The three pillars of right-wing ideology and how we can win elections without moving to the right

[Bjorn Against]

The pundits are always telling us that our candidates need to move to the center to win over voters. What they never explain however is how it is possible for a member of congress to take a centrist position on a bill. When a bill is voted on our members of Congress either vote “yes” or they vote “no”, but there is never an option to cast a vote halfway between yes and no.

Because there is never a centrist option when it comes to voting our pundits have came up with a simple solution to define what the center is, to them the way to be a centrist is to vote for the Republican position. It doesn’t matter where the American people stand on any particular issue, if a Democrat votes with Republicans our media considers them to be a centrist even if their votes go against what the vast majority of Americans want.

By doing this they have created a world in which a person is considered to be in the middle of the political spectrum if they support the HMOs and insurance companies deciding who gets health care and who doesn’t, despite the fact that a large majority of the American people want universal health care.

They have decided that it is a centrist position to support so-called “free-trade” deals despite the fact that most Americans who have an understanding of these trade deals oppose them.

They have decided that it is a centrist position to want to continue the occupation of Iraq indefinitely despite the fact that most Americans want to get out of Iraq as soon as possible.

They have decided that it is a centrist position to support immunity for telecom companies that illegally handed off our private data to the Bush Administration despite the fact that most people don’t want Bush to have the ability to listen in on their phone calls without a warrant.

On issue after issue our pundits have decided that the centrist position is the Republican position and they warn us that if we don’t embrace the Republican position voters will punish us in November. Even when we are outpolling Republicans in virtually every area we are told that we need to become more like the people that the voters are rejecting if we want to win.

Quite often people buy into this line of reasoning because it has been drilled into their head so many times, but I can assure you that becoming more like Republicans is not going to win over voters. Now people can try to suggest that I don’t understand how things work in American politics, they will say that I am just a far left extremist and I could never understand the more conservative Americans that we need to win over.

The problem with this argument however is that I do understand how many on the right think, in fact I used to hold some very right-wing views myself. I was once a Libertarian who towed the party line on virtually every issue, but seven years ago I converted to a leftist. Not a centrist, not even a liberal, but a leftist.

People are probably wondering how I could make such a radical shift, but it is really quite simple. Right-wing ideology is held up by certain key pillars of belief, and once one of those pillars collapses the ideology will collapse along with it. There are three key pillars holding up right-wing ideology, one of them is based on religion, one of them is based on militarism, and the third one is based on capitalism. Those whose faith in right-wing ideology is based in religion needs to be able to trust what their pastor tells them is true, those whose faith is based on militarism need to trust the Pentagon, and those whose faith is based on capitalism need to trust in the corporation.

For some right-wingers all three of these pillars are very solid in their foundations, and all three will need to be chipped away at in order to convert them. For a person like myself who was a Libertarian however the only one of these pillars that was holding up my ideology was the pillar that was based on faith in capitalism. I was never very religious, and I have never been a cheerleader for the Pentagon so the other two pillars were never there for me to begin with. There are other right-wingers who are only right-wingers because of the religious teachings they have heard or their connection to the military, and for them the capitalism pillar would not be nearly as important. The trick to converting people is not to go after their weak pillars however, as those are not the pillars that are supporting their ideology. It is the strong pillars that are supporting the ideology, and once you are able to chip away at the strong pillars enough their entire ideology will collapse and they will have nowhere to move but to the left.

As a person whose faith in right-wing ideology was held up by the pillar of capitalism, I had a great deal of faith in corporations. I trusted the market to be able to work things out when there were problems, and I did not want government interfering in the market because I trusted the corporations who ran the market to do the right-thing. I was told that if these corporations did not do the right thing consumers would punish them and they would go out of business, so all corporations would have an economic incentive to act in an ethical manner.

In the late nineties a worldwide movement grew that was made up of people who were protesting so-called “free-trade” deals such as NAFTA, as well as organizations like the WTO and IMF. Of course Clinton was a big supporter of “free-trade” agreements during his time in office, and as a right-winger I could not stand Clinton so I was quite entertained by watching thousands of people march in the streets to protest him.

But then I started to hear their message, and it turned out they were not just attacking Clinton but they were chipping away at the pillar that was holding up my ideology. They were pointing out all kinds of abuses which were being committed by multi-national corporations, and I could not justify the abuses that they were bringing attention to. I started to realize that corporations were not always rejected by consumers when they behaved unethically, and in fact corporations were making huge profits by disregarding ethics. My faith in the corporation started to die rapidly, and as my faith in the corporation died that key pillar that was supporting my ideology collapsed.

I could not be a right-winger any longer, there was no place for me to go but to the left. I certainly wasn’t about to embrace “centrists” like Bill Clinton or Joe Lieberman who supported these “free-trade” deals because they held the same views that I knew I needed to abandon, it was only the progressives and the leftists who could win me over.

Right now as we are seeing people abandon the Republican Party in record numbers, and I think we are witnessing the ideological pillars of a large number of Americans collapse in the same way as the pillar of my own ideology collapsed. People witnessed their ideology fail under this administration, and they are realizing that they were wrong. They are embracing Democrats not because the Democrats have moved to the “center”, but because they realize that their own values require them to move in a different direction. People don't leave their party because they want to go to another party that is the same, people leave their party because they want change. Adopting Republican ideas is not the way to win Republicans to your side, if someone wanted Republican ideas they would vote for a Republican. The way to win people over is to show them that the Republican way is wrong, and to destroy their faith in the Republican brand.

We can win without selling out our values, I converted and I am witnessing others from all across the nation converting at this very moment. It is time to stop listening to the pundits, and it is time to stand up for what we believe in.

[readmoreoften]

1. Voters don't want any of this nonsense. It's a cover for Democrats to line the pockets of industry.

When Democrats say "well, the centrists want me to vote pro-defense, pro-corporate, and pro-surveillance" what that really means that the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex is threatening to broadcast that said candidate losing the centrist vote and will, hence, therefore lose the election. The military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex continues to enjoy two candidates who represents their interests over the American people.

[Bjorn Against]

2. Yes, to them centrism is what their advertisers want to be centrism

Watch the evening news and you will see that it is sponsored by advertising dollars from the auto industry (which is tied to the oil industry), the pharmaceutical industry, Wal-Mart, and all of the other corporate interests. They are representing the interests of those who line their pockets, and they want to pretend that the American people have the same interests as their advertisers. Their version of "centrism" doesn't represent where the American people stand, it represents where corporate America stands.

[readmoreoften]

3. It's a fictional position that simply means "half-way to everything a corporation could want"

They ask Americans to give them half of what they want, knowing that they can ask for the other half later. They're not greedy.

[Bjorn Against]

4. But they go a lot more than half-way...

When they talk about "free trade" they rarely talk about labor or environmental concerns, and taking a middle position on those issues. To them you are either for "free-trade" or you are against it, and being for it is considered the centrist position while being against it is the far left position. They don't do nuance, and they always consider the Republican position to be the centrist position.

[Bjorn Against]

5. A note on the religion pillar...

While I have never been very religious, I believe that this is the most difficult pillar to chip away at because religious beliefs are so deeply ingrained. What people need to realize however, is that in order to chip away at the aspects of religion that contribute to right-wing ideology we do not have to chip away at the entire religion we just need people to question their own interpretation of that religion. It is a lot easier to get people to question their pastor than it is to get them to question their entire faith.