I don’t know. I mean, it’s pretty easy to find uncontroversially evil people on the left as well. Jim Jones had some pioneering takes on racial harmony, and did not get along with the right of his day. Or cynical people on the left - ask Lemmy about if climate change is going to kill all humans in the next few decades.
The term itself comes from the French revolution, with the revolutionaries sitting on the left. Since then, you’ve had ship of Theseus things happen where a classical liberal might end up on the right, because they follow a chain of intellectual forerunners tracing back to someone opposing the French revolution. In other cases some kind of analogy is made, like the Japanese wartime government being right-wing because many of the dynamics were shared with the European right of the day. Or how Cato the Elder was “conservative” because he promoted a traditional way of life, even if that tradition was being bi and not reading.
All in all, left and right might be great names, because they’re directions that always exist, but depend completely on where you’re standing.
I don’t know. I mean, it’s pretty easy to find uncontroversially evil people on the left as well. Jim Jones had some pioneering takes on racial harmony, and did not get along with the right of his day. Or cynical people on the left - ask Lemmy about if climate change is going to kill all humans in the next few decades.
The term itself comes from the French revolution, with the revolutionaries sitting on the left. Since then, you’ve had ship of Theseus things happen where a classical liberal might end up on the right, because they follow a chain of intellectual forerunners tracing back to someone opposing the French revolution. In other cases some kind of analogy is made, like the Japanese wartime government being right-wing because many of the dynamics were shared with the European right of the day. Or how Cato the Elder was “conservative” because he promoted a traditional way of life, even if that tradition was being bi and not reading.
All in all, left and right might be great names, because they’re directions that always exist, but depend completely on where you’re standing.
Good exposition of the problem.