Left vs Right-Wing Political Views & Psychology

What are associated with politically left and right wing views? Including conservative and liberal views and how to know if things tilt too much in one direction? Also, adding a psychological and philosophical dimension to this subject.

Left Wing

The left wing tends to be for open borders, social justice, supports minority groups, equality, freedom, rights of the individual, including workers’ rights, unions, benefits, and free healthcare. Economically, the left moves toward socialism, which leads to increasing taxes. The extreme far left is communism. Left-wing governments are generally for more government control, and more regulations.

Psychologically, the left also tends to tilt to the idea of nurture and learned behaviours, and that we are blank slates to be programmed.

Right Wing  

The right wing tilts to closing borders, less regulations, and less government control and interference. The right is for capitalism and lower taxes, which encourages and rewards hard work, earning wealth, and owning property. The right also tilts towards conservative values, national pride, tradition, including religion, personal responsibility, and supports hierarchy and the majority population. Fascism and group (race & region) supremacy are examples of when things go too far right.

Psychologically, the right moves towards the idea of nature, in the nature vs nurture balance. They believe our personalities and abilities are at least a good part, if not mostly genetic and cannot be changed.

Personality, Intelligence & Political Views

Some research in personality psychology shows connections to personality traits and political views. For example, on the big five traits, high openness (creativity & intelligence) predicts liberal and left-leaning views. High consciousness (hardworking & traditional) predicts conservative and more right-leaning views. See here for more on this.

The liberal left is seen as being more intelligent. This is why the left attracts narcissists. Plus, the supposed leftist activists are not liberals because they are against many of the values of being a true liberal, such as free speech, and freedom in general. The line between left and right is not always so clear.

Which is best left or right?

Really, neither one is better; problems only start to arise when things go extreme. Ideally, in a two-party democratic system, one side should represent the left liberal, and the other side the right conservative. Depending on the current state of a country, sometimes a more left-leaning government is needed, and at other times a right-leaning approach is the answer.

If things start to go too much in one direction, people can vote for the other party, to either bring things back to the centre, or tilt slightly to the other side.

Political Extremism

Things can tilt too far over to the right, or to the left. How does this happen? Currently, this has already happened in many western countries. This has partly happened due to the demonizing of one side of the political spectrum. More on that here.

Sometimes one side becomes so certain of themselves, or perhaps becomes so corrupt, that they don’t want to give up their power. This could lead to election fraud and manipulating the system. Sometimes one side becomes so dominant, that supposedly opposing parties can become infected with the same ideology. This could lead to the main two parties basically being the same. When this happens, democracy essentially dies. There is no longer an opposition side. This is currently the case in the UK with the Labour and Conservative parties.

The conservative party is not actually conservative. Some politicians may sound conservative some of the time. However, it’s all talk, nothing actually happens. Sometimes the entire needle moves in one direction.

This moving of the needle has been pointed out by Bill Maher, and Elon Musk. Both considered themselves left-leaning liberals in the past. However, now they are being classified as right-leaning conservatives. They claim they haven’t changed their positions. It’s the needle, or the political centre point that has shifted.