"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.' The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing." --Ronald Reagan
(HT: SW.)
I enjoyed this snippet because it's probably the clearest and least judgmental way to discern the difference between the right and the left.
The right wants "the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order".
The left wants "the maximum of individual happiness consistent with justice", or something like that.
It seems to me that issues where the left and the right disagree are almost always places where justice & order (or, conceivably, freedom & happiness) don't overlap.
This is one way of framing it.
Of course, politics is not one-dimensional and the "left-right" axis whatever the principal component is for the region and period. Usually, this axis is defined by the line between a point a) which defends the establish and b) the largest perceived threat to the establishment. In modern America (more so in Reagan's 80s than now), the principle component of politics is still defined by the Cold War. Given the existence of a highly revered constitutional document, American politics is weighted quite far rightwards.
Countries with longer histories have weathered more threats and had a more evolving establishment, so the left-right axis has revolved a fair bit for most of us. Prior to the left being dominated by socialism, the big argument was about hereditary power vs democracy and universal suffrage -- here Reagan's preference for freedom is championed by the left, and the threat of totalitarianism comes from the right.
Reagan is obviously talking about the right of his country at his time, not in pre-war Britain, except I think there is a kind of political memory which underlies the ideological statements from the right and the left, where the right's natural sympathy is for the established power base, and the left's natural inclination is to extend the power base to include more people. I can't explain this in ideological terms like Reagan and Bernardo, because it's a more basic tribal thing. The whole business of a government selected through votes which you can't buy or sell, runs quite contrary to the principle of capitalism that you can accumulate power and influence through industry. Those who have power and influence through wealth are therefore naturally inclined to enlarge the sphere of their greater influence by restricting government, while those with less wealth look for influence through the voted government that represents them better than their money can.
It is a repeatedly observed property of capitalism that the best way to make money is to have some to start with. Wealth can be considered an inheritable trait. Perhaps the left and right of America is not so far removed from the left and right of 17th century Britain, despite the apparent reversal of the freedom vs. totalitarian positions.
More importantly, freedom underlies the left just as much as it underlies the right.