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What is missing in all of our discussions concerning “right” versus “left” is an answer to a fundamental first principle question, i.e. what is a political spectrum intended to signify or convey? For a very long time, the extreme right in our country has sought to re-invent our understanding of what a political spectrum should signify or convey.

The fundamental underlying premise of their new proposed spectrum is that government is our mortal enemy and history proves indisputably that government is evil and dangerous and it always diminishes freedom and facilitates tyranny.

Therefore, the more government activism or intervention within a society — the less freedom exists within society.

This conception of a political spectrum posits a continuous sequence of government activist ideologies (i.e. “statism” or “collectivism”) on the “left” in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other.

Consequently, the new proposed spectrum places anarchy [no government] on the extreme right and totalitarian dictatorships [total government] on the extreme left. But the key to understanding this proposed spectrum is that all forms of statism are placed on the left because they are considered exclusively the result of left-wing impulses.

Seen from this perspective, the more government involvement in our lives, the more government controls or regulates human affairs, the less freedom exists and the more opportunity exists for tyranny to flourish.

From this perspective, the worst violators of human freedom and dignity in all of history have been people who used government to maximize government intervention into people’s lives, i.e. totalitarian dictatorships — and advocates of this spectrum don’t see much point in distinguishing between nazi, fascist, or communist ideology since they ALL resulted in horrific crimes against humanity.

The new “middle” or “center” of the proposed new political spectrum consists of those individuals/groups who consider liberalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and nazism to be forms of “collectivism” or “statism” (aka PRO-government activism). ALL of them are thought to inevitably produce or act as precursors for tyranny – so not much point in making fastidious distinctions between or among them.

Groups whose ideology we currently consider “extreme right” (such as the John Birch Society) place themselves in the CENTER of the new spectrum because they claim to be ANTI-statist since they favor “limited government”.

In essence, the new spectrum is a rather transparent attempt to pretend that everything despicable, dishonorable, frightening and dangerous originates exclusively from the LEFT side of the spectrum whereas everything decent, honorable, moral, and desirable may be found exclusively in the center and center-right side of the spectrum.

Thus the REAL purpose behind this proposed new idea of a political spectrum is to create an “enemies list”. Collectivists/statists of all kinds (i.e. anyone who advocates utilizing the instrumentalities of government to accomplish anything within society—-and that includes liberals, socialists, communists, fascists, and nazis) are considered “the enemy” of human freedom.

The new proposed spectrum subverts the idea that different types of the same thing may have materially (and morally) important distinguishing features which make them incompatible with one another — just as all humans have blood, but if you are given the wrong blood type, you die.

All political radicals or extremists may share common attitudes and may suffer from the same type of intellectual and moral deficiencies – but, nevertheless, they do have unique distinguishing features which render them incompatible with each other.

Consequently, they cannot and should not be grouped together upon a political spectrum if we want to truly understand what motivates people to gravitate toward their political candidates, ideas, and proposals and if we want to understand why a specific targeted audience might become receptive to such candidates, ideas, and proposals.

Elevating the advocacy of government intervention or activity in some matter to the ultimate criterion for placement upon a political spectrum is a form of lowest-common-denominator reasoning because it does not provide a sufficient basis for making a decision about where one belongs upon a political spectrum.

Anybody can select ONE single criterion and then propose we elevate that it to the status of the single most important determinant for placement upon a political spectrum — but that artificially forces us to interpret all human behavior and human motives in a manner which distorts reality.