Liberal "Left" vs Conservative "Right"

 2021 History of Labeling Liberals "Left" and Conservatives "Right" - tifo > .

The Estates General of 1789 was a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and the commoners (Third Estate). It was the last of the Estates General of the Kingdom of France. Summoned by King Louis XVI, the Estates General of 1789 ended when the Third Estate formed the National Assembly and, against the wishes of the King, invited the other two estates to join. This signaled the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The estates of the realm, or three estates, were the broad orders of social hierarchy used in Christendom (Christian Europe) from the Middle Ages to early modern Europe. Different systems for dividing society members into estates developed and evolved over time.

The best known system is the French Ancien Régime (Old Regime), a three-estate system used until the French Revolution (1789–1799). The monarchy included the king and the queen, while the system was made up of clergy (the First Estate), nobles (Second Estate), peasants and bourgeoisie (Third Estate). 

In some regions, notably Scandinavia and Russia, burghers (the urban merchant class) and rural commoners were split into separate estates, creating a four-estate system with rural commoners ranking the lowest as the Fourth Estate. Furthermore, the non-landowning poor could be left outside the estates, leaving them without political rights.

In England, a two-estate system evolved that combined nobility and clergy into one lordly estate with "commons" as the second estate. This system produced the two houses of parliament, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. In southern Germany, a three-estate system of nobility (princes and high clergy), knights, and burghers was used. In Scotland, the Three Estates were the Clergy (First Estate), Nobility (Second Estate), and Shire Commissioners, or "burghers" (Third Estate), representing the bourgeois, middle class, and lower class. The Estates made up a Scottish Parliament.

Separation of Powers: Today the terms three estates and estates of the realm may sometimes be re-interpreted to refer to the modern separation of powers in government into the legislature, administration, and the judiciary. Additionally the modern term of the fourth estate usually refers to forces outside the established power structure (evoking medieval three-estate systems), most commonly in reference to the independent press or media. Historically, in Northern and Eastern Europe, the Fourth Estate meant rural commoners.

Robert Morrison MacIver FRS (April 17, 1882 – June 15, 1970) was a sociologist. He received degrees from the University of Edinburgh (M.A. 1903; D.Ph. 1915), the University of Oxford (B.A. 1907), and Columbia University (Litt.E. 1929) and Harvard (1936). He lectured in Political Science (1907) and Social Science. His work in sociology was distinguished by his acumen, his philosophical understanding, and extensive study of the major pioneering works of Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Simmel and others. (Works read in the British Museum Library in London, whilst resident as a student in Oxford.)

Hans Jürgen Eysenck (4 March 1916 – 4 September 1997) was a German-born British psychologist who spent his professional career in Great Britain. 

The Psychology of Politics (1954)

In this book, Eysenck suggests that political behavior may be analysed in terms of two independent dimensions: the traditional left-right distinction, and how 'tenderminded' or 'toughminded' a person is. Eysenck suggests that the latter is a result of a person's introversion or extraversion respectively.

Colleagues critiqued the research that formed the basis of this book, on a number of grounds, including the following:

• Eysenck claims that his findings can be applied to the British middle class as a whole, but the people in his sample were far younger and better educated than the British middle class as a whole.
• Supporters of different parties were recruited in different ways: Communists were recruited through party branches, fascists in an unspecified manner, and supporters of other parties by giving copies of the questionnaire to his students and telling them to apply it to friends and acquaintances.
• Scores were obtained by applying the same weight to groups of different sizes. For example, the responses of 250 middle-class supporters of the Liberal Party were given the same weight as those of 27 working-class Liberals.
• Scores were rounded without explanation, in directions that supported Eysenck's theories.

Eysenck was accused of being a supporter of political causes on the extreme right. Connecting arguments were that Eysenck had articles published in the German newspaper National-Zeitung, which called him a contributor, and in Nation und Europa, and that he wrote the preface to a book by a far-right French writer named Pierre Krebs, Das unvergängliche Erbe, that was published by Krebs' Thule Seminar. Linguist Siegfried Jäger [de] interpreted the preface to Krebs' book as having "railed against the equality of people, presenting it as an untenable ideological doctrine." In the National Zeitung Eysenck reproached Sigmund Freud for alleged trickiness and lack of frankness. Other incidents that fuelled Eysenck's critics like Michael Billig and Steven Rose include the appearance of Eysenck's books on the UK National Front's list of recommended readings and an interview with Eysenck published by National Front's Beacon (1977) and later republished in the US neo-fascist Steppingstones; a similar interview had been published a year before by Neue Anthropologie, described by Eysenck's biographer Roderick Buchanan as a "sister publication to Mankind Quarterly, having similar contributors and sometimes sharing the same articles." Eysenck also wrote an introduction for Roger Pearson's Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. In this introduction to Pearson's book, Eysenck retorts that his critics are "the scattered troops" of the New Left, who have adopted the "psychology of the fascists". Eysenck's book The Inequality of Man, translated in French as L'Inegalite de l'homme, was published by GRECE's publishing house, Éditions Corpernic. In 1974, Eysenck became a member of the academic advisory council of Mankind Quarterly, joining those associated with the journal in attempting to reinvent it as a more mainstream academic vehicle. Billig asserts that in the same year Eysenck also became a member of the comité de patronage of GRECE's Nouvelle École.

Remarking on Eysenck's alleged right-wing connections, Buchanan writes: "For those looking to thoroughly demonize Eysenck, his links with far right groups revealed his true political sympathies." According to Buchanan, these harsh critics interpreted Eysenck's writings as "overtly racist". Furthermore, Buchanan writes that Eysenck's fiercest critics were convinced that Eysenck was "willfully misrepresenting a dark political agenda". Buchanan argued that "There appeared to be no hidden agenda to Hans Eysenck. He was too self-absorbed, too preoccupied with his own aspirations as a great scientist to harbor specific political aims."

Eysenck is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on other issues in psychology. At the time of his death, Eysenck was the living psychologist most frequently cited in the peer-reviewed scientific journal literature. A 2019 study found him to be the third most controversial of 55 intelligence researchers.

Virginia Inman Postrel (born January 14, 1960) is an American political and cultural writer of broadly libertarian, or classical liberal, views. She is a recipient of the Bastiat Prize (2011).

Postrel was editor-in-chief of Reason from July 1989 to January 2000, and remained on the masthead as editor-at-large through 2001. Prior to that, she was a reporter for Inc. and the Wall Street Journal. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). From 2000 to 2006, she wrote an economics column for the New York Times and from 2006 to 2009 she wrote the "Commerce and Culture" column for The Atlantic. She also appeared on the last episode of the third season of Penn and Teller's Bullshit!.

Postrel wrote the biweekly column "Commerce & Culture" for the Wall Street Journal until April 2011. Since May 2011, she has written a biweekly column for Bloomberg View.

She is best known for her non-fiction books including The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style. In the former she explains her philosophy, "dynamism", a forward-looking and change-seeking philosophy that generally favors unregulated organization through "spontaneous order". She contrasts it with "stasis", a philosophy that favors top-down control and regulation and is marked by desire to maintain the present state of affairs. In November 2013, she published a third book, The Power of Glamour, which defined glamour as "nonverbal rhetoric" that “leads us to feel that the life we dream of exists, and to desire it even more.” And, in November 2020, she published her fourth book, The Fabric of Civilization. This book looks at the "history of innovation, science, technology, trade, and human history in general" through the lens of the global development of textiles.