Someone did develop a political model that distinguishes five general tendencies of political orientation as gradations with extremists most likely to act despotically and treat human life callously. Pinochet may be opposite a typical Commie dictator (let us say Fidel Castro) in ideology but like a commie dictator he is willing to murder anyone who gets in the way of his plutocratic ideal.
This is a consensus model involving the discussion of several posters, and the latest manifestation.
Some of us concluded that even if Ayn Rand had never inspired a political order to form as an expression of her social values, anything that imitated her strange vision in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (everyone defers to the will of the super-rich, lest those people abandon the absolute need for them to dominate everything and take whatever they want) would be a nightmare of poverty and exploitation for anyone not among the economic elite. This distinguishes her from someone like Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, who believe firmly in capitalist organization of society and for taking a huge share of the prosperity that others create through being overworked and underpaid but recognize that the common man needs some economic incentive to do the work, to not endure extreme poverty, and to have something to lose in the event of a proletarian revolution. Roussequ may never have killed anyone directly, but he suggested the climate of the Reign of Terror.
I could contrast the late Jerry Falwell to an Inquisitor in that although Falwell disparaged homosexuals and socialists, he considered killing people who disagreed with him "out of his pay-grade", so to speak. That of course, to him, is up to the Almighty. I can see Ayn Rand endorsing the deaths of millions from exposure, hunger, and exhaustion in the advancement of plutocracy, but I can hardly imagine Jerry Falwell doing so.
Toward the center the political and cultural figures may differ greatly in ideological premises but recognize the need for essential compromises to achieve practical results that meld even opposing trends. This said, Obama is not the sort who would shed any tears about someone like Rajneesh going to prison for poisoning a buffet. We have seen the sparks fly between Merkel and Trump even if both are more on the pro-business axis, and it is safe to assume that although Walesa is a nationalist as was Hitler, Walesa has no problems with what Polish Communists did to Nazi perpetrators of genocide.
In general, if one truly believes in "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", one is safest to go toward the center, whose ideology is murkier and for whom pragmatism prevails.
...There are people missing, and I have seen other circles in which such people as Vladimir Lenin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, George Orwell, Donald Trump, Sir Winston Churchill, Simon Bolivar, Gregor and Otto Strasser (Nazis who wanted emphasis on the "socialist" pretensions of Nazism instead of compromises with the tycoons and big landowners), Mao Zedong, Mohandas Gandhi, and Robert Mugabe. It might be difficult to place such lunatic leaders as Idi Amin or Ivan the Terrible. Where does one put figures of antiquity such as Tutankhamun, Alexander, Shi Huang Ti (brutal and repressive Chinese emperor that Mao admired), Moses, Zoroaster, Caesar, Lao-Tse, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad?
...we dodged real horror with Donald Trump. Most of the Bad Guys of history are cruel and insensitive people, and they may take time before they do real horror. Stalin had a secret police and a killing apparatus in place when he took power; Hitler developed such a nightmare. That Donald Trump could egg people on to do violence against Congress suggests grave insensitivity toward helpless people and his vituperation against the well-educated. We may have spared ourselves a secret police and concentration camps... but for those who regret that such did not happen, we still have economic elites who cling to the attitudes that Ayn Rand held toward anyone not already rich and powerful. Unlike Reagan or Thatcher, she holds little hope for small business startups meeting basic human needs without accreting the sort of power that one associates with tycoons, big landowners, and executives.
I do not know where I would place myself. I respect tradition as a fallback when things go haywire, but I can't quite place which tradition is definitively right. We are far better off with competitive enterprise than with giant entities who buy off smart people with little talent and buy politicians like Ron Johnson. Like the theocrats I see vice as human degradation instead of privilege. I dissent with people who think that life is all about the money, as the most extreme exemplars of that attitude are gangsters such as one finds in the Sicilian and Neapolitan Mafia, the Russian Mafiya, the Chinese Triads, the Yakuza, and the leaders of Latin-American drug cartels.
Note well: part of the American tradition is the defense of old Constitutional norms.
This is a consensus model involving the discussion of several posters, and the latest manifestation.
Quote:Captain Genet
I added some culture vultures, just for PBrower
I'd place Tolstoy as well, but he would be very similar to Stapledon. Both wanted to apply Christian morality in a democratic, rational framework, though Stapledon's contemplation of death of our species and birth of future mankinds would be dismissed by Tolstoy as useless, as he focused on practical, down-to-Earth topics.
![[Image: compass.gif]](https://i.postimg.cc/hgp8CWjN/compass.gif)
Some of us concluded that even if Ayn Rand had never inspired a political order to form as an expression of her social values, anything that imitated her strange vision in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (everyone defers to the will of the super-rich, lest those people abandon the absolute need for them to dominate everything and take whatever they want) would be a nightmare of poverty and exploitation for anyone not among the economic elite. This distinguishes her from someone like Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, who believe firmly in capitalist organization of society and for taking a huge share of the prosperity that others create through being overworked and underpaid but recognize that the common man needs some economic incentive to do the work, to not endure extreme poverty, and to have something to lose in the event of a proletarian revolution. Roussequ may never have killed anyone directly, but he suggested the climate of the Reign of Terror.
I could contrast the late Jerry Falwell to an Inquisitor in that although Falwell disparaged homosexuals and socialists, he considered killing people who disagreed with him "out of his pay-grade", so to speak. That of course, to him, is up to the Almighty. I can see Ayn Rand endorsing the deaths of millions from exposure, hunger, and exhaustion in the advancement of plutocracy, but I can hardly imagine Jerry Falwell doing so.
Toward the center the political and cultural figures may differ greatly in ideological premises but recognize the need for essential compromises to achieve practical results that meld even opposing trends. This said, Obama is not the sort who would shed any tears about someone like Rajneesh going to prison for poisoning a buffet. We have seen the sparks fly between Merkel and Trump even if both are more on the pro-business axis, and it is safe to assume that although Walesa is a nationalist as was Hitler, Walesa has no problems with what Polish Communists did to Nazi perpetrators of genocide.
In general, if one truly believes in "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", one is safest to go toward the center, whose ideology is murkier and for whom pragmatism prevails.
...There are people missing, and I have seen other circles in which such people as Vladimir Lenin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, George Orwell, Donald Trump, Sir Winston Churchill, Simon Bolivar, Gregor and Otto Strasser (Nazis who wanted emphasis on the "socialist" pretensions of Nazism instead of compromises with the tycoons and big landowners), Mao Zedong, Mohandas Gandhi, and Robert Mugabe. It might be difficult to place such lunatic leaders as Idi Amin or Ivan the Terrible. Where does one put figures of antiquity such as Tutankhamun, Alexander, Shi Huang Ti (brutal and repressive Chinese emperor that Mao admired), Moses, Zoroaster, Caesar, Lao-Tse, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad?
...we dodged real horror with Donald Trump. Most of the Bad Guys of history are cruel and insensitive people, and they may take time before they do real horror. Stalin had a secret police and a killing apparatus in place when he took power; Hitler developed such a nightmare. That Donald Trump could egg people on to do violence against Congress suggests grave insensitivity toward helpless people and his vituperation against the well-educated. We may have spared ourselves a secret police and concentration camps... but for those who regret that such did not happen, we still have economic elites who cling to the attitudes that Ayn Rand held toward anyone not already rich and powerful. Unlike Reagan or Thatcher, she holds little hope for small business startups meeting basic human needs without accreting the sort of power that one associates with tycoons, big landowners, and executives.
I do not know where I would place myself. I respect tradition as a fallback when things go haywire, but I can't quite place which tradition is definitively right. We are far better off with competitive enterprise than with giant entities who buy off smart people with little talent and buy politicians like Ron Johnson. Like the theocrats I see vice as human degradation instead of privilege. I dissent with people who think that life is all about the money, as the most extreme exemplars of that attitude are gangsters such as one finds in the Sicilian and Neapolitan Mafia, the Russian Mafiya, the Chinese Triads, the Yakuza, and the leaders of Latin-American drug cartels.
Note well: part of the American tradition is the defense of old Constitutional norms.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.