What divides the left from the right nowadays is almost never the wildly divergent aims each group claims to believe in: it’s simply that, at a personal level, each finds the other bloody irritating.
What divides the left from the right nowadays is almost never the wildly divergent aims each group claims to believe in: it’s simply that, at a personal level, each finds the other bloody irritating.
The left finds people on the right selfish and self-satisfied. They’re not wrong. A philosopher friend of mine says he dislikes the City ‘not for the money they earn but the unquestioning sense that they deserve it’. The right’s aversion to the left is more complex — sanctimoniousness, perhaps. The middle-class left can seem more eager to display good intentions than to obtain successful results. Showing how deeply you care about poverty is more important than solving it.
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