The reduction of the Left/Right dichotomy to the simplistic opposition of collectivism/individualism is one that can only thrive with a selective reading of history.

There’s neither space nor time to recapitulate the developement of this terminology but a few observations are in order.

The terminology is European in origin dating to a period when monarchism and medieval theories of absolutism were very much the order of the day. Right and Left in this context did not represent an opposition between individualism and collectivism as we understand the terms. Neither side was interested in liquidating the primacy of communitarian interests, they were arguing for competing schemes for ordering those interests.

To the degree that we can talk about individualism in this conflict it would appear that those who called for abolishing Aristocratic caste and privilege, an end to Autocracy and state sponsored religion, in short, the demolition of the pyramidic social order inherited from the past, were objectively preparing the conditions for greater liberty for a greater number of individuals.

The whole notion of Individualism being the sine qua non of the Right Wing is of relatively recent vintage and has little currency outside of the U.S. Try, for example, explaining to a European that Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, et al were all Leftists since they subjugated the individual to the collective demands of the State. They would likely point out that in this, the above were doing nothing more than extending and expanding upon the model inherited from the old autocratic regimes. In Europe the Right has historically oriented towards defending the privileges of the few against the demands of the many. The only individualism ever embraced by the European Right was the individualism of the ubermensch.

Of course, being Americans, we don’t normally feel constrained by history. Which is why we often find ourselves in a state of bewildered denial and incoherence when it catches up to us. I think Althhouse’s formulation is a good example of this.

Althouse posits that the individual is at the heart of Right Wingness. From this presumption she proceeds to lump all individual distinctions under the same heading. It follows from this perspective that anti-individualism is the essence of the Left Wing.

Unfortunately for Althouse this abstract model doesn’t stand up to the facts of American experience anymore than it applies to European history. Every great advance of individual liberty in our history has been largely opposed by the Conservative wing. From abolition through women’s suffrage to the Civil Rights movement, the Right Wing has played an obstructionist role. In contrast, all these expansions of individual freedom were largely supported by the Left.

Given all this, the question remains, how can Althouse buy into the spurious algebra that equates Right Wing with Individualist?

I think the answer lies in the fact that there is more than one sort of individualism. There is, for example, the individualism of the exceptional personality as opposed to that which is rooted in the inalienable rights of the individual human being. The former is dear to the hearts of those who inhabit the heirarchies of power and influence since by it, each of them may define themselves as exceptional and therefore completely entitled to whatever perqs they receive or authority they may exercise over others. The latter is directly subversive to the first since it argues that every individual, however exceptional, is obliged to respect the rights and liberties of all other individuals regardless of personal distinction.

As the old adage goes, “The right to shake one’s fist ends where another’s nose begins.” This definitely constitutes a limitation on the individual but it hardly amounts to anti-individualism. Except, perhaps, in the mind of the fist shaker. In some ways our entire political history could be read as a struggle between these conflicting schools of individualism.

All this aside, the assertion that “great artists” are Right wing by virtue of being individuals of distinction has more than a whiff of the mystical about it. It implies that political orientation is something innate, organic and irrational rather than the product of analysis and conscious choice. This is on par with arguing that a person’s politics are dictated soley by national, ethnic, racial, class or sexual identity. The sly implication being that Right Wing politics represent some intrinsic natural order while Left wing politics are a perverse and authoritarian delusion.

I don’t mean to suggest that Professor Althouse would necessarily follow her premise to its logical conclusion. In my experience people who embrace such Randian symplicities seldom do.

Nevertheless, to give credence to the notion that individualism (even that of great artists) is an exclusive characteristic of the Right, is to remove oneself from the gritty, often contradictory, reality of politics in favor of the airy regions inhabited by Platonic idealists and ideologues of every stripe.

(sorry)

things are more complex than that

“He certainly wasn’t switching to right wing politics. He was getting out of politics. I’m calling that right wing.”

Good. A number of thing might follow. Either:

This is what happens when you give only superficial thought to a proposition, deciding that it’s inherent attractiveness to you (I am right-wing; great artists are right-wing; I share some attributes of great, visionary creators; it might even be genetic) obviates the need for further thought before the proposition is championed.

You get caught out sounding dumb, if any reality-based person quizzes you.

Ann’s thesis is:

“left wing politics…requires you to remain engaged and would require the artist to include politics in his art. The great artist sees that those requirements will drag him down (and rejects them and this rejection makes him right-wing) That’s what I’m theorizing.”

I have inserted my own italicised conclusion in there to make the formulation a little clearer.

First part: The Mistaken But Necessary Premises

1. “…left wing politics…requires you to remain engaged”.

Let’s call this the engagement premise.

Left-wing politics, like right-wing politics, cannot be captured under a single heading. It follows that you cannot substantiate the contention that left-wing politics requires you to remain engaged to any more significant degree than right-wing politics does.

(In practice, they’re probably the same. Right and left-centrists agree on government infrastructure, they disagree on its domain and duties. Since the overall infrastructure is the same, the degree of engagement is pretty much the same. Unavoidably, if you live in groups, you will have structures. Structures enforce behaviours. This is engagement.)The premise is junk, but necessary, in order to support the contention/leap of faith that:

2. “left wing politics…would require the artist to include politics in his art”

Let’s call this the inclusion premise. Turning to reality for a second…both left and right wing governments have insisted that artists include politics in art (Spain, Italy, China etc). Other left and right wing governments have not. There is no generalisable rule here. Is Ann saying that is it inherent in the principles uniting left-wing thinkers that they would first press-gang artists if they came to power? Insist on political art? Seems so.

It would be nice if she’d identify this universal principle, but she doesn’t. I suspect, though, that that’s the purpose served by the first premise, the engagement premise, and that’s why the two are linked by ‘and’. It suggests causation without having to claim it. (I don’t think she could bring herself to write ‘therefore’, as the sound of cognitive gears clashing would be too loud, but a nice, safe, suggestible ‘and’. That’s the ticket.)

You can see the set up around now. Ann says that left-wing politics maximises civic engagement (in some undefined way, that differs from the ordinary obligations of citizens under Fascism, for example). Because it maximises civic engagement, it will insist the artist ‘include politics in his art’ (it seems to be assumed that forceful leftie pressure to engage, engage, engage will necessitate artists ‘including politics’, whatever that means.) But the artist rejects this intrusion onto his creative territory, and in so doing rejects a fundamental tenet of deviant left-wing politics (that all artists must include left-wing politics in their art), and is therefore right-wing. QED.

For any of this to hold, you have to ignore the fact that the history of art is more often than not the history of the search for patronage, and government patronage at that. Both Mozart and Bach devoted vast amounts of time to attempting to get government positions, and there are an infinity of other examples. The artist as romantic loner, rebel and loser is a relatively recent invention. It has a lot to do with Pre-Raphaelite harking back to the days of (invented) yore, with Rousseau, and other similar forces. (Feel free to correct me here, someone who knows more.)

It’s a cultural phenomenon, and hardly sufficiently universal an experience to build a religion on.

It doesn’t hold up, and its major flaw seems to be oversimplification (that is apart from unstoppable wishful thinking). It is a form or Mary-Sueism, as an earlier commenter noted. Could it be that being right-wing in much the same way, I must share some of that gigantic creativity, visionary insight and splendid thighs of Michelangelo? Who can say?

Pity. Creativity is a complex and interesting subject. Best not conscripted though.

“To be a great artist is inherently right wing…there is a strong individual, taking responsibility for his place in the world and focusing on that”
(your quote of her article)

When exactly did having a strong sense of personal responsibility make you right-wing? I would have thought that it was exactly a strong sense of personal responsibility that made you left-wing.

For example, concern for the medium and long-term environmental impact of an action betokens a strong sense of personal responsibility. It’s also a card-carrying leftie stance.

Similarly, concern for the poor betokens a strong sense of personal responsibility – I live in a society; I benefit therefrom; he is poor in the same society; he does not benefit therefrom; it behoves me to find out whether it’s my benefiting that causes his suffering, on grounds of personal responsibility. Concern for the poor is an equally identifiable left-wing issue. (Generalising, yes.)

I could go on.

I have always understood it to be the case that it’s the fact of holding the individual in high esteem that makes one left-wing. If you hold individual worth to be a good, then you cannot possibly structure societies in such a way as to demean that good.

It’s the right-wing and its various ideologies that have no respect for individual worth and personal responsibility. It’s under right-wing ideologies that people become ‘human capital’, ‘resources’ and the like, and it’s in service of right-wing ideologies that we have been encouraged to ignore our responsibilities willy-nilly.

So that seems a little weird to me, and it worries me that the political equivalent of axe-murderers can unblushingly claim to serve our best interests (‘it’s just culling, see?’)

Secondly, the rest of the contention is just garbage. Artists are routinely apolitical, for the very simple reason that remaining free of stifling systemic conventions of thought best engenders creativity. When they do become politically active, they seem to gravitate leftwards more often than not, though the reasons are often so idiosyncratic that no rule can be generalised.

The whole mythos around artists types them as eccentric, non-conformist visionaries, and not without reason. The idea that great creative vision and social non-conformity are synonymous with the right-wing is risible.

Are these folks for real?

Except that you’re about a minute and a half too long you old fart! Get to the point. Now!

I’m with bob mcmanus.
Art is always conservative in that it seeks to ‘conserve.’
it describes the present and gives it order; manifesting either a hate so complex that it becomes respect- or love- or a love so complex as to admit all the flaws of it’s object. Either way revolution is foreign to it.
And Jules Verne described the 19th century as Isaac Asimov described 1955. The cerebral pretensions of sci fi are no different than those of socialist realism (though that falls on deaf ears here.)

And Manet was not revolutionary, he was honest.
That was shocking enough.

Aeschylus,Sophocles,Euripedes,Aristophanes,Dylan,
Martin Carthy, Tom Stoppard, Johnny Rotten.

How often are artists reactionary? “We have forgotten or fallen away from the old values and eternal truths and I will use my art to remind people that rock and roll is about three minute fast songs that your parents can’t stand.”

Or folk roots. Or blues. Or the old masters. Or the delusion of progress. Or the archetypes and ancient passions and instincts. It has nothing to do with what Ann Althouse was talking about but is “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon” a conservative or liberal work? I would say conservative, tho few “conservatives” would agree.

If you mean ‘great’ like the generations of Englishmen who built and rebuilt the village church, until it became one of the most attractive buildings in our mind’s eye, then no, they were not right wing. They believed in community and made it happen by doing a lot of stuff Ayn Rand or Knut Hamsun would never do.

Like any of these people know from art, anyway.