Political Aphorisms

Observations on the two warring tribes on the left and right.

The right sees individuals, the left sees groups. The right seems obsessed with growth, the left with security. The right sees process, the left sees endpoint. The right sees the world as a process with growth a crucial enzyme, the left sees security as the crucial endpoint and sees a government mediated insurance as necessary. The right is willing to allow growth to evolve, to change and adapt as it matures and believes safety is a likely endpoint with many others, the left sees government as the enzyme today but has embraced revolution and science in the past when they seemed promising. The right sees institutions as depositories of the social values, the left sees institutions as ossified obstructions to progress. The right hates centralized power, the left trusts power. The right sees chaos without structure and effort, the left believes man and history have a positive direction and structure is an anchor. The right sees potential and progress in risk, the left sees only heartache.

Neither the left nor the right know they are only part of the current dialectic and neither will emerge intact for the next.