Left |
Center |
Right |
Authoritarian - Which party (or side of the aisle) is more authoritarian or totalitarian? That depends on country, culture, time, and personality. But as overgeneralization:
Leftism exists to further the agenda of themselves or the collective, and force people to live "better", more socially just lives -- and that requires the carrot and the stick. Not freedom and persuation. You can't have a Fascist, Socialist, Communist or other leftist government succeed, if people can just opt out. So virtually all those leftist variants (and Islam) believe in and require force to achieve their agenda (social control), just their agenda changes slightly. Conservatism/Traditionalism and other right wing ideologies can be acheived by persuasion (or by force). So while the right in some countries CAN be authoritarian/totalitarian, the left MUST be.
So while the right is often referred to as authoritarian (by lefties), in practice, it is the left that is more authoritarian. |
Classical Liberalism - This is where you mostly want to leave people alone and pick your battles wisely (aka Libertarian).
This of course has a wide spectrum depending on how much they want to leave people alone, and what areas they are willing to make laws to punish people for not doing what they want. On one end is minicharists -- and on the other are those that don't want to make new laws encroaching on people, but they aren't ready to eliminate laws that are encroaching on them either.
Progressives/DNC are virtually always to the authoritarian left of Conservatives/RNC on this one. Progress is almost always about new restrictions on businesses and individuals). There are a few exceptions like immigration laws or abortion where it's fuzzy: but even there, the left wants to subsidies to pay for it, so they're still more authoritarian in practice. |
Anarchist - There are very few that are actually on this end of the spectrum. Anarchism is the reductio ad absurdum that the authoritarian progressives use to accuse anyone to the right of them (which is virtually everyone), "If you don't want my great idea, you must be an anarchist". But there is no such thing as Anarchy. It's a myth or an oxymoron. Put 3 kids on a playground, and in 5 minutes they'll have defined the rules for a game and how they want to play. Anarchy is unstable, and it quickly decays back to a stable state of a libertarian or minarchist kind of government (military, police and courts, individual and property rights).
Since there is no true anarchy, and the right starts usually towards the center (to the left of minarchy) and moves left (with some social safety nets, regulations and laws beyond personal property/liberty). While the left starts on the far left, and moves lefter. |
Collectivism - Socialism/Communism/Fascism (Leftism) is collectivism: the idea that you create a group (collective/insiders) and protect them from the market forces of an unjust world. The tyranny of the majority (or elite minority).
There are those that agree with them (part of the collective) and outsiders that must be destroyed, re-educated or overridden. Us vs them (exclusion) is a prerequisite: the philosophy of "the collective", means the exclusions of those not in the clique. Leftists are NOT fighting for the betterment of humanity (despite what they think of themselves), just those in their mean-Girls club. Conform or die, with no introspection on what they are demanding conformity to. |
Conformism - Conformism is the middle ground followers that will go along with either the collectivists or individualists (or any other ideology). That's not really a moral position or one based on ideology or ethics. It's more Confucianists (or Japanese): don't make waves, just fit in. The nail that sticks up gets pounded down, and the Law of Jante. They are pawns or peasants, know they are pawns, and are content (enough) to never aspire to more for themselves or their culture. (Or to be too afraid of resistance). |
Individualism - On the opposite extreme of collectivism is individualism. As Ayn Rand said the smallest minority is the individual. The left claims to be for minorities, by crushing individual liberties and promoting the tyranny of the majority (assuming they're the majority). Look at places the left controls, and imagine you disagree with them and see how well you're tolerated. |
Isolationist - (pacifist). Historically, the left has been more pacifist than the right. But the right has more isolationists: and isolationism was more traditional American foreign policy. But once in the fight, the right wants to fight to win, the left historically fights to lose. |
Moderate - There are cases where the left or right has been reluctant to get involved. But generally, they flip on who wants to be interventionist, and who wants to be isolationist. Usually, on the same war. (Like left was Gung Ho on Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan... but then wanted to leave before the job was done. |
Interventionist - (militarist) - The right was more against going in, but more for staying in, or fighting to win. The left has been willing to intervene, especially on Social Justice/Humanitarian means (but not against Communism/Leftism), and with anything Europe or U.N. wants. The right is more about U.S. interests, or defending pro-Liberty (anti-Communist/leftism) or for individualism. |
Progressives -
This is also "Post-modernist/ism" -- basically, you can't remake into utopia ("Forward", "Build Back Better", "New World Order", "Great Reset"), unless you tear down all the established institutions/mores/beliefs. The old must be bad, for the new to be good. They are addicted to change (progress), so that's addicted to seeing flaws in everything before they "Fixed it". |
Moderate - These are rational folks who understand both the need for change and some progress, but are wise enough to understand that there's a speed limit on change. Even the best ideas adopted too quickly, will hurt people and cause backlash. Moderates (or modernists) want some change, but don't want to break the speed limits that set the movements backwards. Because they'll never pass the progressive litmus tests for being progressive enough, they are mocked by the far left along with the traditionalists. There are a few conservative Democrats here, many more moderate Republicans. |
Traditionalists - Some measure left/right versus "Forward/Backward" direction of progress. Leftist is hope and change, versus rightism is a return to our roots (Making America Great Again). But even most traditionalists don't want to go back, most just want to slow the rate of going forward. Ask the most ardent conservative in America if they want to bring back segregation or slavery and they'll look at you like you're a CNN watcher: of course not. They just understand that most change comes with unintended consequences that can make things worse, especially when that change is unvetted emotional appeals by the far left. So true traditionalists are rare, most "Conservatives" are moderate modernists. |
Secular - In statism (Communism/Socialism/leftist) the first commandment is no other God's before me, so you can't have any religion above state-worship: God/Religion along with traditions, objective norms, traditions, will all get in the way of the state and their shifting post-modernist non-values. Thus the left tends to be more secular, and intolerant and mocking towards the religious. There are exceptions like in the Middle East, Islamic theocratic socialism is more common (they are Islamic and Socialist). Because Socialism/leftist is part of their beliefs, and supporting Islam dilutes American/Judeo-Christian values, which is likely why the left prefers those homophobic, sexist bigots to more tolerant American Religious Republicans. |
Agnostic - Whether agnostic, apathetic or just tolerant, the moderate middle is people that don't want to intrude on others religion. The left will claim they are in this camp, but then demonstrate the opposite with policies like wanting to outlaw prayer or mentions of God, force people to pay for other people's abortions, or make them bake gay wedding cakes against their religious beliefs. . |
Religious - religious nations are considered more right wing because of the traditionalism (or resistance to progressive overreach). Though they really aren't (always). For example, Islam has Socialism kind of baked in. Iran is a religious theocracy (wrapped in a fraud democracy), and it's not that right-wing at all. (They are statist/collectivist, just the state and Islam blur). Israel as well, can be right-wing on defense but very left on helping Jews. (Both are tribally charitable). So in the U.S. there is a religious right, but it's mostly because coastal progressives demean and drive out their religious left. But before post-modern Marxism (1960's) started driving out the religious from the left, this used to not be a right/left thing. |
Social Justice Warriors - The left believes that instead of Justice (equality of opportunity), we need "Social Justice" (government force, in inequity) to make the world more "fair" and to make up for past inequalities. Handicap the smart, fleet, or rich, to try to force equality of outcome. Thus they wrongly see those that disagree as advocates for injustice/inequality. They miss that replacing an economic meritocracy, with a political or victimhood based one, didn't fix anything, it just changed who the winners/losers were. |
Realist - The right believes that humans are generally good and don't need force as their only motivator (persuasion works). They also believe that in order to teach people, they need to be able to make the wrong choices (and learn from mistakes, and pay the consequences). So they want equality of opportunity and teaching the culture, and local governance to allow geographic/cultural diversity instead of criminalizing/taxing/regulating everything from the top. This puts them to the right of the left wing, but they're still far from the right of the SJW<->Hedonist spectrum. .
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Hedonist - The left thinks the right is hedonist, anything goes in imaginary capitalism. But that's reductio ad absurdum: the right just believe in slightly less Government than the left does (and slightly more local). Then the right gives more in taxes and charity than the left does. There are virtually no true hedonists because most humans value helping others. Studies have shown there's no evidence that the left is any less selfish or hedonistic than the right, and the left in America is incarcerated at a far higher rate (which the left blames on racism or poverty instead of morals/values). |
Tribalist - These are the bigots that can't work outside their clan. Black or White separatists, immigrants that never leave their expat communities, Democrats that lose their shit when they see a MAGA hat, even Union folks that hate management or those who don't work for organized labor. Folks that divide us into smaller and smaller special interests, and hate/resent everyone that aren't like them: that's tribalism. If we hadn't of grown beyond that, we could have never made Nation-states. |
Nationalist - The left spits "Nationalism" like it's a bad thing. There's Tribalism, Nationalism, and Internationalism (globalism). I find nationalism the least offensive and most tolerant of the three: the former has no tolerance for people outside their tribe/clique, the latter has no room for people outside their ideology. Nationalist look for unity in geography and ideology (national identity and culture). And in America, that identity is inclusiveness and diversity and used to be leaving each other alone, and the American dream (self reliance and success). The left is trying to drive it towards identity, victimhood, and special interests -- and that's where much of the Social/Cultural friction is coming from. . |
Globalist - There aren't many real globalists. Not really. There are some that hate their nations so much they want to undermine them, or they want Socialism so bad, that they want to dilute their nation's independence and identity, by enslaving their people to some "World Socialist Collective", in that the New World Order will force what they want on their nation. But point out that if they make more than $50K a year, then they are the 1% they hate (Globally), and that we should tax them at 90% and redistribute their wealth to other countries... and when it's someone redistributing their shit? (instead of them redistributing someone else's). Suddenly they want sovereignty and protection. But if you really think about what it would mean to eliminate all diversity, culture, and specialization, and make us all one world culture, and it's somewhat vile and depressing. I love diversity, and globalists would eliminate that. |