Let’s just say my expectations from this book were reserved.
I have read the author, Douglas Giles, PhD, on Medium. I have been to his website to listen to his podcasts. Sometimes he has interesting things to say. Sometimes, I need more background to figure out what he is trying to say. This book could have been over my head.
The title suggests a new definition of various political terms. Unfortunately, these terms already have too many definitions. I have been accused of using the wrong definitions in my political writing, which seems to be a polite way of telling me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Do we really need more definitions?
While Dr. Giles is not a political scientist, he is still an academic talking about politics. My experience is that political academics have no imagination and seem content repairing their Ford Model Ts. I would not have been surprised if Dr. Giles had given us another Model T repair manual.
But we didn’t get that manual!
Dr. Giles takes us through a little French history of how the terms “left” and “right” started. Then he takes us through a few conundrums to show how contemporary definitions often don’t describe the true political landscape.
As I was going through Dr. Giles’ book, the famous saying “All Roads lead to Rome” came to my mind for some strange reason. Most political commentators might be on the road to Rome, but they all stop before they get there. Hence, the popular definitions of “left” and “right” fall short of explaining the reality we are living. Dr. Giles has taken us to Rome. He gives us two simple yet profound definitions of “left” and “right.”
“Left” means a political movement that wants political power to be shared by many sectors of society.
“Right” means a political movement that wants political power to be concentrated in a few hands.
That’s it! There’s nothing in these definitions about the various ideologies that we think make up “left” and “right.”
Dr. Giles dissects the various left/right positions of current political issues. Each time, he logically takes us “to Rome,” getting to the power-sharing preference of the two sides. Those who we usually label as “left” are OK with sharing power with other people. Those who we usually label as “right” are not.
To help make his two definitions stick a little better, Dr. Giles then takes us through other political terminology.
To digress, I have tried to use Wikipedia to help define these terms. These Wiki articles first give a fuzzy definition of what it means to be a “liberal” or a “conservative.” And then these articles divide these terms up into various subcategories of the political term, sometimes 20 subcategories are listed. This is just a big hair-splitting exercise that is useless to help me communicate concepts to readers who would never read and internalize those Wiki articles.
Back to the topic. Dr. Giles uses fewer political terms to describe the political movements. They are practical, and we can remember them by the time we finish reading his book. And with each term, he takes us to the power question.
Dr. Giles casts a few contemporary movements in the “wrong” way. There have been and still are movements often described as leftist but are actually movements of the right — because they do not want to share power. Labeling a movement by how it wants power to be distributed all makes sense to me. It makes little difference if individuals are manipulated or oppressed by Big Government, Big Business, or Big Religion.
Throughout most of the book, Dr. Giles remains fairly unbiased in his definitions. But towards the end, it becomes obvious there is a bias. Let’s just say it’s hard for a political movement that doesn’t want to share political power to look good. When Dr. Giles takes us to Rome, we find a good part of Rome is working mostly for its own self-interest.
You should read this book for four reasons:
1. The sooner we cast aside the usual left/right rhetoric and get to the power-sharing intention of the various political movements, the sooner we can understand how our societies really work.
2. This book is a good review for current political junkies to fine-tune their political discourse. Same for reformed and relapsed political junkies.
3. Dr. Giles’ definitions of political terms are not so fuzzy. When we come to a common understanding of these terms, we just might find a political unity that can direct us where we really need to go. Dr. Giles just might be on to something. And it is not about repairing a Model T system of governance.
4. This book takes less than two hours to read — to gain so many memorable insights. Try telling a real political scientist to keep things brief.
Here is the most important lesson I learned from this book:
Willing to share power = left. Not willing to share power = right.
I will be using these definitions to guide my future political writing.
Published on Medium 2022
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