April 12, 2009
Right Wing Schizophrenia
Is there a certain schizophrenia inherent to most right-wing out looks? I’ve certainly detected (at least) two examples where it appears to be.
For example, most rightists will scream and shout “that’s unfair!” if the State proposes to tax them or – heaven forbid – tax progressively so that the rich pay sums proportionate to their privileged status when contributing to society’s up-keep.
Yet rightwingers want Law and Order. They want street lighting and motorways. They want an army to defend them from Bad Guys. They want schools which teach children to some sort of standard that allows society to have a functioning economy in which literate and numerate school-leavers can be productive. They want a society in which disease and illness are controlled, key requirements for a functioning economy and society (if sickness and debilitation and the arising insecurity are rife, then…well work out the impact on an economy for yourself).
But many many rightists don’t want to pay for this stuff, which is all very expensive. Again: they don’t want to pay the necessary tax for all this stuff to be possible - and they certainly don’t want people to pay more tax the more able they are to contribute, which appears to be the most sensible way to pay for it all, let alone the fairest.
How strangely schizophrenic.
Another emerging example of such schizophrenia is the common right wing attitude to the police, combined with their crowing about “The Nanny State”.
Most right wingers are against The Nanny State. You see, they believe in freedom, individual autonomy, choice, responsibility. You know, all those grand sounding but strangely vague notions which are rarely clarified with any kind of underpinning explanation of what they mean or how they work in a complex society of millions. (Short answer: there is no short answer, these are big and complex notions).
Nonetheless, being against The Nanny State would surely seem to mean at least one thing. Being against the assault of innocent men by police. Because you know what the police are, right? Of course you do. They are the embodiment of the State’s willingness and ability to use force to curtail the freedoms of certain members of the citizenry. (And that’s not left-wing hysteria: that is the job of the police – what else do you think arresting people and putting them in prison constitutes?)
Yet as I pointed out below, many rightists are again schizophrenic on this point. They are for freedom, and against The Nanny State. Yet they want to apologise for the assault of an innocent man by the police. The police, who are the physical personification of the State’s monopoly of the legitimate use of force.
Which leaves me with a rather mischievous proposition.
Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder which requires treatment. Those with mental health disorders should not be given positions of power over others – they should be treated. Ergo, rightists belong not in government but in sanitoriums.
There’s the shit. Here’s a fan. Have a nice Living Jesus Day.
Alisdair Cameron said,
April 13, 2009 at 9:23 am
Err, you do know that schizophrenia does not (and medically, never has) entail multiple personalities/a split brain (the etymology may have mislead you), don’t you?
Your political points on inconsistency and the contradictions in rightist stands have merit, but erroneously (and stigmatisingly) yoking it to a severe and enduring mental health diagnosis about which you seem ill-informed fatally undermines your piece.
Peter said,
April 13, 2009 at 11:38 am
Erm, I don’t think Paul *really* thinks that right-wingers are mentally ill. That would be silly.
Paul said,
April 13, 2009 at 11:38 am
Fair point, as far as it goes from a medical PoV.
I guess I was using “schizophrenic” in a coloquial sense, meaning something like “simultaneously holding contradictory notions without seeing them as contradictory, vacilating between the two”, which as you point out is not at all a medical understanding of the word.
And so you are right, it’s foolish to draw a medical analogy off the back of that.
I’m not sure I’ve stigmatised mental health disorder, and I know that I didn’t mean to. And I’m not sure my being “ill-informed” in my polemical use of medical terms to illustrate a political point leads to my piece being “fatally undermined”…
Paul said,
April 13, 2009 at 11:40 am
Also, note that Thefreedictionary.com offers the following for schizophrenia:
2. A situation or condition that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities: the national schizophrenia that results from carrying out an unpopular war.
which is really what I was driving at in the original piece.
Alisdair Cameron said,
April 13, 2009 at 11:43 am
Maybe not fatally undermined, but it draws attention from the right’s muddled thinking via inaccurate exaggeration, and isn’t a million miles from the derided comments of Osborne that Brown is autistic.
Paul said,
April 13, 2009 at 11:53 am
It isn’t a million miles, I’ll grant, but I think my intentions are different.
Osborne was trying to smear Brown directly. I’m trying to draw attention to what I perceive to be a recurring problem in rightwing thinking, which I’ve labelled “schizophrenic” in the sense of
“2. A situation or condition that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities: the national schizophrenia that results from carrying out an unpopular war.”
I’ll admit in the cold light of day that drawing the medical analogy for the sake of polemic and to get people’s backs up was not a wise choice, and I’m starting to regret it.
But whereas George Osborne was a small step away from calling Brown a mongoloid, I don’t think I can seriously be read as alleging that rightists (all of them!) have mental health disorders, and should be derided. I’m making a point about political philosophy which I’ll now admitt has been undermined by some crass silliness.
Alisdair Cameron said,
April 13, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Fair enough!
Dan said,
April 13, 2009 at 1:27 pm
There’s a fallacy, unfortunately far too common in partisan political debate, which goes like this: “Some adherents to an ideology (which I happen to be opposed to) believe A. Some adherents to the same ideology believe B. A and B are contradictory. Therefore *all* adherents to that ideology are stupid/schizophrenic/disingenuous/insert your favourite slur here.”
Now, you did PPE at Oxford, right, so I hope that you can understand why this is a fallacy, and why your post exemplifies it so beautifully. It may surprise you, but ‘the right’ is not a homogeneous group made up of people with uniformly identical beliefs; there is, actually, quite a bit of diversity of opinion. I realize you hedge now and again by talking about ‘most’ or ‘many’ Rightists, but the overall tone (and certainly the conclusion) doesn’t exactly fill the reader with confidence that you manage to distinguish between the image of the generic right-winger you have in your head and what right-wingers might actually believe.
Dan said,
April 13, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Oh, and if that came across as too harsh, let me just say that (as someone you’d probably think of as right-wing) I agree with you that the tendency of a lot of people to become kneejerk apologists for police violence is a disgraceful one. I’m just not sure that this says much about anything, apart from the characters of the people who react in this way.
Paul said,
April 13, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Dan,
Fair and good comments, as far as I can see.
I was being very facetious when I wrote the original piece – and I’m sure lots of leftwingers hold contradictory views too, and a mirror image piece could be written accordingly.
Still, the original piece is quite funny and contains a grain of truth, no? Even if it does go too far, remember it was never intended as a wholly serious piece offering fallacy-free reasoning.
(What was it meant as? I’m not entirely sure. I probably shouldn’t blog when bored and coming in from the afternoon sun).
Sensible Conservative « Bad Conscience said,
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