writes, attracts “bleeding hearts,” persons “who have never met a claim
to victimhood that does not cry out for redress and compensation,”
and seem “temperamentally incapable of saying no to the underdog.”
The right, on the other hand, must deal with “jerks,” who want to cut
taxes and social programs “simply because they don’t care about
anybody but themselves,” are unabashedly self-interested, and “may
even have a mean streak.”^54
More broadly, one could identify a vast array of cultural attitudes
and predispositions associated with being on the left or on the right.
“Le ski,” cries a woman played by Emmanuelle Be ́art in a 2004
French movie, “c’est de droite!” Skiing is right-wing.^55 Be ́art’s char-
acter refers to downhill skiing, an expensive sport that requires fancy
equipment and is practiced in highly organized and commercial set-
tings. She does not say so, but Nordic and backcountry skiing may
have more of a leftist touch. For Margaret Thatcher, buses were
apparently collectivist, left-wing contraptions. “A man,” she said,
“who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself
as a failure.”^56 Jean Jae ́lic, a little-known French conservative who
wrote a book on the right in the early 1960s, proposed an entire
classification of characteristics of the left and of the right. In his view,
for instance, soup, mountain hiking, and the morning were discip-
lined, rigorous right-wing preferences, whereas aperitifs, beach holi-
days, and the afternoon were lax, frivolous left-wing inclinations.^57
More recently, a French survey found that people who identify with
the right tend to buy Peugeot cars whereas those on the left are more
likely to choose Renault, a formerly state-owned enterprise.^58 Much
could be said about the political relevance of such categorizations
but, as we will show in Chapter2, public opinion surveys do indicate
significant relationships between political orientations and cultural
attitudes. One should keep in mind, however, that Italians have not
(^54) Joseph Heath, “The Last Word: Thoughts on a United Right,”Policy Options,
55 vol. 25, no. 1, December 2003–January 2004, 116 (www.irpp.org).
56 The movie isA`boire, by Marion Vernoux (France, 2004).
Margaret Thatcher (1986), quoted in theWikipedia Free Encyclopedia(http://
57 en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher).
58 Jean Jae ́lic,La droite, cette inconnue, Paris, Les sept couleurs, 1963, p. 129.
Ludovic Hitzmann, “E ́lection pre ́sidentielle franc ̧aise: La gauche aime Renault,
la droite Peugeot,”La Presse(Montre ́al), May 7, 2007. The most right-wing
French prefer Ford cars!
A clash over equality 23