Sunday, August 15, 2010

Left, Right and Libertarianism

I recently stumbled upon a fun drawing, aiming to contextualize the psychology of the liberal / progressive, conservative and libertarian and their perceptions of each other. You might enjoy it Thumbs-upBroken heartThumbs-down

Here it is:

psychology of left / right

Here it is, in words:

how self-identified members of right/left identify members of the other group

left right
  • believes members of ‘right’ are attempting to subvert the protective rule of government and let ‘corporate greed’ run wild
  • associates ‘right’ with Christianity, nationalism, GWB, ‘deregulation’, racism, slavery, imperialism
  • includes ‘radical’ elements in ‘out-group’ categorization – associates all ‘far-right’ radicals with possible exception for ‘libertarians’, ‘anarchists’ – includes neo-nazis, past communist totalitarianism (although may idealize ‘guerilla’ rebellions which later led to those same regimes)
  • believes members of “left” are attempting to subvert some portion of national character by corrupting established norms
  • believes the left are naive for thinking humans can operate without coercive control
  • believes members of ‘left’ have sense of entitlement
  • includes ‘radical’ elements in ‘out-group’ categorization – likely groups ‘communist’, ‘anarchist’ and possibly ‘libertarian’

reality, as seen by a libertarian

Those self-identified as libertarians, anarcho-capitalists or anarchists tend to ascribe to themselves the following traits:

  • familiarity with history, understands ‘nations’ as abstractions of the division of hierarchal control
  • for some varieties of anarchist, understands difference between compulsory payment and voluntary payment, i.e., difference between ‘government’ and ‘free market’ and the consequence of the introduction of compulsory elements into voluntary interaction
  • ‘utopian’ ideology – unhindered development of discourse leads to technological development, alleviating problems of poverty and even government itself (barring anarcho-primitivists, in some cases)
  • understands difference between deregulation as in ‘removing the cause of the problems’ and ‘deregulation’ as in ‘removing liability protections for problems regulation caused to begin with’
self-identified left self-identified “right”
  • watches: Daily Show / Colbert Report, Maddow, Hitchens, reads Dawkins, Hawking, maybe Chomsky, mainstream “liberal media”
  • possibly supports “welfare” programs
  • believes in “rule of law” as means to an end
  • believes ‘deregulation’ will lead to a crisis of voluntary human interaction
  • watches FOX, soap operas, reads tabloids, trashy supermarket books, Limbaugh
  • sees ‘nations’ as antagonistic entities to be controlled, strong nationalism, xenophobia
  • lives in perpetual fear, large set of ‘morals’ instilled by operant conditioning, often to be imposed onto others (subjects of shilling, not shills, at least not always)

Is it all true? ..dunno.. What do you think?

Sources / More info: twitter

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