The Experts Somehow Overlooked Authoritarians on the Left
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Particularly in the US with its crazy 2-party system, there does not really seem to be the option of choosing a party that actually aligns with your personal ideals. Instead, most people seem to end up compromising at some point and joining the party they perceive is "closest" to them. However, I wonder how much of this decision is driven by ideology and how much is driven by social pressure ("all my family/friends" belong to this one..."). Then, once you have aligned to a party, does the Stockholm Syndrome set in? How much of that party's platform do you start to rationalize and acclimate to when previously you would never have agreed with some of the ideas?
I think where the phenomenon you describe is extremely visible is in elected officials, especially at the federal level. You see an example now with Liz Cheney, who is in the process of transforming from a fairly generic Republican into a fairly generic Democrat as her political incentives change. The same can be observed going the other way with JD Vance moving from generic institutional Republican into post-liberal Trumpist (though perhaps the signs were there for those with eyes to see). The question then is whether the convictions were real or merely convenient.
Also, if someone is a one issue voter (2A, pro-life, etc.), the rest of their party's platform really doesn't matter.
Simply stated: One could not live well in most societies were this not true.
You have to be careful about how you use the money you earn. If you run a business, this lesson is front-and-center every day of your life. You can't throw money around carelessly and survive. This applies to both a business and individuals.
With regards to social behavior. A society could not achieve a high overall level of wellness, productivity and quality of life without individuals having various degrees of tolerance and consideration for others as well as caring for the well-being of various groups around you. Anyone who has experienced bad neighbors knows full-well how ugly it can be to live without caring for others around you.
The problem with political systems such as that of the US is that we don't get to vote on individual issues. We have to choose "kings" and "queens". And so, as an example, if you do not agree with abortion --and this is important to you-- you have no choice but to vote republican and blindly accept everything else they stand for. The same is true of a list of issues favored by democrats. As a further hypothetical case, an individual has no way to vote in favor of the second amendment (firearms) and, at the same time, support climate change action. These two issues are trapped on opposite sides of a political divide. Despite what some might think, people are almost never 100% aligned with a political party. Those who claim to be, upon closer inspection, will typically reveal that their perception of their alignment as compared to how they live their lives do not verify the claim.
In my opinion, the truth of the matter is that, if we could vote on individual issues rather for people, you would see a different distribution of votes. And, I would argue, we might just deliver better outcomes overall.
This is the proverbial "throwing out the baby with the bath water" American saying. We have dumbed things down to the point where your choices are: Republican, Democrat or don't vote. Independents can't achieve scale anywhere I know of, and election mechanism truly rob votes away from them (example, presidential elections in CA are winner-take-all, which means that all independent votes are pretty much always converted to democrat votes...talk about voter suppression).
Changing a complex multivariate system is not easy and should not be done impulsively. I think we desperately need to isolate the issues from party affiliation. In other words, a more direct form of democracy of some sort where we do not vote for kings and queens who will despotically wield party strength at every level in government, but rather make decisions on issues of interest. If such a thing could be implemented, our politicians would be reduced to administrators of our decisions rather than powerful partisan actors.
At the end of the day what makes our lives better is when we all do better. No political party has the monopoly on this. In fact, one could argue political parties have devolved into existing for the sake of their own power structure rather than to benefit society. Taking that power away from them might be more helpful in charting a path that benefits all. Not sure, just what I've been thinking over the years as I watch just how pointless the shit-show we've had in front of us for decades has become. We can't get anything done, and whatever we do get done is a mess.
The majority of the world's population is probably fiscally liberal and socially conservative by Western standards.
Pick a random person in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. They likely have views on many social issues which are very much at the conservative end of those debates by Western standards, even though their positions would be moderate by the standards of their own society.
On the other hand, they are unlikely to share the free market / small government / etc orthodoxy which defines so much of Western economic/fiscal conservatism.
Talking to people is a very skewed sample, because anyone you personally talk to from country X is unlikely to be representative of the general population country X. They are more likely to be an emigrant, more likely to be English-speaking, likely to be better educated – all influences which can lead to them having different views than the majority of the population of their country of origin.
The argument you present does not match reality. Having traveled to about twenty countries and lived in two continents I can tell you, with nearly 100% certainly that the vast majority of people are fiscally conservative. There are degrees when it comes to social issues, some having to do with the differences in cultures around the world.
If I can claim the hypothesis, I’ll say that fiscal conservatism and social liberalism (or tolerance) are a necessary average normal from an evolutionary perspective.
That's not a representative sample. Whether you are travelling for business or pleasure, the people you meet as a foreign visitor are unlikely to be representative of the country as a whole. You probably spent most of your time in big cities, or tourism sites–how many rural villagers did you meet? The people to whom you spoke were more likely to be bilingual/multilingual, more likely to associate with (and hence be influenced by) foreigners, quite possibly even of above-average socioeconomic status. And the 20 countries you visited are probably not a representative sample of the world's population either.
Are there surveys on the percentage of people identifying as "fiscal conservatives", or supporting fiscally conservative policies, across different countries? I think survey data would be far more convincing than anyone's personal anecdotes.
> There are degrees when it comes to social issues, some having to do with the differences in cultures around the world.
You claimed the "The vast majority of people, anywhere in the world, are... socially liberal". As the term "socially liberal" is normally defined in Western societies, that clearly isn't true. Here is a recent survey on acceptability of homosexuality worldwide – https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-... – they asked people "should homosexuality be accepted by society?" Unfortunately, they only surveyed four African countries – 7% of Nigerians said "yes", 9% of Tunisians, 14% of Kenyans, 54% of South Africans. If they had surveyed more, I am sure most African countries would have produced results much closer to Nigeria/Tunisia/Kenyan than to South Africa. Similarly, they only surveyed three Middle Eastern countries – Lebanon (13%), Turkey (25%), Israel (47%). Even in Israel, social acceptance of homosexuality is a minority view, and the average Middle Eastern country is going to be closer to Lebanon or Turkey than to Israel. Obviously on LGBT issues, the average African or Middle Eastern person is not socially liberal – and if we looked at other social issues, such as abortion rights or gender issues or criminal justice reform, I doubt the average African or Middle Eastern person would be socially liberal on those issues either.
Unless you are trying to argue that the average African, while not socially liberal by Western standards, is socially liberal by African standards. If that's your argument, how do you know what constitutes social liberalism by African standards?
I suggest people to watch the recently released footage from inside the Capitol. You could call them idiots, fools, etc, but I don't think you can call them insurrectionists. They just bumbled in and took selfies for the most part. The FBI have been investigating these people for months, and the best they found for some form of plot was a Lego model. It's exactly this kind of inflammatory talk about your fellow Countrymen that is causing greater division.
> In the U.S., though, Costello hypothesizes that right-wing authoritarians outnumber left-wing ones by roughly three to one.
In the US, the left-wing (Democrat voters) clearly dominate the cities and Universities, and thereby have a much higher probability of being more educated. I would suggest people to consider that on average, the right-wing is less able to elegantly express themselves.
For example, when you hear "immigrants are bad", when you nail them down, what they actually mean is "current immigration is unsustainable and affects my local community". There is currently this really dangerous assumption of assuming the political opposition are fundamentally evil, rather than people who want to see the betterment of their Country, but through different means.
P.S. If you're going to downvote, at least do me the courtesy to explain why.
The key word is "psychologists". At best, that field's WEIRD problem ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/non-weird-science/20... ) leaves them poorly qualified on this issue. At worst...why the h*ll would anyone think that psychologists qualify as "The Experts"?
Stalin by all means run almost theocratic totalitarian regime.
Communism was used as a slogan and means of rallying his followers. Same with Mao.
Most left v. right discussions are essentially a projection of some opinionated vector across the 2d landscape into a 1d line which they can then use to slander either end of the vector as authoritarian or communist or whatever. But these actual definitions lose a lot of information in that projection.
The 2d map has left (socialism) v right (capitalism) and up (authoritarianism) v down (anarchism). Its probably even more complicated than that, you could at least add a 3rd dimension of time but projecting everything into a 1d line is nearly meaningless at this point.
Right v. Left basically boils down to one's opinion on hierarchies. If one views hierarchies as good, they're on the right, if they see them as evil, they're on the left, and there's a whole spectrum of "necessary evil", "acceptable", etc, in between.
Then you've got the Authoritarian v. Libertarian axis, which essentially boils down to "how much power should higher-ups in the hierarchy have over those who are lower?". With Monarchies and Dictatorships being "guy on top controls everything" to Anarchism saying "no one should control anyone".
The problem is that, defined that way, certain areas in the space become absurd. What does it mean to completely reject hierarchies as evil, but think that people on top of the hierarchies ought have absolute power? What does it mean to think that hierarchies are good and just, but that there should be no power vested in them?
This manifests outside the philosophical, in the real world as well. As you look at increasingly authoritarian ideologies, the differences between left-leaning and right-leaning ideologies shrink. Comparing the conditions of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR reveals far less difference than you see even amongst the spread of Liberal states today.
Likewise, the number of hierarchies you hear objections to shrinks as you move right amongst Libertarians, until you basically only hear complaints about the government.