I fully get that I could be wrong on various factors I used to create this. I created this as a formal starting point.
I would like to open a civil and rational discussion on this, with the goal of seeing how I might be in error and possibly refining this spectrum to even closer fit current reality.
If I am in error, please correct me, and try to refrain from attacking me. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to me, or vice versa.
Thoughts on this spectrum?
Your post on another thread really got me to thinking on this, and I thought you both might be interested enough to weigh in.
That is way way wrong. NOw Libertarians are left of the GOP on many issues. The commies have infiltrated them.
The red part that crosses over to the left must be RINO land. Notice the blue doesn’t cross over to the right.
If you really want a graphic visualization, maybe you need something like a color wheel instead of a line.
There are thousands of "issues" out there. For each issue, there is often a spectrum, not a binary, range of opinions.
E.g., believe it or not, you could probably find both someone who is generally a democrat, republican, fascist, communist, or libertarian who is against abortion, and another for it.
So even a color wheel may not suffice. It's a multi-dimensional problem so you'll need to brush up on linear algebra and matrices.
Well done. I agree. I was considering where to put strict, originalist Constitution—probably to the right of the deep state box.
Unelected officials with power are not Constitutional.
A big part of the Deep State is the MIC.
Good vanity.
I would only point out that your thinking is two-dimensional, not three. In reality, concepts appear to be circular. Nature (God) is not wasteful. Concepts, which appear to have extremes, as in a spectrum, are circular, in fact. The most ardent Leftist and the most ardent Rightest share the same worldview.
Man is a complex animal. He must exist both as an individual and as part of a collective.
Actually, this is no surprise, at all, as this allows for his dominance. Who can survive against a species that is master of both?
Especially the top graph but somewhat true of the others is
the theory that it is similar to a graph wrapped around a cylinder. Two radical sides touching as the middle denounces them both.
When the Macomb County, Michigan (my home region growing up—also Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone) mostly middle class labor union members changed from decades of always Dem to voting GOP as “the Reagan Democrats” it laid the national groundwork for the later Trump victories.
An example of going so far to one end that they joined at the other end and want freedom, individuality, the Great American Way of Life preserved and so on with Trump, after the JFK style Dem Party changed.
Not 100% perfect analysis but has some truth to it, I think.
PING
Political spectrum in graphs
“””””I don’t believe there is anything Conservative about Libertarianism, except that tendency towards smaller, less intrusive government, so in that respect, I believe there is overlap there towards smaller government”””””
They don’t really believe in smaller government, they want the Border Patrol ended and the borders opened up completely, we already know that leads to bigger government and loss of individual freedoms, look at California, that was done by immigration, and every state that falls is immigration.
Very well reasoned column. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
Moreover, these relationships can be usefully thought of as multidimensional and multifactored even though we can only process and understand them in two or three dimensions at a time.
For example, consider how the Left divides the world. Under traditional Marxism, the categories were based on economics. Modern Marxism applies the broader and more flexible categories of oppressed and oppressor.
Yet Marxism in all forms always has a keen sense of whom its political enemies are. That can change in an instant though depending on tactical and strategic considerations.
Thus Marxists and Nazis in Europe began as bitter adversaries because they were competing variants of socialism. Both allied though to bring down the Weimar Republic, after which their mutual enmity played out between Hitler and Stalin in existential terms.
Nevertheless, when circumstances warranted, Hitler and Stalin allied to invade and divide Poland, with the USSR providing natural resources and war materiel to Hitler for use against Britain and France. Eventually, Hitler turned on Stalin and invaded the USSR in June of 1941.
Remarkably, dedicated communists around the world found ways to rationalize these developments in supposed ideological terms. I suggest that the better approach is to recognize that political movements also view circumstances as a matter of how to seize and retain power. This can scramble seemingly neat and settled ideological relationships.
Ping