How the leftwing-rightwing cliches muddle the discourse

Normally I don’t waste my time refuting right of center commentators because the pickings are so profitable on the other side of the divide, but I'll make an exception this time. Jay Bryant—a guy I admire— needs some ClueBat™ therapy today.

What did Jay Bryant do to earn this? Sloppy thinking, that's what.

In this article, Bryant started out just fine by pointing out that, historically, neither the Republican nor Democrat parties had any significant ideological differences. No, Bryant isn't trying to say that you could never tell the Republican Party from the Democratic Party, he's saying that historically their differences were small as compared to the differences between European political parties.

I agree. About 30 years ago the lack of political cohesion was obvious. Back then the Democratic party included both Jessie Jackson and Jessie Helms.

Bryant then proceeds to discuss the recent phenomena of both parties’ showing increasing ideological distinctions.

OK, fine. I suppose that it’s not to late to describe a process that has been underway since 1968 when the leftists—in their McGovernite guise— began their slow-motion take over of Democratic Party. So far so good.

But then Bryant coughs up this hairball:

Neither of the two [parties have], by world standards, a radical ideology. Pound for pound, our American left-wingers are no match for their European brethren, and on the right, Americans can't hold a candle to, say, the Russians.

WTF? Is Bryant saying that Stalinists are like Republicans except more so? I find this statement extremely offensive, at least when taken at face value.

First of all, in Bryant’s defense, regardless of however poorly he chose his words I doubt he intended to say that Republicans are just a wimpy version of Stalinists.

Secondly, again in Bryant’s defense, he is right that neither party’s ideology can be described as extreme. In America only the splinter parties (e.g., The Green Party, the Reform Party, the Prohibition Party) have both relatively pure ideologies and ambitions to effect sweeping changes. For example, Bush’s intention to reform Social Security by incorporating the option of investing in the stock market—which for either of the two major parties is the political equivalent of digging the Panama canal—is small beer compared to what the Green Party would do to the U.S. if it could.

In my view, Bryant was tripped up by carelessly invoking the classic—and false—“leftwing-rightwing” allegory; where rightwing equals fascist and leftwing equals communist and American political ideas exist somewhere in the happy middle. In this model the Republicans are placed to the "right" of the Democrats.

But this is sooo wrong. This allegory is hopelessly broken because it holds that the fascists (e.g., Hitler, Mussolini) are “on the right” and communists (e.g., Stalinists, Mao, Pol Pot) are “on the left”. The problem with this is that there is no place on this continuum for Classical Liberals (e.g., Franklin, Washington, Jefferson) because, logically, the entire continuum is comprised of statist political systems (assuming a linear interpolation between leftwing and rightwing.)

It was this concept that Bryant had in mind when he insulted the Republicans. This is a classic example of a bad mental model interacting with good logic to yield an absurd conclusion.

So what is a better model? I'm so glad you asked! The following figure shows various political systems with respect to the degree of statism they possess. In my view, it would have been almost impossible for Bryant to make his mistake if his notions about political systems were something like this:

In this figure political systems are ordered by the extent of state control they require to exist.

The EU's heavy regulation requires more state control than the U.S.' deregulated markets. Stalin needed more coercion (e.g., gulags and the Cheka ) than a Latin American junta. The Republican’s vision of an ownership society, school choice and as much economic deregulation as practical requires less coercion than Democrats’ policies of welfare state, racial preferences and enforcement of multicultural social engineering.

And in this figure the Republicans are further from both the facists and the communists than the Democrats; which they are.

Postscript:

It should be noted that certain ironies are ignored by my figure. For example, two of the classical liberals were slave owners.

Update:

Bob White (who was once a Libertarian) commented:

But where are the Libertarians? Same as Classical Liberals, I assume...

Actually I wasn't sure. I wanted to confer with Bob White before I placed the Libertarians on that figure.

My thinking is that Libertarians belong somewhere between the Anarchy and the Classical Liberals. I reason this way because, if I understand their ideology correctly, they believe that an idea state would have even less coercion than the Classical Liberals who founded our country accepted.

Now I know that the founders knew that the country's initial state was less than perfect (e.g., the grandfathering of slavery.) I also know that they deliberately increased the state power—with respect to the Articles of Confederacy—because the previous central government was too weak to be useful.

My question to Bob White is: where would you place the Libertarians and why? If you can help understand this better I’ll probably update the figure to show where they belong.

Now regarding the other part of Bob’s comments:

You could make the argument that by outspending the Democrats, the current GOP Congress/White House has increased state control. But this must be balanced against tax relief, deregulation and (we hope) tax and social security reform.

Hmmm…. I was using the word “control” as a synonym for “coercion”; I was thinking of things like regulation, laws and outright force.

My initial reaction to the premise that increased spending equals increased control is “not necessarily”. The additional spending that I’m aware of—under Bush anyway—is for prescription drug benefits. I don’t see that as coercive.

That being said, payment of taxes to fund these programs is under coercion (i.e., you’ll get thrown in jail if you withhold your taxes). Increased spending eventually equals increased taxes which, to my way of thinking, means some degree of increased coercion.

On the other hand, a politician who ran on a platform that promised to provide some sort of prescription drug benefit implemented these programs. It seems to me that if raising taxes increases coercion—and if the voters understood their taxes would be raised because of this program— then I don’t see that this increase in coercion to be evil.

I reason that most of the Republican’s spending generally doesn’t increase coercion.