The unbearable ease of being right and left and a new political power

Few terms are treated with such recklessness and arbitrariness in the contemporary public space today as "left" and "right." The leading spokesman of an allegedly "right-wing" movement accuses the representatives of another "right-wing" formation of "Bolshevism". A new "Communist International" is said to have taken up residence in Brussels. The US president warns of the rise of "communism". Not Chinese, Vietnamese or Cuban, but purely American (and maybe big and beautiful).

We are witnessing a complete emptying of the concepts that have given Western political life meaning, ethos and compass for more than two centuries.

Right and left - that once sounded proud.

The left - these were the camps of the people, the revolutionary Convention, the fight for the widest possible representation of all people in the legislatures, Jean Jaurès, Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Olaf Palme or François Mitterrand. Tribunes, activists or intellectuals proclaiming social justice and equality for all. Despite all the excesses, they represented the voice of the conscience of the time, which could be wrong, but was authentic.

The right - it was a belief in the strength and commitment of the individual, initiative, entrepreneurship and aggressiveness, sometimes reckless, but always going to the market with skin. Right, it was the belief that the personal interest of the individual will result in the benefit of the whole society. The right was a powerful executive headed by charismatic leaders like Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle or Ronald Reagan. They had their weaknesses and limitations, but their moral integrity could not be doubted.

Are there significant political forces in the Czech Republic today that would reflect at least a hint of the above principles? (Do they even exist anywhere in the Western world today?)

If not, let's stop playing the right-left spectrum. But the times are too serious for us to afford not to understand the words we use.

We are concerned with saving the national community, which must draw from deeper mental and psychological resources than mere media and cabinet platitudes from a dictionary that has lost its meaning.

We need a political force to guide us through the vast global geopolitical changes and upheavals that lie ahead.

We need a moral force to free us from nihilism and unproductive neoliberalism and suicidal Atlantic militarism.

We need intellectual strength and courage that will not hesitate to make fundamental radical healing changes in practically all spheres of economic, educational and social life.

We need a suggestive and mobilizing force that will unite patriots, altruists, idealists and creative and industrious people, and that will scare and shame the sell-outs, cowards and opportunists.

The future world will not be divided into West, East, North or South, but into countries that have the aforementioned power and states that are unable to create it.

It will be the difference between rise and greatness on the one hand and humiliating stagnation and decline on the other.

Which part of the world do we want to belong to?