God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle aged male, a stern
fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules
and regulations. He holds men accountable for their actions. He has
little apparent concern for the material well being of the
disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds
the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God
is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country
club.
Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He’s nonthreatening.
He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been
naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He
gives everyone everything they want without the thought of quid pro quo.
He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor.
Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such
thing as Santa Claus.”
This asymmetry works to the Left’s advantage. It’s human nature to
overlook the failings of a politician, party or institution if its
motives are visibly benign. The United Nations has been involved in all
manner of scandal, from ivory smuggling to running prostitution rings,
but it embodies the lofty ideal of brotherhood among nations: it means
well. The EU is corrupt, undemocratic and wasteful, but it was
established to guarantee peace in Europe: it means well. Every Labour
government, without exception, has increased unemployment, but Labour
politicians care about the poor: they mean well.
To put it another way, our generation elevates the moralistic
(holding the right opinions) over the moral (doing the right thing). You
can fiddle your taxes, betray your wife, mistreat your pet, but nothing
– nothing – is as shocking as to voice the wrong views about, say, race
relations.
Spend five minutes in an online discussion and you’ll see how easily
Lefties use the word “evil”, in the sense of “evil Tory scum”. What’s
most striking is not the rudeness but the narcissism. It’s as if, having
dispensed with the religious notion of wickedness, Lefties have
redefined “evil” to mean “someone who disagrees with me”.
Not all, Lefties, obviously. I have Labour-voting friends who are
motivated by a more or less uncomplicated desire to help the
disadvantaged. But louder, by far, is what we might call the Lily Allen
Tendency:
“You say
It’s not okay to be gay,
Well I think you’re just evil.
You’re just some racist who can’t tie my laces
Your point of view is mediaeval.”
Evil? Look, I supported civil partnerships long before most
Conservatives; I even opposed Section 28 at the time, rather than in
retrospect. But were the people who disagreed with me all evil? Even
Mother Theresa?
It isn’t just angry teens who think this way. You get it from Labour
MPs, Guardian columnists and the like. Count how many people on Twitter
cheerfully proclaim in their bios that they “hate” Tories, “hate”
Republicans, “hate” neo-liberalism. Sure, you’ll find one or two “hates
socialism”, but it’s far, far rarer. Having defined politics, in your
own mind at any rate, as a battle between good and evil, you can enjoy
hating the other side. “Let’s all get together and have a good hate,”
said George Orwell, satirising his fellow-socialists. If you’re
self-righteous enough, you might even be able to aver without irony that
we should “refuse to tolerate intolerance”, “not listen to such
prejudiced people”, “hate the haters”, “refuse to read that bigoted
rag”. Lily again:
“F**k you!
F**k you very, very much!
‘Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew,
So please don’t stay in touch.”
To repeat, there are Lefties who rise above it. Nick Cohen recalled
his shock, as a fourteen-year-old, at discovering that his teacher, an
eminently decent man, voted Conservative. In his case, it led him to
reconsider his view of Tories. Many others instead reconsider their view
of their teacher.
These others, if they’ve read this far, will now be spluttering with
rage. How can I possibly say that hatred is a Leftist characteristic
when everyone knows that Right-wingers are the worst haters of all? It’s
a telling response since a) it proves the point; and b) it’s not true.
Quantitative evidence is hard to come by. We can all cite Twitter. We
can all point to Lily Allen Tendencies in supposedly serious
commentators (John McTernan and George Monbiot are two people I’ve
recently spotted on Twitter claiming that Tories are motivated by some
kind of malignity). But where’s the empirical data?
Well, one way to test whether there is a Left-Right difference is to
ask people whether they would drop a friend if they found out that the
friend voted the other way. And, conveniently enough, precisely such a
poll was carried in the New Statesman last month. Labour voters
were twice as likely as Tories to find it harder to be friends with
someone who voted for the other party, and ten times likelier to be find
it easier to be friends with someone who shared their allegiance.
For proper qualitative and quantitative analysis, though, we need to
look at the extensive surveys undertaken by the American psychology
professor, Jonathan Haidt. Among other things, he asks people to answer a
series of political questions as themselves, as a typical Right-winger,
and as a typical Left-winger. Rightists, it turns out, have little
difficulty imagining themselves as Leftists and answering accordingly;
but the reverse is not true.
To find out why this asymmetry exists, you’ll have to read Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind.
I can give only a perfunctory summary here. Essentially, he finds that
Left-wingers are motivated by an exaggerated concern for the underdog,
the perceived victim, the oppressed group. Right-wingers have that
sense, too, but, in their brains, it is balanced by a number of other
tendencies: concern for reciprocity, for group loyalty, for sanctity and
so on. Because Rightists have the pro-underdog trait, too, they
understand well enough what is actuating their opponents. But most
Leftists lack the complementary parts of the conservative brain. Their
reasoning therefore goes something like this. “I’m a nice person. I care
about poor people and ethnic minorities and the oppressed. You’re
opposed to me, so you hate them.”
Now we Evil Tory Hatemongers can respond in various ways. We can
dismiss our critics, laugh at them, patronise them. Or we can try to
show that the free market is the underdog’s truest friend. Almost every
tax, almost every regulation, almost every tariff falls on the little
guy. Capitalism is the only system yet devised where the masses are
truly in charge.
You can hold a conviction against the evidence only for so long. Most
of us see through Father Christmas before we’re ten; but we should be
gentle with those who take longer.
Daniel Hannan is an MEP for South-East England, and a journalist, author and broadcaster. His most recent book is Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World.
