What is the Right/Left Divide?

Matt Taibbi weighs in on a topic I’ve been contemplating a lot lately, the increasingly meaningless distinctions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ as they apply to American politics.

In 2004, on the Dean campaign plane, after seeing reporters throw the words “left” and “liberal” with Dean in a way that I didn’t really understand given the governor’s history, I polled the press corps on what its definition of “left” was. I got very few answers. While it was well understood that Howard Dean was “left” (and not just “left” but “too left” to win the White House, according to many reporters) no one could really say which of his policy ideas qualified him for that title.

As proven so consistently by the Bush Administration, the distinction cannot be traced to anything like ‘smaller government’ or ‘individual freedom.’ About the only consistent litmus test anymore seems to be abortion. Other than pro-life, I am at a loss to explain Sarah Palin’s politics on any issue. One of the more interesting aspects of the health care debate has been watching the GOP adopt what are essentially liberal positions, simply as a means of setting themselves in opposition to what Obama is proposing. Take the death panels, for instance. At its heart, the death panels argument says that critical health care decisions should not be driven by financial considerations, and that care should not be restricted due to an inability to pay. Another curious example has been the fervor with which the right has sought to label the Fort Hood killings as terrorism, even though the effort reinforces the logic of the hate crimes legislation that they so vehemently oppose (i.e., that the mindset of the perpetrator [up to and including the language used during the crime itself] can fundamentally alter the nature of the crime).