You have heard it said that the political spectrum runs from Left to Right, with Leftism being defined, it would seem, by communal modes of societal organization culminating in communist totalitarian autocracy as the farthest Leftward pole, and Rightism being defined, it would seem, by tribal nationalism culminating in Nazism and other Fascist movements as the farthest Rightward pole.

Does this make any sense at all?  No, of course not.  The Nazis were a National Socialist party.  The Right Wing as defined by the makers of this spectrum is a tribal group movement, just as collective in nature as the Left Wing.  Only the divisions are different.  On the Left, class division rules, and the proletariat seeks to eliminate the bourgeoisie until only a vast, undifferentiated tribe of Workers exists in paradise on Earth.  On the Right, national or racial division rules, and the nation in power seeks to eliminate all other nations until only a vast, undifferentiated tribe of Aryans or what have you exists in paradise on Earth.  Both end in a vague collective utopia after a period of revolution and genocide.

People who talk in terms of this political spectrum from Left to Right use it to define the right and moral position as the position in the Center, equidistant from the “extreme” Left and the “extreme” Right.  For some slightly more sophisticated thinkers, the inescapable similarity between the two poles has led them to propose that the political spectrum is actually a circle, and if you go “too far” to the left or right, you meet at this common point of pure evil totalitarianism.  These theorists describe the ideal point as being the point on the opposite side of the circle from that worst totalitarian point.  This is a distinction without a difference from the Centrists of the linear spectrum model.

Let me ask you, in either case: what does it mean to be not a thing?  What good does it do you to try not to be this or that?  If you decide that you are not going to be a mass-murdering genocidal lunatic, does that mean you’re going to be a good person?  Does that even give you anything you can use as a working definition of good?  No, it does not.  Google tried it.  They started out with a motto, “Don’t be evil.”  Next thing they knew, they were building the censorship and social control infrastructure for Communist China, in exchange for billions of dollars, and they quietly retired that motto.  It turns out, whatever your definition of evil, you may avoid that only to discover that there are infinite other ways to be evil, and without a positive definition of Good, you can never achieve anything but another kind of evil.  It’s a matter of probabilities.  If there are infinite evil points and only one (or any finite number) of good points, then if you aim at random, you are mathematically guaranteed to strike evil.

I’ll put it another way:  You tell me where you want to fall on a line between Stalin and Hitler.  Do you really think that line goes through somewhere good?  Do you really think you can take the mean of two mass murderers and get something decent?  It’s absurd.  If you want to stand on that line—anywhere; I don’t care where—then good riddance to you.  You are a mixture of one or another kind of monster.  Indeed, I would say that the distance between the Left and the Right as defined by these people and their spectrum is entirely illusory.  There is no meaningful difference between Stalin and Hitler.  It’s all socialism, it’s all an appeal to authority, and it’s all genocidal.

If you want to create a decent society; if you want to differentiate yourself from these monsters; then you must not be anywhere on this line.  You must be above it, far from it on some other axis entirely.  I will tell you what is the actual political spectrum, and it is the only actual political spectrum in the human experience:  The spectrum between freedom and totalitarianism.  This is the only spectrum, the only differentiation, that matters in any analysis of human society.

Political theorists who use the classical Left-Right dichotomy place people who talk about freedom on the “far Right,” as if they somehow equate to Hitler and Mussolini.  Try to find some freedom in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.  Try to find even a hint of similar rhetoric.  Go ahead; I’ll wait.

Of course it’s nonsense.  But they do this for a good reason—actually, one of three reasons:  In the third case, they’re just intellectually incapable of thinking outside the schemes they’ve been handed by their academic betters.  These talk in terms of Left and Right because they were so taught and they’ve never given it a second thought.  They never give anything a first thought.  In second case, the assignment is cynical.  They don’t believe anyone who speaks of freedom is actually being honest, with others or with himself.  They believe there is only authority, the endless struggle of every man to impose himself on his neighbor, and any mention of freedom is a hollow pretense.  These people of despair create their own hell.  In the first case, the people assigning freedom-lovers to the political Right are doing so in order to eliminate discussion of freedom from the language, so that the presumption of authority rules.  This is a fine distinction from the cynics who believe that any genuine desire for freedom exists.  The people of this first case believe that freedom and the free spirit can exist, and they are actively fighting against it.  Their agenda is to create a totalitarian society, and by tailoring all discussion of civics around an unstated, assumed presumption that all governments are one or another form of authoritarianism, by eliminating freedom from the vocabulary, they create the second and third cases.  It’s a choice they make to further their fight.

The first case is the first case because these are the people who invented the Left-Right spectrum we take for granted today.  It wasn’t introduced to our discourse by freedom-loving American Founders.  It is an invention of socialist academics who were ever trying to figure out how to bring about the socialist revolution.  Framing the political conversation on their terms was, and remains, a conscious choice, not academic but strategic.

So, to review, there is no Left-Right political spectrum.  That is an invention meant to degrade political discourse.  The only spectrum that matters is the spectrum between authority and liberty.  And the only place one may morally stand on that spectrum is at the point of absolute liberty. (Oh, but wouldn’t a society of absolute liberty decay into anarchy and madness?  No.  We have already discussed this.  A society of absolute liberty produces only peace, order, and progress.)