What does the term “right-wing” mean to you?

It seems clear to those on the so-called “left-wing” that “right-wing” means anybody they judge not sufficiently to the left ideologically. I mean, they are trying to primary Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman even though he voted with Joe Biden 94% of the time. However, he supports Israel and doesn’t think Donald Trump is a fascist dictator, so they have called him a “right-wing extremist.”

Melanie Phillips, journalist and conservative commentator from the UK, noted that the truth is now “right-wing,” saying, “Astoundingly, truth, evidence and reason had become right-wing concepts.”

If the “Right” is truth-, evidence-, and reason-based, it makes sense that the opposite, the Left, is none of those things.

That’s true but also unfortunate. Truth, evidence, and reason are not supposed to be exclusive to any ideological group.

I can illustrate it, in Barack Obama composite girlfriend fashion, with a composite of discussions I have had repeatedly with different people on the Left. Seeing some of the signs at this past weekend’s open-air “No Kings” cosplay conventions triggered the discussion I have had about how supporting illegal immigration and climate “action” are mutually exclusive.

First, as a practical, scientific, and biological matter, scarcity matters. Every farmer or rancher understands scarcity and what the term “carrying capacity” means. Their lands are not infinite, and while farmers rotate crops, deploy irrigation, and use fertilizers to forestall it, arable land “wears out” with usage. If not addressed, the land becomes fallow and cannot support growing anything of value. The same goes for anyone who has ever run cattle or other livestock. I grew up with livestock down in Mississippi, where one acre of land provides enough grass to graze one cow. I’ve lived in Utah on and off for three decades, an environment quite different from my home state, and ranchers out here need 25 acres of range for the same cow.

So, like cows and crops, countries have a carrying capacity of their own based on environment, natural resources, livable space, and economic success and stability.

If, as is evident, the environmentalist Left claims our environment is constantly being degraded by people and the systems necessary to support them, then what sense does it make that more people coming into America is consistent with their argument that there should be fewer people to “heal” our environment?

It doesn’t make sense. If they were consistent, they would support a strong border, tight immigration policies, and strict enforcement of deportation orders for anyone who slips through and is caught to keep the population steady.

Their position is also inconsistent with something else they should cheer, which is that the birthrate of Americans is sinking below the replacement rate. A lower birthrate means fewer people — which has been a long-term objective of the depopulation-minded climate alarmists — so they should see that as a bonus, right?

But they don’t.

With campaigns to stop deportation of “our neighbors” and to decriminalize illegal immigration because “we need more workers to harvest our arugula” to replace those not being born, they openly assert that we need more people, not fewer.

The weird thing is that as they accuse white, conservative Americans (a.k.a. the Right) of xenophobia, when they prioritize brown skin over white, they are guilty of “leukophobia” (from Greek leukos, meaning “white”), or the fear of white people.

Melanie Phillips is correct.