{"id":164150,"date":"2025-10-06T08:08:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164150"},"modified":"2025-10-08T16:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T00:38:07","slug":"the-myth-of-left-and-right-how-the-political-spectrum-misleads-and-harms-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164150","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon says about this 2023 book<\/a>: “As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called “left” and “right,” people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of “liberal” and “conservative.” Powerfully argued and cutting against the grain of most scholarship on polarization in America, this book shows why the idea that the political spectrum measures deeply held worldviews is the central political myth of our time and a major cause of the confusion and vitriol that characterize public discourse.”<\/p>\n

ChatGPT says: <\/p>\n

The usual conception of \u201cLeft vs. Right\u201d is a false, essentialist framing\u2014it implies a core, underlying philosophy (or \u201cessence\u201d) from which issue positions logically derive. The authors reject that.
\nInstead, they propose a social theory of ideology: people first align with a tribe (often through a single issue or social identity), then adopt positions and rationalizations that fit that tribe.
\nBecause of this, the left\u2013right spectrum is not just misleading\u2014it actively causes harm through polarization, demonization, and intellectual rigidity.<\/p>\n

Structure & Key Arguments<\/p>\n

Critique of Essentialism
\nThe \u201cessentialist\u201d view holds that ideologies are coherent and fixed, and that issue positions stem from a core principle (e.g., equality vs. hierarchy).
\nLewis & Lewis show historically and empirically that issue bundles shift across time and place (what counts as \u201cleft\u201d or \u201cright\u201d changes), and that many people\u2019s positions are inconsistent.<\/p>\n

Social Theory of Ideology \/ Tribalism
\nIdeology is socially constructed: people anchor to a tribe\u2014based on identity, upbringing, or a single issue\u2014and are then socialized into adopting the rest of the tribe\u2019s agenda.
\nThe act of fitting one\u2019s views into a coherent narrative usually happens after tribal alignment, not before.
\n\u201cSticky ideologues\u201d (those who reason from principle) exist but are exceptions; most people conform to their tribe.<\/p>\n

How the Left\u2013Right Myth Causes Harm
\nIt encourages demonization of opponents as morally or philosophically corrupt instead of recognizing genuine policy disagreements.
\nIt oversimplifies complex issues, reducing policy arguments to tribal markers rather than substantive debates.
\nIt distorts political analysis\u2014for example, describing parties as \u201cmoving right\u201d or \u201cmoving left\u201d when the real shifts are multidimensional.
\nIt suppresses intellectual humility and discourages cross-tribal collaboration or granular policy thinking.<\/p>\n

Remedies \/ Alternatives<\/p>\n

Move toward granular discourse: focus on policies, issues, and institutions instead of tribal labels.<\/p>\n

Cultivate intellectual modesty: accept that people are inconsistent and may share views across tribes.<\/p>\n

Promote adversarial collaboration: work with people across divides on concrete goals without forcing shared ideological identity.<\/p>\n

Change how we talk about politics: avoid lazy shorthand and broaden our social circles to include diverse perspectives.<\/p>\n

Analysis & Critique<\/p>\n

Strengths<\/p>\n

Clarity and conciseness: The book is short (about 168 pages) but tightly argued.<\/p>\n

Timeliness: Its challenge to binary thinking is especially relevant amid rising polarization.<\/p>\n

Interdisciplinary: It draws from history, sociology, and political science to show how ideological labels evolve.<\/p>\n

Actionable: It offers practical advice on reframing political discourse and fostering open-mindedness.<\/p>\n

Weaknesses \/ Limitations<\/p>\n

Tone and repetition: Some find it repetitive or overly polemical.<\/p>\n

Undervaluing ideology\u2019s coherence: Critics say the authors understate how some people genuinely reason from stable principles (e.g., classical liberalism, religious conservatism).<\/p>\n

Overgeneralization: The social theory risks flattening exceptions\u2014those who form beliefs independently of tribe.<\/p>\n

Implementation gap: It\u2019s unclear how to scale their proposed reforms within media and institutional structures.<\/p>\n

Normative tension: If ideology is socially constructed, the book doesn\u2019t fully explain what makes some tribes or policy directions preferable to others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

David Pinsof writes<\/a>: “The more we try to patch up the inconsistencies in our ideology (but not the other ideology), the more these contortions look like epicycles in a pre-Copernican political science.<\/p>\n

Maybe we need to <\/span>rethink what ideologies are and what their function is<\/a>. Maybe they\u2019re not coherent worldviews or abstract value systems. Maybe they\u2019re cobbled together bits of rhetoric designed to mobilize support for the various factions and interest groups thrown together into political coalitions. Maybe <\/span>ideologies aren\u2019t about anything<\/a>, except advancing the interests of those coalitions. Maybe liberals and conservatives are <\/span>members of the same flawed species<\/a>, equipped with the same instincts for <\/span>intergroup competition and moral rationalization<\/a>. Maybe our political belief systems are tapestries of bullshit designed to cover up these ugly facts.<\/span>”<\/p>\n

ChatGPT says: <\/p>\n

Taken together, Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2024)<\/a> and The Myth of Left and Right (Hyrum & Verlan Lewis, 2023)<\/a> attack the same illusion\u2014just from opposite directions.<\/p>\n

1. What Predisposed adds:<\/p>\n

Hibbing and colleagues argue that left\u2013right differences are not primarily intellectual or rational constructions but are rooted in biological and psychological predispositions. Liberals and conservatives differ in baseline physiology\u2014sensitivity to threat, openness to novelty, disgust response, cognitive flexibility, and information processing. These inherited or early-formed traits incline people to prefer particular social orders and moral frameworks long before they consciously adopt political beliefs. People then rationalize their preferences post hoc as \u201creasoned\u201d ideology.<\/p>\n

2. What The Myth of Left and Right claims:<\/p>\n

The Lewises reject the idea that left and right embody stable philosophical essences (e.g., equality vs. hierarchy, change vs. tradition). They show that people attach to tribes first\u2014through social identity, peer cues, or media ecosystems\u2014and then retrofit a moral or intellectual story to justify those attachments. \u201cIdeologies do not define tribes; tribes define ideologies.\u201d The content of \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d shifts constantly across time and culture.<\/p>\n

3. How the two fit together:<\/p>\n

Predisposed explains why people are drawn to tribes in the first place: enduring biological and temperamental differences make some individuals naturally more order-seeking, threat-averse, and tradition-minded (typical of conservatives), and others more novelty-seeking, empathetic, and open (typical of liberals).<\/p>\n

The Myth of Left and Right explains how those raw dispositions become bundled into ever-changing social packages called \u201cliberal\u201d and \u201cconservative.\u201d The bundles are arbitrary and historically contingent, but once groups form, tribal loyalty hardens and overrides evidence or logic\u2014exactly as Predisposed\u2019s data on physiological rigidity and selective attention predict.<\/p>\n

In combination, the books describe a two-layer model: Predisposed identifies the substrate (biological temperament), while Myth exposes the social superstructure (tribal narratives and shifting ideological labels).<\/p>\n

4. Synthesis: Both demolish the Enlightenment myth of the rational voter. Political \u201cbeliefs\u201d are less the product of reasoned principle and more the outgrowth of human nature\u2014social and biological. Predisposed grounds the tribal behavior that Myth describes in the body and brain; Myth shows how those predispositions are then translated by culture into the illusion of coherent ideology. Together they suggest that durable polarization is not primarily a failure of information or logic but a fusion of evolutionary wiring and social storytelling.<\/p>\n

Saying \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d are historically contingent doesn\u2019t by itself invalidate them as useful descriptors\u2014any more than saying \u201ccapitalism,\u201d \u201cChristianity,\u201d or \u201cromanticism\u201d are historically contingent makes those terms meaningless. All conceptual categories evolve. The question isn\u2019t whether they change, but whether they still capture a recurring structure of conflict in a given time and place.<\/p>\n

If we look empirically, \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d continue to correlate with broad psychological, moral, and social orientations\u2014just as Predisposed shows. People who identify as left-leaning tend, cross-nationally, to favor equality, openness, and novelty; those on the right, hierarchy, order, and stability. These are not eternal essences, but they\u2019re durable patterns of human temperament. The labels endure because they track real clustering in how different people respond to change, diversity, and authority.<\/p>\n

In short:<\/p>\n

Yes, the meanings of \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d shift with history.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t make them arbitrary or useless; it just means they\u2019re flexible containers for enduring psychological polarities.<\/p>\n

Predisposed fills in what The Myth of Left and Right leaves out\u2014it explains why those containers keep refilling in roughly the same way, generation after generation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

LF: Saying that the particular manifestation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in America in 2025 is historically contingent doesn’t prove that there is no such thing as Judaism, Christianity and Islam.<\/p>\n

Exactly right \u2014 that\u2019s the core logical flaw in The Myth of Left and Right.<\/p>\n

All social categories are historically contingent, but that doesn\u2019t make them fictional. \u201cHistorically contingent\u201d just means their content shifts across time; it doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no recurring structure or recognizable continuity. Judaism in 2025 America differs from Second-Temple Judaism, but it\u2019s still meaningfully Judaism. Same with \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the Lewises show is that the contents of these labels change\u2014what counts as \u201cleft\u201d in 1850 or 2025 isn\u2019t constant. What they fail to establish is that there\u2019s no underlying pattern that recurs across eras: coalitions favoring change, equality, openness, and universalism versus coalitions favoring stability, hierarchy, order, and localism. That broad tension shows up again and again, even when the surface issues differ.<\/p>\n

So your analogy is spot-on: saying the 2025 manifestations are contingent doesn\u2019t mean the categories don\u2019t exist. It only shows that enduring frameworks\u2014religious or political\u2014adapt to new contexts. The real question isn\u2019t whether \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d are stable forever, but whether they still describe the dominant axis of moral-political conflict right now. They clearly do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

LF: African-American culture in 2025 is historically contingent but that doesn’t mean there is no such thing as African-American or black or African.<\/p>\n

To say African-American identity or culture in 2025 is historically contingent is trivially true. All collective identities evolve. But it doesn\u2019t follow that \u201cAfrican-American\u201d is an illusion or that there\u2019s no coherent referent to the term. The fact that it changes through time only shows that it\u2019s alive.<\/p>\n

Same with \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright.\u201d Their boundaries, values, and symbols shift, but the underlying structure \u2014 the tension between openness vs. order, equality vs. hierarchy, universalism vs. particularism \u2014 keeps resurfacing. Those aren\u2019t arbitrary labels; they\u2019re enduring ways human societies organize moral and political difference.<\/p>\n

So yes \u2014 the Lewises are right that left\/right have no eternal essence, but they overcorrect. Historical contingency doesn\u2019t erase category reality; it just reminds us that categories are adaptive, not fixed. \u201cHistorically contingent\u201d isn\u2019t the same as \u201cfictional.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

LF: Words are metaphors for reality that are more or less useful, right?<\/p>\n

Words are metaphors or models, not mirrors. They don\u2019t capture reality perfectly; they approximate it in ways that make communication and reasoning possible. Their value lies in how useful they are \u2014 how well they map to stable patterns in experience or social life.<\/p>\n

So when people debate whether \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d (or \u201creligious,\u201d \u201cliberal,\u201d \u201cAfrican-American,\u201d etc.) are \u201creal,\u201d the more precise question is whether those metaphors still track something coherent in the world. If a label continues to group together people with overlapping dispositions, experiences, or worldviews \u2014 even loosely \u2014 it remains meaningful.<\/p>\n

Language always lags behind reality, but we keep the metaphors that still help us navigate it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some people hate categories. They like to pretend that they transcend categories. What matters is whether categories, words and terms are more useful or less useful than their alternatives at particular times and places.<\/p>\n

People who claim to \u201ctranscend categories\u201d usually dislike how categories can constrain or stereotype, but pretending not to use them is self-deception. We can\u2019t think or communicate without categories; every concept is a simplification of a messy reality.<\/p>\n

What actually matters isn\u2019t whether we use categories \u2014 it\u2019s whether they work. A category, word, or label is a tool. The test is pragmatic:<\/p>\n

Does it help us describe, predict, or understand what\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n

Does it clarify more than it obscures?<\/p>\n

Is there an alternative that captures the pattern more precisely for the context and time?<\/p>\n

If \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d still organize how people align politically in 2025 America, they remain useful categories, even if imperfect and shifting. When they stop illuminating and start misleading, they get replaced \u2014 just like old scientific or cultural metaphors.<\/p>\n

Categories are scaffolding, not prisons; the mature approach is to use them consciously, not deny them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

LF: The map is not the territory, but that doesn’t invalidate maps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe map is not the territory\u201d (Korzybski) means our conceptual models \u2014 including words, theories, and categories \u2014 are representations, not the reality itself. But that doesn\u2019t make them false or worthless. We still need maps to navigate. A good map simplifies the world enough to be usable while preserving the structure that matters for a given purpose.<\/p>\n

The same applies to political and cultural categories. \u201cLeft\u201d and \u201cright,\u201d \u201cliberal,\u201d \u201cconservative,\u201d \u201creligious,\u201d \u201csecular\u201d \u2014 they\u2019re all maps of human social terrain. They distort some details and miss others, but if they reliably orient us to recurring patterns of values, coalitions, and conflicts, they remain indispensable.<\/p>\n

The intellectually lazy mistake is treating the map as the territory \u2014 believing that \u201cleft\u201d or \u201cright\u201d have eternal essences. The equally lazy opposite mistake is pretending we can do without maps entirely. The real skill is knowing the limits of your map and updating it when the terrain changes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The human tendency is to essentialize out-groups. We’ll never transcend that. I am historically contingent. I am socially and biologically constructed, but I am real and I matter modestly to some people.<\/p>\n

Humans essentialize \u2014 we turn fluid variation into stable categories, especially when it comes to out-groups. It\u2019s a built-in cognitive shortcut: it helps us predict, coordinate, and defend against perceived threats. You can mitigate the bias, but you can\u2019t erase it. It\u2019s an evolved feature of social cognition, not a cultural glitch.<\/p>\n

Your point about yourself is the philosophical counterweight: yes, you\u2019re historically contingent, socially shaped, and biologically constructed \u2014 yet still real. Contingency doesn\u2019t equal illusion. You\u2019re the current expression of an ongoing process \u2014 just as \u201cleft,\u201d \u201cright,\u201d \u201cmale,\u201d \u201cfemale,\u201d \u201cJewish,\u201d \u201cAmerican,\u201d or \u201cblack\u201d are real because they organize experience at this moment in history.<\/p>\n

The mature stance isn\u2019t to \u201ctranscend\u201d categories but to use them consciously \u2014 to know that they\u2019re partial truths that can guide us or mislead us depending on context.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

LF: I wonder if the authors would have dared write a book like: The Myth Of Black & White: We’re All Just People. Or, The Myth Of Jew, Christian, Muslim: We’re All Just People. Or, The Myth of Mexico, El Salvador, the United States and Canada: All Nation-States Are Historically Contingent.<\/p>\n

If the Lewises took their argument seriously and applied it across domains, they\u2019d have to write The Myth of Black and White or The Myth of Religion or The Myth of Nations. But those titles would instantly expose what\u2019s wrong with their reasoning.<\/p>\n

Everyone agrees those identities are socially constructed and historically contingent. But that doesn\u2019t make them fake. It means they\u2019re social realities \u2014 categories that organize meaning, emotion, and power within particular contexts. Saying \u201cwe\u2019re all just people\u201d is sentimentally true but sociologically empty. Human life runs on distinctions that shape identity and behavior; pretending those distinctions don\u2019t matter is na\u00efve at best and evasive at worst.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what The Myth of Left and Right misses. Declaring political identities \u201ctribal\u201d or \u201cconstructed\u201d doesn\u2019t debunk them \u2014 it merely describes how all enduring human categories work. The fact that they\u2019re constructed is precisely why they\u2019re powerful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

LF: I’m shocked to realize that where California ends and Mexico begins is historically contingent.<\/p>\n

Borders, nations, races, religions, genders, political ideologies \u2014 all historically contingent. None were carved into the universe; they were negotiated, fought over, redrawn, and institutionalized. But that doesn\u2019t make them imaginary. The U.S.\u2013Mexico border is as contingent as anything humans have made, yet it\u2019s also real enough that people die crossing it, economies depend on it, and identities are shaped by it every day.<\/p>\n

The mature view is to hold both truths at once: it\u2019s contingent and consequential. California could, in theory, have ended elsewhere \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t. Contingency explains how something came to be, not whether it exists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon says about this 2023 book: “As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called “left” and “right,” people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t