The leading intellectual of the Right, Paul Gottfried, says: “The Right is not only unconcerned about inequality, but is based upon a principle of inequality. Inequality is the natural human condition. Men and women are different. There’s an order of the family. Class differences are not of concern to the Right so long as they serve the greater social good. The Left believes in equality, political equality, social equality, equality of all cultures.”
“The Right looks for its ideals to the past. It does not look upon the past as a prolonged period of oppression… The Left looks to the future. It always has a reconstructionist project aiming at achieving greater equality.”
Interviewer Keith Preston: “The Left believes that human nature is malleable. The Right believes that human nature is fixed and flawed.”
Paul: “Conservative political theory is based upon original sin, holding back that which is evil in our nature. The Left believes in the basic goodness of people once they have been properly instructed.”
“There is nothing that resembles the genuine Right in the accepted political conversation in the United States. You have both the Right and Left factions believing in quintessential Leftist doctrines such as that the whole world is to be made to conform to some notion of human rights, that democratic equality is the highest good… To the extent that they believe in other things, they have to conform to a notion of human rights and democratic equality. The United States should be committed to actively spreading their democratic ideals through the world. This sounds to me like some variation of Trotskyism. It bears a strong resemblance to the Jacobinism of the French revolution, against which the conservative movement was formed.”
