Only by understanding the distinctions between left and right in the United States (US) can you truly understand whether you are left or right！

By Boss Gu, rewritten in English by Mr. Y

Since the 2024 US presidential election, the US has been experiencing a tit-for-tat confrontation between the left and right. The assassination of Charlie Kirk marked a new level of this confrontation and division.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk marked a new level of this confrontation and division.

However, many people don't quite understand the political leaning in the US. In particular, many people are often confused or even disorientated about what the terms "left" and "right" represent.

For example, writer Fang Fang once shouted that the extreme left was attacking her, but those who attacked her were mainly nationalists, and nationalists are generally defined as right-wing internationally.

Some say that left means a planned economy and right means a free market. However, even Hitler, internationally recognized as an extreme rightist, heavily promoted a planned economy in his own country.

Today, I'll discuss the concepts of left and right in light of the two major political parties in the United States. You can also compare them to see if you are left or right.

1. Left and right are criteria for political leaning.

The origins of left and right are simple; a simple online search will clarify.

During the French Revolution, the revolutionaries sat on the left side of parliament and the royalists sat on the right side. This is where the left-right political divide began. Now, you can put yourself in the historical context. If you were to return to the French Revolution, would you be a revolutionary or a royalist?

The American War of Independence preceded the French Revolution by several years. The American revolutionary party at the time was called the Whigs. They opposed monarchy, or imperial power, and demanded a republic. The entire set of ideas about republicanism, popular sovereignty, and democratic politics all originated in France. When the French saw the American War of Independence, they became anxious: "Our ideas have been realized in America. No, we have to do it ourselves." So, guided by the ideas of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution started with great vigor.

At the time, those in France and the US who advocated for the abolition of imperial power were all left-wing.

Just look at the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. They're identical, over 90% similar. Both advocate equal rights for all, popular sovereignty, and the separation of powers.

The right wing at that time was the royalist party, who wanted to maintain the original order, that is, the hierarchy of monarchs, nobles, and clergy could not be abolished. Another right-wing faction was theocracy. At that time, Europe was ruled by both theocracy and monarchy, and the church's rule was also cruel. The Puritans fled to the United States to escape religious persecution.

The most important goal of the French Revolution was to dismantle these hierarchies. Emperors, nobility, and clergy were all just ordinary people, all the same. Anyone who dared to resist the Revolution was to be slaughtered - the right wing was a bad breed seeking to enslave others, and they deserved to be killed.

The American War of Independence and the French Revolution, which took place in the late 18th century, marked the rise of the left.

Americans sought to preserve their traditions of representative government and self-tax. For the French, everything associated with the ancient regime was repugnant and must be uprooted, including religious beliefs.

Both French and American revolutionaries presented the world with declarations of rights - claims of rights based on human reason and self-evident truths. These declarations were the fruit of the Enlightenment, the belief that truth can be attained through reason, and that equal rights for all are the result of rational thought.

Before the Enlightenment, for thousands of years humans were based on a hierarchical society, with clear distinctions between social members and varying rights between classes. Those who sought to preserve traditional hierarchies were, in essence, right-wing.

The intellectual achievements of the Enlightenment changed the whole world. The hierarchical political systems such as monarchy, theocracy, and slavery that had lasted for thousands of years basically disappeared from the world within two hundred years.

The political turmoil that has occurred over the past century, including in China, can be considered the aftermath of the Enlightenment.

In modern society, in most countries, the overt hierarchy has basically disappeared.

The above is, in fact, the history that every Chinese high school student knows.

This is where the distinction between left and right begins. But some might say, "That's not right. My understanding of left and right is different. The left represents big government, the right represents small government; the left represents socialism, the right represents capitalism."

Has the definition of left and right changed?

Not really. The definition of left and right remains the same today as it was more than one hundred years ago.

Many people talk about redefining left and right but left and right are a set of labels used to categorize political tendencies worldwide. Their purpose is to simplify communication. For example, if you see a right-wing figure in a country come to power in the media, you can roughly guess its likely domestic and foreign policy, ensuring your judgment is not significantly biased.

You can't arbitrarily adjust the left-right distinction based on personal preference, as this will only lead to confusion. If you insist on labeling a political faction as left when all media and books around the world clearly define it as right, then communication will be impossible.

2. Left and Right in the US

Okay, let's get back to the left and right in the US.

Currently, the left and right in the US are represented by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Why do some Americans call Trump “Hitler”? It's actually calling him right-wing extremist.

If you think the Republican Party only advocates small government, you're completely wrong. The Republican Party has never advocated small government. Both parties in the US advocate big government, but they differ in the methods of government regulation.

Many people say that this is wrong. Trump cut taxes as soon as he came to power, and he also said he would cut regulations, reform the FDA, and reduce regulation. Isn't this small government? Yes, these advocates are small government.

But the Democratic Party also has small government advocates, such as reducing government restrictions on foreign talent, opening work visas, legalizing marijuana, and reducing government control over trade. These are all small government advocates.

The Republicans also has big government advocates, but people tend to overlook it. For example, they advocated building a border wall, government intervention to control population migration, restricting work visas to prevent foreigners from working in the US, strict drug control, prohibiting abortions, imposing tariffs, and implementing trade controls. Doesn't this expand the scope of government control? How could it be small?

Trump's candidacy sparked huge controversy because he stated that having an abortion is a crime. This statement goes beyond the typical Republican stance, as most pro-life Republicans believe that doctors and institutions that assist women with abortions are guilty, but the women themselves are not.

Why are most Hollywood stars against Trump? This alone makes them think Trump is Hitler. Your government is so overpowered, what's your business with my uterus?

And the so-called Republican tax cuts are a joke. Even President Reagan, who declared that "government itself is the root of the problem", saw fiscal spending rise year after year during his presidency, just like Trump.

Cutting taxes without cutting spending is a lie. All government spending is tax revenue. You claim to have cut taxes, but government spending has increased. This is simply a different way of collecting taxes: less money is collected openly, but more is collected covertly. The increase in government spending is one of the core signs that the government is getting bigger and bigger.

So, neither party in the US advocates for small government. What, then, is the fundamental difference between the left and right?

It's actually quite simple. The Democratic Party is left-wing, still upholding the fundamental principles of the French Revolution and the founding of the US, also known as natural human rights. Its philosophy is that everyone has equal rights.

The Republican Party's underlying thinking is that everyone's rights are unequal. This is actually a lineage inherited from the monarchists and theocrats.

• The rationale behind Trump's wall construction is that the rights of Latin Americans are unequal to those of American citizens.

• The rationale behind Biden's liberal immigration policies is that everyone in the world has equal rights, and free movement should be allowed.

• Trump's patriotism, nationalism, and unilateralism are driven by the logic that the rights of Americans and those outside the United States are inconsistent, and that I cannot afford to pay for the military expenses of Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

• Biden's globalism and multilateralism are driven by the logic that everyone in the world has the same rights, and that the US government should pay to protect the human rights of everyone in the world.

• Trump's bans on abortion, drugs, gambling, and prostitution suggest that human rights are granted by the government.

• Biden's legalization of marijuana suggests that it's a natural human right: you have the right to smoke whatever you want.

This underlying logic applies not only to the two major parties in the United States but also to left-right divisions around the world.

The left, long in power in Europe, is keen to contribute financially and physically to poverty alleviation in Third World countries because they believe everyone is equal. Currently, Europe's right-wing parties are anti-globalization and advocate nationalism. They believe that my country is my country, and foreigners are none of our business; they want to treat the country as a single entity.

Thus, Trump's rallies often feature patriotic slogans about the USA. He advocates making America great again, and his campaign slogans were "Use American products, hire American people." Do you feel a strong sense of "patriotism" from him?

The Democratic Party's slogan, on the other hand, is "America is back," meaning a return to multilateralism and globalism.

As soon as Trump took office in 2017, he went to North Korea to shake hands with Kim Jong-un. Why? Unilateralism, America first. He is not prepared to take action, let alone spend money on wars around the world. Republicans think this is foolish and none of their business!

The Democrats' cosmopolitanism demands a hand in everything. Whether it's the Arab Spring or the North Korea issue, Democratic governments have actively intervened. Regarding China's Hong Kong issue, the Trump administration has rarely expressed its stance, but the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has been busily engaged, passing bills and issuing proclamations.

Whatever happens in any place is related to me.

The America you see is a crisscross of left and right.

The United States is a country with a separation of powers. Trump is right-wing, but the House of Representatives is left-wing. The executive and legislative branches each have their own powers, so they often intermingle and produce different voices.

Understanding this underlying logic will allow you to analyze the impact of these two parties on U.S. domestic and foreign affairs after coming to power.

3. What are both the left and right parties in the United States doing wrong?

Let's start by discussing the left.

Some people say, didn't you say earlier that the left is good? You said it overthrew hierarchical society. Of course it’s good. Few people agree with hierarchical society nowadays, but it doesn’t mean that as long as one opposes the hierarchical society, he is correct in anything.

The idea of ​​equal rights for all is certainly correct, but what constitutes rights is a matter of considerable debate. The most famous leftist thinker, and the architect of the founding principles of the United States and France, is Locke.

Locke was the first to propose the doctrine of natural rights.

He personally defined "natural rights": "Men are born with the same advantages of nature and are able to exercise the same physical and mental faculties. They are therefore equal, and there is no relationship of subordination or dependence." He also stated, "Since all men are equal and independent, no one may infringe upon the life, liberty, or property of another." The inviolability of life, liberty, and property is the core of Locke's theory of rights.

From this point of view, the boundaries of rights have been continuously expanded. The right to vote is a right, the right to demonstrate is a right; Roosevelt even proposed that freedom from want and freedom from fear are also rights.

The left's constant expansion of the boundaries of rights is one of its greatest mistakes.

The concept of equality of outcome we often hear about is actually the result of the arbitrary expansion of the boundaries of rights. Equality of outcome means that everyone enjoys the same material standard of living, which has become a right, similar to Roosevelt's right to freedom from want.

4.So what is left Wing extremism?

We often use the terms left Wing extremism and right-Wing extremism. Under these terms, many people assume that left and right are on a linear axis: those who move further to the left are left Wing extremism, and those who move further to the opposite are right-Wing extremism. They assume that the middle is correct, and that being neither left nor right is right.

There's a profound conflict of fundamental ideas between left and right; there's no middle ground. The difference between natural human rights and civil rights is enormous.

Extreme left or extreme right refers to whether the means used to achieve their perceived rights are extreme. The "extreme" here refers to the extreme means.

For example, racism. Hitler, based on the theory of bloodline, believed that the Germanic race was the noblest bloodline in the world, while the Jews were pariahs. This idea actually existed long ago, but the direct, murderous extermination of the Jews was extreme, hence the term "extreme right."

Similarly, to achieve equality for all, confiscating everyone's property and then establishing universal canteens, ultimately leading to disaster, is extreme leftism. The "extreme" in "extreme left" refers to the extreme nature of the means, namely, confiscating everyone's property.

Extreme refers to the degree of brutality of the means, not the extreme of value orientation.

Who is the extreme left in the United States? It's Bernie Sanders.

• Sanders advocates raising taxes on all wealthy individuals and levying a 77% inheritance tax on the wealthiest 0.2%.

• He demands that large corporations raise their employees' wages, raising the minimum hourly wage in the United States to $15, and eliminating wealth inequality.

• Regarding health care policy, Sanders proposes Medicare for All.

• Regarding education, he proposes free college and free student loans.

• Regarding financial institution regulation, Sanders advocates capping the size of financial institutions, which might force the dismantling of large financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

Where is his extreme? He wants to use government force to impose a 77% inheritance tax and impose massive taxes on everyone to implement free education and health care.

The underlying logic is that universal rights should be extended to universal property, universal education, and universal access to universal health care.

While it's certainly true that everyone has the same natural rights, the essence of rights is the ethical norms of human society, the behavioral rules that resolve disputes. Locke explored the norms of property rights: self-ownership, first-come-first-served, and free trade - these are the specific essence of rights.

However, the expanded interpretation of rights during the Enlightenment, coupled with the subsequent expansion of the meaning of rights by countless intellectuals, ultimately led to "consistency of rights" becoming the source of most of the erroneous claims of the left.

The Democratic Party's concept of rights also drives its Cosmopolitanism and multilateralist foreign policy.

For example, the Democratic Party is keen to get involved in various international human rights issues, even taking proactive interventionist measures. Not only do they constantly criticize countries they identify as having human rights violations in public opinion, but they also contribute money, manpower, and even military force to intervene.

The Democratic Party is also keen on government charity for impoverished regions around the world. Over the past decades, developed countries have provided over $2 trillion in aid to Africa, with the United States providing hundreds of billions of dollars in official aid.

The Democratic Party also likes to promote its democratic system globally, believing that democracy ensures equal rights for all. Democratic movements around the world have received financial and even military support from the Democratic Party.

Based on this philosophy, the Democratic Party has also formed alliances with all democratic countries around the world, expanding rights to include electoral rights. Forming alliances and promoting multilateralism is a continuation of this philosophy in foreign affairs.

So, what are the consequences of a Democratic Party in power?

A flawed concept of rights leads to increased domestic taxation and rampant welfarism, but also to the relaxation of social regulations, such as the legalization of homosexuality and marijuana, and increased freedom of population migration.

Internationally, multilateralism and political alliances are advocated, along with a desire to be the world's policeman, the use of force, and the role of world government, hoping that the entire world will act according to Democratic Party ideals.

The erroneous left not only broadens the interpretation of rights, constantly expanding the connotations of the term, but also, misled by various erroneous economic theories, creates disasters in economic policy.

Economics and the theory of rights are two different disciplines. Economics is the study of the laws governing human action, the study of whether means are sufficient to achieve ends.

For example, if we want to increase a region's wealth, is a planned economy or a market economy the best approach? This is the question economics discusses: what means can achieve the goal?

Economics has nothing to do with left or right. Economics is value-neutral, while left and right are judgments about value. Economics simply explains economic laws. As for whether you promote nationalism by pursuing a free market or a planned economy, that's still right in politics. Left and right are about values ​​and goals, not about the choice of means.

Faulty economic concepts have a long history. While The Wealth of Nations is a classic and pioneering work in economics, while revealing the hidden secrets of the market -the invisible hand - it also proposed the labor theory of value and the instrinsic theory of value. These ideas, passed down through Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and finally to Marx, became the theoretical pillars of planned economics.

The fusion of erroneous economic ideas with anti-hierarchical society and universal civil rights led to the global leftist revolutionary movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, sweeping the world.

From the early 20th century to the present, the world's mainstream has been leftist ideology combined with a flawed planned economy. This has been true not only in China and the Soviet Union, but also in Europe and the United States, where a half-baked planned economy has emerged, following the path of expanding "universal rights for all."

The Democratic Party in the United States represents the mainstream ideology of the European and American world. Beyond the United States, developed countries like Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have also been largely governed by Democratic-like parties for extended periods. In other words, developed countries have been primarily governed by the left, and have been so since the early 20th century.

Thus, Europe and the United States are far from being the market-dominated economies we once imagined. Instead, the current situation is characterized by rampant state-owned enterprises, public education and public healthcare, a planned economy implemented through monetary controls, and the ever-expanding concept of human rights.

Some say Japan suffered a lost thirty years, but in reality, Europe and the United States suffered a lost century.

This is the double disaster of a haphazard interpretation of rights and a misconception of economic laws.

What about the Republican Party? What would the right and extreme right in the United States do if they came to power?

See you in the next article.

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