Why a right winger?

É muito frequente acontecer-me isto: numa conversa qualquer, digo de repente que sou de direita e as pessoas ficam a olhar para mim, meio confusas, meio assustadas, sem saber se estão a falar com um nazi ou com um tipo que apenas discorda de uma certa visão normalizada das coisas. A semana passada aconteceu-me isto com um casal que muito estimo e que não via há anos. Como ela é britânica, escrevi este email para eles em inglês, que na verdade serve bem de manifesto, até porque é sucinto:

People get often puzzled when I say, upfront, the I am a right wing guy. Not a social democrat. Not center-right. Not right leaning. Right wing. After all I don't have swastikas tattooed on my body. I don't look like an extremist. I don't go around in white hoods spanking black guys. I don't come across as a tyrant. I smoke pot and come from a lower middle class in the outskirts of Lisbon. Though I have worked hard during my entire adult life, I own a very proletarian VW Golf and a T2 house in Damaia (a very unimpressive suburb of Lisbon) and that's about it. Thus, it's easy to perceive that I'm not rich and will not inherit anything from anyone. So, why a right winger?
To put it as simple as I can (so not to bother you with rethorics): because I strongly believe in liberty, individualism and responsibility. I believe In liberty as a tool for people to suppress tyranny and take as much control as possible of their destinies; I believe in the individual so he remains human in the midst of social convergence; and I believe in responsibility so I can resist the temptation to establish desires as rights, and assume my own faults with the same legitimacy that I take credit for my virtues.

But Jordan B. Peterson, explains it a lot better:

"How could the world be freed from the terrible dilemma of conflict, on the one hand, and psychological and social dissolution, on the other? The answer was this: through the elevation and development of the individual, and through the willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of Being and to take the heroic path. We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world. We must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate what is old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It's asking a lot. It's asking for everything. But the alternative - the horror of authoritarian belief, the chaos of the collapsed state, the tragic catastrophe of the unbridled natural world, the existential angst and weakness of the purposeless individual - is clearly worse."

Taken from "12 Rules For Life - An Antidote to Chaos"

That's it.