Covid killed the left/right spectrum

Political Loyalties Have Been Blown Up | Brownstone Institue - Jeffrey A. Tucker: 

April 18, 2022 - "Before lockdowns of Spring 2020, media rhetoric had divided the American population into two camps: pro- and anti-Trump. It was an easy way to think even if it came nowhere near describing me, my friends, or most people. Then came the virus. It made an enormous mess out of this simple outlook. 

"[President Donald] Trump kept changing his position not only on the threat level but also what to do about it. He went from comparing the virus to the annual flu in January 2020 to calling for a nationwide lockdown at a March 16 press conference, before changing his mind again a few months later and urging everyone to move on. Of that lockdown order, center-left publication Vox, which had been firmly in the anti-Trump camp for the previous five years, immediately praised the press conference. For the astute, this should have been a sign that something fishy was going on. 

"But this praise for panic – and the use of despotic power without precedent to wield against a virus – was itself very strange. For the previous two months, the center left and left in the media were very clearly downplaying the virus and nowhere calling for lockdowns. In other words, they were saying in January and February what Trump was saying at the time. 

"Here are some examples of what people have entirely forgotten.... 

• January 30, 2020, MSNBC... 'Americans are too worried about the new coronavirus that’s spreading rapidly across China,” former White House health advisor Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel told CNBC on Thursday. 'Everyone in America should take a very big breath, slow down, and stop panicking and being hysterical,' said Emanuel, who served during Barack Obama’s presidency. “We are having a little too much histrionics on this'....
• Slate ... March 4, 2020. "There are many compelling reasons to conclude that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is not nearly as deadly as is currently feared. But COVID-19 panic has set in nonetheless ... which is frankly understandable given that initial reports have staked COVID-19 mortality at about 2–3 percent.... Allow me to be the bearer of good news. These frightening numbers are unlikely to hold. The true case fatality rate, known as CFR, of this virus is likely to be far lower.... Even some lower estimates, such as the 1 percent death rate recently mentioned by the directors of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, likely substantially overstate the case'.... COVID-19 is a relatively benign disease for most young people, and a potentially devastating one for the old and chronically ill, albeit not nearly as risky as reported'.... 
• Psychology Today: "The coronaviruses are cold viruses.... We know how cold viruses work: They cause runny noses, sneezing, cough, and fever, and make us feel tired and achy. For almost all of us, they run their course without medication. And in the vulnerable, they can trigger a more severe illness.... Yes, this virus is different and worse than other coronaviruses, but it still looks very familiar. We know more about it than we don’t know….It’s scary to think that an invisible enemy is out there to make you sick. But your doctor is not panicking, and you don’t need to'....
• Or we can look to Fauci himself, writing on February 28, 2020, in the New England Journal of Medicine, in an article co-signed by Charles Lane (of junket fame) and CDC head Robert Redfield: "If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS'....

"Whatever you think about these predictions, and there is still vast uncertainty about many aspects of this virus (thanks to testing inaccuracies and the degree of death misclassification), these voices were clearly counseling calm. Two weeks later, all hell broke loose, and this same ideological camp spent the next two years in a state of panicked meltdown and an attempt to keep the public living in fear for as long as possible. This was followed by a demonization campaign against the unvaccinated, from the very people who all swore that the 'Trump vaccine' would surely be dangerously corrupt.... What changed and why? It wasn’t the data,,,, Something else was going on. The entire pandemic became politicized....

"Two years later, with Trump out of power, the same public voices have again defaulted to dividing the population by the old terms: “liberals” vs “conservatives.” It’s become tremendously annoying not to mention wildly inaccurate. Oddly, most of the views attributed to the 'liberals' are essentially illiberal: opposed to free speech, against choice on vaccination[;] supportive of lockdowns and restrictions, segregating the population, making fun of people who want freedom and resent how it has been stolen from people in the guise of pandemic planning....

"Meanwhile, there is nothing about the people labeled 'conservative' who favor conserving anything about the current-day operation about politics. Quite the opposite: they are defending free speech against censorship, angry at elite management of life, and for toppling the administrative states’ power to rule the country and world without democratic consent. And this group is also more likely to favor diplomacy over saber rattling in foreign affairs. 

"I can’t imagine how confusing this must be for people whose English is a second language, much less those who have only a passing familiarity with American political culture.... From your own experience and conversations, you know what hardly anyone wants to admit. There has been a massive scrambling of political and ideological loyalties throughout the population over these past two years, as trust in so many institutions has dramatically fallen. There is no longer a predictable way to discern the friends of freedom from its enemies based on past loyalties and opinions.

"The last two years have confounded everyone who believed in the stability of American law, politics, public opinion, and the ideological attachments of both pundits and the general population. It’s all been turned upside down and inside out several times over. Anyone who thinks that we’ve all settled back into some mythical comfort bubbles of 'liberals' vs 'conservatives' is refusing to face post-pandemic politico-cultural realities.  

"Similarly, terms like left and right, and even independent and libertarian, have proven almost useless in predicting people’s responses to a respiratory virus and hence attitudes toward pandemic policy. The last two years have challenged political and ideological conventions like no other force in our lifetimes, and will likely lead to a rethinking and realignment, same as war and depression have in the past."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/political-loyalties-have-been-blown-up/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Conservatism vs. classical liberalism

Conservatism and Classical Liberalism Don’t Share the Same Values - James Peron, The Radical Centre:

November 3, 2018 - "Too many sympathizers to libertarian ideas think the core of liberalism is free markets and thus they fall for the delusion that conservatives are some variant of 'classical liberal,' because they claim to support markets.

"But, a classical liberal holds to individual rights as his core value, not markets. Markets are derivatives of rights theory ... intertwined with the liberal theory of rights. Conservatives tend to oppose individual rights for collectivist concepts. The 'common good' comes before individual rights to them.... It is no different with the illiberal Left, who make similar arguments.

"Individual rights means individualism  —  something for which conservatives don’t care. They are advocates of the herd, they preach social conformity in the name of tradition. They are happy for you to be free regarding which toothpaste to buy, just not thrilled if you assert the right to pick which person to marry....

"Economics, while individualistic at its core, is also very herd oriented.... Human economic needs are global, pervasive, and common to all ... what Abraham Maslow called lower order needs....

"Economic needs are not particularly individualistic. Thus conservatives don’t immediately oppose this freedom in the short term. I do think they oppose it in the long term, and there were plenty of times in history when conservatives opposed it in the short term as well.... Conservatives have not been friends of free markets overall. Economic rights just aren’t seen as automatically threatening to the conservative herd identity.

"What really gets the conservative’s back up is social freedom [or] freedom in the ... non-market realm. It is linked to markets but it is heavily about individualistic wants and needs, or what Maslow called self-actualization needs. Lower order needs tend to be relatively similar for all. Higher order needs are strongly individualized.

"The conservative is happy with freedom for the herd  —  that is in those areas where everyone has roughly similar needs — just not freedom for the individual  —  where needs and wants are unique, individualistic, perhaps even idiosyncratic or eccentric....

"The smaller the minority the more likely, I suggest, the conservative is to attack it. The closer it gets to the unique individual, the further it drifts from the herd, and conservative values are ultimately herd values. Theirs were values fit for a world where food was scarce and life was primitive....

"For the conservative mind it is easy to be 'liberal' when it comes to property rights, difficult when it comes to gender identity, same-sex marriage, religious skepticism, etc.... Given the consensus in favor of markets — impure ones perhaps, but still markets — it is much more telling to discover how much social freedom one is willing to grant. Where they stand on rights for LGBT people, or 'illegal' drugs, or censorship of erotica, is more indicative as to whether they are a classical liberal than their position on price controls or lower taxes."

Read more: https://medium.com/the-radical-center/conservatism-and-classical-liberalism-dont-share-the-same-values-25d80dd8b902
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Libertarians the most analytic voters, study finds

Study of Politics and Analytical Thinking Puts Libertarians on Top - Bloomberg - Tyler Cown:

March 28, 2018 - "You might think being 'analytical' is a good thing. We associate 'analysis' with people who are smart, well-informed and relatively dispassionate in their assessments.

"You might think that politics is an area where being analytical is especially useful. If you do, well, I have news for you: Libertarians measure as being the most analytical political group. That’s according to something called the cognitive reflection test, which is designed to measure whether an individual will override his or her immediate emotional responses and give a question further consideration. So if you aren’t a libertarian, maybe you ought to give that philosophy another look. It’s a relatively exclusive club, replete with people who are politically engaged, able to handle abstract arguments and capable of deeper reflection.

"What else can we learn from this new study of political and analytical tendencies, conducted by Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand of Yale University?

"For the 2016 election, one group that measured as especially nonanalytical was Democrats who crossed party lines and voted for Donald Trump. There is a stereotype of a less well-educated voter, perhaps both white and male, who reacts negatively and emotionally to Hillary Clinton... For all the dangers of stereotyping, the study’s data are consistent with that picture.

"Both nonvoters and independents do poorly on the analytic dimension. There is a myth of a reasonable, rational politically independent America, sitting in the middle of the spectrum, weighing arguments carefully and seeing which candidate or party has the better ideas and platform. In reality, that group measures as relatively impulsive and prone to less informed judgments.

"If you are a Democrat, you might take some cheer in the fact that Democrats/liberals measure as somewhat more analytical than Republicans/conservatives. But ... individuals who are conservative along economic dimensions measure as more analytical than those who are not, again on average.... The opposite is true for social conservatives, by the way: They are less analytical on average.

"Do these results, combined with the presumption that being analytical is good, mean you really ought to be a libertarian? Well, no ... First, any test has biases, and this test was conducted online, as was earlier and broadly compatible work by other researchers. Maybe it is only the internet-savvy libertarians who have greater analytical skills.... Second, being very analytical in some ways puts you out of touch with the American citizenry.... Extremely analytical leaders might be best for managing an organization of predominantly analytical people, but that doesn’t mean they will be good national politicians. "

Read this: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-28/study-of-politics-and-analytical-thinking-puts-libertarians-on-top
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Libertarians should campaign to take the center

Libertarians' Only Chance At Success Is Winning From The Center, Not The Extremes - The Jack News:

November 7, 2017 - "Libertarians have many ways to describe their political philosophy to those unfamiliar with the term. David F. Nolan, one of the primary co-founders of the Libertarian Party, used a method that has become a familiar sight ...[a] simple 10 by 10 grid, ... oriented as a diamond.

"On one axis, is a category labeled 'economic freedom,' and on the other 'personal freedom.' The familiar left-liberals and right-conservatives are shown in opposite corners. The libertarian quadrant occupies the top of the chart, at the center. Beneath it, falls the category variously labeled as populists or authoritarians [or totalitarian - gd], and in between fall centrists.

"This concept is familiar to political scientists, and ... reflects the broad idea that libertarians tend to agree with the right more on free markets and economic policy, and more with the left on personal freedoms, social issues, and civil liberties....

"Critics are quick to point out that it’s an imperfect visualization of more complex alignments and disagreements among different political ideologies.'Fiscally conservative and socially liberal' is an incomplete description at best. But it can also convey the broad strokes of how libertarians compare to typical Republicans and Democrats.....

"Even for those who push for a more radical branding, an important part of the message is that libertarianism is equidistant from both the left and right, or that it is distinct and apart from both..... The traditional target for Libertarian campaigns aren’t the hardcore base of Republicans or Democrats, but instead among Libertarians, among independents, and among voters disaffected from either of the two major parties....

"[T]here are some within the liberty movement – those who go by the paleolibertarian label – who would like to see libertarianism move in a more populist direction.... In this way, they might hope to become a part of and influence to movement conservatism, the GOP, and whatever the party will look like after Donald Trump comes out the other end.... You can already see this tilt in Sen. Rand Paul. His strategy has always appeared to be one of working within the mainstream of the Republican Party. Recently, he has downplayed or even mov[ed] to the right on social issues such as immigration and gay marriage.

"But Sen. Paul isn’t alt-right, sticking instead to a more mainstream sort of conservative-libertarian fusionism. This contrasts with the more extreme strain of the paleolibertarian movement includ[ing] such figures as Hans Herman-Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, and others associated with the Mises Institute..... The paleolibertarian alignment ... is a strategy to influence and remake the populist far right. That can include supporting so-called anti-establishment candidates, like Pat Buchanan, Klansman David Duke, and Roy Moore. It includes not just downplaying or watering down libertarian positions on social issues, but radically reversing them and embracing cultural and social conservatism. In turn, this leads to backlash and disputes with more mainstreams libertarian institutions....

"But at a time when both major parties are clearly fleeing the center, and partisan bipolarization is at record highs, there is an opportunity in selling libertarianism as the governing strategy of the only grown-ups in the room.... [T]he liberty movement can build an electoral coalition from the center outward.... There is something in it for everybody, and there’s a coherent guiding principle that ties it all together."

Read more: https://www.thejacknews.com/politics/libertarians-chance-success-winning-from-center-not-extreme-far-right-left/
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Why are there no libertarian countries?

Why are there no libertarian countries? - George J. Dance, Nolan Chart:

April 29, 2017 - "'Libertarians and anarchists often get challenged with an annoying question,' Warren Redlich, the CEO of Independent Political Report and a former Libertarian Party candidate, recently wrote:  'If libertarianism is so great, why hasn’t any country tried it?'

"There is no doubt that the question has been asked often, and that it is meant to be annoying. Consider the source: Michael Lind. Lind, for those who have never heard of him, is a writer for the New America Foundation who has achieved some online notoriety as a professional anti-libertarian. (A google search on 'Lind libertarianism' turns up more than 100,000 hits.)

"Lind first came to my attention when he proclaimed 'the collapse of libertarianism as a political force' back in November 2007 – just in time for the birth of the Ron Paul Revolution. In fact, though, he was heralding 'the utter and final defeat of … the libertarian counter-revolution.' before that, and he has continued to do so since: most recently in 2015, when he pontificated that 'the libertarian moment [Rand Paul] symbolized is over.' (To be fair, he also pontificated in his 2015 article that 'There was never a libertarian moment in the United States' – which gets one wondering just what keeps collapsing.)

"But constantly heralding the end of something that never existed in the first place must get boring after a while; so in 2013 Lind came up with a new angle: the above question, smugly packaged as 'The Question Libertarians Just Can’t Answer.' That had such a great reception that he followed it up within days with two more articles, with equally-revealing titles, 'Why Libertarians are Basically Cult Members,' and 'Grow Up, Libertarians!'

Given this genesis, there is no wonder that anti-libertarians ask the question often, and that they do so mainly to annoy libertarians. But there is really nothing annoying about the question itself. The absence of libertarian countries is a phenomenon in need of an explanation, and trying to provide one could shed some light on little-explored areas of political theory. So it is worth attempting an answer."

Read more: https://www.nolanchart.com/why-are-there-no-libertarian-countries
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Poll finds most Canadians distrust governments

Majority of Canadians distrust government: poll suggests - Home | The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti | CBC Radio:

February 16, 2017 - "In a recent Edelman poll, only 43 per cent of Canadians say they trust their government — down from 53 per cent a year earlier.

"And 80 per cent of Canadians feel the country's elites are out of touch.

"The findings in the so-called Trust Barometer survey conducted annually by public relations firm Edelman is the first time in 17 years that Canada has joined the ranks of "distruster" countries in which more than half of citizens say they distrust their civic institutions.

"Author and journalist Susan Delacourt says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be really concerned. This spike in distrust and cynicism is the same sentiment that propelled Donald Trump to the White House, and it is gaining ground here....

"Compared to a year ago after Prime Minister Trudeau was first elected, Delacourt says trust in government and the media has slipped 10 per cent.

"The decline in numbers, Delacourt suggests, is most likely because of what is unfolding in the U.S. before and after Trump's election.

"'We saw a year in which the media and the people inside the political bubble had failed to anticipate Brexit and failed to anticipate Trump. And I think that people out there are noticing,' Delacourt tells Lynch.

"In September, Delacourt wrote a column suggesting Prime Minister Trudeau and U.S. President Trump have 'similar disruptive styles to politics.' 'Trudeau ran as an outsider. I don't know if you remember the first day of the 2015 election campaign. He was the leader who chose not to be in Ottawa. He portrayed Ottawa as a problem'....

"The challenge for Trudeau to restore trust in Canadians, according to Delacourt, is to live up to the promise made in his speeches, which is to connect people back to politics."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-february-16-2017-1.3984460/majority-of-canadians-distrust-government-poll-suggests-1.3984577
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Trump era is libertarians' opportunity

Donald Trump and the Libertarian Future - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Nick Gillespie & Veronique de Rugy:

January 20, 2017 - "Donald Trump is nobody's idea of a libertarian but his presidency provides a tremendous opportunity to advance libertarian policies, outcomes, and aspirations in our politics and broader culture. Those of us who believe in reducing the size, scope, and spending of the federal government and expanding the autonomy, opportunities, and ability of people to live however they choose should welcome the Trump era. That's not because of the new president's agenda but because he enters office as the man who will inevitably close out a failing 20th-century model of governance....

"Trump enters the White House with historically low approval ratings. This is not merely his fault by any stretch. His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, was similarly distrusted, a reflection of broad loss of faith not in this or that candidate but the entire political system and especially the two major parties, Congress, and most parts of the federal government. Our declining faith and confidence in government are direct results of failures in government to deliver what it promises and, as a majority has long believed, a belief that it is trying to do too much. Trump is coming after not just eight years of an imperial presidency but 16 years of such behavior. For the entirety of the 21st century, the White House has been occupied by men who consistently arrogated more and more power to themselves, often only advancing their complex and self-serving legal arguments in secret or amongst their own advisers.

"Trump's bullying personality, seemingly boundless egotism, and personal vindictiveness simply pour gasoline on the fire that is already lit. Serious conservatives and, at least temporarily, many conventional liberals have a heightened appreciation of limiting government power, especially in the executive branch. From secret kill lists to limitless surveillance to an endless list of presidential orders on everything from workplace rules to immigration, Obama 'leaves a loaded gun in the Oval Office' for his successor....

"Washington is broke, unpopular, and dysfunctional. The only important question is what will come next. Clearly, we need a government that spends less and does less but also appeals to most Americans of whatever ideological persuasion. We know what sort of operating system has improved our commercial, cultural, and personal lives: It's one that flows directly from libertarian ideas about maximizing options for individuals and the groups they form.... The trick, of course, is to translate that live-and-let live ethos, the cornucopia model into politics and government, which by definition precludes exit. Here, Trump's brashness and divisiveness is forcing all of us to realize government isn't and can't be all things to all people without endless conflict....

"By a two-to-one margin (60 percent to 30 percent), Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a dread that was energized by the two main choices for president offered us in 2016.... A future in which government is disrupted and diminished — and individuals are empowered and enlivened — is possible, but only if we make it happen." "

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/20/donald-trump-and-the-libertarian-future
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Documentary looks at how US politics is Rigged (video)

The Election Isn't Rigged, But The Political System Is. - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Nick Gillespie:

October 18, 2016 - "I'd like to point you to a great new hour-long documentary that explores the ways in which ordinary Americans and their concerns are systematically shut out from political discourse. Not right there at the polling place, of course, but much, much further upstream....

"Underwritten by Overstock.com's CEO Patrick Byrne and featuring a calvacade of libertarian-leaning commentators such as Matt Kibbe, Glenn Beck, and yours truly (in a brief appearance), Rigged 2016 analyzes why politics and elections never seem to engage the concerns and views of voters and citizens who refuse to identify as either Republican or Democrat. It also gets at why the two major parties are losing members like nobody's business.

"Below is the trailer and ... the website for the full, hour-long film, which you can watch for free online. "Do Not Vote For President Until You See This Film," reads the tag line. It's sage advice."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2016/10/18/the-election-isnt-rigged-but-the-politic
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Watch complete film at: http://www.rigged2016.com/