Political Spectrum
April 29, 2007
This one is all my own opinion - no references at all.
The commonly known methodology for analyzing the political system with fascism on the right and communism on the left is a falsehood. When I say that I mean from a real world, observable perspective. From a theoretical perspective, that simple methodology might be accurate, but it definitely is not when you look at the actual implementation of these various political ideologies.
So, let's look at the current methodology.
And yes, I've read a bunch of more complicated views of the issue and here are a few of them in pictures (and there are others). I think they are overly complicated and simply created by a bunch of wanks trying to justify their existance.
How should the political spectrum be portrayed? In my opinion a circle. I'll refrain from inserting where I think our parties fit on the spectrum but you can put them in for yourself.
I think most people intuitively understand this and shy away from political extremes for this very reason.
The bottom line is Freedom versus Control. Both political freedom and control and economic freedom and control. For the reasonably free society we have today (for the moment at least), the ideal society lies somewhere in between the extremes. If we allow our government or corporations free reign, they will inevitably take us toward extreme control (dictatorship). So, some government is good, too much government is bad. Some corporate freedom is good, complete corporate freedom is bad.
Today, we are trending towards complete corporate freedom and thus towards fascism. If we fail to recognize it and stop it, we are all in for a very rude awakening.
OK, I said I wasn't going to put our parties on the spectrum but I can't help myself. I think all four major federal parties (Conservatives, Liberal, NDP and Green) are way too far on the left or right of the control spectrum - well above the half way point (as shown by their deeds rather than their words) and the situation looks like it will only get worse.