From the article: [...] Data point: In Slovakia the only party ever openly supporting gay rights and marijuana legalization is also the most laissez-faire party. (More info, in Slovak language.) And for many people here it feels these topics "naturally" belong together: we want less state regulation, both in economic and private lives. On the other hand, we have no significantly pro-guns or pro-feminism party. Guns are not a big topic here. Feminists are opposed to the religious party (which is considered right-wing, but many of its opponents are also right-wing), but don't seem to support any specific party. So it would be interesting to have data from other countries, whether the described connection is US-specific, or typical for most countries. Because if it is US-specific, the most likely explanation would be "somewhere in the past, for whatever reason, people advocating A and B formed a coalition, and since then people perceive A and B to be parts of the same political opinion", and in other countries the historical accident could have been different. People may have the universal tendency to make politics two-sided ("us" and "them"), but the specific contents of those two sides may be accidental. And if some people are more concerned about choice between A and B, but other people are more concerned about X and Y, over time these choices will collapse into AX and BY, or AY and BX. Even if the choice is neurologically based, e.g. some people prefer "safety" (right) and others prefer "exploration" (left), what exactly is "safe" and what is "adventurous" may depend on the specific historical context. For example, the first Communist regimes clearly were "adventurous"; something new, never tried before. But what about the post-Communist countries now? Here it is reversed; the "safety-oriented" people dream about the good old times when men were men, women were women, and The Party had everything firmly under control; while the "adventurous" people dream about

Started reading. Encountered the claim that rightism is survival-oriented and leftism aesthetics-oriented. Thought of Leni Riefenstahl, and Fascism as "the aestheticization of politics". Then thought of endless megabytes of right-conflationist libertarians explaining why Nazism really, truly is entirely leftist and not rightist at all. Then thought of Wilson and Korzybski and the "is of identity". All modern¹ political views are misrepresented badly by being projected onto a single left-right axis. To the point that I am increasingly convinced that anyone who tries to make generalizations about "leftism" and "rightism" is either hijacked by a meme, or selling something, or both. ---------------------------------------- ¹ This may be read as "post-WWI" at least.