only see things in the dim light of Left or Right are missing most of reality. Instead of reflexively siding with their team, they would benefit from thinking for themselves. If you treasure liberty and respect the right of everyone to do whatever doesn't violate the equal and identical rights of anyone else, you'll free yourself of the political blinders.

This is what liberty looks like.
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I couldn't do this without your support.