Redefinitions

Feeling better, finally, and doing a little catching up in the blogosphere this morning. Can't point to anything specific, but some of the comments I've seen have crytallized -- almost -- something I've been thinking about for a while.

We've defined the political "right" and "left" according to certain criteria that, for most of recent history, have been based on the power and size of government versus the citizenry. Thus we've had commentators such as Andrew Sullivan walking a perilous tightrope, trying to differentiate their own, "classic" conservatism from the new conservatism (Goldwater vs Bush), while the left has become nothing more than a group of whiners without a central focus.

I ran across this, quoted by Sullivan, this morning:

Leftists who make common cause with, or excuses for, anti-democratic forces should be criticized in clear and forthright terms. Conversely, we pay attention to liberal and conservative voices and ideas if they contribute to strengthening democratic norms and practices and to the battle for human progress.

I think there we have the seeds of a new definition, and we'll take our cue from what we've seen "conservatism" turn into in this country: the right has become the party of big government, huge budget deficits, unashamed cronyism, claims of unlimited power by the executive, censorship, denial of basic human rights, including the subversion of our legal system in the service of maintaining that power -- in short, every totalitarian regime we've ever seen.

It's an idea that's been at the back of my mind for a long time, and I think I've even mentioned it, in embryonic form, a couple of times. We needn't call it "right" or "left" -- we can call it "up" or "down," "in" or "out," what have you, but the fact remains that, while the left is saddled with the history of Stalin and Mao and the current embarrassment of PETA and the PC thought police, it will be unable to forge meaningful alliances or to state a clear position. Cut them lose -- throw PETA, Michael Moore and their ilk to the winds and focus on fighting authoritarianism, whether it be the Taliban or the Bush administration. The right has been hijacked by religious fundamentalists, and quite frankly, I see little difference between the Christianists of the US and the Islamists of the Middle East and Central Asia: they are both rooted in authoritarian philosophies, no matter how much they have to pervert the teachings of the religions they claim as their cores. It's up to the left, now, to stand for the principles of democracy and human liberty. If that means redefining the poles, so be it.

This all comes from The Euston Manifesto, linked by Sullivan. I like the idea so far. Check it out.

Bit:

Ran across an interesting reference to the relationship between art and entertainment (I think from a study of Ray Bradbury's fiction, if I remember correctly) that I want to go back and look at again, now that my brain is working. More on that later. (Sparked again by a comment by Andrew Sullivan. Much as he irritates me sometimes, with what seems to be commentary from a hermetically sealed ivory tower, he is thought-provoking more often than not.)