Political Compass

We’ve been asked on more than one occasion just exactly what we mean when we refer to the “upper-right-quadrant” (the URQ), or the “lower-left-quadrant” in our posts.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that the terms “left” and “right” have pretty well disappeared from the bunker lexicon, except as a form of satirical shorthand. We’ve come to believe that they are absolutely useless in defining a persons political philosophy.

Stephen Harper, George W. Bush, and Adolf Hitler, are all politically “right”, something that actually tells you very little about their individual political philosophies. Joseph Stalin, Pope Benedict, and The Dalai Lama are all politically “left”. How many productive political discussions can you generate with that information?

Answer: Very darned few. Although a lot of people still try. And by doing so, they (sometimes deliberately) muddle discussion so effectively that it degenerates into name calling and mud slinging far earlier than it otherwise might.

What’s worse is that many folks actually trim their thinking to fit the cut of the political banner they think they should be sailing under, and treat others as thought they were doing the same. Here at the bunker we don’t like gun control very much, which puts us way to the “right” on that issue…whatever the heck that means.

If you need another example of this look no further than the US invasion of Iraq. Conventional rhetoric tells us that “the right” supports the US president, and that “the left” are a bunch of surrender monkeys who don’t, but if you take the time to really look at who is saying what it’s nowhere near as cut and dried as some would have you believe.

That’s why the bunker has moved away from discussing events and people in terms of the traditional “left” and “right”, and now uses the political axis (or compass) that adds the vertical dimension of Authoritarian/Fascist – Anarchist/Libertarian.

It’s important to pay attention to the difference between things like “state imposed collectivism” (Authoritarinism) and “voluntary regional collectivism” (Anarchism); otherwise Joseph Stalin and Pope Benedict are left at being, well, “lefties”, full stop, end of story.

If you think about that chart you will quickly see that the great horrors of our day have not been perpetrated by “the left” (Stalin), or by “the right” (Hitler), they have been forced upon people by authoritarians – a group that includes both lefties and righties.

So that everybody knows where we stand the bunker has decided to post our political chart. Two of us share a quadrant with Nelson Mandela and the Gandhi…pretty good company. Lily and Max – well, they spent a long time in the Red Guard. What can we say?

So as you can see, describing us (as so many do) as lefties is only half right.