We hear so much about the political spectrum, left versus right, that I think we’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that its an idea to be understood as drawn upon a straight line. That going back and forth is kind of a tug of war and no matter how far we go, it just keeps getting better for “our side” of the political game.
But it is not a line. And pulling further doesn’t get us further from the ideas we fear.
I propose that we think of political ideology instead as a circle, and to mark out the points we can make the various political ideas as the hour marks upon an imaginary political clock. With that as our metaphor, lets put twelve o’clock at the top as being a stable centrist democracy.
In that configuration, liberalism, leftism, or liberal democracy is at about 11 o’clock. Old school conservative democracy, what we would call the fiscal federalist Conservatives here in Canada, tends to hang their hats at about 1 o’clock.
Now, let’s push a little further.
I would put liberal socialism, that pooling of public resources, lets-look-after-each-other brand of politics as a social accounting exercise along the lines of the NDP in Canada sitting firm around 10 o’clock and maybe sometimes leaning towards 9 o’clock with their more aggressive policies. Likewise, the social conservative movement, our modern conservatives here in Canada, you know hard-core capitalism and individualism, the separatism movement in Alberta as my go-to example, and too the religious right, well, they are maybe even pushing past 2 o’clock and are often found leaning in to the 3 o’clock mark on the circle with their policies.
If you are keeping track you may have noticed that (a) this is where most people take the top half of our imaginary political clock from 9 until 3 and put it on a straight line and don’t think about where those lines lead and (b) that we don’t yet have any marks on the lower half of our imaginary political clock.
But, let’s keep going.
In the lower half of the circle, calling these political ideas democracy is no longer a fair assessment.
So with that said, at around 8 o’clock we probably have socialism, yes, bad. But then going a bit further round at about 7 o’clock on the dial let’s put full on capital-C Communism, very bad, and definitely not democratic or a place someone who has spent most of their lives in a democratic society wants to live. Yes, if you push too far left you may eventually get there.
But then, and we’ve got to be fair and map this out properly, in fairness to the risks of moving left, let’s now push into the risks of moving further right on our imaginary political clock. As that counterpoint, we could easily drop modern American Nationalist movement, aka MAGA, at about 4 o’clock and probably keep going clockwise to put full on fascism at 5 o’clock on our metaphorical political timepiece.
If you are keeping track maybe you will have noticed that if you keep going it is a short leap down to the autocratic dictatorship line which I would chime at precisely 6 o’clock on our pretend political clock.
Not a line. It is a circle, and both political directions lead to the same place.
Then, still again thinking of this as a big old circle, ask yourself it really even matters how you got to that lower half of the clock or what label you give it, is it even democracy anymore? And are you pushing us back to high noon? Or are you putting your weight onto the hands pulling them with all your might to the bottom?