Political compass for the21st century

[Bill the Piper]

(09-22-2018, 11:58 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I would not agree that "Eurocrats" (which I assume you mean those advocating and upholding the European Union) are conservatives. The conservatives here are the Brexit and LePen-school nationalists.

The Eurocrats are missing the joke the generational cycle played on them. Back in the 60s-70s they rebelled against the G.I. establishment (which was worse on the Continent, because it contained many former fascists). Now, the former rebels ARE the establishment, and the G.I. elites' ideology doesn't exist anymore.

Brexiteers are rebels who want the people to decide, rather than unelected Brussels brahmins. The EU could be a good thing, but it became too centralized and undemocratic for me to support it. I don't see willingness to reform on their side.

Quote:Bolsheviks are not conservatives either; they are using the state to bring about equality.

In the 1917 this was accurate. In 1987, it wasn't. By the 1980s it was obvious that a centralized command economics is good only for the Party's elite intellectuals.

Quote:Your cultural-liberal category of rejection of all loyalty and morals (which you describe as such in your exchange with brower) may be too extreme for most liberals to identify with

It is extreme. Only pure countercultural liberals like Rajneesh (who had committed a terror attack) reject all loyalty and morals, but all figures from the purple box would argue loyalty, morals and social structure limit human self-expression.

It is not different than the other sectors. Only an extreme market liberal rejects all intervention on the market, for example. But all agree the market is good.

Quote:I doubt there's a clear separate box for cultural conservatism (i.e. traditionalism). It overlaps completely with conservative nationalism, for sure. You have three separate right wing ideas, spread out over 3/5 of the diagram.
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Conservative nationalism does not deserve a separate box. As you point out, nationalism dates back to the 19th century. But, it was liberal, then. That was a different flavor, so a box for "nationalism" placed on the right can't be correct. Again, the state is neither liberal nor conservative; it is statist. Conservative nationalism is just a flavor of cultural conservatism, which says only this: "my group is more deserving than yours." It is thus the same as religious conservatism, the religious right, etc. MY God, Family and Country uber alles.

Hitler and Mussolini were the ultimate cultural conservatives. For Hitler everything was about "Deutchland." But what was the goal of "Deutchland"? To exterminate the Jews. Mussolini and Trump want to "make our country great again." What does this mean? For Trump it means "keep the Muslims out!" For Mussolini it meant a pact with the Catholic Church. Similarly for Franco and his coalition in Spain.

You are mistaken about the nationalist sector. 19th century nationalists were "liberal" because they struggled against actual Thomistic traditionalists like the Habsburgs or the Papal State. In the 1960s, anti-colonial nationalist movements in Africa were opposed to traditionalism and wanted to modernize their nations, because they wanted to weaken traditional elites, who often had good rapport with the white masters. Arab nationalists like Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad aren't exactly known for dedication to traditional forms of Islam. They have no beards, wear Western clothes and drink alcohol. For the Wahhabis, they are infidels. Arab politics seems to be polarized between the blue and black sectors.

With Hitler, it's more complicated. I think he could have used traditionalist arguments when he struggled with working-class social democrats. But, in some areas of Germany, like Bavaria, the main opponent of the Nazis were Catholic monarchists. There, Nazis emphasized their "progressive" attitudes. Many parts of the Nazi program were anti-traditional, like eugenics, Lebensborn (a form prostitution aimed at producing racially pure Aryan children) or suppression of Catholicism in favour of either "positive Christianity", or reconstructed Germanic paganism among the SS men. They agreed with the Christian conservatives on some things, like disapproval of homosexuality, but for different reason. What bothered them is that Aryans don't pass their "noble" genes on if they live in a same-sex relationship. Many neo-Nazis today are either neo-pagans, Satanists, or atheistic social Darwinists. Other profess a form of Christianity ("Christian Identity) very different from orthodoxy, e.g. they believe that Christ was not racially Jewish.

Trump is not a traditionalist, too. He was divorced twice, has paid for sex many times and probably used drugs during his 60s youth. His lifestyle is an anathema to Christian conservatives, who tolerate him only because he is against feminists and other counterculturals.

Mussolini and Franco could be on the cusp of Blue and Black, like Gaddafi.

Then, there are anti-nationalist traditionalists. Thomistic Christianity is a good example: universal papal authority is exalted, ethnic identity considered unimportant. Today representatives of this tendency include hardcore Catholics like SSPX. On Islam's side, there is al-Baghdadi's vision of a global caliphate.

Quote:For a libertarian, there is only one issue: less government.

...because the market can fix everything. He* is not about disbelief in state power, but about belief in the magic of the market.

*I use the masculine pronoun because most libertarians seem to be gen X men.