The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Make the Left-Right Divide History David Fleming at Independent Alliance asked me to do a piece summarising my thoughts on the Left-Right Divide. Here it is. RUSERE SHONIWA We have to go all the way back to the  French Revolution  in 1789 to trace the roots of the Left-Right political divide that permeates political discourse in the West today. The burning issue brought before the French National Constitutive Assembly in 1789 was whether the king should have absolute veto power under the new political regime or whether that power should be restricted. When voting on the issue, those who wanted the monarch to retain absolute veto power sat to the right of the president, while those who favoured restricting the power of the monarch congregated to the left. Ever since then, the labels of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ have been used to demarcate political opinion across a wide spectrum of issues from economic policy to law, civil rights and even religious attitudes. At this epochal moment in histor

While I think his description of the modern "Right" is a bit too rosy, I found his comparison of the Left-Right paradigm to the hemispheres of the brain to be interesting.  For me, this essay also illustrates why it may be best not to identify oneself with the Left or the Right; that it is wise to appreciate the necessity of both. The Internet is a Brain With Schizophrenia Right and left as neural net JOHN CARTER Alex Rommel There’s been a lot of discussion recently over the principle of NETTR – No Enemies To The Right. This is an idea that has been kicking around in right wing circles for about a decade now, originating with the observation that Western political discourse has for generations been characterized by a fundamental asymmetry: the centre-left typically does not criticize the radical left on moral grounds, framing their excesses as originating from well-meaning enthusiasm, whereas the centre-right actively distances itself from the right’s own radical fringe on mo