The TWO MOST IMPORTANT questions in politics (since Aristotle)
(Questions about two primary ideas: Equality and Freedom)
We Need a Well-Defined Political Map:
By: Lloyd Sloan & Bob Wittmann
December 2022
The Left-Right Political Spectrum has Problems
Left-Right political labels originated in the French Revolution (1789). The Clergy and Nobles sat on the right, the lower classes on the left.
Americans today use “Left-Right” to mean the same as “Liberal-Conservative”, but struggle to define “liberal” or “conservative”.
The labels are mostly for hurling insults between two warring tribes.(Examples: “Far-left lunatics! Right-wing racists!”)
Understandably, many Americans prefer calling themselves “independents” with apparently no better definition than “I’m just not one of those two parties!” (“A plague on both their houses”)
Adding to the confusion, we are told Stalin is far-left and Hitler is far-right, but are these actually polar opposites? Such a map makes no sense. Hitler and Stalin are closer to each other than either is to Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. The opposite of tyranny is anarchy. Are anarchists now the moderate centrists? It is quite absurd.
Why is this Important?
Some “Whiggish” Observations:
– The upper left has been left out. (What Jefferson called “Whigs”:
low-tax or classical liberals, the frustrated “independents”).
– Republicans (elephants) are correctly mapped as “conservatives” on the right; they divide (up-down) over small-big government and mistakenly deny the importance of left-right (class) differences.
– Democrats (donkeys) are correctly mapped as big-government
“progressives”; they divide between left-right factions (Bernie-Hillary) and mistakenly dismiss the up-down (freedom) dimension.
– The “two-party system” comes together in the lower right. The result has been bigger government with greater wealth inequality.
– Why has big government (fascism) been winning for a century? Because the deck is stacked to “compromise” ONLY lower right.
One way to stay lost is to follow the wrong map: Columbus had to first realize the world is round, not flat.
Obviously a four-quadrant two-question quiz is simplistic. But this is often a phony excuse to keep the present mess. And it ignores the important insights that the E-F map provides. A more refined (continuous) map provides even more insights, while the essential E-F vision remains.
If someone mentions left or right, ask them to define these labels.
If they can’t, you can now do this for them, which is better than CNN or Fox can do! And push back: did you mean UPPER or LOWER left or right!