I enjoy reading the work of those with whom I fundamentally disagree. I've just finished Yoram Hazony's "The Struggle for Israel's Soul", an impassioned defense of the tenets of traditional Zionism. I always enjoy Stephen King's articles and the thoughts of Pat Buchanan. I find that reading things from the opposite side of the political spectrum helps to take me out of my intellectuial comfort zone, that it improves my mental rigour to think "why is this worng?"
When I picked up a copy of Rush Limbaugh's "See, I Told You So" a few months back, I was expecting to be similarly challenged. I knew little of his actual work, more of his reputation as the voice of Republican America. I was hoping for sharp, incisive, right-wing argument. I was deeply disappointed. Once one overcomes the man's quite staggering ego, one finds that Limbaugh has little of interest to say.
A typical Limbaugh argument tends to make sense for a superficial period of time, say the first second and a half, before logic rudely intrudes and reduces it to absurdity. My favourite of his pithy one-liners is the assertion that liberals believe that choice is " something good when it comes to abortion, something bad when it comes to education."
Yeah! Good straight-talking...oh shit, no hang on a minute. Limbaugh says that liberals are inconsistent in their application of "choice" yet no-one on this planet would defend "choice" in any and all circumstances, it is not an absolute. I should have the choice of what type of shampoo to buy, but I shouldn't have the choice of whether or not to steal said shampoo rather than paying for it. But even if one did accept Limbaugh's logic that choice is an absolute, wouldn't conservatives then be open to the same criticism that they believe in "choice" for education but not for abortion?
For me, this points to the fact that Limbaugh is a propagandist rather than a serious thinker. However he did make one point in his book which piqued my interest when he wrote:
"...it doesn't take any guts to be a liberal. It's the easiest decision you could ever make in your life...All you have to do to be a good liberal is to say yes to everything, except cutting spending and downsizing government...All you have to do to prove your compassion is to say yes..."
This got me thinking, is conservatism really the more difficult choice for a person to make? It seems to me that, on the contrary, to be left-wing (I'm a European so I don't "do" the liberal versus conservative dichotomy) is the tougher option.
Left and right are labels which encompass many different attitudes and policy prescriptions, so I must speak in very general terms here. To my mind, what divides left from right is their view of human nature. Leftists believe that collective political action can improve the condition of humanity, while those on the right see our unjust world as either inevitable or necessary or both. I would charcterise this as the difference between optimism and pessimism. Conservatives might well respond that it is actually the difference between naivety and realism. But either way, this basic dichotomy serves as a useful point of reference.
With this in mind, it seems to me that to be left-wing is much more difficult than to be right-wing. Conservatism is, in some ways our default position. Part of the conservative mentality is the urge to shrug one's shoulders and say "life's a bitch, nothing I can do about it". It's much harder by contrast to believe, as leftists do, that the human race can actually improve its lot, that we can reduce poverty, increase tolerance, strengthen human rights. The easier option is to accept this injustice, to celebrate it even.
There's an exceptionally well-worn cliche that if you're not liberal at 20 you don't have a heart but if you haven't turned conservative by the time you're 30, you don't have a brain. I disagree with this truism but still, it points to an incontestable fact, that the older you are, the more likely you are to be right-wing. This holds true, to the best of my knowledge, in every single democratic society.
Conservatives would have you believ that this is because "wisdom comes with age", but there is another, more intriguing explanation. It could be that as people age, they lose the energy to be angry. They are so worn down intellectually by the evident injustice of the world that they come to accept it. If this is true then drifting rightward as you age is a sign, not of wisdom, but rather of submission.
Isn't there something wonderful about those who refuse to submit, the old unrepentant lefties, shaking their walking sticks in anger at the unfairness of it all? How can they be said to be taking the easy option?
So I disagree with Mr. Limbaugh's "conservatism is tough" argument, but it does at least hold up a lot longer than his average offering.