Truth, Not Politics, Is at the Root of the Left-Right Divide

Dennis Prager is the best at explaining the root of the left-right divide — see more examples here.

Three years ago, I wrote a column explaining left-right differences on 35 different subjects. Any one or two of them would make for a major political/cultural divide. Thirty-five make the divide unbridgeable.

As the thesis itself is not really debatable, what is more difficult to explain are the roots of this divide.

I believe it is commitment to truth.

Since I began studying the left as a graduate student of communism at the Russian Institute of the Columbia School of International Affairs, of one thing I was certain: Truth is not a left-wing value. It is a liberal value, and it is a conservative value, but truth has never been a left-wing value. From Lenin to today’s left, lying, especially about opponents, is morally acceptable as long as it serves the left’s goals of defeating opponents and attaining more power.

Once you realize this, the divide becomes explicable.

Why has YouTube taken down the video of two emergency room physicians who argue that the lockdown may not be called for? Because the left does not argue with opponents; it shuts them down. And that is because it has no interest in truth. That’s why the left is pressuring YouTube and Facebook to prohibit anything the left differs with from appearing on their platforms. Just as the Soviets labelled everything in the Western press “imperialist propaganda,” the left labels everything with which it differs “misinformation.”

That is also why virtually every university does whatever it can to prevent conservatives from speaking on their campuses.

And why has The New York Times just received a Pulitzer Prize for what leading liberal historians have labelled its “mendacious” rewriting of American history, known as “The 1619 Project”? Because to The New York Times and the Pulitzer Prize committee, truth is less important than smearing America.

Read more: Townhall

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