‘Left’ versus ‘right’ is tearing our country apart. The Founding Fathers gave us a better way

As a matter of necessity, human beings must use conceptual frameworks to understand and bring order to their experience. Frameworks like the periodic table of elements in chemistry or Porter’s five forces in business strategy are mental “maps” that help us navigate a given realm of life. While all frameworks are simplifications of reality, some are better than others.
On Constitution Day, Sept. 17, it’s worth thinking about the political framework used by the framers of our constitutional system and comparing it to the one en vogue in America today. Is there something America’s founders can teach us about how to improve the way we think about politics?
Currently, the dominant political framework in America is the “left-right” political spectrum. According to this paradigm, we can place every person, party, idea or institution on a line running from left to right depending on its disposition toward change. (Those radically in favor of change are considered to be on the “far left,” those radically against change are on the “far right,” and those in favor of some are change in the middle.)
The political spectrum tells us that all policies naturally bundle together into two packages because a disposition in favor of change leads to one set of positions (higher income taxes, more gun control, more aid to Ukraine, less drug control, less abortion control, etc.) while a disposition against change leads to the opposite set of positions (lower income taxes, less gun control, less aid to Ukraine, more drug control, more abortion control and so forth).
Instead of thinking in terms of a “left-right” political spectrum, the American founders conceived of politics as the quest to simultaneously empower and restrain government. In their model, too much government power leads to tyranny, while too little leads to anarchy, so the best political order is one in which checks and balances keep government strong but limited. In the words of James Madison, “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” The way that the framers of our Constitution sought to empower but control government institutions was multifaceted rather than unidimensional. Among other principles and mechanisms, they focused on popular sovereignty, individual rights, the separation of powers, federalism and the rule of law.
The main problem with the political spectrum is its assumption that there is just one master principle in politics — change — but clearly this isn’t the case. There are many principles that should inform our stance on political issues, and both Democrats and Republicans today want to change some things and preserve the status quo on others — it depends entirely on the issue.
Since there are many issues in politics and infinite ways to bundle those issues, we can’t possibly model politics using a single line.
The political spectrum also communicates nonsense. It says that taking “right-wing” free markets to an extreme somehow leads to socialism (“far right” Hitler was, after all, the head of the National Socialist Party). It says that Ronald Reagan’s spending cuts moved the Republican Party “to the right,” but George W. Bush’s spending increases also moved the party “to the right” because of the war in Iraq. But when Donald Trump repudiated both the war in Iraq and Reagan’s spending cuts, he had, according to the spectrum, also moved the Republican Party “to the right” because of his immigration restrictions. So who is really “on the right”? The question is absurd because government spending, the war in Iraq and immigration are three separate issues and we can’t model three issues on one line.
The political spectrum not only confuses and misinforms, it also generates tribalistic hatred. If politics is a simple choice between left or right, then once we have chosen the correct side, we think we have all the political answers. We don’t need to think, reason or consider alternatives, we just need to destroy the “evil people on the other side.” The spectrum gives us the delusion of omniscience and shuts down constructive dialogue.
The founders’ framework, by contrast, illuminates and informs. Instead of telling us that politics is about just one thing, it gives us a tool with which to evaluate and discuss the many political issues on the table today. Does a proposed gun control regulation move us in the direction of tyrannical government control or move us away from the anarchy of gun violence? Does a proposed drug policy regulation tyrannically infringe on individual choices or help us avoid the anarchy of social breakdown? In each case, the pursuit of human liberty will depend on certain kinds of government restrictions on individual choices and certain protections of individual rights against government power. The founders’ framework doesn’t give us all the answers to complex political questions, but it does give us a useful way to think about them.
The “empowering and restraining government” framework served the founders well when they created the Constitution and largely explains why America has had free institutions for longer than any nation in history. Unfortunately, today’s “left-right” political framework is not serving us well and largely explains why our politics has devolved into meaningless shouting matches and unthinking conformity.
Ideas have consequences, and a really bad idea — the “left-right” political spectrum — is tearing our country apart and leading to harmful tribalism, sloppy thinking and misinformation. Constitution Day is a good time for us to reflect on how we can find ways to use the founders’ wise framework more and our own mistaken framework less. Only then can we find solutions to the vexing political problems of our time with the same success that the founders did in theirs.
Hyrum Lewis is a professor of history at BYU-Idaho and was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford University. Verlan Lewis is the Stirling Professor of Constitutional Studies and an associate professor of political science at Utah Valley University. They are co-authors of the book “The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America.”