Left, right, etc

Janet Albrechtsen ends a column with this:

So I'll leave you with a larger but somewhat cheeky hypothesis. Left-wing politics is essentially an emotional, instinctive utopian kind of world peopled by romantics and dreamers. Conservatism is, on the other hand, more rational, analytical and pragmatic. That is why creative types tend to come from the Left. Right-wingers, by contrast, have real jobs.

Of course, calling it "somewhat cheeky" indicates that she's hardly likely to consider it entirely defensible. But still it attracts a lot of criticism from the left-y side.

What do I think? Well, that the modern "creative type" is much more commonly left leaning is surely true, isn't it? (Why that is so is not entirely clear to me, nor is why it seems especially true of the last 40 years or so.) I would have also thought that Marxism was clearly utopian in nature, and a matter of faith masked as science. There is surely still an element of utopianism that runs through the Left.

But the issue of the rational/emotional divide is more complicated than Janet's take. Modern social conservatives of a religious bent (like me) understand the emotional appeal of the old faith, and regret that it has less influence on society. On the other side, there is often the unreflective atheistic utilitarianism of modern ethics, which prides itself as more rational than anything that is partly based on faith and mystery.

Of course, it is not as if mainstream Christian religious ethics doesn't employ rational argument too. (Pope Benedict reminded the world of this recently.) One of the most frustrating things about arguing with the irreligous Left can be their attitude that their conclusions are self-evidently more rational than that of those who have a religious influence. In fact, the different conclusions may arise more from the varience in fundamental assumptions about human nature and reality, and these are really matters of faith (or at least unproveable) for either side.

Someone else has probably explained this better than I can...