It's a commonplace that labels like "left" and "right" don't mean anything, but that's not true.

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The first clean distinguishing test I ever heard came from @StevenBrust: "Ask what's more important, human rights, or property rights. If they say property rights are a human right, they're on the right." (I liked this so much I put it in my novel Walkaway)

2/

Then came the definition from @CoreyRobin's "The Reactionary Mind": to be on the right is to believe that some of us were ordained to rule and the rest to be ruled over, and that the world is only right when the correct rulers are enthroned.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-reactionary-mind-9780190692001

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(I liked this so much I put it in my novella "The Masque of the Red Death).

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/

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Today, I learned a new definition, courtesy of @jholbo1: "Conservatism says the law protects in-group members without binding them; while binding out-group members, not protecting them. Mafia logic all the way up and down."

https://twitter.com/jholbo1/status/1264387116982661120

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This follows perfectly from the second definition. The purpose of the law is to protect the rightful rulers, so the law can't - by definition - punish them. And it is "mafia logic."

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Holbo was talking about Michael Gove - a UK Tory Minister - excusing his fellow minister Dominick Cummings repeatedly breaking the quarantine rules that Cummings is responsible for creating and enforcing.

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But it could apply equally well to Trump's pardons for his crooked henchmen, or the legions of Karens who think the cops should come and bust some Black kid's head for selling lemonade without a license, while ignoring their own anti-vax playground quarantine-breaking.

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It's pure Blue Lives Matter logic: the law should protect cops from Black people, but not Black people from cops. It should punish Black people who break the law, but protect cops who break the law.

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There is a meaningful difference between reactionary and progressive, left and right. It's the difference of property rights vs human rights - whether you exact the right to hoard while others starve, or the right not to starve while others hoard.

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It's the difference between pluralism and elitism: whether you think some of us were born to be ruled over, or whether you think we should have a government selected by its people to serve those people.

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It's the difference of equal protections and duties under the law, as opposed to impunity for the powerful and the legalized oppression of the powerless.

eof/