Extremism versus stability

We are accustomed in political discussions to describe both ends of the political spectrum as "extremists".  But what are the extremes?  In the case of the Left it is easy:  Communism.  But what is an extreme conservative?  The Left are sure that it is someone like Adolf Hitler but the logic of conservative commitment to individual liberty and suspicion of government makes libertarianism a much likelier extreme form of conservatism.

So which is right?  And why the diametrically opposite interpretations of what extreme conservatism is?  Conservatives presumably know what they believe so why do Leftists persist in attributing  to conservatives something  that conservatives completely disagree with?

It is of course propaganda and the usual Leftist specialty of abuse but even propaganda has to have some element of truth behind it or it will mostly not persuade.  I will look at that grain of truth shortly.

At this point I am going to skip forward a little, however, and say where I think people go wrong.  I don't think there IS any such thing as extreme conservatism. Libertarians believe in a lot of stuff that conservatives reject.  But I do believe that there is such a thing as extreme Leftism.  How come?

I think that the whole polarity of politics is misconceived.  The contest is not between Left and Right but rather between stability and irritability/anger.  Conservatives are the sheet anchor of society. They ensure that there is some continuity and predictability in our lives.  They are the anchor that prevents us all from being blown onto the shoals of arrogant stupidity in the manner of Pol Pot and many others.

For various reasons most people in society have gripes about it.  Even conservatives can usually give you a long list of things that they would wish otherwise in the world about them.

But some of the discontented are REALLY discontented -- discontented to the point of anger -- and among them there is a really dangerous group:  Those who "know" how to fix everything.

So the political contest ranges across a spectrum from valuing stability to various degrees of revolutionary motivation.

But can there be an extreme of valuing stability?  In theory yes but I have yet to hear of ANY conservative-dominated government that lacked an active legislative agenda.  BOTH sides of politics  have changes they want to legislate for.  Conservatives don't want stability at any price any more than they want change that threatens stability.  So as far as I can see, ALL conservatives want change PLUS stability.  And mostly they get that.

Fighting that anchor that keeps society going on a fairly even keel, however, there is the Left  -- who want every conceivable sort of change.  Some just want more social welfare legislation and some want the whole society turned upside down by violent revolution.  And the latter are indeed extremists.

So there is no sharp Left/Right dividing line  -- just a continuum from strong support for stability amid change to a complete disrespect and disregard for stability among extreme advocates of change.

It is possible that there is somebody somewhere in the world who values stability so much that he/she want NO change in the world about them at all.  If so, I have never met such a person.  Everybody has gripes and change is a constant.  The only question is whether we can manage change without great disruptions to our everyday lives.  Conservatives think we can and should.  Leftists basically don't care about that.  For them change is the goal with stability hardly considered.

Now let me skip back to a question I raised earlier.  I think we are now in a better position to answer that question.  The question is why do conservatives and Leftists disagree over what extreme conservatism or extreme Rightism is?  And the answer is now obvious.  If it does not exist, no wonder people disagree over what it is.  The theoretical inference would be that an extreme conservative wants ZERO change: he/she wants stability alone.  But, as I have noted, such people appear not to exist and if they do exist they are surely too few to matter.

But what about the Leftist conviction that society is riddled by people like Hitler:  "Racists" and "Nazis".  Leftists never cease describing those they disagree with that way.  Even a moderate and compromising Christian gentleman such as GWB was constantly accused of being a Nazi.

Again our conception of stability versus extremism helps answer that -- particularly if you add in a dash of history.  Take the "racist" allegation:

Before WWII, everybody was racist in the sense that they believed that racial differences are real and that some of those differences are more desirable than others.  Both conservatives and Leftists agreed on that.  And if they are safe to say it, many conservatives still think that.  I do.

But, exactly as I have pointed out above, Leftists went a lot further than that. They carried their views to an  extreme.  They did not care how many applecarts they upset.  They wanted either to breed out the inferior races (American progressives) or to exterminate them (Hitler).  Where conservatives just accepted a complex reality of long standing, Leftists KNEW what had to be done about it and so hurt a lot of people and did a lot of damage in the process.

When their old friend Hitler lost the war, however, Leftists had a desperate need to disavow all he stood for and so threw their whole rhetoric into reverse gear.  They were still obsessed in their minds by race and racial differences but denied their previous destructive intentions towards other races.  And to accentuate that, they went into paroxysms of rage whenever they discovered that conservatives still had THEIR prewar attitudes.  Leftist attitudes had flipped but since they had opposed Hitler and Leftism generally, conservatives long saw no need to denounce their prewar views.

So in a sense Leftists are right to see that Hitler and conservatives have something in common -- a willingness to admit racial differences -- but are very wrong in their implicit claim that conservatives would carry such views to any kind of extreme.  Extremes are for the Left  -- not just theoretically but as a matter of historical fact.  So they are now as extremely anti-racist as they were once pro-racist.  Conservatives by contrast just jog along trying to keep a firm hold on reality

So Leftists take some generally accepted idea and carry it to extremes, hoping to be seen as great champions by doing so.  Their extremism is a "look at me" phenomenon, a claim on especially great virtue.  Antisemitism is a good example of that.  Before WWII antisemitism was virtually universal.  Nobody liked the Jews and some degree of discrimination against them was normal and accepted.  Not allowing Jews in your club was the commonest form  of that.

So Leftists took antisemitism to extremes and became the leading critics of Jewry, culminating in the holocaust, which was the work of the National Socialist German Worker's Party. Leftists transformed minor discrimination into mass murder.

When Hitler lost the war, however, antisemitism suddenly had bad associations so Leftists abandoned it forthwith and became, for a while, great champions of Israel. Democrat President Truman recognized the state of Israel within minutes of its being proclaimed and the Soviet Union was only three days behind him.  Popular sentiment had changed so Leftists became energetic champions of the new sentiment



The document above signed by Truman gives a vivid contrast to what his Democrat predecessor BEFORE the war did.  FDR is of course well known for sending a shipload of German Jewish refugees  back to Hitler, rather than allowing them to disembark when they arrived at Miami -- JR.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).