The latest installment in Dennis Prager‘s National Review Online columns contrasting the political Left and Right involves stubborn facts.
Here’s a difference between Left and Right that is rarely noted despite the fact that it is at least as important as any other and even explains many of the other differences.
At the core of left-wing thought is a rejection of painful realities, the rejection of what the French call les faits de la vie, the facts of life. Conservatives, on the other hand, are all too aware of these painful realities of life and base many of their positions on them.
One such example was the subject of my first column on Left–Right differences: whether people are basically good. When liberals blame violent crime in America on poverty, one reason they do is that liberal beliefs since the Enlightenment have posited that human nature is good. Therefore when people do truly bad things to other people, liberals believe that some outside force — usually poverty, racism, and/or unemployment — must be responsible, not human nature.
Liberals find it too painful to look reality in the eye and acknowledge that human nature is deeply flawed. This is especially so since left-wing thought is rooted in secularism, and if you don’t believe in God, you had better believe in humanity — or you will despair.
