The Political Spectrum

THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM.pdf

Title

The Political Spectrum

Identifier

THE_POLITICAL_SPECTRUM

Creator

Jacob Schlitt

Description

"As far back as I can remember I have been interested in words and politics."

Date

2016-01-18

Format

application/pdf

Type

text

Text

THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM

As far back as I can remember I have been interested in words and politics. Writing this, the name of my friend Carla Cohen’s book store in Washington DC came to mind: “Politics and Prose.” She must have been interested in the same things as well. As usual, I deviate.

Thinking about words and politics, I have been trying to sort out the political spectrum. What first comes to mind is left and right. To some of us, left is good and right is bad. The Democratic and Republican parties are the two major political parties reflecting left and right. (A while back, the Republicans kept call the opposition party the Democrat Party. I am not sure why, but it really upset the Democrats. Perhaps that is why.)

We inherited our political parties from England, and way back then, they had funny names for the parties on the left and the right: Tories and Whigs. I never really knew which was which. Tory sounds conservative, but I am not sure. Finally, they became Liberal and Conservative, giving rise to W.S Gilbert’s great line about every little boy and girl born into this world alive, is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative. (These days, the Liberal Party in England has been replace by the Labor Party.) Then, there is the remark attributed to Clemenceau, which my son David heard attributed to Churchill, that if a man is not a Socialist when he is young he has no heart, but if he is still a Socialist as he gets older he has no head. Oops. I deviate again.

What I am trying to do is to give a name to each point on the political spectrum. However, I once heard the political spectrum described as a circle, not as a straight line, and I found it fascinating. It was the speaker’s way of making the point that the extreme left—totalitarian Communism (Stalinism)—and the extreme right—Fascism, (Hitlerism), are much the same: authoritarian, despotic, cruel, repressing the will of the people. The issue of socialism versus capitalism was irrelevant. Democratic government—the will of the people—was what was relevant.

Back to the spectrum: For most of us, we think of Radical as Left, and Reactionary as Right. But to confuse us, some people on the left, as well as the media, left, right and center, talk about the Radical Right. (And today, the term “Radical Islam” has become very popular.) Most of us know what we mean by radical: Extreme, seeking fundamental, revolutionary change. True it can come from the left or right. (This might confirm the idea of the spectrum as a circle.) Radicals are scary, left or right. They want to overthrow the current order. To get at the root. Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, calls his campaign a social revolution. That is radical.

Reactionary, we all know, is bad. People we consider reactionary seldom call themselves reactionary. They are extremely conservative; defenders of the status quo, especially if the status quo is in their favor, and it usually is. What they are reacting to is progress, liberalism, making the system fairer. They may have more in common with the Radical Right than they would like to admit. Until the way of life reactionaries enjoy is threatened by the crazies on the radical right.

We are finally getting to that part of the spectrum which I want to consider: Where I and those I know find ourselves. Returning to the designations from left to right: Progressive, liberal, moderate (middle of the road), independent, conservative. In the mid ‘40s, left wing New York politics was caught up in a struggle between the center left and the far left, the Socialists and the Communists. The “Socialist” American Labor Party formed in 1936, was captured by the Communists, so the Socialists, in 1944, picked up their marbles and formed the Liberal party. In 1948, the American Labor Party, joined with and became the newly formed Progressive Party to support Henry Wallace in his bid for the Presidency.

So then, the term Liberal became more conservative (more to the right) than the term Progressive, which to many meant pro-Communist. Today, many people think of liberal as being to the left of progressive. Many Democrats running for office do not want to be called liberal, but they don’t mind progressive. Time marches on.

At one time, from the 1930s to the 1960s, there used to be a broad political middle, which I will call moderate left and moderate right, assigning 20% of voters to each of them. (This includes the middle of the road and independent.) I would assign 20% to each of the clearly designated left and right (liberal and conservative), and 10% each to the extreme left and right, the zealots. There were clearly shifts over time, and third party threats.

In the 60s, the Democrats lost their moderate left middle when they lost the Solid South. This was compounded more recently by a populist appeal from the right on social issues like abortion, same sex marriage, and equal rights. The Republicans lost their moderate right middle when people like Javits or Lindsay or Rockefeller realized they were no longer welcome. The majority of the party moved right. The moderates had to move right or move out. And the segregationist Southern left middle became the right and the right middle, Another deviation. Another way of looking at it is whether the Government does for you what you can not do for yourself.

Where do I and my friends stand today, and how are we affected by the shifts in the spectrum? A clever button I once saw read “My heart is on the left.” It still is. Though I never was a YPSL (Young People’s Socialist League) or SP member, I did join when DSOC (Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee) was formed. I proudly identify myself as part of the unequivocal left 20%. And I believe my friends who supported the Progressive Party in 1948, are there as well, though a few may have slipped into the moderate left. We are differentiated today by those of us who support Bernie Sanders and those who support Hillary Clinton.

Original Format

application/msword

Citation

Jacob Schlitt, “The Political Spectrum,” Autobiographical stories & other writing by Jacob Schlitt, accessed February 10, 2025, https://tsirlson.omeka.net/items/show/423.