An interesting Right vs. Left “interview” that is closer to being a debate.
I tend to view political ideologies in the same way that I view religions in the sense that I don’t think any of them are “true.” Instead, these are collections of myths and archetypes that people use to order their own psyche, and as common bonds with which to form community with others.
I would approach political conflict in a way that was fairly similar to that of Hobbes, who was concerned about the constant warfare between rival religious sects and royal dynasties during his own time. He didn’t really believe any of these had “truth” on their side, but simply that they were contending interests struggling for power. We have a very similar situation today where various ideologies, cultural and ethnic groups, economic interests, and perspectives on contentious issues are struggling for power in a similar way, leading to the various conflicts we see in our own society. Like Hobbes before me, I really don’t care who is “right” in most of these conflicts, and doubt that anyone has “truth” (as opposed to self-interest) on their side. The Wikipedia entry on the “Left-Right political spectrum” defines the various ideological divisions in this way:
Generally, the left wing is characterized by an emphasis on “ideas such as equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform, and internationalism,” while the right wing is characterized by an emphasis on “notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism.”
Political scientists and other analysts regard the Left as including anarchists,communists, socialists and social democrats, left-libertarians, progressives, and social liberals.Movements for racial equality are also usually linked with left-wing organizations. Trade unionism is also associated with the left.
Political scientists and other analysts regard the Right as including Christian democrats, conservatives, right-libertarians, neoconservatives, imperialists, monarchists, fascists, reactionaries, and traditionalists.
A number of significant political movements—including feminism and regionalism—do not fit precisely into the left-right spectrum. Nationalism is often regarded as characteristic of the right, although nationalism is also sometimes present in the left. Populism is regarded as having both left-wing and right-wing manifestations (see left-wing populism, right-wing populism). Green politics is often regarded as a movement of the left, but in some ways the green movement is difficult to definitively categorize as left or right.
This is a pretty good definition of the various divisions, and if there had been such a thing as Wikipedia four hundred years ago, the divisions might have been defined in terms of dynastic loyalties and sectarian religious rivalries. Hobbes’ primary concern involved the question of how to achieve civil peace in the face of such conflict. He ultimately favored an absolute monarch that would rule in the manner of a Saddam Hussein-like figure on the presumption that it would be within the cracks in tyranny that civilization would emerge. The thought of Hobbes opened the door for the development of classical liberalism, which essentially amounts to the idea that “order is not enough, humanity also needs freedom.” In the modern world, ideological and interest group rivalries have replaced religious and dynastic rivalries, and the managerial plutocratic state has replaced the absolute monarchy. Consequently, the principle question asked by Hobbes and the early Enlightenment thinkers remains, “How does civilization achieve order plus freedom?”