a Leftist leader:
See, Leftist are, at heart, Rationalists rather than Empiricists. So when Leftists are faced with an issue, their question is rooted in that Rationalism and they ask, “What makes conceptual sense, here?”
An Empiricist asks a different question. He or she asks, “What has worked in the past?” They want to conserve what has already been learned. In other words, they are empirically rooted in the past in a way that Rationalists simply are not.
And it’s why you don’t want a Lefty leader. Certainly not on a clan or nation level. Sure, you can talk about how Leftism just doesn’t work, but it goes far deeper than mere outcome. It’s not just a bad outcome that indicts Leftism/Rationalism. It is the very foundation of Leftism that is inherently unstable.
A Leftist/Rationalist has only theory to work with. They don’t have “the wisdom of the ages” because they are much more wedded to whatever wind of trendy doctrine sounds good now. Oh, and they think they are just way smarter than all those rubes in history…
So you absolutely want a historical Empiricist as a leader. Otherwise, you are at the mercy of whatever idea seems to make conceptual sense right now—to that particular leader. And if thought trends change (maybe it is just “a bit of bad beef”—thanks Dickens!), so does the thinking of the leader. Hence the famous terror in the old USSR (and ALL Lefty regimes) that today you are in the “in crowd,” but you may be facing the firing squad tomorrow!
For example, a Lefty/Rationalist says, “We need to get rid of all guns because it totally makes conceptual sense that if there are no guns there can be no gun crime!” The Conservative/Empiricist says, “Yeah, but the actual data show that the higher the rate of gun ownership by regular people is strongly associated with a lower incidence of violence of ALL sorts, including gun crime!”
So there is a fundamental difference in approach. Not that it is exclusively one approach or other for either side, but it is certainly the prominent trend.
This is why people on both sides think, “THIS will clinch it,” but it actually doesn’t. They are arguing on two completely different wavelengths. The Conservative thinks that this is all about facts, while the Leftist thinks this is all about conceptual satisfaction.
Thus, there is often this “paradigm blindness” on both sides.