Political compass for the21st century

[Eric the Green]

(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.

(09-23-2018, 05:46 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: 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.

Brexiteers and Le-Pen conservatives are conservative nationalists akin to Trump. I don't trust them at all to be democratic. I don't know if the EU will be reformed either; I still think it's better, but I could be wrong.

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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.

They are still left wing, and equality is the goal. It is achieved to a large extent, except that most people remain poor, and there is an elite created. But people benefit in many ways in varying degrees from socialism and communism; that can't be discounted. Women advance, and religious and racial barriers often decrease. Economic support is given in many cases. It depends on the quality of the rulership, and how fully the nation becomes dedicated to the cult worship of the leader and how much it is about preserving his power. Cuba today is much better than North Korea, for example.

Becoming the establishment does not make someone a conservative. Conservatives may say otherwise; they are wrong. Command economics is liberal; it is just not the pure liberalism of the genuine left, which is very much akin to the Green Party, which is democratic to the ultimate degree possible, but is not anti-state.

Centralized command economics is down the scale toward statism; that takes it far away from the liberal left pole on the Nolan map, because that's how a circle works. Near the bottom of the scale, the left can't take you very far left! The ideal and goal of centralized command economics, as the name you give it demonstrates, is much more about upholding the power of the state for its own sake. It may have intended to create equality, just as the free market ideology intends to create freedom. In reality, neither ideology creates neither.

Centralized command economics creates an elite; no doubt about that. Its libertarian free market opposition also creates an elite; that is even more clear.

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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.

That doesn't make sense to me. You can't identify a box only by its most extreme and partial expression, and throw other folks into it. Obama is in your purple box, and certainly would fit nowhere else, but he specifically rejects disloyalty, or any idea that government restricts self-expression or freedom. Liberals believe the state protects our freedom. That's what it's for. Free market advocates disagree strongly. Free enterprise is the only freedom they care about. For liberals, free enterprise is rule by bosses that take away our freedom. This is the most fundamental debate in our society today; it must be clearly represented on any political map.

Rajneesh is a very poor example of whatever he's supposed to be. I would drop him from the map. He was merely a cultist, and his cult remains focused on keeping itself separate and protected from outsiders.

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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.

19th century nationalists were anti-cleric, because the clerics were repressive, but they were also liberal democrats and were liberals on that account. That started with the French Revolution, which remained influential throughout the 19th century and in its nationalist movements. The American Revolution was nationalist too in much the same way. 3rd World Nationalism followed the American model in the 20th century in that it was primarily anti-colonial and anti-imperialist. 19th century nationalists belong in a liberal democratic sector, which does not exist in your map. Your map excludes all liberal democrats, as far as I can see.

Quote: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.

Nazis above all were against the Jewish religion and the Jewish race. That is religious conservatism no different than Trump's anti-Islam or the Islamic State's anti-Christianity or anti anything non-islamic. Same business exactly. The Catholic Church went along with this religious conservatism under Hitler, Mussolini AND Franco. I cannot agree that any strains in the Nazis are in any way liberal. Nazis have always been Social Darwinists; that goes back to the start, and particularly to Hitler. Eugenics and Darwinian materialism applied in this way is not much different than today's Social Darwinism believed in by free market conservatives like Ayn Rand. It's the same repressive crap.

Neo-pagans today are NOT Nazis, and Nazis are NOT neo-pagans. Today's Nazis in the USA support everything white, which definitely means Christian, and definitely not Jews.

Quote: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.

I see the point that sometimes nationalists and religious traditionalists are mutually exclusive. Religion can cross borders and nations cannot. But I don't see that one is closer to the bottom of the chart than the other; they are both repressive (none more so than the Islamic State) and both equally conservative. So the separate boxes don't work on that account. Usually, the two are combined, as with Trump. His own lifestyle and behavior means nothing, and no-one supports him more than evangelicals, according to all polls. They don't care a fig about his lifestyle, except perhaps unless they are Mormons in Utah. They only care that he supports their program-- which he does. Trump is using national borders to repress religion too. So the two conservatisms are definitely combined, in all respects, in Trumpism.

I don't doubt the two are different institutions, and there are strong rivalries historically between them. But today, where those two conservatism types are not combined, I think they are basically the same, because both are supporting one social group as superior or to be protected against others. Traditional religious conservatism is all about that, and nothing BUT that. My country right or wrong, my religion right or wrong. "Traditionalism" is God, Country and Family authority, each supporting the others.

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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.

For libertarians I know, it is most definitely both. It is ALWAYS about less government. Opposing government is the essential ingredient in ALL their political goals and slogans. If your map does not account for that fact, it can't be correct.