A Guide to the Perplexed: Some Names of Different Forms of Modern Politics

From here.

The most striking evocations of this new culture war are the now daily examples of the New Left’s flouting of issues and ideas that should unequivocally be nonpartisan, universal concerns – in any normal society, that is.

Note I use the term Left as a form of mutually intelligible shorthand. I realize not all “true leftists” or “classical leftists” adhere to the wild excesses of the current lot, but there’s no easier way to quickly and conveniently refer to the group of people presently strangulating society. If I termed them Progressives, then those would complain instead – nor do I even consider myself a “Right-winger” and mostly disavow the arbitrary binary. So the perceived anti-Leftism doesn’t come from a place of partisan malice in the sense of the classic divide.

If you have a better suggestion on what to call the psychotic miserables currently occupying the totemic placeholder of the ‘Left’, I’m all ears. But for now, the New Left at least differentiates them from you proud Classical Liberal lot.

Just call it the Cultural Left or the Woke Left, and you’ll be fine, my boy.

As you note, a lot of us on the Left despise the Cultural Left as much as you all do. For these Left dissenters, you may call us the Anti-Woke Left, Alternative Left or Alt Left, Economic Reductionist Left, Anti-Identity Politics Left or anti-Id Pol Left, or Socially Conservative Left, etc.

“Classical liberals” tend to be on the Right because that’s a rightwing form of economics. In this sense of Liberalism (Classical Liberalism), the politics advocates “freedom in all things” – economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of civil rights. They tend to be suspicious of big governments of any type. “Neoliberal” economics is actually rightwing or conservative economics.

The problem is that this is confused with “liberal Democrats,” a term that refers to a certain type of somewhat leftwing US politics called “social liberalism.” This is the politics of liberal Democrats here in the US. This social liberalism is not found anywhere else, although Canada has something resembling it that is further to the Left. In both the US and Canada, this means a politics that is left of center yet stops short of actual social democracy. Sort of the middle ground between social democracy and centrism.

I know. It’s completely confused, isn’t it?

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