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186. Paul Gottfried on Defining Right and Left
In this episode, we welcome back Dr. Paul Gottfried to discuss a chapter in his book Revisions and Dissents: “Defining Right and Left”. What is the classical or essentialist Right? And how is this to be distinguished from “conservative,” historically? Similarly, what is the Left and how is this to be distinguished from what is considered “liberal” today? Paul takes us through this and more. From anthropology to the interchangeability of man, from competing notions of liberty to differing biases toward many distinctions as inherited – and even eschatology and how one may or may not achieve some utopian or millennial society; there is a more transcendent significance and foundational worldview behind the political competition between the right and the left of every age. We also go into how Christianity, both in a piecemeal way and in a distorted way, has been an instrumental good and a pragmatic means for both at times – though the hostility of the Left toward Christianity has become much more prominent as they have turned marriage and sex into social battlegrounds to be overcome for the self-centered, self-defined and subjective desires of individuals, or their activist parents. When subjective self-fulfillment has become the standard for the current instantiation of the Left, they truly have found a basis for an eternal and perpetual revolution that even surpasses the ultimate end envisioned by Karl Marx that had a social basis, and objective features.
Book: Revisions and Dissents
Article: “Three Conceptions of Conservatism”
Check out: Chronicles (especially the print magazine)
Hear our previous interview: here.
Other resources by Dr. Gottfried:
“Origins of the New Left” (Claremont Review of Books)
Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt
Fascism: The Career of a Concept
Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade
After Liberalism
The Strange Death of Marxism
New book: The Essential Paul Gottfried, Essays from 1984-2024
Other resources:
To Change All Worlds; The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn
A Conflict of Visions; The Vision of the Annointed by Thomas Sowell
Out of the Ashes by Anthony Esolen
American Awakening by Joshua Mitchell
From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Richard Weikart
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By Brendon Scoggin and Skyler HamiltonIn this episode, we welcome back Dr. Paul Gottfried to discuss a chapter in his book Revisions and Dissents: “Defining Right and Left”. What is the classical or essentialist Right? And how is this to be distinguished from “conservative,” historically? Similarly, what is the Left and how is this to be distinguished from what is considered “liberal” today? Paul takes us through this and more. From anthropology to the interchangeability of man, from competing notions of liberty to differing biases toward many distinctions as inherited – and even eschatology and how one may or may not achieve some utopian or millennial society; there is a more transcendent significance and foundational worldview behind the political competition between the right and the left of every age. We also go into how Christianity, both in a piecemeal way and in a distorted way, has been an instrumental good and a pragmatic means for both at times – though the hostility of the Left toward Christianity has become much more prominent as they have turned marriage and sex into social battlegrounds to be overcome for the self-centered, self-defined and subjective desires of individuals, or their activist parents. When subjective self-fulfillment has become the standard for the current instantiation of the Left, they truly have found a basis for an eternal and perpetual revolution that even surpasses the ultimate end envisioned by Karl Marx that had a social basis, and objective features.
Book: Revisions and Dissents
Article: “Three Conceptions of Conservatism”
Check out: Chronicles (especially the print magazine)
Hear our previous interview: here.
Other resources by Dr. Gottfried:
“Origins of the New Left” (Claremont Review of Books)
Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt
Fascism: The Career of a Concept
Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade
After Liberalism
The Strange Death of Marxism
New book: The Essential Paul Gottfried, Essays from 1984-2024
Other resources:
To Change All Worlds; The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn
A Conflict of Visions; The Vision of the Annointed by Thomas Sowell
Out of the Ashes by Anthony Esolen
American Awakening by Joshua Mitchell
From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Richard Weikart