[mapt]

To be blunt: It doesn't.

The modern political binary was originally constructed in the ashes of the French Revolution, as the ruling royalty, nobility and aristocracy recoiled in horror at the threat that masses of angry poor people now posed. The left wing thrived on personal liberty, tearing down hierarchies, pursuing "liberty, equality, fraternity". The right wing perceives social hierarchy as a foundational good, sees equality as anarchy and order (and respect for property) as far more important than freedom. For a century they experienced collective flashbacks to French Revolutionaries burning fine art for firewood in an occupied chateau.

Notably, it has not been a straight line of Social Progress, nor a simple Hegelian dialectic, but a turbulent winding path between different forces of history that have left us with less or more personal liberty in various eras. But... well... you have to be very confused about what they actually believe now or historically to understand progressives or leftists as tyrants who demand hierarchy.

That confusion may come from listening to misinformation from anticommunists, a particular breed of conservative who for the past half century have asserted that ANY attempt to improve government or enhance equality was a Communist plot by people who earnestly wanted Soviet style rule. One of those anticommunists with a business empire, Charles Koch, funded basically all the institutions of the 'libertarian' movement, and later on much of the current GOP's brand of conservatism.