Understanding Politics from Left to Right: Project Introduction

Presumably, political writing and political speech from the LEFT, will have information and arguments that political writing and political speech from the RIGHT, will not have. At the same time, political writing and political speech from the RIGHT, will have information and arguments that political speech and political writing from the LEFT, will not have.

This is perfectly natural. If you want to pull someone to the left you will put together a package of information and arguments that, you hope, will tend to pull people to the left. If you want to pull someone to the right you will put together a package of information and arguments that, you hope, will tend to pull people to the right. These two packages are certainly going to contain different sets of information and different arguments.

If we really want to understand political issues or political debates, we need to use sources from both the left AND the right because each side is presenting a different set of facts and arguments. Using ONLY the left or ONLY the RIGHT would be like listening only to the defense or only to the prosecution during a trial. If we were on a jury, we would not be able to reach a fair verdict unless we listened to the evidence presented by BOTH sides at the trial.

Why not just listen to the "center" and ignore the left and the right? This might sound like a good idea at first, but it probably won't work out in practice for a couple of reasons. First of all, how do we know that political communications that claim to be from the center, are really from the center? If this is the only thing we listen to, we may not be able to tell. If we listen to the left AND the right AND the center, it should be much easier to tell if the communication from the "center" really is from the center or if it is subtly slanted one way or the other.

The second reason that listening only to the center is not enough is that people who are really in the center are not "true believers" in the way that people on the left and the right are. A moderate person in the center might leave out some evidence that is actually very important to true believers on the left or true believers on the right.

For these reasons, if we really want to understand a political issue or debate, we need to make some effort to look at it through the eyes of the left, and also through the eyes of the right, and also through the eyes of the center. Only then, can we feel reasonably confident that we have a good understanding, and can make an educated decision, about who we agree with, and why we agree with them.

It is true that, even if we use one source from the left, one from the center, and one from the right on any given topic, we COULD still miss some important information. No sources are perfect. However, it seems obvious that using one source from each point of view will surely give us a much better chance of getting a full and balanced understanding than we would get from one source. Given the fact that we all have limited time, this is probably the best we can reasonably expect to do.

For an easy way to find articles from the left, the center, and the right, just go to. AllSides.

[Note: I have shared image links to a couple of political books in this blog post. I think these books will help us to understand the various political viewpoints we have in the United States, why they quarrel so violently, and how can get some benefit from this clash of ideas. If you read them please leave a comment and tell me about them. If you click on any of these links and then buy these books, or almost anything else at Amazon, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support!]

**********

If you want to support Anything Smart, please click on the book links in this post and make a purchase. If you buy any of these books through this blog, Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for visiting my blog, and thanks for your support!

***

Copyright © 2023 by Joseph Wayne Gadway