Via Andrew Sullivan, Scott Sumner has a new idea for a political spectrum, which you can view here. Like I posted about last week, I am becoming more and more convinced that we really do need a new way of thinking about politics.
The traditional right vs. left political spectrum is inadequate to the task of describing the actual situation. As a result, political discourse is a bit like the part in the book Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, where the Sphere is trying unsuccessfully to explain to the Square of two-dimensional Flatland how the three-dimensional world works. The framework just isn’t built to handle it.
I agree. There are at least three apices: Reaction (those who want to return to the weltanschauung dominant before 1789), Liberals (those who want essentially property rights and a nightwatchman state), and Social Revolutionaries (who want a radical and egalitarian transformation of society, and who would include Jacobins, Anarchists, and Communists).
I agree. There are at least three apices: Reaction (those who want to return to the weltanschauung dominant before 1789), Liberals (those who want essentially property rights and a nightwatchman state), and Social Revolutionaries (who want a radical and egalitarian transformation of society, and who would include Jacobins, Anarchists, and Communists).