Lane Kenworthy, The Good Society
May 2025
The political left and right tend to differ along three main axes.1 One is economic, with the left preferring more government support for security and fairness and the right prioritizing freedom for individuals and firms. A second is social-cultural, with the left here emphasizing individual liberty and the right privileging order, tradition, and community. A third is foreign policy. Here the left has tended to be more isolationist, the right more favorably disposed to intervention abroad.
But that’s too simplistic. There are a large number of issues on which people may hold different views. And there are a variety of orientations that may or may not influence those views. Few of us have views that are consistently left or right. And in many instances it isn’t clear exactly what view is “left” and what is “right.”
ISSUES
Here is a sampling of the many issues people may care about.
Economy
Economic growth
Unemployment
Inflation
Interest rates
Taxes
Government debt/deficits
Regulations
Fiscal stimulus during recessions
Trade policy, tariffs
Break up big companies (anti-trust)
Regulation of crypto currencies
Living standards
Jobs
Wages
Cost of housing
Cost of gas
Cost of food
Cost of cell phone service
Credit card interest rates
Stock market
Minimum wage
Welfare state
Bankruptcy protection
Retirement resources
Healthcare
Universal health insurance
Cost of health insurance
Cost of pharmaceuticals
Reactive vs preventive healthcare
Banning/taxing ultraprocessed foods
Work requirements for Medicaid recipients
Cost of care for disabled
Family
Cost of childcare
Cost of eldercare
Difficulty in finding a partner
Divorce
Schools
Funding for K-12 schools
Teacher quality
Teacher pay
Teacher job protection
School choice/vouchers/charter schools
Textbook content
Cost of college (loans, tuition-free)
Too few slots at selective universities
Resources to STEM vs arts/humanities
Status/respect given to elite universities
Equal funding of men’s and women’s sports
Payment to college athletes
Safety
Crime
Gun violence
Terrorism
Cash bail
Plea agreements
Prison conditions
Prison privatization
Road safety
Product safety
Food safety
Vaccine safety
Work
AI threat to jobs
Commute time, remote work
Privacy/monitoring on the job
Not enough time to complete my tasks
Work autonomy
Just-in-time scheduling
Gig economy worker protections
Labor union rights
Corporate ethics
Transportation
Roads/potholes
Congestion pricing
Air travel cost/comfort/convenience/safety
Bus and subway cost/comfort/convenience/safety
High-speed rail
Other social issues
Abortion
Separation of church and state
Free speech, cancel culture
Marijuana legalization
Opioids/fentanyl/meth addiction
Internet pornography
Sports betting legalization
Homelessness
Gay marriage
Transgender persons serving in the military
Transgender women participating in women’s sport
Gender-neutral bathrooms
Lawsuits
Fairness, justice
Poverty
Glass ceiling
Racism
Police brutality
Affirmative action
DEI policies (diversity, equity, inclusion)
Reparations to Black Americans
Income/wealth inequality
Billionaires
Illegal immigrants’ access to government programs
Environment
Transition to clean energy
Nuclear energy
Fracking
Pollution
Oceans
Endangered species
Politics
Voter access: ID requirements, vote by mail, early voting
Accuracy of vote counting
More than two political parties
Electoral college
Political polarization
Policy gridlock
Senate filibuster
Executive orders
Judicial review
Federalism, states rights, local control
Term limits for congress
Term limits for judges
Foreign affairs
Military spending
Aid to poor countries
Quantity of legal immigration
Barriers to illegal immigration
Financial or military support to Ukraine
Financial or military support to Israel
Assistance to Palestinians
Involvement in the Middle East
Taiwan independence
Sanctions on Cuba
Support for refugee organizations
Support for the United Nations
Support for the World Bank and the IMF
Support for the World Health Organization
Cooperation on health research (vaccines, potential pandemics)
ORIENTATIONS
Here are some orientations that might guide a person’s beliefs and preferences on issues if they think of themselves as on the left or the right.
Left
Liberal
Progressive
Openness to change
Experiment
Security
Fairness
Justice
Help the disadvantaged
Individual freedom (positive liberty)
Opportunity
Democracy
Regulated markets
Equity
Equality
Inclusion
Solidarity, fraternity
Diversity
Internationalism
Big government
Right
Conservative
Tradition
Preserve
Liberal
Individual freedom (negative liberty)
Opportunity
Democracy
Free markets
Authority
Patriotism
Nationalism
Order
Security
Safety
Protection
Justice
Community
Small government
AN ILLUSTRATION: U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTION ABROAD
There are hundreds of millions of people in various places around the world who could, in theory, be helped by American military intervention. Some are in danger of being imprisoned or killed by a brutal government. Some are threatened by violent rebel movements or gangs. Some are at risk of dying because of an inadequate food system or medical system. Some are needlessly poor due to the way their country’s economy is structured.
Citizens of the United States face a number of potential considerations in deciding whether they favor such intervention.
Suppose you think of yourself as conservative. What should your view on this question be?
Historically, conservatives in the United States have tended to want a strong military. And they’ve favored using that military not only here but abroad. This is first and foremost to protect and pursue our own interests around the world. But many conservatives have also wanted to help people elsewhere, especially where doing so involved boosting democracy and freedom.
A prominent recent example here is our invasion of Iraq in 2003. President George W. Bush argued that the United States should launch a military invasion of Iraq because Iraq’s government was developing biological or chemical weapons (“weapons of mass destruction”) and it was run by a dictator who was hostile to the United States. So the justification was self-defense. When an investigation turned up no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush argued that we should go ahead with the invasion because we could create a democratic political system in Iraq, and that this would be good not only for Iraqis but might help foster a spread of democracy to other nations in the Middle East.
On the other hand, a bedrock belief for many conservatives is that there are sharp limits to what government is able to accomplish. And for some conservatives it goes farther; they believe government action tends to make things worse rather than better. This should lead conservatives to worry that regardless of the merits of the goal of a military intervention, we won’t end up doing it well enough to achieve the goal.
Currently, this view seems to be predominant among American conservatives. It’s been heightened by our lack of success in recent decades with military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and also Libya.
What about progressives?
Prior to the 1960s, the views of most American liberals were similar to those of conservatives. Like conservatives, progressives saw the world as a fundamentally dangerous place, so our principal aim when it came to foreign intervention was to ensure Americans’ safety.
The Vietnam War changed this. Our military committed many atrocities, which sometimes were revealed to the American public in photos or on television. The government we were fighting to protect was revealed to be corrupt and violent rather than democratic. American progressives increasingly came to view our military, and its interventions, as aimed mainly at protecting the interests of large American corporations and the military itself, rather than the interests of American citizens and ordinary people in other nations.
This view began to shift in the 1990s, when the United States provided troops and weapons to help defeat a very bad government in southern Europe, as the former country of Yugoslavia split apart. The intervention achieved its aim and very few American lives were lost. This success, coupled with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, seemed to suggest that America could now use its military mainly, or perhaps solely, for good rather than selfish purposes. So quite a few liberals came to support humanitarian military interventions.
This shift in views happened in other countries too. In fact, in 2005 the United Nations General Assembly enacted a new approach to humanitarian intervention, which says “The international community, through the United Nations, has the responsibility to help to protect populations.” This, for the first time in human history, formally overrides the principle that nations have full and complete sovereignty to do what they want within their borders.
On the other hand, many progressives are suspicious of what is sometimes called the “military-industrial complex” — the alliance between the military, large corporations that build weapons, and large firms and rich investors that might get some economic benefit from our interventions in other countries. An example of this view is the suspicion that our interventions in the Middle East in recent decades have been more about boosting the profits of American oil companies and weapons builders than about protecting our safety or spreading democracy.
So on the issue of America’s use of military intervention, it isn’t clear what position is “left” and what is “right.”
- For more, see Wikipedia, “Left-Right Political Spectrum.” ↩︎