Reply #77: Not So, Sir [View All]

[The Magistrate]

One of the major forces harnessed in political activity is the desire to be part of a group. Very few humans are wholly immune to this. Ostracization and denigration serves the purpose of discouraging persons from identifying with the group so assailed: it works to prevent further growth of it, and to peel off from it all but a very hard core who pitch their identity on defiance, and cannot usually be brought to work with any group they cannot imagine centered on themselves.

The right is, as a general proposition, far more cohesive than the left. There are several reasons for this. One is that the right has practical experience of wielding power, while the left, particularly at its farther reaches, has only theoretical projections of how they might wield it, and it is more difficult to get a good quarrel going over matters of practical experience than over a variety of hypotheticals. Another is that the right has a nmuch higher proportion of authoritarian opersonnalities in its ranks than does the left, and persons so formed are more apt than the average to move cohesively under accepted leadership. Thus, there is less splintering, once things come to the sticking point, on the right than on the left. Rightist politicians have less to fear from their fringes than do left politicians. It is up to persons on the left to recognize this tendency, and act themselves to correct it.