| 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. |
