I know Lemmy isn’t normally the best place to search for this, but are there any high-quality right-wing explainers, or modern books, or media outlets?
I myself am ultra-left (quite literally communist, to the dictionary sense of the word), but I’d like to quit the bubble that inevitably forms around and look at good arguments of the opposing side, if there are any.
Is there anything in there beyond temporarily embarrassed millionaires and fears that trans people will destroy humanity? Is there rational analysis, something closer to academic research, behind modern ideas of laissez-faire capitalism and/or political conservatism?
I’ve tried outlets like PragerU, but they are so basic they seem to target a very uncritical audience.
I’d like to see the world in the eyes of an enlightened right-winger, and see where they possibly fail (or if suddenly they have valid arguments).
I will have to preface this with the fact that I have not read any of his books, but former British politician Rory Stewart is one of the people that comes to my mind when reading your description. I don’t think that he comes to the right policy positions, of course, but whenever I listen to him he does seem to at least have a degree of empathy for all people. He seems to at least generally see the problem even if I think that his solution wouldn’t work. He has an effective way with words in interviews and his writing is generally very well reviewed too.
He isn’t really right wing though, he is from a different Tory faction which failed to tap into much of any power in the past few governments. Politics on the Edge gave good insight into his time as an MP and his roles during the period, but he didn’t justify or go into much detail about what being on the right (centre right for him, really) truly means.
I’m not sure that makes him not right wing, surely that just means he wasn’t the kind of right wing that succeeded in the political landscape of the UK in the past 20ish years? His voting record is generally in favour of less regulation (outside of a few issues), lower taxes, military intervention, isolation from the EU. He’s pro-environmentalist, but that hasn’t always been an exclusively left-wing thing. Similarly, anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are both left wing, even if they wouldn’t necessarily get along well in a single political party together
There are many left-wing people who were for leaving the EU, so I wouldn’t use that as a measuring stick of left/right.
His voting record is something he has covered; a lot of these votes which make him seem particularly bad (I’m not a big fan of his, despite having read The Place In Between - before I knew who he was - and Politics on the Edge) but from times when people were whipped or ‘encouraged’ to vote a particular way. We found out what happened when he did go against the whip, with even Nicholas Soames feeling that wrath.
Edit: my first sentence in my previous post can be misinterpreted. My meaning is that he isn’t very (strongly) right wing, not that he isn’t right wing at all, as he clearly is centre-right at his most ‘left’.
Fair enough. The whip is a reasonable point to bring up, though I would suggest that if it bothered him that much he wouldn’t have stayed in the party for ten years. After all, he had switched parties beforehand. I get where you’re coming from though.
Might be useful when taking popular side of it, thanks!