Democratic/Republic L/R E/I

Hi Peter,

You replied:

Ken's view on politics is much more refined than that. The second part of the audio has just been released, and you can read some details about that here.

If anybody wants to discuss that further, please open a new thread, since it's off-topic.

Thanks for the link, and for the very correct moderator direction to open a new thread, which I've done here.

Though I read the material in the link carefully, I didn't see anything that showed more depth in terms of either of my problems with the original statement - i.e. Left and Right are quite simply and (in my opinion) erroneously assigned to Democrats and Republicans, and Left=external and Right=internal.

In fact, it goes on to say that

… as Ken explains, the second, hidden, civil war is raging smack dab in the middle of the Democratic Party. Quite simply, the new postmodern Left and the old modern Left…

(again presupposing the existence of any true Left within the Democratic Party)

I'd like to leave this issue of where the Democratic Party lies to the side, though, and consider the (to me) more serious problem of summing up the Left as attributing ”the fundamental cause of human suffering to external causes”.

In his introduction to a talk in 2006 on the War on Terror Noam Chomsky presents three basic principles  necessary to deal constructively with terrorism. One of them is that “Elementary moral principles matter, even if they have consequences that we would prefer not to face.”   This principle, as he shows, has far-reaching implications when ignored, whether we are talking about the Nuremberg trials, or North American assistance and complicity in atrocities  throughout the world, or Iraq, and the list goes on.

So, could it be a commitment to internal causes of suffering at their most basic that  people on the Left work towards alleviating suffering seemingly due to “external” causes?

Re: Democratic/Republic L/R E/I

So, could it be a commitment to internal causes of suffering at their most basic that  people on the Left work towards alleviating suffering seemingly due to “external” causes?

Yes, but this doesn't refute the internal/external dimension. The important question is what determines human happiness? Happiness is obviously an internal quality, how do people get it? I don't think this should be interpreted to mean that the left never makes arguments from internal causes – for example, that greed is the cause of environmental problems. But how do we solve greed? The left is virtually silent on this question. Similarly, the right sometimes argues from external causes – for example, that the media caused social decay. But if you dig a bit and asked what causes greed, or what caused the media, they revert to their internal/external explanations. Society socializes us to be greedy. The media consists of secularists who abandoned God.

Foreign policy is a bit more tricky, but the anti-war left strongly opposes the idea that war is justified because the enemy is innately evil. The fact that Chomsky emphasizes morality is actually an evolution for him, and for the left overall. Remember 2004 and the obsession with “values”? 

Re: Democratic/Republic L/R E/I

Hi Nicole,

I don't follow US politics closely, so I can't comment on details about the Democrat and Republican parties. I have a few general remarks that I hope can shine a light on this, and I'd like to hear your opinion.

Ken uses the terms Left and Right as meaning relative to the center of the political spectrum, so in that respect I think we can say that the Democrats are on the left of the center of the US. Many would indeed consider the Democrats right-wing in other countries, but these countries have a different political spectrum.

By what you're saying, I get the impression that you translate internal as 'domestic', and external as 'outside of the US', which is not how Ken uses the terms. Please correct me if I misinterpreted you. Have a look at  Chapter 14 of The Many Faces of Terrorism for a more detailed explanation, see pages 12 and 13.

Peter