Left and Right

The labeling of political/social views as right or left has a long tradition, yet the meaning of these two opposites has varied, often to the purposes of the party applying it. Despite fascism and communism being almost identical, Stalin managed to label fascism right wing to communism being left wing.

In searching for a universal scale we have put the respect for man’s natural rights on the right, and a lack of respect for them on the left. Because of the nature of the right there is limit when all of man’s rights are respected it is impossible to respect more rights, we have a terminal point, because of this it is more appropriate to refer to near right rather than far right. On the left the ways and severity in which man’s rights can be violated are seemingly limitless, thus terms like: moderately left, far left, extreme left are all appropriate. We have observed that individuals on the left seem always to be opposing something as the major focus of their attention, interestingly this vitriol is directed usually at other but different left thinking groups. To paraphrase Tolstoy “Everyone on the near right is pretty much alike, everyone on the far left is left in his own way.”

If you are going to try to graph the political spectrum on two dimensions the best candidate for the second dimension would be the scope of government. Although any combination on the graph is theoretically possible, most societies should fall in between the dotted lines.

Still maybe because to the variety of ideas we see on the left a better way to represent it graphically would be circle, with the center being the right and outside the left.