{"id":41977,"date":"2020-04-15T01:00:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T05:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=41977"},"modified":"2020-04-14T07:56:10","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T11:56:10","slug":"qotd-the-limited-utility-of-the-left-right-scale-in-political-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/04\/15\/qotd-the-limited-utility-of-the-left-right-scale-in-political-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The limited utility of the &#8220;left-right&#8221; scale in political debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Categorizing a political position according to some simple left-right scale of values leaves something to be desired. Political views cover such a wide variety of issues that it is impossible to describe adequately any one person merely by identifying where he sits on a lone horizontal line.<\/p>\n<p>Use of the single left-right scale makes impossible a satisfactory description of libertarian (and classical-liberal) attitudes toward government. Libertarians oppose not only government direction of economic affairs, but also government meddling in the personal lives of peaceful people. Does this opposition make libertarians &#8220;rightists&#8221; (because they promote free enterprise) or &#8220;leftists&#8221; (because they oppose government meddling in people&#8217;s private affairs)? As a communications tool, the left-right distinction suffers acute anemia.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the familiar left-right \u2014 &#8220;liberal-conservative&#8221; \u2014 lingo, such use continues. One reason for its durability is convenience. Never mind that all-important nuances are ignored when describing someone as being, say, &#8220;to the right of Richard Nixon&#8221; or &#8220;to the left of Lyndon Johnson&#8221;. The description takes only seconds and doesn&#8217;t tax the attention of nightly news audiences.<\/p>\n<p>Don Boudreaux, <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/coercivists-and-voluntarists\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Coercivists and Voluntarists&#8221;, <em>The Freeman<\/em><\/a>, 1997-08-01.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Categorizing a political position according to some simple left-right scale of values leaves something to be desired. Political views cover such a wide variety of issues that it is impossible to describe adequately any one person merely by identifying where he sits on a lone horizontal line. Use of the single left-right scale makes impossible [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,10,53,41],"tags":[550,101],"class_list":["post-41977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-libertarianism","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aV3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41977"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56437,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41977\/revisions\/56437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}