Posted on 09/09/2009 11:31:47 PM PDT by neverdem
“The most important effect of the new, accurate political spectrum is the clarity it brings to political analysis and discourse.”
I think this look at the political spectrum is very useful—especially if you add anarchy at the right, as you suggest.
However, I object to the author suggesting this is somehow new or novel. I read almost identical analyses of the political spectrum in 1968.
“On the far right, you have totally decentralized authority, such as autonomous city-states.”
Well, that puts anarchy right back into your spectrum. The next step beyond autonomous city-states would be entirely autonomous individuals—to wit, anarchy.
However, I like the thinking behind the decentralized vs not as the basis for a spectrum.
I would disagree on one item: the placement of libertarianism. One could, by its rhetoric, also place the ACLU there. One could, by their rhetoric, place Emma Goldman's anarchists there. But both aided and abetted and one was founded by bolsheviks. When the Libertarian party actually accomplishes something, when it has something to show for all the rhetoric, I'll say it belongs where it is. Right now I see the party and movement as enablers of the left. My instinct is, as with anarchism, the ideology inherently always empowers the opposite of what is claims and the liberty its members often sincerely wish to advance.
But we have seen how it doesnt work that way in practice. We saw it in 1998 when the LP knocked Ensign out (by under 800 votes) and gave us Harry Reid as Majority leader. We saw it in 2002 when the LP was caught taking money from the DNC to run ads against the GOP in the south. We saw it in 2004 when the LP allied itself with the Green party to contest the Ohio vote.
When liberty is confused with licentiousness, the reaction and the result is a Zero tolerance society. The ACLU, by its promotion of "civil liberties", has empowered the courts, empowered lawyers and created a web of laws and regulations which have ensnared the nation. Unfortunately, as I see it the intentions many sincere libertarians have of advancing liberty has had and will have the same outcome as the ACLU has enjoyed with the only difference being the ACLU always intended to restrict freedom while the vast majority (but not all) of those who promote libertarianism do not.
Excellent quote. I hadn’t heard it before.
On the general subject, if you haven’t read Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, bump it up towards the top of your reading list.
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