“All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.” This observation was introduced by political commentator John O’Sullivan in the National Review on October 27, 1989, and became known as O’Sullivan’s First Law.
O’Sullivan’s First Law was born when he was a speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher and a keen observer of how institutions changed over decades. Charities, churches, media outlets, once firmly traditional, seemed to bend steadily toward progressive causes. The law didn’t try to explain why, it just captured the pattern.
But explanations soon followed. One line of thought is that in liberal societies, any attempt to stand outside liberalism risks looking “primitive and dangerous.” Faced with that stigma, organizations drift leftward simply to survive. Another theory is about temperament: progressives tend to be more risk-averse, defining caution as the avoidance of anything that might slide backward into old hierarchies. Conservatives, by contrast, often tolerate more diversity in outcomes, so they push less for institutional control.
Today, O’Sullivan’s law still sparks fierce arguments. Is it a genuine sociological insight, or a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps it reveals less about left versus right, and more about the gravitational pull of dominant ideas in any era. Institutions, like people, want to belong. And belonging usually means moving toward the reigning consensus, even if, over time, that consensus looks very different from where it began.
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