December 12, 2023

Left/right is a continuum, and Taylor Lorenz is telling you where she is on the line, that is, what's to the right of her.

This is easy for me to understand. I remember a colleague of mine — years ago — laughing that at this point she finds that everyone she knows is to her right. And in speaking about the Supreme Court, it's conventional to deny that Justice X or Justice Y has moved to the left and to assert that they stayed where they've always been while the Court moved to the right. 

37 comments:

rehajm said...

And in speaking about the Supreme Court, it's conventional to deny that Justice X or Justice Y has moved to the left and to assert that they stayed where they've always been while the Court moved to the right.

Yes you’ve made this distinction before but it just isn’t all that interesting compared to the left/right swings of the court. I do understand why the left chooses to personalize- it’s in the Rules book…

gilbar said...

Just ask Cook! Every single person in the US is to the right of him (Every Single One)

Enigma said...

But there's an underlying irony, as Taylor is kind of correct.

Today's "left" is much more dogmatic, authoritarian, and conservative than the big easy-going libertarian faction on the "right." The "left" fights paper tigers and ghosts from the distant past all the time. The "left" also created an eco-green-diversity-transgender-free-everything-for-everyone-but-you-must-comply vision that only billionaires and arch conservative Hitler/Stalin/Mao-like win-or-destroy-everyone autocrats want.

The nominal "left" routinely breaks into factions, each with random and rigid but unrealized visions. They are the true "alt-right" today, and are reckless/extreme because they demand that the world be different than it is or than it can be.

rehajm said...

Frankly, the relativism is boring and it distracts from examining the policies.

I will make an exception for SCOTUS exceptionalism related to all things Trump. They are in DC after all. When you stand in the swamp everything to your right is radically so. I mean Trump’s a Clinton Democrat without the crime for chrissakes…

gilbar said...

of course, Taylor never said "to the right of her".. She said "right-wing"
If i'm number 3 engine on a B-52; number 4 is "to the right" of me; but it sure ain't on the "right wing"

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Where she is on the line… she is one on a line… of journalists. Or something. She worked the line along Johnny Cash.

rehajm said...

Btw, in our house re:

HAM(M)…

IN OUT

Mary Katherine John

mezzrow said...

I can't deny that Lorenz is speaking directly from the heart. Honest, there's one in there somewhere. She has hopes and dreams too.

"What if we could just make all those mean people go away, Santa..."

Howard said...

All my Israeli friends are lefty IDF Veterans who think Netanyahu is a POS, are against the illegal settlements in the West Bank and at the same time fully support the destruction of Hamas.

This isn't a left-right issue. It's an issue of who do you support. Human beings are more complicated than the simple binary political labels that change with the winds of time.

Temujin said...

Bless her heart.

grog said...

Trying to imagine the world that Taylor Lorenz lives in...and just shake my head.
What a miserable life.

Kai Akker said...

Lorenz knows neither history nor politics. A perfect journolist for our times.

narciso said...

You need to chose better friends oct 7th is where the oslo embrace ended

Ann Althouse said...

"of course, Taylor never said "to the right of her".. She said "right-wing""

Well, that's the point of this post, to clarify by restating what was unsaid (or unperceived).

Right and left is relative.

tim maguire said...

To the liberal, only conservatism is a bias. Liberalism is not a bias, it's just pain common sense. It follows from that that anyone to the right of a liberal, no matter how left they may be, has let right-wing bias undermine their common sense.

narciso said...

Didnt the Bezos fire her, because she is such a jackalope

narciso said...

Emmett tyrell had it right about the kultur smog and how certain republicans like hagel grow, exhibit 23

https://www.emerald.tv/p/mitt-romney-the-model-senator-for-e29

narciso said...

She is a zampolit a commissar like her brother from another mother will sommer

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

In her case, it's a chart...
To think the NYT is right-wing in general?
Perhaps the NYT actually reports truth once in a while (and they do, once in a while) and when NYT veers into truth - it's "right-wing."

Lorenz is in a place so far left - up is down, lies are her truth. I call it the Stalin zone.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

A fish insisting all the other creatures around it are wet.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Does Lorenz work for NBC?
She is perfect for NBC.

Aggie said...

Dumb & Dumber & Dumbest, all wrapped up in a single clueless package.

Sebastian said...

"This is easy for me to understand."

For me, too. It's also why, as a reliable source told me once, Althouse is "conservative."

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Right and left is relative.

Okay now you've piqued my language curiosity. I think you chose "is" for a specific reason, although at first it struck me as awkward, but would rather hear it expressed in your unique way than posit my own guess.

hombre said...

Don't stop here, Professor. Your blog posts today contain a cornucopia of leftist phantasmagorical thinking.

Yancey Ward said...

Damn it- I never knew Robert Cook was Taylor Lorenz!!!!!!

Yancey Ward said...

This is just unsurprising, though- 20 years ago a commenter at Kevin Drum's blog, CMDicely, asserted to me in a comment the exact same sentiment, as have dozens of other lefty commenters in the intervening years on various blogs. They really do believe the NYTimes is right-wing. I suppose it really is a relativism issue, but then that also shows how utterly unselfaware such people are, which says nothing good about them.

rehajm said...

It's the 'true Republican' argument. The last true Scotsman...bleh

narciso said...

have you ever seen them in the same room,

the Times was for Stalin for Fidel for the Sandinistas for Arafat and Saddam, they were the handmaidens in the Edwin Wilson affair,

n.n said...

The Left-wing of the governing spectrum is authoritarian. The right is libertarian. The center is conservative. The far-left is totalitarian. The far-right is anarchist. The left-right nexus is leftist.

Michael K said...

This isn't a left-right issue. It's an issue of who do you support. Human beings are more complicated than the simple binary political labels that change with the winds of time.

No, to Lorenz the Palestinians are left wing heroes, especially Hamas.

Joe Smith said...

MKH is a cutie...not always right, but easy to look at...

farmgirl said...

(The term)… right &left is relative.
Implication implied?

Douglas B. Levene said...

Uh, Taylor, there’s a call from Bari Weiss for you on line 2.

John henry said...

There seems to be a growing trend to refer to these leftists as "fascist"

I for one welcome this trend. I started embracing this use back in the days of Occupy Wall Street. I realized that the OWS black shirts were no different in tactics and ideology from Mussolini's black shirts.

Both are pure fascist.

Let's just call a spade a spade. Taylor Lorenz perfectly fits mussolini's definition of fascist. Stop calling her left. Call her fascist.

John Henry

David Aitken said...

The Left/Right political scale is a holdover from the French general assembly in the 1700s. It measures nothing and is useless. A better scale would be a vertical line with Liberty on top and Slavery on the bottom.

Rocco said...

gilbar said...
"Of course, Taylor never said 'to the right of her'.. She said 'right-wing'.
If I'm number 3 engine on a B-52; number 4 is 'to the right' of me; but it sure ain't on the 'right wing'.
"

David Brooks is engine number 4. Taylor is the engine that dropped off of the B-52 over Minot AFB in January, 2017.