Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Was Nazism Right Wing or Left Wing? An Answer From History" video.

  1. For me, all contradictions vanish when you see "right" as authoritarian/totalitarian, with the Roman Empire as an example. One of the reasons all the European kings wanted the blessing of the Church, was because that was the Roman model, and with that model came Divine Right to rule, and absolute power of the King. This "innovation" was "peak right wing." The "left," as I see it, is the rejection of that model, and a belief that power at the top should be as limited as possible, and the power should remain in the hands of individuals. The more say the state apparatus has in your everyday life, the more "right" it is. We've jumbled up the terms, deliberately, I think, so that it's easier for a power-grabber to masquerade as a spokesman/agent for the left, but when you see government intervention as "right" and government non-intervention as "left," you know that any politician who wants the government to intervene to "save everybody" is actually pushing for a return to "right" or "authoritarian" forms. That politician wants to be an aristocrat and for you to be his serf. "Look what I do for you. Do as I tell you."
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  2. By this measure, Hitler was right wing, but so was Stalin, and so are all socialists. The farthest "left" we ever got was the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution (as amended). But it didn't take long to start chipping away at it (or ignoring it) as it suited those closest to the levers of government power, which were pretty short levers back in the day. "Liberal" or "left" also includes a philosophy of tolerance of others: their ways and their beliefs, so long as their ways or beliefs do not conflict with basic non-force principles. That got conflated with the idea that your individual urge to compassion and care for others meant that government should perform the primary functions of charity. Government - especially federal government - as the primary "care-giver" is where the lefties-in-spirit got it wrong. Charity comes from people, not paid bureaucrats.
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  3. If you see "left" as more people, less government and "right" as more government, less people, then you begin to see that Ron Paul is a genius for his simplicity.
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