The Dead End of Left and Right Politics – Joe Rogans and William Buckley Juniors

The need for a new political road map and a new political language

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

I try to imagine a whole new road map to chart the political landscape we now live in and I see Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. Yet the difficulties inherent in such an undertaking do not stop me from understanding that the old left-right compass hides more than it shows, and that we need a new map and a new language more than ever.

What does it mean to say someone is on the left? What does it mean to say someone is on the right?

There are many different shades and tones across the political spectrum. There are some political species, like syndicalists, or certain types of libertarians, or anarchists, and many others that are not always easy to classify without blurring matters. And if we go far enough in either direction, it is arguable that we end up with much the same thing; thus the horseshoe theory put forward by French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye.

But if we omit the extremes, if we leave out the very select and the very specialised, we will have before us a great, big playing field where certain views and values are generally axiomatic. At least, they were.

If someone was on the right, they were for: smaller government, lower taxes, less economic regulation, less fiscal spending, fewer social supports, employers, traditional moral values, nationalism, which may tend towards chauvinism or jingoism, and economic individualism.

For foreign policy, the right pulls in different ways as paleoconservatives are non-interventionist on the whole. From the sixties onwards, however, up until recent times, the right has predominantly been interventionist and expansionist.

If someone was on the left, they were for: bigger government, higher taxes, more economic regulation, more fiscal spending, greater social supports, employees, non-traditional moral values, cultural diversity, social justice and socioeconomic equality.

From the sixties up to sometime in the 21^st century the left was mostly anti-war, anti-imperialist and anti-expansionist, but it’s a mixed bag before and after.

William Buckley Jr.

Let’s take one of the 20^th century’s great conservative one-offs, William Buckley Jr., to see how well he fits in to rightist cartographical relief.

Buckley believed government should be small and ‘self-inhibiting’, and opposed progressive taxation (and had serious reservations about income tax), calling it an ‘institutional form of continuing class warfare’. He espoused laissez faire economics and was generally against all but essential (as he saw it) economic regulation. He stood firmly and consistently on the side of big business and the wealthy.

He believed staunchly in traditional morality and Judeo-Christian values. As such, all things homosexual were both wrong and repugnant to him. That he supported the legality of homosexual relations was probably a function of the countervailing weight his profound belief in the autonomy of the individual provided.

He held essentialist views on race, seeing whites as inherently superior and blacks as inherently inferior. Accordingly, he opposed the American Civil Rights Movement, and was supportive of the South African Apartheid. He recanted his racist views in latter years, voiced his admiration for Martin Luther King and expressed his regrets regarding his earlier opposition to black rights. How genuine and transformative this shift in his politics was is not agreed upon.

He vehemently backed the War in Vietnam, but was far more considered and cautious when it came to Iraq, averring that the only rational course was a ‘submission to reality’ that the war was a failure. His views here were strident and unwavering; he felt the conservative movement had committed ‘intellectual suicide’ by aligning behind the Bush administration.

His stance on drugs was mixed and varied. He stuck to the stereotypical right-wing conviction that drug addiction is mostly about agency, choice and weakness of character. Yet he was painfully aware of the great moral incommensurateness of being sent to prison for years for selling a few ounces of marijuana. He supported the legalisation of marijuana, and may have favoured the legalisation of most drugs, although how far his approval went and what it would have looked like in practice is unclear.

William Buckley Jr. was overestimated, in my view, as a rhetorician and raconteur, but underestimated as a thinker and analyst. He said some abominable things, often exhibited more style than substance, and was given to cheap braggadocio and threats of physical violence. At the same time he could be thoughtful, pragmatic, incisive, and had the good sense and reflectiveness to move away from untenable positions and towards more reasonable ones.

Overall, he mostly fits in very well with the above criteria as a political thinker of the right - smaller government, lower taxes, limited regulation, limited state intervention, traditionalism which tends towards racism and chauvinism, support for some wars and not others.

We will now move on to one of the world’s most prominent public figures of the present day, Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan

Rogan isn’t a political thinker or a political commentator as such, rather he is someone who occupies such a unique and central social space that his political views are put under the magnifying glass. And he does take some very strong stances on a number of issues.

Everyone knew where Buckley fit in on the political spectrum; no one quite knows of where Rogan sits. Here is what Google throws up as to whether he is on the left or right.

Some see him as some kind of libertarian. Some see him as a centrist. Some see him as right wing. Some see him as swing. The impossibility of easy classification is as symptomatic of the times as is Rogan’s seemingly immiscible potpourri of convictions and beliefs.

Rogan is in favour universal healthcare, and has blasted the mendacity of the American system centered around private insurance companies. Rogan supports socialised and even free education for all, sees the US system as ‘predatory’, and believes an overhaul is essential. He sees marriage equality as a fundamental right for all, and has repeatedly and vigorously defended abortion as a woman’s choice. Rogan is a supporter of social welfare and universal basic income.

These are all the bread and butter of the left.

Joe Rogan is in favour of the legalisation of all drugs. He takes drugs himself, most notably hallucinogens and marijuana, and regularly touts their salubrious benefits.

Once again, this was part and parcel for the left in erstwhile decades, both in position and inclination.

In tandem with the above, Rogan has begun to criticise and cast heavy doubt upon the science behind and the implications of climate change, even moving towards climate denial and fabulism. He has done much the same with Covid, and opposes state intervention and regulation in this area. His aversion to big government continues at present with his zealous backing of Elon Musk and DOGE and their campaign to cut spending and eviscerate the state of what they see as extraneous appendages.

This antipathy towards large and interventionist government, and the a priori thinking that the state is wasteful, inefficient and bloated, is bog standard for the right.

Rogan is an avid hunter and a big proponent of the carnivore diet. He is a devout defender of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. These positions and proclivities were mostly the purview of the right in times past.

We can see just how dichotomous Rogan seems to be as a political creature by the politicians he has backed to be president – Bernie Sanders, Jo Jorgensen, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. The truth is that no real dichotomy exists here. This is the mental movement and political journey of someone who is not happy with the centre and the Political Establishment and who has been swept along in wild and weird new ways by great societal changes.

Overall, Joe is a variegated political animal - universal healthcare, universal basic income, free education, drug legalisation, marriage equality, pro-choice, and all the big state and big spending that this necessitates. At the same time - no to state intervention and positive liberty in a number of areas, no to climate change, yes to chopping up the state, yes to guns.

New realities, new individuals, new thinking

Different realities and issues are giving birth to different societies and individuals who are being pulled in whole new directions. This has birthed new political constellations, new political categories and new political possibilities. With so much that is new and so much that is different, the old political maps are simply not fit for purpose.

One could argue that they always left enough out to mean they partly illuminated and partly obfuscated the world they were supposed to shine a light on. But now, they are stone implements in an age of metal – tools meant for a whole other time.

We see these shifts manifesting right across the spectrum. New political phyla and species are emerging, and the migrations and habits of the great dominant beasts are undergoing big changes.

The Democratic Party is now the party of war. Many social democrats, progressives and wokeists will turn a blind eye to American imperialism when it comes up against a state like Russia, the least woke country in the world they can hate fully guiltfree as the embodiment of evil because it is white. The European Union, once priding itself as a Kantian political institution that had evolved beyond the dirty world of Thomas Hobbes, has chosen the path of prolonged war in Ukraine over peace. All this represents a large and aberrant shift for what we used call the centre and the left.

For anti-war sentiment and an end to western military adventurism, we now must go to the far left and the far right. Donald Trump and his supporters want more peace and dealmaking across the globe, and less war and black-white moralism. The spirit of isolationism is returning to the right, with particularist urges replacing grand universalist designs for world order. Old-guard lefties like Bernie Sanders continue to oppose war in all forms, as do fringe political figures, as do smatterings of academics who hold to anti-imperial values.

Picture a trifle with multiple layers. Now imagine we deconstructed it, flipped it upside down and slammed it down hard on the counter. Now imagine we peppered it with a few little fusion flourishes. It’s an absolute mess. That doesn’t mean we can’t dig around and prod and poke to tease out rhyme and reason from all the madness. But it does mean that the old recipe books and traditional guidelines are no longer of much use.

Typology is signposting. When it’s good it gives us the lay of the land without forcing us to do too much wandering and too much thinking. When it no longer captures the topography of the land it was made to describe, it’s time to put it down and circumnavigate the world once again. The old left-right road map is now a dead end that tells us nothing and leads nowhere.