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Political Conservatism - "Right-Wing" governments - are one form of Political Ideology - a set of beliefs on which a political party or political system are based. Originally, the conservative, or right-wing, part of a Western society was dedicated to a preservation of basic values, like home, family, religion. It favored strong traditions and a reluctance to change. It generally included economic freedom and the idea of 'free enterprise' - the freedom to start businesses and make money. It also included a small government that didn't intrude much into people's lives. None of this seems bad, but slowly the definition changed to include other elements that are more disturbing. Conservatism today includes national support for a strong military for both defense and aggression. And it now includes a strong nationalism. Typically, a conservative political party does not favor social items like pensions or health care, a social welfare system, and it may not pay much attention to education, either. Most conservatives oppose the idea of a welfare state and believe the government should regulate standards, not give money, since private organizations are often better equipped to deal with social problems. US President Ronald Reagan argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom. Today, the US Republican Party is the most striking example of an extreme right-wing government, and the party is completely dominated by right-wing extremists. Oddly, the Democrats are also right-wing, though not as strongly so. We usually say that the US is the only country in the world with two right wings, and it seems that perhaps 75% of the US population would be in this category. It is a generally accepted truth that the US Republican Party today (and in fact the entire US government) is under the control of, and being held hostage by, the radical Right Wing. Israel would be the only other good example of a radical Right-Wing nation, where both the government and much of the general population have not only extreme, but fanatic right-wing majorities. | ||||||||||||
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This is the reason the US has so many private charities - hundreds, if not thousands - collecting money for every 'good' cause. They raise money for the poor, the needy, the sick, the orphans, the homeless. Many of these charities, like the Red Cross, have become huge international organisations while others are local in activity. Supervising these groups is a constant challenge since they spring up very frequently - and sometimes disappear just as often, and since far too many of these 'charities' are outright scams, where the founders spend all the raised money on management salaries and a high lifestyle. And often, even the most respectable charities keep 80% of the money raised for management and marketing, and distribute maybe only 20% to the poor or sick. But in any case, Right-Wing governments like those of the US believe that these social causes are better looked after by the private sector and that government has no place here. Often, in a strong Left-Wing or Liberal society, these charities scarcely have a need to exist because of adequate government social saftey nets. Unfortunately, Health Care, Pensions, Unemployment Insurance, and all other Social Services fall into this same category - where Right-Wing Governments believe it is the responsibility of the private sector, of corporations, or of society to provide for itself, and that government should not pay for this. In most civilised countries, the government provides the hospitals and many other health care facilities, but in the US the hospitals are private businesses and are operated only for a profit. US history abounds with tales of people dying in the parking lots because they didn't have the cash or a credit card to permit admittance to a hospital. And Health Care in the US is extremely expensive - the average cost of a one-night stay in a hospital is more than US$1,500, and for complicated or serious illnesses the cost is between $6,000 and $9,000 per day. During the 2008 economic crisis, millions of American families went bankrupt and lost everything, due to high medical costs and a lack of a national health care system.
We have witnessed the bitter fight in the US where President Obama wanted to expand the health care system - and most of the government, AND a large part of the population, were against it. This would seem bizarre to most people, but the Far Right strongly holds this position. In one Right-Wing province in Canada, a new Premier dismantled almost the entire provincial health care system. He admitted later that he had no clear idea of what he was doing, but that he just 'wanted to save money'. And in fact, the dismantling stopped only when an alarming number of people were dying because of a lack of health care. In many cases, so many hospitals were closed that a seriously ill person might have to take an ambulance 100 or 200 miles to the nearest hospital. This is a typical symptom of the Right-Wing ideology everywhere. | ||||||||||||
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An important part of Right-Wing thinking and government, is that inequaliies in the system are justified, and are indeed a natural phenomemon. Right-wing politics views social and economic classes as the "natural state of man", and rejects attempts to remove these. It is considered acceptable that wealth and power are concentrated in only a few hands or that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. In contrast to Europe and most other countries, the US industrial sector has never placed much value on a highly-skilled and well-trained work force. Workers below the professional level have always been largely untrained, having to learn their skills on the job. The US educational system too, is unlike every other industrialised country. While the top tier of American universities provide a first-class education, that of the lower levels is widely regarded as inferior. It's been sad to watch, but the US has been dumbing-down its educational system for decades, and an increasingly larger portion of the population has no hope of fufulling the American Dream. Education is free at primary and secondary levels but Universities in the US have become so expensive (US$50,000 - US$70,000 per year) that that only the elite can afford them, and those from lower socioeconomic classes have little chance of attending. Wealth distribution in the US is increasingly being concentrated in fewer hands (2009) | ||||||||||||
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Consider these 2009 figures of income and wealth by race in the US:
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The US media are fond of referring to ethnic problems in China, cultural assimilation, something they refer to as 'cultural genocide' they claim is practiced by the government. But in addition to the Native Indians, the US has its own program of domestic cultural genocide that the Right-Wing media ignores. The US is often described culturally as a 'melting pot', meaning that peoples from all across the globe assemble in America and emerge as one homogenised, happy whole. The US talks glibly about treasuring all the cultures that form its society, and the idea has always been promoted as one of the great benefits of 'freedom and democracy'. But that is only propaganda. In a Right-Wing world, this melting pot is precisely what we call cultural genocide. The first generation that immigrates to the US will try to maintain their cultural background, the language, the traditions, the festivals and so on. But for the second generation, this becomes almost impossible. In Elementary School, children will often be ridiculed because of their parents' accents, their sometimes funny ways, because of the strage foods they eat, because of the funny foreign languages they speak, or because of their churches or odd religions. Youngsters have no easy way of dealing with this except to renounce their heritage and try to become like everyone else - which mostly meant adopting the white, anglo-saxon model. That pressure is on everyone from every ethnic group from every country, and it is inescapable. The schools are a major part of this assimilation pressure as is the government itself. And the pressure is precisely to renounce your 'foreign' cultural heritage and become truly white. A US politician was featured recently in the news, with a proposal that all Chinese and other Asians in the US should do away with their foreign names and adopt English ones because the Asian names were too difficult to pronounce. However much the US preaches about respecting minorities, the real life experience is that you can succeed only by escaping your minority and becoming, if you can, part of the majority. And you can do that only by renouncing your heritage, your culture and traditions. The social fabric of Right-Wing North American society will not permit anyone to be very different. There is in fact an intense, if subtle, pressure to conform, because in a Right-Wing world, my way is the only way. To enter this 'melting pot' is to emerge as some kind of homogenised nothingness. It's true the US has Dragon Races and Lion Dances, Chinatowns and Little Italys, and many cultural amusements for tourists to stare at, but that is by no means the same thing as preserving cultures. Europe is different and it has always surprised me that so many geographically small countries could be so close to each other and yet maintain 100% of their individual cultures. The countries in Europe do not 'melt' into each other. You will see a bit of fuzziness near the borders, but when you're 5 kms. inside Italy, you know absolutely that you are no longer in France or Austria or Yugoslavia. In European cities, it used to be so charming to see the coffee shops with a sign board containing the price of coffee in 15 different currencies. In Canada, we might see a USD price, but in the US, you pay in American dollars or you can go back to your own country. China does it much better. With 56 ethnic groups, one would expect pressure to assimilate, but all the evidence points in the opposite direction - the jealous protection of these small groups with different cultures. The government actually does protect and defend these people to prevent their being assimilated. | ||||||||||||
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It is the right-wing ideology that causes most of the trouble in the world, because of its intolerance, the lack of an ability to live and let live. "My way is the right way, the only way, the true way, the way God intended when He created the Universe." "If only you could see clearly, you would understand that MY definitions of freedom and human rights and democracy are the only right way." "If only you could understand, you would want to be like me. And if you still don't get it, then we'll send over some of our B-52s and explain it to you in a way that you WILL understand. If you won't come to 'democracy', then democracy will come to you." | ||||||||||||
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Adversarial means to have an adversary, an opponent against whom you battle. Two people fight and the winner takes everything. The entire US political system is designed this way, as are the legal and justice systems. In politics, the population and the candidates are separated into two camps, according to Right/Left ideology, and then fight a huge and very expensive battle with the winner taking control of the country. In other civilian life, disputes are not settled through mediation or conciliation, because that provides no clear winner or loser, so disputes are most often settled in the courts. The US has more than 20 million lawsuits every year and the number is increasing. This is why the US has 70% of the world's lawyers - one for every 265 people. America has only 20% of China's population, but 10 times as many lawyers. But it isn't only the legal and political systems. In fact, the entire right-wing system - all of US society - is adversarial and strongly individualistic, depending on competition and conflict to decide outcomes. The thinking goes like this: The US is a rich country, full of freedom for each person to realise his potential and acheive his goals. We give you the opportunity, and we don't owe you anything else. So, if you are poor, it's your own fault - you didn't want badly enough to become rich. This is the reason that Americans appear so fanatically focused on their 'rights and freedoms'. The right-wing mentality fosters this attitude; government and society are not so important as the individual, although in fairness to truth, it really is only the elite in the US who are the important individuals. The rest are management class or just workers, and matter much less. This is also the reason that Americans generally focus on "ME" - MY rights, MY freedoms, MY everything - often to the total exclusion of what is best for society or for the country as a whole. It is only the right-wing countries - primarily the US - that thrive on conflict, that prefer a good fight to a good discussion. In these countries, a disagreement requires a clear winner and a clear loser - in either case, due to 'merit'. It is in these countries consisting of winners and losers that individualism grows so fiercely. It goes with the territory. The Right Wing is generally incapable of understanding others who don't share their views, and debating with the Right is often fruitless because their characteristic is a fervent belief they are 'right'. This is the fundamental problem facing the dialogue between China and the US. The USA is far right-wing, fiercely individualistic, and China is at the other end of the scale. | ||||||||||||
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It is interesting that one of the core bases of right-wing political conservatism is the installation and management of fear in the population. This includes the fear of external or internal threat - real or imagined - that can be used to control the people. Right-wing governments, including that of the US, use this fear management to rationalise and justify the privileged elite class system and the embedded inequities and injustices from which they profit. | ||||||||||||
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The Rright-Wing sees everything as a zero-sum game. To them, if I become richer, that can only make you poorer. If I become stronger, that means you are now weaker. It's as if everything were a competition for survival, and the Right Wing permits only the survival of the fittest. | ||||||||||||
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Nationalism is the doctrine that your national culture and interests are superior to any other, and that your nation should act independently to obtain its own goals, and not work collectively with other countries to solve global problems. This is why on many occasions, US nationalism precludes peaceful relations with much of the world. And in fact, right-wing Americans have little tolerance for their own left-wing people. We see Americans marching in the streets, waving flags and yelling, "America - love it or leave it!" Americans have quite a strident nationalism, often unpleasant, loud and offensive. Right-wing nationalism believes in 'the survival of the fittest', for both individuals and countries. The best man or the best country wins; the others are losers. One of the social controls of this nationalism is using the term "Un-American". It is a pejorative term, (insult) in politics and society which is used to describe any actions that deviate from the 'best interests' of the right-wing. It means to be subversive, unpatriotic or deviant, considered contrary to the best interests of the United States. The US government actually has a high-ranking Senate Committee called the House Un-American Activities Committee, which is charged with identifying such 'deviant' behavior. That would be like China establishing a top-level group of officials to seek out and destroy any "Un-Chinese" thinking in the country. The US is the only country with this kind of extreme nationalism. | ||||||||||||
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Jingoism is an extreme patriotism, an extreme type of nationalism, and we see this demonstrated in the US in two main ways: | ||||||||||||
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It is interesting that most of the large media in the US are owned or controlled by the far right-wing, which is quite efficient at reporting only the news that fits their agenda. And much, or most, of the news reporting is biased and slanted, to fit the interests of this group. More than that, they will on occasion totally fabricate news stories to further this agenda. This topic will be examined further in the Sections on Media. | ||||||||||||
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The US has always retained a great fear of government systems dissimilar to its own, and it focused most of its attention on communism. In fact, even a mildly socialist government would almost always attract a hugely disproportionate response from the US - typically a military one. After World War II, anti-communism became an integral part of the domestic and foreign policy of the United States, and focused on patriotism and nationalism. Communists were seen as enemies of capitalism, and battling communism was the main priority of US foreign policy. Often in the past, the US has supported the most brutal dicatatorships, if they were hostile to communism. The US approved of repressions, suspension of civil rights and the abolition of democracies, so long as these nations would battle communism. That's why the US interfered in China, supporting Chiang Kai-shek, and why they intervened in Vietnam and so many other places. | ||||||||||||
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Government support for the majority religion has from the beginning of the movement been a major part of right-wing politics. Today in the US, the 'religion' being supported is the far-right Christian church - not a moderate religion. It is interesting to note that while a God, any God, is normally described as a God of Love and Tolerance, more horrible wars and human-rights travesties have been committed in the name of religion - in fact, torturing and killing in God's name, for his glory, presumably. It isn't only the Christian West that has started wars, but that relatively small part of humanity has had much more than its share. And in fact, without the interference of the Christian West, the rest of the world would have had far fewer wars and injustices. But, as George W. Bush said, "God told me to go to Iraq" - and kill maybe a million people? | ||||||||||||
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A Socialist state is more left-wing, and cares more about equality, about relieving the misery of the poor. It cares more about health care and education, about a Social Saftey Net for its citizens. Generally, the tax rates are higher, to support these government programs. It is more concerned with the role and responsibility of society, of government, of the community as a whole, and the government plays a larger role in the country. Law and order tends to be more relaxed. Left-wing parties and governments are not normally belligerent and do not typically start shooting wars. | ||||||||||||