Political compass for the21st century

[Bill the Piper]

I think the 20th century categories we typically use to think about politics are obsolete. We need something new. Many people are familiar with Nolan's chart, but I'm not satisfied with it because it measures how much government action does one want, rather than goals one wants the government to achieve.

Today there are five main political orientations, and I choose to use colours as metaphors for them. Each of them prioritizes certain principle.



Purple prioritizes self-expression. Fundamentally it’s individualistic Leftism. It sprung from either the countercultural movements of late 20th century or progressive varieties of Christianity. Main concern of this orientation is to help the victimized wherever they are: oppressed minorities, animals, the environment itself. Its preferred economic system is either democratic socialism or capitalism with strong welfare system. Purples are sometimes called “bleeding hearts”.

Red prioritizes economic equality. Unlike purple, it is essentially tribal. Reds believe the state should be a tool of organized working class, hostile to business. This means Marxists or trade unionists whose loyalty is directed at the international working class. Their preferred economic system is command economy. They are typically most concerned with “bread and butter” issues, so there are no distinctly Red views on culture.

Yellow prioritizes non-coercion. Yellows believe the best thing a government can do is not interfering with market forces. In terms of culture, they favour the right to privacy and freedom of speech. They include some neo-conservatives, market fundamentalists, classical liberals and the most extreme variety: libertarians. Some of them have pretty mystical reverence for the market.

Black prioritizes traditional righteousness. They are basically religious conservatives: Islamists in the Middle East and Dominion Theology in America. Virtually non-existent in modern Europe. Hardcore varieties of Black seem determined to make the world a Kingdom of God, while more moderate Black types prefer a society based on "natural law" and the traditional family. Not really interested in economics.

Blue prioritizes raw power. Typically lead by a strongman. Want to further the nation’s interest without moral obstacles, to make it the strongest and dominate everyone else. In terms of culture, it requires promoting "manly" or "militaristic" values. The most exteme variety is obviously fascism, but it is rather rare in this day and age. More typical of our era are „right-wing populisms” like Trumpism in America and various euro-sceptics on the European side. In domestic politics, it aims at total security and builds a police state to achieve it.

Some movements are hybrids. I put Stalinism and Nazism on the Red-Blue border, alt-right on the Blue-Black border, neo-cons on Yellow-Black border and liberal globalism on Purple-Yellow border. Christian democracy is a more unusual Black-Purple hybrid, which cannot be shown on the pentagon. Their views on economics, foreign policy and the environment are Purple, but cultural conservatism comes from Black Thomism.

If you are curious, my economic views (compassionate capitalism) are on the Purple-Yellow border, while the way I think about culture is mostly Yellow (preserve privacy and freedom of speech) with some Black influences (dislike of pornography, drugs, etc.).

Using S-H, we can add that Purple and Black have strong connections to the prophetic archetype, since they focus on individual behaviour. Blue and Red have strong connections to the civic archetype, since they focus on the institutions. Yellow is more difficult, maybe nomadic? Most libertarians seem to be gen X.

[pbrower2a]

Got a source?

This is very different from the more standard right-left/authoritarian-libertarian divide.We have a pentagon instead of a square or circle.

It is telling that Hitler and Stalin are close to each other. Both were military expansionists once they got the chance, murderous tyrants, and collectivists at the worst -- the sort of collectivism that crushes all individuality.

It would be interesting to see where some historical figures of politics from early-modern times to now -- Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Robespierre, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Juarez, William II, Gandhi, Adenauer, Trotsky, Churchill, FDR, Franco, de Gaulle, Khomeini, Deng Xiaoping, Reagan, Kennedy, Mandela, Thatcher, M L King, Gorbachev, Saddam Hussein. Havel and Qaddafi fit. Or is this only for 20th century and later figures?

What would someone near the center of the pentagon be like?

I am tempted to believe that people might be extremely traditionalist on some values and either counter-cultural or 'communist' on economics.

[Bill the Piper]

(09-20-2018, 01:25 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Got a source?

I'm the author. But I used intuition rather than rigorous research. There should be a test to accompany that, some day I have to write one.

Your post has been a valuable contribution to developing this system.

Quote:It would be interesting to see where some historical figures of politics from early-modern times to now --  Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Robespierre, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Juarez, William II, Gandhi, Adenauer, Trotsky, Churchill, FDR, Franco, de Gaulle, Khomeini, Deng Xiaoping, Reagan, Kennedy, Mandela, Thatcher,  M L King, Gorbachev, Saddam Hussein. Havel and Qaddafi fit. Or is this only for 20th century and later figures?

I don't know enough about many of those people. I feel that most mediaeval societies would be close to blue-black border, since there was a close relationship between the church and the warrior aristocracy. 18th century revolutionaries would be like yellow, purple and red combined together. So it's mostly for 20th and 20st century.

Gandhi - purple on economics, but black on culture (like a Hindu version of Christian democracy)
Trotsky - red, close to purple border.
Churchill - probably black close to yellow border (an old school Tory)
FDR - purple on economics, yellow on culture (typical pre-boomer Progressive)
Franco - blue, close to black border
Khomeini - extreme black like bin Laden, but slightly closer to blue as an Iranian nationalist
Reagan and Thatcher - as yellow as you can get,
Saddam Hussein - blue (he was an Arab nationalist)
Qaddafi - blue, but somehow closer to black border than Saddam
M L King - purple
Mandela - centrist blue, closer to red border

Quote:What would someone near the center of the pentagon be like?

A wish-wash centrist. Perhaps something like the Eurocrats, who have no cohesive ideology other than keeping the structure their predecessor have built.

Quote:I am tempted to believe that people might be extremely traditionalist on some values and either counter-cultural or 'communist' on economics.

I've already mentioned Black-Purple hybrids. There used to be a cult called Aristasia. They mixed hardcore traditionalism with radical 1970s-style feminism and boomer variety of socialism. That would be an extremist of Black-Purple hybrid.

[pbrower2a]

OK -- I get some important inferences. Extremists are toward the periphery of the pentagon, with people in on borders being 'fusions' (example: Marcuse clearly melds egalitarianism with counterculture tendencies, Stalin is about as nationalist as he is Marxist, Qaddafi is both nationalist and traditionalist, and Falwell is a traditionalist who believes firmly in market economics and Thatcher or Reagan are free-market mavens but less markedly traditionalist on morals). People at the apices of the pentagon are pure communists (Marx), nationalists (Putin), traditionalists (bin Laden), free-market advocates (Rand), or exponents of a counterculture (Rajneesh).

Those in power on the extremes of the Communist, Nationalist, and traditionalist zones are consummately brutal: Trotsky (and Pol Pot), Stalin (Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Castro as well), Hitler (and probably Mussolini, Goering, Goebbels, Quisling, and Pavelic), Qaddafi, and Khomeini left no question of what they were. People toward the free-market extreme have yet to establish a libertarian dystopia in which people who have rough times submit to peonage or serfdom or starve (Some people would like a society based upon the principles of Ayn Rand, and I think that it would be just as nasty as a Communist or fascist regime). Counterculture figures at the extreme have also yet to establish themselves as leaders.

OK, so would I trust someone on the line and at the extreme between Communism and nationalism, like the Gregor or Otto Strasser? Not in the least. The people on the borderline between nationalism and communism are the ones who have set up the extermination and labor camps in which millions die of either being worked to death on starvation rations or being executed. The difference between Hitler and Pol Pot is the choice of victims.

People toward the center are not so extreme; these are the people who have characteristics of three or more of the five tendencies and pick and choose. FDR (and probably Adenauer) are prime examples of Christian Socialists, people capable of picking and choosing between nationalism, tradition, the free market, and egalitarianism. Maybe Gandhi is a "Hindu socialist". They may be nationalists as necessary, but they recognize that the appeal of their countries' nationality ends at well-defined borders. The position of Angela Merkel near the center exemplifies someone open-minded and not at all extreme.

The extremists of three sectors of the pentagon (including those best described as fusions between communists and nationalists or between nationalists and traditionalists) have shown themselves capable of genocide, aggressive war for pushing their ideology into places where such ideology is unwelcome, persecution of dissidents, and terrorism.

But not being at the extreme means that one isn't so fanatical. One might have an agenda, but it isn't conquering an empire or killing off opponents or 'class enemies'. I don't see either Reagan or Thatcher being as brutal or despotic as Putin, Khomeini, or Trotsky even if they could be abrasive. Maybe the Anglo-American tradition endures that their sort of traditionalism and free-market values implies respect for the rule of law and for the marketplace not only of merchandise but also of ideals. I never thought of Jerry Falwell as the sort to call for putting miscreants into concentration camps or mass graves, either. God might damn gays and lesbians to Hell, but that is not in Falwell's pay-grade.

I could suggest a really-nasty fellow for an illustration of someone at the extreme between the free market and traditionalism, someone that I did not mention: Agosto Pinochet. He was a killer.

So being near the borderline of two tendencies (Churchill or Pinochet) makes one a murderous tyrant if one is also an extremist if in power. I can excuse the harsh warfare that Churchill (or Lincoln) waged.

...You could not place Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Robespierre, Napoleon, Lincoln, Juarez, Garibaldi, or even Wilhelm II, so perhaps this pentagon fits only the last century or so. The earliest figure that you could place was Marx, and probably only because he is so blatant that he defines an ideology as few others can. You would probably also have trouble with anyone from World War I or earlier except perhaps Marx. The only plutocrat in the group is Trump... I don't know where Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, or Bill Gates would go. I'd guess that the most blatant advocates of Gilded Age capitalism would be close to Ayn Rand. The willingness to mow down strikers might demonstrate the potential ruthlessness of free-market mavens.

Would Thomas Paine fit the borderline between counterculture and free-market advocacy?

[Bill the Piper]

(09-21-2018, 08:54 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I don't see either Reagan or Thatcher being as brutal or despotic as Putin, Khomeini, or Trotsky even if they could be abrasive. Maybe the Anglo-American tradition endures that their sort of traditionalism and free-market values implies respect for the rule of law and for the marketplace not only of merchandise but also of ideals. I never thought of Jerry Falwell as the sort to call for putting miscreants into concentration camps or mass graves, either. God might dam gays and lesbians to Hell, but that is not in Falwell's pay-grade.

So I'll have to move them closer to the centre. Thank you for feedback.

I agree with your comments about the Anglo-American tradition.

Quote:I could suggest a really-nasty fellow for an illustration of someone at the extreme between the free market and traditionalism, someone that I did not mention: Agosto Pinochet. He was a killer.

Good idea. He takes place of Thatcher, while Thatcher moves towards the centre. She was no killer after all.

Quote:...You could not place Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Robespierre, Napoleon, Lincoln, Juarez, Garibaldi, or even Wilhelm II, so perhaps this pentagon fits only the last century or so. The earliest figure that you could place was Marx, and probably only because he is so blatant that he defines an ideology as few others can. You would probably also have trouble with anyone from World War I or earlier except perhaps Marx. The only plutocrat in the group is Trump... I don't know where Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, or Bill Gates would go. I'd guess that the most blatant advocates of Gilded Age capitalism would be close to Ayn Rand. The willingness to mow down strikers might demonstrate the potential ruthlessness of free-market mavens.

Would Thomas Paine fit the borderline between counterculture and free-market advocacy?

I simply don't know enough about their political leanings of 18th and 19th century figures to answer that question. Washington and Jefferson were yellow, as they created the US as a primarily classical liberal country.

Gilded Age capitalists would be somewhere right from Ayn Rand, since they were heavily traditionalist.

[Eric the Green]

The circle ALWAYS works best, in my opinion. You have different positions, all of them related to their opposites and shading into each other. You have the essential polarities that define the landscape. The 5-sided diagram is pretty much just the same circle, with some more-specific labels on them that are too specific, and without the clarity and inter-relationships that the cross within the circle conveys. I guess I'm a circle chauvinist

You put social democrats in the red quint-drant, is that a word, or what's the word? The same one as Marx and Stalin, who are not democrats, but tyrants. Traditionalist means little in itself; the definition of conservative is to uphold the people in power. Politics is about power, and who has it.

There's no clear right and left on your chart. The Nolan grid indicates that perfectly, so it's better. The political compass is the same idea, except that liberal and conservative are not located at the horizontal edges, but at the far edges of the lower left and upper right quadrants. Left and right are NOT outdated; they are more clear than ever. Liberal, or left, means power to the people. It means power to the widest group of people possible, including the rights of Nature. Right means hierarchy and class, power to the bosses, conceived as the superior people.

The right or Conservative side enables economic bosses to keep their power by curbing state intervention, and also supports those cultural and social values that keep in power those who want to hold certain groups in a superior place or discriminate against or keep away certain groups (cultural and social conservative, fewer rights for them, etc.), and regulation of supposed deviant behavior not in keeping with cultural authority (wars on drugs, porno, etc.). Those dominant groups could be nations, so cultural-conservative covers nationalism and militarism, but also religious hierarchies. The word "nationalism" is too specific and confusing. It was not long ago that communists and liberals were nationalists, because the nation was the locus of freedom and power for a group of people oppressed by colonial, capitalist and/or aristocratic/royalist imperialism. This is exactly what was not recognized by the Americans who created the American war against Vietnam.

At the left side of the Nolan chart are those who are liberal on both social and cultural issues and democratic rights, and liberal on economic issues recognizing that the state needs to curb the capricious power of the bosses and make sure there's opportunity for all. "Counter-cultural" doesn't really convey this political meaning. Not all political liberals are like rajneesh or new age hippies, by any means, and it's not only cultural freedom that they want, but freedom from the tyranny of the economic bosses. The left of the circle is thus both cultural and economic, not just cultural. Maybe I just don't like the label; "self-expression" doesn't really cover "bleeding hearts" for victims of oppression.

The top of the Nolan chart is libertarian; equal to the lower right on the political compass. Libertarians and libertarian-anarchists usually endorse greater democratic and social rights, rather than the superiority of ethnic or religious groups, and tend strongly to anti-militarism; but also endorse freedom of enterprise and laissez-faire, which in practice means an economy owned and run by the few who can compete and win in such a social-darwinian unregulated and un-taxed set-up. Your chart puts only the free market libertarians at the top. They belong on the right, not the center; unless they are also social/cultural and peace-movement liberals, in which case they are high-center. The near-opposite polarity between the economically libertarian social darwinists like Ayn Rand and the liberal democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders is not indicated on your chart, but that's still the most important polarity today. On the European-oriented political compass, economic left and right are clearly shown as "left and right" per se. A labor social democrat like Corbyn would be almost on-the-edge left, slightly below the horizon, while Ayn Rand would be at the right edge; maybe just a bit below also. I'm not sure how cultural liberal or democratic she was, but it seems libertarian economics was her prime focus at least.

The bottom of the Nolan chart (upper left on the political compass) is totalitarian or statist, and people who lean that way look to the state for solutions for economic equality, as well as for protecting the groups that they identify with and depend on for the sense of safety and self-esteem and regulation of behavior and morals. Nazis are in the far lower right and Communists are in the far lower left. The opposite of Stalin is not Ayn Rand, I don't think, because she leans further to the right, since her main priority is free enterprise.

[Eric the Green]

The emergence of Trumpism is probably a main reason you propose your 5-sided chart as "21st century." I would look on Trumpism more as a temporary spasm that already existed and is fully accounted for on the old chart. People all have a different combo of views. Economic nationalism is supported by many liberals and communists, and Trump supports this with his tariff war. Except for this, he is a free-market libertarian to an extreme degree, and is also promoting and boosting social conservatism with attitudes that border on racism and certainly preferences for white rich people in society and in allowing who comes into the USA. And he is supporting religious conservatism as well, and religious conservatives are his biggest supporters. There is little difference between national and religious conservatism, as I see it. Most conservative tyrants have embraced both. It all comes under the heading of "my group is better than yours" and should be protected from those other groups. Trump belongs on the far right, although not all the way to the edge because of his economic nationalism.

The polarity between statism and anarchy is most useful in distinguishing between Reagan or Falwell and people like Pinochet and other despots who kill people. The closer you are to the bottom, the more you use the state to exert absolute power. The tyrannical cultural conservatives like Khomeini and Putin are closer to Hitler at the extreme lower right-- although there is more right-left distinction between Hitler and Stalin than appears on your chart. Robespierre would be more toward the bottom left too, and further down would be the communist dictators of recent times. I can't see being at the extreme per se as being state-sponsored or state-backed killers. Only the edge near the bottom. Admittedly, Trump might like to be there too; we can't be sure. But his brutal approach to immigrants is telling. Extremists all around the circle may be more likely to be violent radicals or revolutionaries, though. But they would likely be smashing the state, at least maybe until they take power themselves. Then they might move down the polarity.

[Bill the Piper]

(09-21-2018, 11:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You put social democrats in the red quint-drant, is that a word, or what's the word? The same one as Marx and Stalin, who are not democrats, but tyrants. Traditionalist means little in itself; the definition of conservative is to uphold the people in power. Politics is about power, and who has it.

Traditional, working class oriented social democracy has mostly fused with the New Left in such a way that there is now no difference between them. One is a social democrat economically, but New Leftist on the cultural issues like LGBT rights, migration or drug legalisation.

Traditionalism, as a political idea, means enforcing traditional morality by force. It is always theocratic to some degree, although moderates like the Christian Democrat focus on "natural law" rather than divine commandments as such.

Your concept of conservatism is meaningless. In Saudi Arabia, your conservatives are the Wahhabis. In Europe, the Eurocrats. In 1980s Russia, hardcore Bolsheviks.

Quote:There's no clear right and left on your chart.

You see that the Red and Purple sector are on the left, Black and Blue on the right. That is intuitive. The Yellow sector is neither left nor right. Some "market liberals" call themselves "up-wing". But mostly, Left and Right are terms without a clear meaning. If Right means power to the elites, the Bolsheviks would be right-wing!

BTW, If you like the Nolan chart better, I'm not going to dissuade you from using it.

Quote:The emergence of Trumpism is probably a main reason you propose your 5-sided chart as "21st century." I would look on Trumpism more as a temporary spasm that already existed and is fully accounted for on the old chart.

Seriously, nationalism (as opposed to simple tribalism or ethnocentrism) exists since the 19th century. All anti-colonial movements of the 1960s like Baathism were distinctly nationalist without really being traditionalist or religious. Trumpism is nothing new.

Quote:The polarity between statism and anarchy is most useful in distinguishing between Reagan or Falwell and people like Pinochet and other despots who kill people. The closer you are to the bottom, the more you use the state to exert absolute power.

I didn't focus on the means, but on the goals. Absolute power is not a goal in itself, it always aims at something: enforcing racial purity (Nazism), religious orthodoxy (Taliban), or the hegemony of the working class (Bolsheviks).

[pbrower2a]

(09-21-2018, 11:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The circle ALWAYS works best, in my opinion. You have different positions, all of them related to their opposites and shading into each other. You have the essential polarities that define the landscape. The 5-sided diagram is pretty much just the same circle, with some more-specific labels on them that are too specific, and without the clarity and inter-relationships that the cross within the circle conveys. I guess I'm a circle chauvinist

You (Bill the Piper) put social democrats in the red quint-drant, is that a word, or what's the word? The same one as Marx and Stalin, who are not democrats, but tyrants. Traditionalist means little in itself; the definition of conservative is to uphold the people in power. Politics is about power, and who has it.

Maybe the term "communist" is better replaced by "egalitarian" or "socialist". Both Nazism and Stalinism claimed to be egalitarian in objective. If Stalin saw the evil as the independent capitalist of any kind, Hitler saw Jews as the arch-villain even if the Jew was a child or in extreme age or even if the "Jew" had abandoned religious Judaism. For Stalin, killing off capitalists and preventing the return of capitalist tendencies was the way to a perfect commonwealth without capitalist exploitation. For Hitler, the way to a perfect community was to recognize that only Germans and kindred people by 'race' was to eliminate troublesome peoples who could use their capacities only to deceive and cheat "Germans" -- the Jews. Others could survive as slaves or serfs, but the Jew would thwart that.

The fault was not the amorality of the Jews; indeed I find Jewish morality compatible with human brotherhood. If someone like Churchill could fault the 'international Jew', practically a euphemism for 'Bolshevik', as many of the Old Bolsheviks were of Jewish origin, Churchill's cure for the tendency was to get the 'international Jew' to rediscover his Jewish religious and cultural roots and become resolutely Jewish. As someone whose culture is partially German, I can only recognize the Yiddish world (except for the Hasidim who reject the modern and secular world) as kindred to mine. So the big difference is that they reject Jesus and I simply forget him at times? Jewish morality and what I believe in aren't that different. No -- the incompatibility between Judaism and both Stalinism and Nazism is between Jewish morality and totalitarian immorality.

It is possible for a Jew to have involvement in a cause that has socialist and nationalist tendencies... and Zionism can be both socialist and nationalist without going to the criminal zone of fascist and Bolshevik terror.

OK, so because of the fusion of nationalism and egalitarianism, Zionism as expressed by the first generation of Israeli pols like Ben-Gurion and Meir could be in the same direction as Hitlerism and Stalinism -- except that it rejects the gangsterism. The rejection of terror, criminality, and brutality makes all the difference in the world.

Quote:There's no clear right and left on your chart. The Nolan grid indicates that perfectly, so it's better. The political compass is the same idea, except that liberal and conservative are not located at the horizontal edges, but at the far edges of the lower left and upper right quadrants. Left and right are NOT outdated; they are more clear than ever. Liberal, or left, means power to the people. It means power to the widest group of people possible, including the rights of Nature. Right means hierarchy and class, power to the bosses, conceived as the superior people.

New ideologies are often not so much pure expressions as they are fusions. The Nolan Grid seems to have its continuum between hierarchy and individuality and elitism and equality -- but it says little about counter-cultural tendencies or the distinction between nationalism and internationalism. Who knows? The perfect model might be a sphere with three axes perpendicular to each other... or even some four-dimensional hypersphere with four perpendicular axes!

Quote:The right or Conservative side enables economic bosses to keep their power by curbing state intervention, and also supports those cultural and social values that keep in power those who want to hold certain groups in a superior place or discriminate against or keep away certain groups (cultural and social conservative, fewer rights for them, etc.), and regulation of supposed deviant behavior not in keeping with cultural authority (wars on drugs, porno, etc.). Those dominant groups could be nations, so cultural-conservative covers nationalism and militarism, but also religious hierarchies. The word "nationalism" is too specific and confusing. It was not long ago that communists and liberals were nationalists, because the nation was the locus of freedom and power for a group of people oppressed by colonial, capitalist and/or aristocratic/royalist imperialism. This is exactly what was not recognized by the Americans who created the American war against Vietnam.

But the Right needs the State as an enforcer, an entity that can compel commitments to raw deals that people made in distress that have lost all relevance to the subject and that the elites enforce so that they can maintain power and privilege. The Right is often militaristic because (1) war is profitable, (2) conquest can bring new subjects into captive markets as workers and consumers, (3) conquest can get command of desired resources, and (4) the command-and-control model of the military is well-suited to the economic order of the sweat-shop and plantation that exemplify the profit motive at its worst.

Quote:At the left side of the Nolan chart are those who are liberal on both social and cultural issues and democratic rights, and liberal on economic issues recognizing that the state needs to curb the capricious power of the bosses and make sure there's opportunity for all. "Counter-cultural" doesn't really convey this political meaning. Not all political liberals are like rajneesh or new age hippies, by any means, and it's not only cultural freedom that they want, but freedom from the tyranny of the economic bosses. The left of the circle is thus both cultural and economic, not just cultural. Maybe I just don't like the label; "self-expression" doesn't really cover "bleeding hearts" for victims of oppression.

The top of the Nolan chart is libertarian; equal to the lower right on the political compass. Libertarians and libertarian-anarchists usually endorse greater democratic and social rights, rather than the superiority of ethnic or religious groups, and tend strongly to anti-militarism; but also endorse freedom of enterprise and laissez-faire, which in practice means an economy owned and run by the few who can compete and win in such a social-darwinian unregulated and un-taxed set-up. Your chart puts only the free market libertarians at the top. They belong on the right, not the center; unless they are also social/cultural and peace-movement liberals, in which case they are high-center. The near-opposite polarity between the economically libertarian social darwinists like Ayn Rand and the liberal democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders is not indicated on your chart, but that's still the most important polarity today. On the European-oriented political compass, economic left and right are clearly shown as "left and right" per se. A labor social democrat like Corbyn would be almost on-the-edge left, slightly below the horizon, while Ayn Rand would be at the right edge; maybe just a bit below also. I'm not sure how cultural liberal or democratic she was, but it seems libertarian economics was her prime focus at least.

I see any counterculture as a rejection of tradition in morals, loyalties, and class structure. It could be that innovative ideas such as Freudian psychology that at first seems daring proves itself useful and becomes mainstream. So it could be with Marcuse, who does not seem so radical now as he did in the 1960s. Maybe as the eccentricity loses its relevance (with the death of the thinker) what might have been counterculture in one era becomes tradition.

This said, the counterculture is not where one goes to seek power and economic gain. Maybe a really-vile person like the late Charles Manson could find suggestible people capable of doing horrible things if he brainwashes them. Most of the time a counterculture has the problem of cohesion as shown in the expression 'like herding cats'.

Quote:The bottom of the Nolan chart (upper left on the political compass) is totalitarian or statist, and people who lean that way look to the state for solutions for economic equality, as well as for protecting the groups that they identify with and depend on for the sense of safety and self-esteem and regulation of behavior and morals. Nazis are in the far lower right and Communists are in the far lower left. The opposite of Stalin is not Ayn Rand, I don't think, because she leans further to the right, since her main priority is free enterprise.

The libertarian-statist polarity is obvious, as are the traditionalist-modernist polarity and the egalitarian-hierarchical polarity. Non-violence and a rejection of fanaticism tend toward the center. A five-way division of politics does seem geometrically awkward even if correct.

...Now back to a more contemporary issue in politics: if most Americans (our economic elites and our remaining racists excluded) are too egalitarian to fully fit the extreme position of Ayn Rand, it is quite clear that most Americans have found Ba'athism, Nazism and Stalinism objectionable  as antitheses of what they believe in. The Ku Klux Klan keeps resurfacing at times with its pretense of standing for American virtues, but the purported virtues of the Klan are not what most Americans see as theirs. Americans are incompatible with authoritarian traditions (let us say the fanatical Islam of Khomeini, Qutb, bin Laden, and al-Baghdadi) that really are exotic, but something comparatively benign but exotic (Bahai, Wicca, Sufism, Zen Buddhism, maybe Hare Krishna) is tolerable.  Extremists usually end up on the legal fringe, isolated except among like-thinking fanatics, generally ignored until they act out with violence and criminality until they are either blown away or put away. I think of the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, Jim Jones' "People's Temple", the Branch Davidians of David Koresh, the Manson 'family', and of course the Aryan Nations.

Now what about Trump? He's close to being a fascist in his nationalism, fanaticism, and authoritarianism. His political appeal has been to the 'forgotten man' much as one expects with any demagogue. He excoriates any difference with his view of the world, and he is extremely hostile to intellectual difference (which includes practically any intellectual activity other than praise for his personality and interests). He has attracted few creative people to his side; even Hitler found sculptors, painters, and architects to exalt his esthetics. The problem with him and most Americans is that he violates so many of our political and social traditions. He spoke to the 'forgotten man' by attacking everyone else in a spiel that one associates with the late Don Rickles except that instead of cutting down the rich and powerful he went against the middle class and well educated. He has been a huge disappointment. America is not in the blue sector of Bill's pentagon; more of America is in the 'yellow' zone or in one of the other four sectors but close to the middle.

Thus I see the low approval polls for Trump as President.

[Bill the Piper]

(09-22-2018, 08:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: A five-way division of politics does seem geometrically awkward even if correct.

Less polarizing than A against B, X against Y, etc. Five distinct ways.

Quote:I see any counterculture as a rejection of tradition in morals, loyalties, and class structure.

Counterculturalists see tradition, morals, loyalties and class structure as things than restrict self-expression.

Quote:Maybe the term "communist" is better replaced by "egalitarian" or "socialist".

Yes, socialist is better. Communist is too loaded. Also, any communist will claim he is a socialist.

[Eric the Green]

(09-22-2018, 05:50 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(09-21-2018, 11:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You put social democrats in the red quint-drant, is that a word, or what's the word? The same one as Marx and Stalin, who are not democrats, but tyrants. Traditionalist means little in itself; the definition of conservative is to uphold the people in power. Politics is about power, and who has it.

Traditional, working class oriented social democracy has mostly fused with the New Left in such a way that there is now no difference between them. One is a social democrat economically, but New Leftist on the cultural issues like LGBT rights, migration or drug legalisation.

Traditionalism, as a political idea, means enforcing traditional morality by force. It is always theocratic to some degree, although moderates like the Christian Democrat focus on "natural law" rather than divine commandments as such.

Your concept of conservatism is meaningless. In Saudi Arabia, your conservatives are the Wahhabis. In Europe, the Eurocrats. In 1980s Russia, hardcore Bolsheviks.

First of all, thank you for your ideas. I like the innovation. It is an interesting new way of looking at the political scene. I don't think it will replace the circle, but if you think the circle is inadequate, there's no harm in putting out a different vision.

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. Bolsheviks are not conservatives either; they are using the state to bring about equality. The difference from socialists and liberals is the degree of state power which they use and advocate. That takes them further from the left pole of the circle or compass, but they are still on the left. More on that below.

I think there are always shadings, and that conservatism is the underlying idea behind cultural traditionalism as well as support for the idea that economic bosses should rule society. So 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.

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, and your socialist/communist area is too willing to use absolute power to a degree which democratic socialists do not believe in.

Quote:

Quote:There's no clear right and left on your chart.

You see that the Red and Purple sector are on the left, Black and Blue on the right. That is intuitive. The Yellow sector is neither left nor right. Some "market liberals" call themselves "up-wing". But mostly, Left and Right are terms without a clear meaning. If Right means power to the elites, the Bolsheviks would be right-wing!

BTW, If you like the Nolan chart better, I'm not going to dissuade you from using it.

Thanks; I think it's adequate.

Quote:

Quote:The emergence of Trumpism is probably a main reason you propose your 5-sided chart as "21st century." I would look on Trumpism more as a temporary spasm that already existed and is fully accounted for on the old chart.

Seriously, nationalism (as opposed to simple tribalism or ethnocentrism) exists since the 19th century. All anti-colonial movements of the 1960s like Baathism were distinctly nationalist without really being traditionalist or religious. Trumpism is nothing new.

Quote:The polarity between statism and anarchy is most useful in distinguishing between Reagan or Falwell and people like Pinochet and other despots who kill people. The closer you are to the bottom, the more you use the state to exert absolute power.

I didn't focus on the means, but on the goals. Absolute power is not a goal in itself, it always aims at something: enforcing racial purity (Nazism), religious orthodoxy (Taliban), or the hegemony of the working class (Bolsheviks).

The Nolan chart and the political circle got it right I think, precisely because they see things the way that I see them. Your alternative and any scheme will reflect to a degree our own views, but the circle has a way of transcending those views and giving every view its proper role.

The Nolan/compass got it right that absolute power IS a goal or political view in itself, and that the opposite is anarchy or libertarian. The issue there is state power itself. For a libertarian, there is only one issue: less government. Their Nolan grid puts their own view at the top. But the same ideology appears at the bottom right in the political compass, which has been widely adopted now in several versions and questionnaires. I assume you have seen it?

I understand the obvious point that upholding those in power does not equal conservatism. Upholding those in power appears to be upholding state power. From a more underlying perspective though, upholding power is conservative. It is obvious that for a liberal, state power IS necessary. As Obama said in his great Sept.7 speech in Illinois, we NEED a functional government in order to make change. And that change is to equalize power and open it to more people. This is the liberal goal, the left-wing goal.

It is similar to your counterculture view, which overlaps the liberal pole on your pentagram. But your description as rejecting all loyalty does not encompass this liberal view that state power is needed. The liberal state is an organ of the people, and is ruled by the people. Obama made that point very well in his speech. The only antidote to the power of a few at the top is activism and votes by the people.

Power to the people is the liberal goal, not absence of power. Your diagram obscures this essential point. Liberals in power are using the state to bring more power to the people. If these liberals attain power, and then seek to hold onto it, they don't cease to be liberals on that account, and their so-called "anti-establishment" opponents (called that because they are now out of power in the state) do NOT cease to be conservatives, and their real goal CONTINUES to be limitiing power to the people and upholding the power of the few even despite their deceptive liberal slogans. Americans are especially liable to get confused about this, because of the power of Reaganoid neo-liberalism in the USA over the past half century.

The obscured left and right poles in your diagram puts cultural views only at the poles. This is incorrect in my view. Left and right encompass both cultural and economic views. The Nolan chart gets this, so it gets it right. State power does not equal political power, per se. State elites do not equal elites per se. Those who have wealth and power are the elite too, and primarily so. Free market elites defend the power of the wealthy few. Their use of the term "neo-liberal" or "classical liberal" is a deceptive ploy. They are not liberals at all; they are conservatives. Their system allows the wealthy elite bosses to rule without restraint. That's why it is very right wing.

These days, free market libertarian is the main program of conservatives, especially in the USA. It can't be high center. Nolan puts it in the upper right. The political compass puts it on the extreme right pole. It is interesting that the Libertarian Party's view of the political scene gets it exactly right, even though the political point of view which they advocate is very narrow-minded, and incidentally quite different from mine.

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.

[Eric the Green]

The circle, rather than 5 boxes, allows for more subtlety in understanding our political views. If I take the Libertarian Party's questionnaire at a fair or somewhere online, and I (hypothetically) score in the upper libertarian left, then I probably didn't fully agree with higher taxes in all cases. I probably was somewhat business friendly. I am still predominantly liberal, which means I might approve the minimum wage, or laws against discrimination or pollution. But I am closer to the libertarian right than someone who wants higher taxes on the wealthy, socialized medicine for all, and other more socialist liberal views that require more state power.

If I am in the extreme edge of upper left, then maybe I think social change can come about mainly through cultural means, or through anarchistic coops or free stores and such, and the state isn't much needed to enforce them.

On the MBTI, and on the philosophy wheel which I developed, the "methods" might be akin to the poles on the Nolan grid. In MBTI, the outer letters indicate modes of behavior and action. E and I are extraverted and introverted, meaning the degree of reliance on other people and society. J and P are judging and perceiving, meaning whether you make decisions and like authority or whether you like to be open-ended and go with the flow.

These polarities might be roughly the same as the poles on the Nolan grid.
P = no decisions, just be open to what comes = libertarian
J = make a decision and adhere to a schedule, respect or impose rules and order = statist
E = find your energy in society = conservative
I = find your energy by seeking solitude and going your own way = liberal

The quadrants on the grid represent the middle letters on MBTI. These are the essential psychological functions, rather than ways of action.
N = iNtuitive, meaning awareness of general archetypes and concepts, and possibilities to design not yet visible; essentialist
S = sensate, relating to specific things as they are and using them; empiricist
T = thinking, discerning cause and effect relationships, seeking the truth, tough-minded adherence to facts; rationalist
F = feeling, caring for others, heart-directed and tender-hearted, interested in social harmony over facts; existentialist

The quadrants in the Nolan grid represent the essential political functions. They are:
upper right = economic conservative, sort of = S
lower right = cultural conservative, sort of = N
lower left = economic liberal, sort of = T
upper left = cultural liberal, sort of = F

They may not correspond well to the MBTI functions, but they illustrate the idea that they are essential functions rather than "methods" or ways of behavior.

[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.
(...)
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.

[pbrower2a]

Perhaps a sphere, regular octahedron, or cube would work better by allowing three axes instead of two. The most obvious axes would be those of the Nolan Chart, the left-right axis for economics and the top-down axis for libertarianism versus authoritarianism. (I am tempted to believe that the libertarian dream ends up as a feudal nightmare, which is a different story, with the manorial lord becoming extremely powerful in his demesne over people who become subject to the liberties of the manorial lord). Would the third axis be conformity versus self-expression? Or something else?

[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.

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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.
(...)
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.

Quote:

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.

[Eric the Green]

(09-23-2018, 01:13 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Perhaps a sphere, regular octahedron,  or cube would work better by allowing three axes instead of two. The most obvious axes would be those of the Nolan Chart, the left-right axis for economics and the top-down axis  for libertarianism versus authoritarianism.  (I am tempted to believe that the libertarian dream ends up as a feudal nightmare, which is a different story, with the manorial lord becoming extremely powerful in his demesne over people who become subject to the liberties of the manorial lord). Would the third axis be conformity versus self-expression? Or something else?

Actually, the left-right axis on the Nolan chart is NOT just economics, but both economic and cultural (primarily "personal"; or conformity vs. self-expression). If you redraw the map in the way the political compass does, then the left-right axis becomes economics, and the up-down becomes cultural. Conformity vs. self-expression is part of the cultural aspect, shown as up versus down on the political compass, and called "libertarian versus authoritarian" there. It is well accounted for in both the Nolan grid and the political compass. The two charts are identical, except in where the factors are placed. The names for the various factors are not identical, so that can confuse people. For the Nolan chart, "authoritarian" means statist and is placed at the bottom, and "libertarian" means less or no government (depending on how extreme) and is placed at the top.



In the Nolan chart, the up-down axis is libertarian up to anarchy, and statist down to totalitarian. In the political compass, that same axis appears as lower right versus upper left. The left-right axis in the political compass, shows liberal at the lower left (minus/minus scores) and conservative at the upper right (plus/plus scores).

This map of the political compass is good, except that it puts Obama in the wrong place.


Here's another version of the political compass from the wikipedia article below:



wikipedia has an excellent summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart

[Bill the Piper]

Eric the Green Wrote: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.

You're right. I've replaced this bastard with Max Stirner, who was also a bastard, but at least is widely recognized as an influential figure in the history of political doctrines.

Eric the Green Wrote: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.

You need better information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-völkisch_movements
https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/inside-...nism/79101

Also, look up aryanism.net, which is run by actual neo-Nazis, hostile to traditional Christianity and calling themselves Gnostics.

Finally, there are the anti-Christian quotes from Hitler's table talk:
Christianity is the prototype of Bolshevism: the mobillization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society
Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race

Make no mistake, I despise Nazism and Fascism, as well as religious traditionalism, but I still see a fundamental difference between them.

Quote:Your map excludes all liberal democrats, as far as I can see.

There are two sectors descended from liberalism. I mean, classical liberalism was a 18th century phenomenon which doesn't exist anymore. Both moderate Purples like Obama and moderate Yellows like Merkel can claim the mantle of liberal democracy.

Finally, I think the Nolan chart makes good sense in an unanimous society, which agrees on what should be done and only has disagrees about how to do it. Nolan measures the amount of government intervention, but doesn't differentiate between reasons for it. For example, it cannot distinguish between censorship used for PC reasons and for traditional religious reasons. Or between intervening on the market because you want to quench inequality and intervening in order to subordinate businesses to the military.

[Eric the Green]

(09-25-2018, 12:50 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

Eric the Green Wrote: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.

You're right. I've replaced this bastard with Max Stirner, who was also a bastard, but at least is widely recognized as an influential figure in the history of political doctrines.

I don't know him either, but that sounds better. Thanks for your reply, and it's not too long

Quote:

Eric the Green Wrote: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.

You need better information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-völkisch_movements
https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/inside-...nism/79101

Also, look up aryanism.net, which is run by actual neo-Nazis, hostile to traditional Christianity and calling themselves Gnostics.

Finally, there are the anti-Christian quotes from Hitler's table talk:
Christianity is the prototype of Bolshevism: the mobillization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society
Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race

Make no mistake, I despise Nazism and Fascism, as well as religious traditionalism, but I still see a fundamental difference between them.

I see non-fundamental differences between them.

I don't know what table talk is, but I know Hitler was enthralled with German medieval mythology and Wagner operas. But the fact remains he and the church did not object to each other and mutually protected each other, because fascism and religious authority are compatible. And his war on Jews was just an example of religious fundamentalism in its way. The cultural/social conservatism quarter is all about us vs. them, or which group I belong to and uphold and which group I persecute. There were some Nazi occultists in Hitler's early period, and if you are right, then some Europeans still look back to pagan roots, as Hitler did. I would not call Gnostics "neo-pagans" though. Here in America, of course, Nazis are Christians, and uphold it because it's the religion of the white race. I have heard them and seen the reports.

Remember that religions and spirituality can also be leftist, even if organized. It is the claim of dominance by one sect over others that makes it conservative or fascist. Nationalist groups and ideologies usually use their religion as part of what makes their nation "great again" or "exceptional" or "destined to rule" or "in need of protection from those foreigners" etc. Hitler used it to the hilt. He used his native paganism, used the Christians, and used hatred of the Jews, which became his central focus, and their extermination as the final solution to all problems.

Quote:

Quote:Your map excludes all liberal democrats, as far as I can see.

There are two sectors descended from liberalism. I mean, classical liberalism was a 18th century phenomenon which doesn't exist anymore. Both moderate Purples like Obama and moderate Yellows like Merkel can claim the mantle of liberal democracy.

Finally, I think the Nolan chart makes good sense in an unanimous society, which agrees on what should be done and only has disagrees about how to do it. Nolan measures the amount of government intervention, but doesn't differentiate between reasons for it. For example, it cannot distinguish between censorship used for PC reasons and for traditional religious reasons. Or between intervening on the market because you want to quench inequality and intervening in order to subordinate businesses to the military.

I read you as saying that yellow is all about the market, not democracy. If it's primarily about the market, that's conservative. In fact, it's the heart of conservatism today, and remember, it's placed as the extreme right pole on the Europe-oriented political compass charts. In the Nolan chart it is upper right.

Liberal democracy leans liberal; that is, moderately to the left. The pure yellow that would be the same as libertarian still values civil rights and democracy, personal and social freedoms. If the Nolan circle is divided into the quadrants, then upper left is the libertarian left, and that's where most American liberal democrats would be found. The peace movement is there, shared among liberals and libertarians, and the opposite is militarism located in the social/conservative lower right (group vs. group). The more progressive wing of liberals today would be close to or at the left-wing pole. I don't see much of a place for the heart of liberalism today on your chart.

But the classical liberalism of the 18th century is basically what libertarians aspire to, and would be the same thing except classic liberals were not as extreme in their free market ideology, and more dedicated to human rights and democracy than libertarians today. This ideology is also called neo-liberalism. It hasn't gone anywhere. Allied with various shades of social conservatism, it is currently dominant in the USA government, and has been for 40 years.

I don't see at all that the Nolan chart pictures any agreement at all on what should be done. It is not true that Nolan just measures the amount of government intervention. How can you say that? That is only the up-down axis. The whole point is that it's a circle or a diamond shape. It has TWO axes. The left and right axes do not agree! And there are also two diagonal directions, one economic and one personal/social. A circle rather than a diamond gives a bit more room for more variety of views. You can define as many polarized axes as you want on it too.

The amount of government intervention varies on both the left side of the chart, and the right side of the chart, but not as much as in the center, where the disagreement is about government itself, with a mixture of left and right motives. That disagreement is as central to US politics and its conflicts as any other question. It is ideology, and not just "methods." Censorship for PC reasons is in the lower left, moderately low and strongly left, because it's much more left-wing, because it protects the rights of groups and their equality; while censorship for traditional religious reasons is on the lower right, setting one group above another and repressing the other. Censorship itself is low on the statist to libertarian scale, because it is not as low/oppressively statist as jailing or killing political opponents. Obviously, government intervention to quench inequality is classic left-wing, and is lower left or at the left pole, depending on what is done and how. It is directly opposed to free market conservatives on the upper right. Using business to support the military is classic fascism and is lower-right (again, varying in how extreme the militarism is).

[Bill the Piper]

Eric the Green Wrote:I read you as saying that yellow is all about the market, not democracy. If it's primarily about the market, that's conservative. In fact, it's the heart of conservatism today, and remember, it's placed as the extreme right pole on the Europe-oriented political compass charts. In the Nolan chart it is upper right.

Liberal democracy leans liberal; that is, moderately to the left. The pure yellow that would be the same as libertarian still values civil rights and democracy, personal and social freedoms. If the Nolan circle is divided into the quadrants, then upper left is the libertarian left, and that's where most American liberal democrats would be found. The peace movement is there, shared among liberals and libertarians, and the opposite is militarism located in the social/conservative lower right (group vs. group). The more progressive wing of liberals today would be close to or at the left-wing pole. I don't see much of a place for the heart of liberalism today on your chart.

But the classical liberalism of the 18th century is basically what libertarians aspire to, and would be the same thing except classic liberals were not as extreme in their free market ideology, and more dedicated to human rights and democracy than libertarians today. This ideology is also called neo-liberalism. It hasn't gone anywhere. Allied with various shades of social conservatism, it is currently dominant in the USA government, and has been for 40 years.

Democracy is no longer the goal, at least in the West. It has been achieved and is the starting point for modern politics. I don't know where a "democracy first" person would go. Probably close to the centre, at least if we're talking about the extant form of democracy. Neoconservatives value democracy much, and I place them near the centre. The same for Christian democrats. They are centrist, although of a different flavour than neo-cons. It might be that wanting to preserve the existing form of democracy is a centrist trait. Expanding it, on the other hand, as in "participatory" or "direct" democracy is IMHO a Red trait, since it's closely related to workplace democracy, which is desired by all Reds except the totalitarian Bolsheviks.

A countercultural liberal values democracy as a means of political self-expression. A Purple extremist is however very likely to prefer anarchy.
A libertarian might prefer democracy because it's less likely to interfere with the market than an authoritarian system. Many libertarians don't agree with that and see an enlightened autocracy as more conducive for the market, like Moldbug.
A traditionalist is least likely to support democracy. Divine or natural law cannot be changed by voting. Still, High Toryism was once a thing in Britain, and it brought traditionalism and some form of democracy together. Pashtun tribal system is also a restricted form of democracy within traditionalist, where only clan elders can vote.
A moderate nationalist could support democracy as well, as expression of the will of the nation. Many 19th century European nationalists wanted democracy, and fought against the cosmopolitan monarchies. But democracy is not conducive to nationalists' militaristic goals, so most of them choose autocracy.
A working-class Red leftist also wants democracy, because it's an expression of equality. Autocracy is hierarchical by definition. Bolshevism is undemocratic, but this is a result of a nationalist admixture. I've decided to rename this sector as EGALITARIAN, as communism is only an extremist form of it.

The final verdict: democracy is a procedure, a very good one, but my judgement still depends on why one supports it.

[Eric the Green]

(09-27-2018, 06:39 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

Eric the Green Wrote:I read you as saying that yellow is all about the market, not democracy. If it's primarily about the market, that's conservative. In fact, it's the heart of conservatism today, and remember, it's placed as the extreme right pole on the Europe-oriented political compass charts. In the Nolan chart it is upper right.

Liberal democracy leans liberal; that is, moderately to the left. The pure yellow that would be the same as libertarian still values civil rights and democracy, personal and social freedoms. If the Nolan circle is divided into the quadrants, then upper left is the libertarian left, and that's where most American liberal democrats would be found. The peace movement is there, shared among liberals and libertarians, and the opposite is militarism located in the social/conservative lower right (group vs. group). The more progressive wing of liberals today would be close to or at the left-wing pole. I don't see much of a place for the heart of liberalism today on your chart.

But the classical liberalism of the 18th century is basically what libertarians aspire to, and would be the same thing except classic liberals were not as extreme in their free market ideology, and more dedicated to human rights and democracy than libertarians today. This ideology is also called neo-liberalism. It hasn't gone anywhere. Allied with various shades of social conservatism, it is currently dominant in the USA government, and has been for 40 years.

Democracy is no longer the goal, at least in the West. It has been achieved and is the starting point for modern politics. I don't know where a "democracy first" person would go. Probably close to the centre, at least if we're talking about the extant form of democracy. Neoconservatives value democracy much, and I place them near the centre. The same for Christian democrats. They are centrist, although of a different flavour than neo-cons. It might be that wanting to preserve the existing form of democracy is a centrist trait. Expanding it, on the other hand, as in "participatory" or "direct" democracy is IMHO a Red trait, since it's closely related to workplace democracy, which is desired by all Reds except the totalitarian Bolsheviks.

I think a political compass, just like my philosophy wheel. is made for all times and places; different views are never really outdated, they are all still in effect in many places in the world today. Democracy is not established in many places in the world, and is under severe threat in the USA today. Issues of civil rights, voting rights, vote suppression, gerrymandering, big money in politics, are still front and center. The Green Party makes democracy a central pillar of its values. So I don't think democracy is an out-of-date goal; it is central to a liberal, and to some libertarians at least.

I would agree that it would apply to many centrists, but democracy is among the central values of those on the left and in the upper left as well. The Democracy Now TV show uses the word in its title, and its view tilts strongly left.

Neo cons are not centrists, as their name applies. They are first of all militarists, which is central to the social conservative lower-right quadrant on the Nolan chart. Libertarians and liberals alike detest neo-cons. They tend to be conservative as well, and although they profess to impose "democracy" on the rest of the world, in reality what they are promoting is the power of wealth, money and business in these places, and in The West as well. Conservatives of all stripes prefer a society in which some groups are superior to others, and that includes economic groups. Conservatives, including the most-extreme statist fascists like Hitler, uphold a class society. Communists advocate a classless society and seek to achieve it, even though their statist approach creates a state elite. Social-darwinist economic libertarians like Ayn Rand advocate freedom, even though their free market creates an elite of wealth.

Quote:A countercultural liberal values democracy as a means of political self-expression. A Purple extremist is however very likely to prefer anarchy.

A libertarian might prefer democracy because it's less likely to interfere with the market than an authoritarian system. Many libertarians don't agree with that and see an enlightened autocracy as more conducive for the market, like Moldbug.
A traditionalist is least likely to support democracy. Divine or natural law cannot be changed by voting. Still, High Toryism was once a thing in Britain, and it brought traditionalism and some form of democracy together. Pashtun tribal system is also a restricted form of democracy within traditionalist, where only clan elders can vote.

According to their own definition, and according to Nolan and those who promote his chart and put themseles at upper-center, democracy and political liberty are central tenets to their ideology, and so if they are in favor of enlightened autocracy, or the 18th-century enlightened despotism as it was called then, then they have fallen further down the scale, perhaps centrist or further to the right. Traditionalists, Tories, Pashtun tribes, and so on, are in varying right-wing and lower-right-wing positions on the chart.

Quote:A moderate nationalist could support democracy as well, as expression of the will of the nation. Many 19th century European nationalists wanted democracy, and fought against the cosmopolitan monarchies. But democracy is not conducive to nationalists' militaristic goals, so most of them choose autocracy.

A working-class Red leftist also wants democracy, because it's an expression of equality. Autocracy is hierarchical by definition. Bolshevism is undemocratic, but this is a result of a nationalist admixture. I've decided to rename this sector as EGALITARIAN, as communism is only an extremist form of it.

The final verdict: democracy is a procedure, a very good one, but my judgement still depends on why one supports it.

Democracy and other forms of government have definite positions on the wheel. Nationalism can be liberal and democratic, as it was in the early and mid 19th century; I agree. But nationalism is not a form of government. Nationalism, religion, racial identity politics and so on are not conservative, unless it meets the criteria I mentioned; if nationalism becomes a matter of one social group against another; nation pitted against nation (including in militarism), race against race, gender against gender, religion against religion, tribe against tribe. If nationalism, religion, identity politics etc. advocates that all groups be treated equally and with full rights, then it is liberal, democratic and upper left.

Working class leftists vary in their degree of support for democracy. but it tends toward the lower left, and is more statist than liberals in general. It wants severe restraint on the big business bosses and regulation of the economy. Bolshevism is more statist, and it does not want more autocracy because of nationalism, but because it is more statist per se. Communism is explicitly international, and anti-nationalist generally speaking; and strongly anti-imperialist, unless it is to impose it's own ideology on the whole world. Communism says "workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains" (Karl Marx, 1848)

I do think "egalitarian" is a much better word for the lower left; although its emphasis is economic egalitarian (the upper left is culturally egalitarian); communism is only the extreme lower-left sector, and leaning strongly toward the low statist pole. When you get to Stalin, although his government was not about nationalism, it was about socialism in one country first, so it is closer to the lower-right sector than Trotsky and Lenin were, and is just about as strongly statist as you can get. Extreme communism wants not only severe regulation of the economy, but central planning and control over all of our economic and personal activities.

As Nolan pointed out on the wikipedia page I posted, the cultural axis is about who one associates with, as well as personal liberties and conformities, etc. The social conservative quarter advocates government and military power to defend, protect, advance, uphold etc. the group you associate and identify with, above and before other groups. The social liberal quarter opposite it advocates equal rights and freedom from government restraints for all groups, and for peace (at least if possible) between them rather than war between them. Especially in the left part of that quadrant, the government is used to protect those rights. That's where liberal democrats belong. The word counter-cultural does not really cover that quadrant's concerns, although those that advocate only cultural means to achieve liberty and non-conformity would fit in that quadrant also, but more toward the top of the chart; the libertarian region IOW.