I'm mr. beat let's watch some people
talk about politics shall we charlie
Kirk and Candice Owens the right wing
superstars went on Fox News and what
they did is they spewed the most boring
banal right wing talking points I've
ever heard
they spent out hour after hour of
slickly produced left-wing propaganda
and those people have more or less
systematically been ignored by people on
the right-hand side and the left-hand
side of the political spectrum yeah on
the right conservatives you're always
talking about taxes and regulations and
big government and on the left liberals
talking about economics it's always
about income inequality right the divide
between the left and the right is as bad
as it's been in really any of our
lifetimes you know what I'm not quite
sure that all of these people have the
same definitions of the left and the
right what do people mean when they say
left-wing or right-wing well the whole
political spectrum that gave us left
versus right began during the French
Revolution not that long ago for more
about this I'm going to send you to mr.
Barris from the channel this is Barris
he's going to get into the history of
why we have these terms go ahead Barris
yeah thank you for having me over mr.
beat to discover the origins of the left
versus right paradigm one must go as far
as the French Revolution with the
creation of the National Constituent
Assembly whose main task was to draft a
constitution now while France is proudly
Republican today and any trace of
royalty as long begins in a way that
wasn't always the case and a large
portion of the population supported the
king
Wiley's those who represented that
population as such when on November 11th
1789 the assembly had to vote on whether
the Constitution would grant the king an
absolute veto or partial veto those who
favored an absolute veto were asked to
sit on the right of the president of the
assembly while those who favored a
partial Veta which was the more radical
position were asked to sit on the left
this wasn't done symbolically but to
make the vote count easier for the
president who felt a bit overwhelmed
the 1,500 deputies and just like that
France started this idea of change
versus tradition of liberalism versus
conservatism which still shapes the
political landscape to this day in the
following months the deputies will
maintain that distinction not out of
ideology but rather necessity as the bow
indigo villa explained we begin to
recognize each other those who were
loyal to religion and the king took up
positions to the right of the chair so
as to avoid the shouts oaths and in
distances they're enjoyed free rein in
their passing camp furthermore being on
the same side of the political spectrum
by no means meant that he shared the
same ideologies it is often forgotten
that the French Revolution started as a
bourgeois revolution the bourgeois were
somewhat Republican and was considered
left-wing however most bourgeois also
supported free-market reforms and
liberalism in the classical sense and
when you have proto-tool communists like
Cassius pabeth who were also considered
left-wing because well the alternative
meant support of the king you get why
this might be problematic right it would
take another century before he left
versus right spectrum became popular
outside of France in the beginning of
the 20th century as revolution sprouted
across the world the press and academics
needed a quick way to categorize to
different ideologies that were fighting
each other especially as these
ideologies both left and right became
increasingly radical for example the
Bolsheviks who loved anything related to
the French Revolution immediately
embraced their left-wing vs right-wing
spectrum although they consider
themselves to a centrist position in
England however the political spectrum
took longer to become widespread and
books only started referencing it in the
late 1920s adoption in the u.s. was just
a slow but eventually as partisanship
increased in the 1960s during the civil
rights movement the idea of her left
versus right political spectrum cemented
among the beliefs of both part
and that's it mr. beat that's the story
of how an overwhelmed president when you
did an easier way to count his deputies
ended up creating a system which now
allows Millennials to dismiss their
uncle as a racist right-wing boomer
while he dismisses them for being
triggered left-wing snowflakes well
thank you mr. Baris what about today a
well often the political spectrum looks
something like this on the left side of
politics you tend to see ideas like
liberty equality aka egalitarianism
progress and internationalism on the
right side of politics you tend to see
ideas like Authority hierarchy tradition
and nationalism on the left you often
see reform while on the right you often
see reaction those on the Left tend to
want more government involvement to make
society better they want it more
top-down while those on the right tend
to want less government involvement to
make society better they want it
bottom-up ideas on the left are often
called quote liberal and ideas on the
right are often called quote
conservative of course these
generalizations are incredibly
misleading which is why this political
spectrum is pretty much crap I mean
rarely do folks fit neatly on one side
or the other for example a person might
think the government generally screws
everything up when it gets too involved
yet absolutely hates nationalism or
hierarchy often folks find themselves
caught up with this weird label called
quote centrism because they fall
somewhere in between however most people
fall quote in-between on most issues hey
can we get a better political spectrum
up in here please
Thanks okay what's this one oh yes this
one was developed in the 1950s by a
psychologist named hans eine sink he
noticed that there was something similar
going on with the nazis who were
supposed to be on the right end of the
spectrum and communist dictators who
were supposed to be on the left end of
the spectrum so he came up with these
two spectrums
an R Factor representing radicalism and
a T factor representing tender
mindedness needless to say
eins inks diagram had its critics in
particular this dude another
psychologist named Milton Rowe Keach who
argued the big difference between the
left and right was basically that the
left stressed equality more needless to
say eins ink later adapted his chart to
look like this bringing an S factor
spectrum which followed economic beliefs
around that same time the Noland charts
developed by a libertarian activist
named David Nolan became a handy way for
people to quickly see where they fell
politically by looking at a personal
freedom spectrum and an economic freedom
spectrum yep that's about where no one
would have been on his own charts and
yes today it's still heavily used in
libertarian circles the vocem chart was
a 3-axis version of a Nolan charts and
looks like this whoa that one looks
complicated other two axis charts
include the porn L chart developed by
this dude
Jerry porn L on one axis it looks at
people's attitudes toward the government
or as he said the state on the other
people's attitudes toward social
progress oh wait a second how do you
define social progress though over the
years there have been tons of political
spectrum charts like this one and this
one and more three axis versions like
this one but the problem is people won't
stop fighting about which chart is best
most of the debate centers over which
axis or axes to include for each one
wait a second the plural of axis is axes
what the heck anyway additional axes
include communitarianism versus
individualism no separation of church
and state versus complete separation of
church and state interventionist foreign
policy versus non interventionist
foreign policy multilateralism versus
unilateralism globalization versus
protectionism pacifism versus militarism
and centralism versus regional as
that's a lot of isms again odds are
almost all of you are somewhere in the
middle on all of these spectrums so
where do you fall in the political
spectrum that's right
you with the yellow shirt well I think
it depends on the issue it's not static
chances are you are constantly moving
around on the spectrum and that's
probably a good thing because it shows
that you have a more open mind if you
want to know where you stand at any
given time I personally recommend the
political compass it's not perfect but
it's a pretty good start figuring out
where you stand politically there is
also I side with dot-com which does a
decent job of matching you up with
politicians you should probably vote for
but calling someone or yourself
right-wing or left-wing which really
didn't start happening frequently in the
United States until the 1920s by the way
it is almost always an
oversimplification whenever someone says
the left or the right or left wing or
right wing ask them what they mean when
they say that
chances are you asked different people
they'll give you different answers I
think those terms left and right can do
more harm than good and probably it's
time to get rid of them well what do you
think mr. Barris yeah let's get rid of
them because unless you are a filthy
royalist we are all technically
left-wing here and you aren't a rulest
mr. beat right right okay then and
thanks for helping me make this video
mr. Barris be sure to check out mr.
barristers channel this is Barris it's
exclusively about French history and
it's an amazing resource so what do you
think about political spectrums
are there actually any good ones out
there what about that political compass
test I was telling you about do you like
that one let me know in the comments
below and thank you for watching