What are today’s culture wars about? Do leftists have a better moral compass? Is the West really the source of misery in the world? And does right-wing politics automatically equal fascism?
These questions matter because much of our political discourse rests on a dishonest moral map. Left and Right aren’t moral categories. They are political poles whose function, at best, is to maintain balance and prevent the pendulum from swinging too far in either direction, and history shows what happens when that balance collapses. Millions died under Marxist communism and socialism, just as millions died under National Socialism.
Political movements always come wrapped in morally flattering labels: progressive, conservative, socialist, nationalist, anti-fascist. But these terms tell us nothing about a movement’s actual moral character. So, the decisive question is: does it respect the individual as an autonomous human being, or does it subordinate him to a totalizing collective ideal?
This is the central flaw in the moral self-understanding of much of the modern Left. It assumes that good intentions guarantee good outcomes. Because socialism speaks in the lingo of equality, justice, and liberation, many instinctively treat it as morally superior to conservatism or capitalism.
However, historical records suggest otherwise.
Nazi Germany was responsible for roughly 20 million deaths. It remains one of the most evil regimes in history, and nothing about this comparison should diminish that fact. But Marxist regimes, according to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, were responsible for more than 100 million deaths.
No serious person ever said, “That wasn’t real Nazism.” Nazism is judged by its historical consequences. But when the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cambodia, North Korea, and other Marxist regimes are discussed, apologists are very quick to respond: “That wasn’t real socialism.”
This asymmetry allows one of the deadliest ideologies in modern history to preserve its moral halo, while its tens of millions of victims are treated as unfortunate deviations from a beautiful idea. That isn’t only stupid. It’s obscene.
Ideologies must be judged not only by what they promise, but by what they repeatedly produce when given power. The real question is not whether a movement calls itself Left or Right, progressive or conservative. The real question is whether it protects the individual from the collective, or sacrifices him to it.
In the end, the political divide that matters most isn’t Left versus Right. It is liberty versus totalitarianism.
