There are two reasons. One is quite simple and probably the greater reason, but there's a larger, more detailed motive behind it. If you want, you can read the first and last paragraph for the short answer, but if you want to read this looooong diary, go ahead and indulge yourself. The short answer, is that when I was about 11 years old I was watching the Bill Clinton vs. Dole drama unfold. I believe we were watching the Republican debate, and I remember the Republicans getting on stage whining, going "single mothers," "poor people," and "blacks" are causing the downfall of civilization. Well, I turned around and looked at my single black mother in our six figure house in the swanky part of our state, turned back to the television, and thought to myself "These people are just assholes. That explains it." I didn't give it much thought after that until I got into high school.
So I got into high school and we were going over the history of the Soviet Union, the Russian revolution, etc. etc. I was getting a good all around education. My history teacher was a Bush admiring Republican, and he and I got into it quite a lot :P We did Adam Smith in my Econ class and read all sorts of stuff for history and civics that came full circle. I actually read von Mises' "Socialism" and Friedman with a mix of Rand (I couldn't finish all of Atlas Shrugged, it was too torturous) while at the same time reading Steinbeck (more my speed) and a ton of other stuff I don't even remember. I had a good deal of right wing, "the individual is what triumphs over circumstance" type friends, plus some people who I think were just raised in right wing households and learned to hate Dems from their parents. I then started to think about what political party I would support and which way I'd lean on the spectrum. The left/right, authoritarian/libertarian spectrum isn't perfect, but I'd thought I'd take a crack at it since I'd be voting once I left high school. Yeah, I'm civic minded, so sue me.
I picked my side by looking at the extremes. I figured the extremists were just taking their philosophy to it's end conclusion. Center Left and Center Right stuff gets muddled with compromise and stealing the other sides values for their own benefit to get a clear snapshot. It wasn't a perfect method to figure out who I stood with, but it would give me a hint as to what I would find more acceptable. First, I looked at the far left, and I went as extreme as I could:
Communists
Eco-terrorists
Socialists
Anarchists (this one is not necessarily left though, so I looked at the left leaning variety of this type)
Well from my perspective communism failed. The Soviet Union collapsed when I was young, and my history book outlined the problem with bureaucratically deciding supply and demand. Von Mises was right in that price levels give a much more efficient mean of determining how much of x should be produced and where it should go. I then looked at where communism flourished and saw it as a reaction to extreme suffering. In Russia, the country had finally gotten rid of serfdom, but large swathes of Russians were desperately poor, illiterate, and backward, and in many cases purposefully kept that way. The imperial power extracted blood and treasure from its population (my history teacher would regale us with tales of how two Russians would go into battle with one rifle). It also doesn't help that the Russian government bungled the war, printing themselves into inflation in the midst of food shortages. Communism was in large part a reaction to pretty devastating societal degradation. It wasn't just Russia. Japanese Communists were anti-imperialists and were against the invasion of China, which is probably why they were rounded up and killed. Again, people trying to stand up against some great wrong.
I started reading about social democracy and found that it worked as a system. The countries where those types of governments sprang up were able to successfully get the majority of the populace to clearly see their own best interest and act accordingly. Norway is a great example. Even the gold bug super libertarian "business' interest and societies' interests are linked to the hip" types had to admit when done right, socialism worked for the Swiss, Finns, Austrians, etc. It works for Canada too, because they're fiscally conservative hardline Socialists as pointed out recently by Bloomberg. The system gets results. Poor housing in Norway is nowhere near as crime ridden as other nations because their floor of material goods is higher. Culture plays a role of course.
Eco-Terrorists I felt were resoundingly rejected by society. You can't burn down the forest you're trying to save. It's usually better to slowly help people become environmentally conscious bit by bit instead of scaring them into thinking they'll have no jobs if they can't excessively log.
Left Wing anarchists are a fun lot. I knew some in college. They usually go off to a commune somewhere and grow their own food or make their own clothes. Or they're like my cousin and just espouse anarchy on the weekend and then go back to working for the big insurance company for 25k a year M-F. There's also the loony left who are against vaccines and want chemical free bug spray.
In my view, the extreme left was concerned with protecting the poor and downtrodden, curbing excesses in power (especially imperial), and protecting the environment before it becomes so degraded that no one could use it anymore. They are extreme because of the massive resistance they're up against (monarchies, deep pocketed industrialists and a populace that doesn't care that kids die making their goods). Does this mean I'm going to join the far left? Not happening. I asked myself a few questions. Did Communism lead to widespread death? You bet. The Stalinist purges were horrific and Pol Pot had people killing each other because they "looked" educated. Sometimes people didn't die out of spite, but out of sheer stupidity, like leaving their farms to become industrialists or draining lakes to grow corn only to have all the topsoil blow away. Freedoms were curtailed and stepped upon left and right. Unacceptable. I also don't believe in vaccine conspiracies (I actually read a website that said that there's been no vaccine ever created in history that has been effective, it's all the government).
So then I turned to the far right. These groups are by no means discrete; historically regimes will fall into many groups at the same time, as they complement each other. Let the shudder-fest begin:
Ethnic Supremacists (It's not just White, depends on the country)
Fascists
Theocrats
Super Free Marketers
The ethnic supremacists need no introduction. We see them in Greece now, having taken (I believe) 27 seats in parliament. Their platform is that Greece needs to expel non-Greeks to make sure Greeks have jobs. White supremacists in this country have a long history, no need to go into it. We also have the National Review's recent spat of intelligent racists on their slate of great conservative thinkers. It's not just White people. You'll see this in far right groups the world over. "The Japanese are the supreme race and great warriors set to rule everything beneath heaven."
Nuff said.
Fascists use elements of the ethnosupremacists for their PR campaign, after all, they are egalitarian with regards to the "in" group, but they also like to have people worship industry and business. Anything bad that happens can be traced to the "other" who must be expunged. A small clique of connected businessmen control the countries industry to gear them for domination. The family is touted as the bedrock of the ethnically pure nation, and then summarily destroyed by pitting family members against each other for "treason" or when the males are needed to be sent off to war.
Theocracy takes two routes. If the country is poor, backwards, and unconnected to the rest of the world, it might look like Bangladesh or Afghanistan. If theocrats are in a richer, more connected country, then you might get something like the moral majority in this country or something like in Saudi Arabia, where Islam and Sharia are observed until you cross the border and head to the casino. God is for the poor masses to follow. These people believe that the country around them is in a perpetual state of Soddom and Gomorrah so they need to take power to effect their God's chosen path for all of humanity, whether you like it or not. Blech.
People who believe in the free market are found across the spectrum. One of the greatest mistakes Fox News makes constantly is to equate liberals (people who think capitalism is fine) with communists. The right wing Free Marketeer types, though, are the kind that think child labor is fine, people working 125 hours a week and then flinging themselves off the top of the building is great, leaving someone to die outside of an emergency room is moral, and that mislabeling products is free speech. These people also believe governments should pump up business with millions of dollars and anyone that gets in the way of Foxconn must perish. Unfettered, kill or be killed capitalism is great, and yeah, the poor get goodies too because innovation makes stuff cheaper for them (but not necessarily safer and god forbid we make their working conditions better cuz you know, efficiency n' stuff). But lord help that poor person if they ever question their plight. If they do, it MUST be jealousy.
The far right essentially thinks that the human project is failed from the beginning, unless you apply extreme pressure to society to help the chosen "good" people to rise to the top while dealing in some form or another with the rejects who are holding back the "good" people from being great. Whether that means strapping on your jet pack and killing them all as you fly away to never never land, or actually doing something similar to that in real life, it's all bat guano and evil. Heck, even the nicer ones don't see the dark alleys they head down. For example, von Mises didn't like fascism (it's a common slander against him to say that he did), but was cheering Italy on as it got rid of its unions, because you know, free markets n' stuff. Too bad he never put two and two together and saw how losing one brings you the other.
So, both extremes have some real, real awful stuff. But that's mainly because they take the base assertions too far. The far left wants to elevate the little man, and can do it if done right and not by pitting people against one another but rather by focusing on what makes civilization, and the far right wants to free the man who feels that he should have something for being super special awesome, but doesn't get it because it was stolen away. I decided to go on the side of the people that at least were trying to protect the weak and defenseless, and figure that fundamentalism of thought, of any sort, leads to tragedy. Center left it is.
So basically, I don't like super love the left, but their motives are fine as far as I'm concerned and it's a morality shared by most people who, you know, like civilization. I just figured if I stay near the center, or at least, take out the authoritarian parts it's not at all bad. Hell, even the guy who recently came out against Obama in an attack ad after Obama made a typical Rawlsian social contract argument decided he was, in fact, all about the social contract and his 11th grade teacher. In his interview though, he made a snide comment about Al Gore and the internet, and proved he was a Republican, brainwashed to hate Democrats, who thinks of his party as a frat where he gets special favors and adulation. After seeing that ad, I turned around, and thought to myself, "He's just an asshole. That explains it."