December 8, 2007

The Charge of the Left Allayed

By Jon N. Hall

Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Folks who follow politics will continually run into these words: “left”, “right”, “center”, “political spectrum”, and their variants. If you think you know the meanings of these words, please raise your right hand. No, your other right hand.

That little joke goes to the problem America has with political terms: We don’t agree on their meanings. It’s understandable that the meanings of political terms will vary from nation to nation, and from era to era. But you’d think we could agree on terms as simple as “left” and “right” in today’s America.

On page 232 of his must-read book When Europe Slept, Bruce Bawer writes:

In the 1930s, the ascent in Europe of a totalitarianism of the left—Communism—fed the rise of a totalitarianism of the right. Might the spread of Islamism in Europe today give rise to an opposing but equally inhuman neo-fascism?

And on the next page Bawer writes that Germans in the 30s:

…drifted away from their blandly well-meaning centrist government and toward the upstarts at both extremes of the political spectrum—the Communists on the left, the Nazis on the righ

(Hey, Bruce, maybe there’s “a totalitarianism” in the center of the political spectrum, too.)

Does Mr. Bawer really think Islamism is more akin to communism than to fascism? Many analysts think of Islamism as a variety of fascism; they call it "Islamofascism". This quibble, however, is small potatoes compared to the larger conceptual problem these quotes point to. But Bawer is not alone, for what he gloms onto seems to be the unquestioned conventional wisdom, at least in some quarters. So let’s define some terms.

All-purpose dictionaries can be unreliable in their treatments of certain political words, but these definitions ring true:

American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition

totalitarianism
Domination by a government of all political, social, and economic activities in a nation. Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century: earlier forms of despotism and autocracy lacked the technical capacity to control every aspect of life. The term is applied both to fascist governments (see fascism) and to many forms of communism.

American Heritage Dictionary
totalitarian
adj. Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: "A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul" (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.)

In other words: the worst possible government imaginable. That’s all we needed to know. Totalitarianism is the government sensible folks most want to avoid.

Well, we Americans may not know what’s left and what’s right, but we sure as heck know what a spectrum is, don’t we. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a spectrum is the “entire range or extent of something, arranged by degree, quality, etc”. For example: “The entire range of wavelengths (or frequencies) of electromagnetic radiation, from the longest radio waves to the shortest gamma rays.”

The spectrum has got to be just about the simplest conceptual device or model we have. All spectra are 1-D; that is, one-dimensional, linear. When you trace from one point on a spectrum all the way over to the end of the spectrum, whatever the spectrum is calibrating continually gets either more and more, or less and less. When you make the return trip the reverse happens. You won’t find discontinuites, as Mr. Bawer’s “political spectrum” seems to have. For instance, you won’t find the color red between lime green and mint green on the electromagnetic spectrum. And, in the spectrum of temperatures, you won’t find absolute zero between lukewarm and toasty. These are examples of discontinuity. Discontinuity violates The Sacred Law of the Spectrum. And we can’t have that.

Perhaps the most obvious problem with Mr. Bawer’s “political spectrum” is where to place the decent systems of government, like liberal democracy. Wouldn’t those systems need to go in the center of his spectrum—between the totalitarian systems?

Here’s another possible problem with Mr. Bawer’s “political spectrum”: With totalitarianisms at both extreme ends of it, totalitarianisms would be distributed throughout the entire range of it—all political systems would be totalitarian.

If not out and out absurdities, such outcomes certainly seem wrong. I don’t mean to pick on Bruce Bawer. In fact, I wish everybody would read his otherwise-excellent book, especially Europeans. It’s now out in paperback. But the quotes were so illustrative of this common conceptual breakdown that I just had to use them.

Even if they’re colorblind, folks agree about the placement of colors on the electromagnetic spectrum. That spectrum is elegant and true because its subject (radiation) is simple and measurable. Not so the political spectrum, which deals with a subject that is complicated, not easily quantified, and riddled with theory: government. Compared to the exactitude of the spectra in the hard sciences, the political spectrum is only a rough approximation, and cannot fully account for the complexity of its subject. Therefore, some contend we need another model, something other than the spectrum, to limn out the political landscape.

In a disapproving email responding to an article I wrote last year that touched on these matters, a rather “progressive” fellow informed me: “FYI: the only geometric model that adequately describes the variety of human political organizations is a discontinuous multi-dimensional manifold [emphasis added].” Be that as it may, it’s difficult to imagine political commentators injecting the higher mathematics of topology into their discussions. Especially when they’re having such trouble with even one dimension.

Although I still stand by my article of last year, it did have one little problem in that I repeatedly used the term “political continuum”. I now know that “political spectrum” is probably the preferred term, as “political continuum” got only 14.1 thousand hits on Google, while “political spectrum” got 1.77 million. Funny, but “discontinuous multi-dimensional manifold”, whether with or without the hyphen, didn’t get any hits when googled. Maybe my email respondent was having me on.

Also, a continuum can be multi-dimensional, such as the space-time continuum. You could say that a continuum such as space-time consists of several spectra. My article, however, confined itself to one dimension, the left-right political spectrum. (Which is fitting, since I’m a one-dimensional kind of guy.) However, there are indeed alternative conceptual devices to the spectrum for plotting out political systems. And some, such as the Nolan Chart and the Pournelle Chart, go all the way up to 2 dimensions.

Alternatives to the spectrum may eventually catch on, but they don’t have much to do with the way most people think and talk right now. What folks talk about nowadays is: left, right, center, far-left, loony left, radical left, hard left, mushy middle, sane center, center-right, rabid right, vast rightwing, etc. This is terminology used by politicians, the media, academics, and even political scientists. It is language that implies a spectrum, as does “red state/blue state”. It is language that invokes something simple and basic, not some complex debatable theory, but something we should all be able to agree on. To be sure, this language is imprecise, but it’s firmly a part of current English usage.

You can base a spectrum on anything that has a range of values. You might base your political spectrum on totalitarianism itself, and place the various systems of government on that spectrum according to how closely they hew to the totalitarian line. This would be a rather arbitrary thing to base a spectrum on, but in such a spectrum all the totalitarian systems would necessarily be grouped together.

However, the only way a political spectrum could logically have totalitarianisms at both of its extreme ends would be if that spectrum were based on just the right variable. And now we come to the core of our problem: Upon what variable should the political spectrum be based? To put it another way: What should the political spectrum be a calibration of?

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward…

In my aforementioned article, I maintained that fascism is on the same side of the political spectrum as communism. Now, that fascism is leftist is by no means an original idea. The polymathic Aussie blogmeister John J. Ray has made this argument repeatedly. Here’s an expanded version of a Front Page article from 2002 where he does just that.

But, whereas Dr. Ray goes into historical and theoretical particulars, I wanted to see if I could mount a more general argument. While Ray demonstrates that Mussolini and Hitler were socialists, I wanted the simplest argument I could muster, à la Occam’s Razor. After all, my article was on civility in the time of war. I wanted to show that the political left’s neverending charge of fascism against conservatives was not only uncivil, but illogical, incoherent, even daft, making their charge doubly uncivil. So, secure in the knowledge of what a spectrum is, I set out to determine what variable makes the most sense to base the political spectrum on, and see if things then fell into place.

At first, I thought the political spectrum should be based on Freedom, or, maybe, civil rights. But I chucked that for something I came to feel might be even more basic to political systems: Power. Since totalitarianisms grab more Power than any other political system, they all go at an extreme end of my spectrum, both the commies and fascists. However, had I based my spectrum on Freedom, or civil rights, or, for that matter, a variable such as the size or intrusiveness of government, the totalitarian systems would still be clustered together, over on the end. And the opposite end of my spectrum is taken up by anarchism, the total absence of government and its Power. (To find out what I placed in the center of my political spectrum, click on the link above.)

My method is simplicity itself. Notice that I don’t game or predetermine my outcomes by starting out with definitions of “left” and “right”. I don’t set up debatable dichotomies. I don’t get bogged down in theory or ideology. Instead, I merely identify an aspect of government (Power), adopt it as my variable, and then determine to what degree various systems exhibit that variable. True, I don’t measure the amounts of Power in the various systems, and attach a number to them. I wouldn’t know how to do that. But I don’t need to; it is apodictic that totalitarian systems have the most Power and that anarchy has the least. And I’m not concerned here with advancing a theory. I’m just trying to restore some sense to a few very simple, but much abused, words, so we can all be on the same page when we use them.

Others have trod this ground before me, to be sure. Recently I found this spectrum at the American Federalist Journal, and it so exactly comports with my own conclusions that I have to wonder if I saw it long ago and then stashed it away in some remote recess of my memory, only to have it bubble up when I needed it. But if I hadn’t seen it, then I have even more faith in my spectrum, as someone else derived it independently. However, I do question its color scheme; having red at both ends isn’t very spectral. Red and violet would have been better. Having green in the center could have something to do with the desirability of the “green zone”, about which more later.

Certainly, there are differences between fascism and communism, particularly in the theoretical realm. But in the way these 2 systems treat the people they are cousins. And it because of these commonalities that we lump fascism and communism together under the rubric of totalitarianism—and why they need to be grouped together on the political spectrum or, for that matter, on whatever paradigm or model you prefer, even the old “discontinuous multi-dimensional manifold”.

Whether communist or fascist, the most important thing to know about totalitarianisms is this: They’re totalitarian. The differences between the commies and the fascists are not nearly as fundamental as their commonalities.

Both communism and fascism are Freedom-denying soul-killing Hells on Earth.

So, naturally, some political theorists say these 2 systems are opposites.

But any political theory that would posit such a thing should be seen as grossly defective. For it would be ignoring the most fundamental concerns people have about any form of government: Is a government going to oppress, persecute, enslave, or exterminate us?

Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

If you are a lefty, all the above is anathema.

Why? Put yourself in the shoes of an American leftwinger: You’re quite comfortable with your beliefs. You’ve always prided yourself for being “on the left”. You know you’re on the side of the angels (though you’re much too sophisticated to believe in such creatures). You regularly sneer at conservatives, self-righteously labeling them rightwing fascists. It IS rather inconvenient, however, that the “received wisdom” has it that one hellish system (communism) is on your side of the political spectrum. And now some nattering idiot is saying the other hellish system (fascism) is also on your side of the spectrum. It’s just too much. It can’t be. Everything you thought you knew is wrong. And those folks you’ve been demonizing as fascists? Maybe they’re the good guys.

Most folks just aren’t up for this kind of adjustment, as it requires an unusual degree of moral fortitude and intellectual heroism. David Horowitz calls it "second thoughts". It’s a form of rigorous political self-examination. Apparently the left doesn’t buy the idea that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Were it to become the conventional wisdom that fascism is leftist, the American left would be out of business. If we had this new consensus, the charges by the left would sound as loony as “Stalin was a moderate”. The hard left could no longer be taken seriously.

So, the left rejects any new arguments out of hand, and goes back to its old routines, hoping they can nationalize everything in America before too many folks reject them.

But besides being Hells on Earth, both communism and fascism are species of socialism. The Nazis were socialists. The Soviets were socialists. And the American left celebrated, even romanticized, the Soviets. But it is now beyond debate that the Soviet Union was no paradise, worker’s or otherwise. Indeed, it was a hell (see Solzhenitsyn).

Now, not all socialists are monsters. Tony Blair is a socialist, and he’s a good guy, whose oratory can bring a tear to the eye of a Fred Barnes. The American left is mostly socialist, and they’re…well, not monsters. Not yet anyway. But the farther left you go, the nastier it gets. And this is the problem for the American left: They must be ever on the alert not to go too far leftward. But as they’re amassing more and more Power, stripping it away from the people, that’s exactly what they’re doing—going further to the left.

Maybe they don’t accept Thomas Jefferson’s observation that “a government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.” Maybe they reject Friedrich von Hayek’s warning that even “benign” forms of socialism have a tendency to devolve into totalitarianism. Or maybe they just think they’re smarter than the other socialists and won’t repeat their mistakes. But what the left doesn’t understand is that it is because of the consolidation of unfettered Power in government—with no counterbalancing Power held by the people—that socialists were able to carry out their crimes against humanity.

So, how has the American left dealt with the charge that they are socialists?

Well, they certainly bristle at being labeled “socialist”. Labels are a big deal for the left; they seem to think labeling is solely their prerogative, their birthright, not for lesser mortals. As Jonah Goldberg points out, they now want you to call them "progressives". Which is a good thing, because now America can begin relearning the true meaning of the word “liberal”.

Besides re-labeling, the American left is trying to reposition itself to the aforementioned “green zone”, i.e., the center, where America lives. They’re trying to convince America that their Euro-style socialism is actually mainstream, what the Founding Fathers intended all along, and good for what ails you. (This may require more nuance than most normal folks are capable of.)

In repositioning themselves, the left must reposition the opposition. That’s how conservatives got bumped over to the rightwing. But just as important as understanding that fascism is leftist is understanding that American conservatism is centrist.

Leftist to right of them,
Leftist to left of them,
Leftist in front of them,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

America’s confusion has gone on long enough; America must forge a consensus about what’s left and what’s right in the political realm. That, or be in a continual muddle. She needs to understand that communism’s and fascism’s crimes against humanity compel us to lump them together. If the Soviets and the Nazis had differing economic theories and agriculture policies, so what, they were both murderous thugocracies. The American left’s flirtations with one of these monstrous regimes is beyond pathetic.

Conservatives would be the biggest beneficiaries of this new consensus. For if it became the conventional wisdom that fascism is leftist and that conservatism is centrist, then the co-religionists of the history’s biggest victims of fascism, American Jewry, would need to rethink their political allegiences. Which could put New York in the conservative column.

I’m talkin’ realignment, folks. That’s how important these simple words are.