Left and right - alternate edit

Here is the original version of my post on left and right, which I had lost...some few additional ideas, so I just post it too...

First, let me link again to this excellent description in Secular Conservative:

The Secular Left asks, why not?
The Secular Right asks, why?
The Religious
Left demands that we should, “Because god wills it!”
The Religious Right
asserts that we can’t, “Because god forbids it!”

Brilliant. Reminds me that in my opinion the pre-Enlightenment thinkers, in particular Montaigne and Pascal, were real temperamental conservatives: they could see all the evil with the status quo, but thought efforts to change it would likely make things worse. Many, but not all, Enlightenment thinkers thought the world could be improved, easily...Some were more realistic, in particular Voltaire: he cared, but was highly sceptical too...



Here is the post itself - sorry, not edited:



What are left and right? One of the smartest accounts of it is certainly Marchel Gauchet’s in the Lieux de Memoire, t.1 – unfortunately not available on line… In a nutshell, both are a lot about identity, memory, emotional links to one side or the other. One comes from a “left” or “right” family. In Italy, I have even seen this partly linked with and/or replicated by attachment to a football team. One supports the Roma or Lazio because grandfather did – and often this means also that one supported the Communists, or the (Neo-)fascists, etc. So, left and right as identity markers, taking partly over from the village, or religion, etc., in a time of urbanization and secularisation.
What might left and right otherwise really mean, in terms of politics and ideology. Two ways to approach this: “temperament”, or precise ideological contents. I tend to think temperament makes more sense (see in secular conservative the summary). Here is why: ideology-wise, what was left became right, and now maybe the opposite may become true…
Ever since the French Revolution occurred, and the terms made their debut, there has been a “race to the left”, or a gradual entry into the mainstream of ideas that were first thought revolutionary, but then were pushed “rightwards” by the emergence of more “progressive” ideas. This movement was essentially driven by the left becoming the party of “equality” rather than “liberty” (not necessarily against liberty, but with more emphasis on equality). This analysis is best seen in Furet- La Revolution Francaise.
There has always been a tension, however, and a return movement too. As the left became more associated with promoting/protecting certain social categories, it took a certain “corporatist” character, that was more in keeping with what the right had been in the early days of the French Revolution. This is not just a recent evolution, but one that was visible in the second part of the 19th century already.
Some transfers of ideas from left to right (or vice-versa) were also not just the result of the emergence of more radical proposals, and the “natural” push of previous radicalism “rightwards” as a result, but of a real “takeover” of ideas by the other side. This is most famously the case of nationalism which, while introduced in the Revolutionary times by the left (i.e. the Revolutionary movement), was taken over fully and with enthusiasm by the (far) right, and became a fantastic driver for it, in the late 19th century – and onwards, forever as it seems.
Interestingly, one could have assumed that, since the extremes of both left and right had demonstrated their essential similarity in results in the 1930s, the understanding of the misleading nature of left and right as ideologies would be understood. The Cold War, however, prevented this – but on what ideological delusion was it supported?
> some real issues: colonies, foreigners, sex, change?? Culture??
> Poverty/ what to do about it?
> Temperament
> At the end – Montaigne/Pascal/jansenistes vs. Lumieres (but maybe not all of them? Voltaire as right-wing libertarian or not even – conservative??) – in fact drawn both to the realism of the first and their attention to perverse unexpected consequences AND to the world changing enthusiasm of the 2nd (because otherwise nothing ever happens)