A New Political Spectrum
Why does everyone on the Left blame Trump, Trump voters, and, by extension, all Republicans and free men everywhere for white nationalism, racism, bigotry, and therefore blames us for all acts of insane violence perpetrated by young men on mind-altering antidepressants?
How did a New York limousine liberal like Trump get labeled as a fascist?
Somehow, everyone and his maiden aunt has become convinced that Fascism, which is a type radical nationalists socialism preferring totalitarian theory above Christian truth and Anglosaxon love of liberty, belongs on the right side of a one dimensional political spectrum.
This puts fascism cheek and jowl with constitutionalist Christians upholding pragmatic, real world based free market defending limited government subordinate to Christian truth and Anglosaxon love of liberty.
It also puts fascism on the opposite side of the alleged spectrum to Leftism, which is radical international socialism preferring totalitarian theory above Christian truth and Anglosaxon love of liberty.
The main problem with this spectrum is that there is nothing it is measuring. It is a meaningless spectrum.
Of the possible ranked factors involved in political theory, such as rule by one versus rule by many, or such as having an established church versus having freedom of religion, or such as advocating radical change based on theory versus advocating only cautious organic changes based on traditional wisdom, or such as socialism versus liberty, identity politics versus liberty, hate speech regulation versus liberty, gun control versus liberty, ecological regulation versus liberty, or totalitarianism versus liberty, not a single one of these factors is the thing where more of it equals Leftism and less of it equals Fascism.
If there were a real spectrum there would be something, anything, that adding to it gets you communism, and subtracting from it gets you republicanism, and subtracting more gets you fascism.
Now, the only thing that fits this definition is the degree of opposition to communism. When the opposition is zero, we have communism. When the opposition is bound by laws and common decency, we have republicanism, and when the opposition is ferocious and lawless, we have fascism. So to it might be useful as rhetoric to Leftists to simplify all the complexities of politics to a one dimensional spectrum measuring the degree of resistance to their powerlust, but why any republican or democrat or monarchist in his right mind would use such a spectrum, I have no idea.
But you might think that, in Europe, the guardians of the traditional regime of established national churches and landowning aristocracy and unelected monarchs are closer to fascists, in that they which their nation and race and culture to remain intact, than they are to communists, whose theory predicts the disappearance (or, rather, demands the abolition) of all these things. The European idea of tradition puts those opposing the rapid communist revolution or the slow Fabian devolution in the same camp.
If so, banish the thought. It is absurd.
Fascism may indeed call for the preservation of in name only certain institutions communists wish to abolish utterly, but it also calls for the radical abolition of all traditional law and religion and landownership, and replacing them with centralized control.
The difference between a state-owned factory and a state-run factory allegedly kept in private hands is a legal fiction. It is like saying a slave owns any wages he earns, provided he spends those wages only when and in what amounts to buy which goods his master shall dictate. It is a difference in name only.
A spectrum that ranked the number of rulers on the other hand, makes sense and means something. A monarch, a tyrant, and a dictator are all a single individual; a parliament of barons or an assembly of elected lawmakers is a group; the democracy in Athens including all voting citizens.
Nearly all political analysis in the West, following the Greek philosophers, makes this threefold spectrum its starting point: the types of government are rule by one, a monarchy, rule by few, an aristocracy, or rule by many, a democracy, and each has a corrupt form, a tyrant is a lawless monarch, an oligarchy is a lawless aristocracy, and mob rule (leading immediately to tyranny) is a lawless democracy.
Note that this analysis treats entirely with form rather than content. It says how many men make and execute the law, but ignores the source and substance of the law.
Again, a spectrum that ranked concentration of powers also makes sense and measures something.
An English king in the Middle Ages was circumscribed in his use of power by the parliament of his barons, by the Church (which, at that time, was not subordinate to him) and by the traditions and uses of the folk law. By the late Middle Age, the Magna Carta established the limits of his power in writing. On the other hand, in the same time period, the Sultans of the Near East had no written nor traditional limits on his power, as he was absolute authority in all matters secular as well as spiritual. In the same time period, the Mikado or Emperor of Japan was figurehead, having no authority outside ceremonial matters, while the Shogun or Commander in Chief, was the actual master of the nation. The Senate of Rome in the time of the later Emperors was likewise merely ceremonial.
Thus a spectrum which put the Mikado on one end, next to the Senate, the English Monarch in the middle, and the Eastern Sultan on the other end would be measuring something.
To use a more trenchant example, a possible political spectrum could measure content of the bond linking high with low in society, based on the source of the law, rather than with the formality of how many men enforce said law.
Again, there are three types: laws can grow organically out of the folk traditions of the tribe and clan into which one is born, as in an Indian tribe or Scottish clan, needed to maintain amity, resolve disputes, and maintain continuity between generation; the laws can be protocols and regulation needed by the ruling class, sons of the conquerors, to maintain discipline and prevent mutiny by the servile class, sons of the the conquered, as in England; the law can be a covenant between a variety of peoples drawn together by mutual faith, mutual need, or mutually shared vision, in order to protect the God-given rights and duties acknowledged by one and all, as with the ancient Hebrew, the Swiss cantons, or the American colonies. These three forms of government can be called the patriarchal, the elitist, and the constitutional.
A “nation” in this nomenclature is the same as an ethnic group, namely, an extended set of families sharing a common ancestor, common traditions, and a common language. A nation-state is the attempt to separate tribe by ancestry into friend and aliens. An empire is the extended conquest of one nation above all others, with the law primarily concerned with maintaining the hierarchy of slave, servant, citizen, noble needed to prevent rebellions. A federation is the combination of clans, nations, and groups, each otherwise sovereign in itself, beneath a limited government, whose operations are circumscribed by law.
Any of these possible spectra, including the ninefold matrix of law versus chaos and good versus evil propounded by Gary Gygax, would be more useful to describe the current political interest group alliances and oppositions in modern America than the misleading and frankly empty Left-Right spectrum.
For example, on the Gygax matrix, the modern GOP would be Lawful Stupid, losing every election gracefully, much like an overly literal Paladin in D&D who will not strike a lady being smashed in the codpiece by the warhammer of an Amazon. The modern Democrat party would be barking mad Chaotic Evil, akin to Cthulhu-worshipping two-headed mind flayers eating their own brains with red-hot sharpened spoons of iron.
Let me propose a new spectrum: The Somewhere Men and the Nowhere Men.
A Somewherer lives somewhere. He has a home, he has local affections and relations, he is tied to the soil, to the graves of his fathers, and his job and career, his local church and local community are immobile. A factory worker, for example, cannot up and leave unless he takes his factory with him. Nor can a farmer leave his farm.
A Nowherer lives nowhere. He carries his profession in a laptop, and is equally at home in Sidney as in Singapore as in Cincinnati. His job involved management, finance, or the arts, or something else which does not involve working with his hands.
To the Somewhere Man, the creative destruction of capitalism benefits him in theory and in the long run, but if the price is that he has to move his house and family, and lose the family farm, the theoretical economic gain is outweighed by the real personal loss.
To the Nowhere Man, the creative destruction of capitalism is beneficial in the short run, but his normal human desire for roots and for a home of his own creates an overwhelming temptation, and an overwhelming incentive, for him to enter into the incestuous and corrupt relation with local governments for their mutual benefit to halt the turning of the wheel of capitalism while the Nowhere Man is perched at the top. This form of bribery and extortion can be called Freemasonry, or the Uniparty, or Fascism, but the best term is Plutocracy.
The only way to halt this wheel in the modern day is to lie and tell capitalists that plutocracy is actually a beneficial result of and the global free trade agreement; and meanwhile to lie and tell socialists that the plutocracy will establish a welfare state safety net and work regulations to prevent the excesses of capitalism from harming the poor and downtrodden.
The real effect, no matter what the stated purposes of the ironically named global free trade agreements, is to create a slothful international bureaucracy governing trade and finance in such as way as to ensure the continuity of the Nowhere Men. The alleged benefits of such bureaucracy controlled so called free trade is not the drop in prices and the increase in efficiency predicted by free traders, but is, instead, a cross between a trade war and a cold war there the established financial powers prevent competition from threatening their market position.
The real effect, no matter what the stated purposes of the welfare state, is to create inescapable dependency among the poor and downtrodden, so their votes can be harvested when needed, or they can be stirred to mob violence when needed, but in no case can they take any effective action to unseat the plutocratic Nowhere Men enthroned at the top of life’s jammed and motionless wheel of fortune.
The beauty of this two headed lie is that the capitalists, seeing the devastation caused by the welfare state, will blame the socialists; whereas the socialists, seeing the wealth accumulating only in the coffers of the One Percent, while wages are stagnant and jobs are lost overseas, will blame the capitalists.
But there are more political and social spectra involved than merely the economic one. Capitalists are merely one wing of the Lawful Good party in America, and Socialists only one wing of the Chaotic Evil: and neither of this forms either party’s established base. Another axis runs between the Christian versus the Wicked Witch, also known as social conservatives versus feminists and sexual perverts; a third axis runs between the Totalitarians versus Libertarians.
Now the Christians, being pragmatic and realistic by nature, cannot bring themselves to dismantle the welfare state because, despite the theoretical wickedness of charity at gunpoint, pragmatism says welfare acts as the opiate of the people to prevent mass riots, and realism says charity at gunpoint is better than letting beggars starve on the streets.
Witches or Warlocks, on the other hand, are always ideologues, and usually sophomores in College, therefore idiots. Lacking religion, they need ideology to take its place. Infected in their brains by devils, bad fairies, hobgoblins of the mind, and giggling imps from hell, the ideologue pays no attention to reality, to facts, to practicality, and bases all political and social demands on pure theory, otherwise known as voodoo.
Voodoo works under the theory that changing the name of a thing changes it nature. Hence, the Witchdoctor thinks calling a sexual perversion an orientation, or calling a faction a community, or calling sex gender, or using he/she instead of he, or using BCE for BC calling evil good and good evil, using euphemisms for unpleasant things and smear words for good things and using preferred pronouns, and so on and on, the Witchdoctor believes will have some real effect in the real world.
The one effect it will have, no matter what the stated intentions of the Witchdoctor, is that people will come to disbelieve and distrust any spoken word, and will be cowed and broken in fear as they are forced to utter perfect nonsense about the male right to an abortion or the female penis belonging to the forty seven genders.
As ideologues, therefore idiots, the Witches and Witchdoctors become useful to the Nowhere Men, and, indeed form so much of the base of their support that rarely if ever are the two distinguished.
As ideologues, therefore idiots, when the Witches see the failures of the welfare state and the growth of a plutocratic class of multi billionaires, instead of looking at the facts of what is causing the problem, and offering a sane solution, they name and rename things as quickly and furiously as they can, doubling down on the exact same policies that cause the failure, but using their naming magic to name someone else and something else as the scapegoat bearing all the sins of the tribe.
The Green New Deal, like the Rain Dance, names the problem of the angry sun monster allegedly warming the world as being caused by a lack of totalitarian control over all wages, prices and working conditions. Once a hundred million more innocent lives are sacrificed in bloody purges and orchestrated famines, so the Green New Deal assures us, the anger of the sun monster will be appeased, and the burning of the world in twelve years will be avoided.
Intersectionalism, like the mumbojumbo of the voodoo Witch Doctor, names the problem as caused by spirits and phantoms and ancestral curses, known by various and ever changing names as white privilege, white nationalism, systematic racism, patriarchy, and other fictional spooks that exist only in the childlike minds of the primitive savages who believe in voodoo.
In any case, the Nowheres have more power over the idealism of the idiots than over the pragmatism of the Christians, simply because the Christians seek to reform institutions that do not function as designed and do not deliver what is promised.
The final axis is the totalitarians versus the libertarians. The libertarian notion of liberty is shallow and foolish, because, following Hobbes, they define liberty as the absence of external coercive restraint preventing the sovereign willpower, enslaved to appetite, from doing whatsoever it craves to do. The Christian thought defines liberty as the absence of external restraints or presence of internal strength of character, which otherwise would prevent the Christian from fulfilling his duties to God, to nation, to community, to family, to self.
Since these two definitions overlap to a large degree, the difference only arises during discussions of vice laws and blue laws and other areas where the Christian says the state has a role in preventing the spiritual degeneration of the people, whereas the libertarian says the state has no such role, and could not be trusted with the power to do so, if it did. In terms of the conflict between the Somewheres and the Nowheres, the libertarians and Christians are united against the Totalitarians.
Now, Totalitarianism, as a practical matter, is difficult to sell to free men. Free man are hard to convince to disarm, take up their chains, kiss them, and fetter them onto wrist and ankle. The social unity and discipline needed in times of public emergency or war is a time when free men are willing to compromise part of their freedom as a necessary evil to avoid a greater evil. Likewise, and more to the point, starving men will accept chains in order to receive bread, and enviously men will delight to receive chains if and only if they can see their hated betters loaded with heavier chains.
The Totalitarian promises an end to the emergency, hence a return to peace and safety; he promises abundance; he promises revenge on hated betters. Tyrants always win the love of commoners by pulling down and trampling aristocrats.
Totalitarianism therefore must create an atmosphere of war-panic, emergency, and crisis, even when, as now, we in this nation are at peace. Ecological falsehoods serve this purpose well.
Totalitarianism must claim that poverty is growing even during, as now, a time of abundance, and if the poor are not getting poorer, he can point to the One Percent who are getting richer exponentially. Hysteria about wages gaps and wealth gaps will serve this purpose.
Totalitarianism must stir up enmity between as many people and as many groups as possible, amplifying grievance, inventing grievances, or searching through ancient history to find grievances long ago rectified. And nothing serves this purpose as well as accusing the innocent of misogyny, bigotry, and racism.
There are, oddly enough, sober mainstream totalitarian candidates and politicians calling for reparation for the evils of slavery in the Confederate States, as if the war between the Union and the Confederation shed insufficient blood to atone for the sin, or two generations of affirmative action to undo the practical effects of Jim Crow. But the thirst for revenge runs deep in the human heart, even in the hearts of men never offended by those they envy, and both sides born long after the actual offense was done and atoned for.
The only real political spectrum these days runs between the Somewhere men with local and particular loyalty, and love, and patriotism. Somewheres include the three wings of Constitutionlists, Christians, and lovers of Liberty.
You can call them Populists if you like. The name is apt. The name Conservative is more apt.
Over and against this, are the Nowhere men, cosmopolitan hence loyal to no race, no nation, no peoples. They are Plutocrats, equally deadly to the glassy eyed ideals of Witches as to the hard headed pragmatism of Christians; equally manipulative of the false expectations of Capitalists as the idiot opium dreams of Socialists; enemies of all liberty, and, indeed, of life itself.
You can call them the Globalists if you like. The name is apt. The name Progressive is better, if ironic, considering that all their policies aim at dismantling Christendom first, then all civilization. But Progressivism is the name under which Freemasonry hides itself these days. Do not mistake them for liberals or socialists.
The Liberal movement once was sane, in the same way Marvel Comics used to be able to write good superhero yarns, in the same way universities used to be able to instruct the young, in the same way the newspapers used to be able to print the news. The science fiction world convention used to be able to delivery Hugo awards to popular and well written science fiction books.
The sickness of Progressivism eats up these institutions from within, hollows them out, and dances around in their undead, sagging leather skin, demanding the praise and prestige the name once held, back when it lived. The same has happened to the Democrat party that once held men like John F Kennedy.
Since the Nowhere Men, by their nature, have no particular patriotism or local loyalties, they can only appeal to cosmopolitan ideals over and above the flag of any nation. The very idea of borders offends them, as does the proposition that some nations are more civilized than others, some cultures less savage.
Since the Nowhere Men, by their nature, wish to be benefited by the engine of capitalism, but also to jam that mechanism to prevent new and younger rivals from usurping their market share, they cannot be honest either to capitalist or socialist, for their self interest opposes the enactment of policies favoring either, but they must appeal to both, in each case blaming the rival of the opposite parties.
This means that by their nature the Nowhere Men must be dishonest, dishonorable, and treacherous. Even the crooked ideals of a communist or fascist are beyond them.
This is why we now have the incredible spectacle of millionaire owned newspapers editorializing in favor of Occupy Wallstreet, while billionaire companies like Google and Facebook systematically suppress conservative speech and ideas, including speech in favor of private enterprises like theirs.
Since the Nowhere Men, by their nature, regard all men everywhere, of every creed and tongue, race and origin, as their sheep to be equally shorn and lambs to be equally slaughtered, they regard anyone with local loyalty as being an obstacle. Nowhereanism requires centralization of power, so that unrestricted tyrants can act lawlessly without any fear of reprisal. Any local sovereignty, from subsidiary city halls of a federalist system, to the absolute individual sovereignty of a Libertarian utopia, must be smashed.
Since local loyalty always involves the particular people and traditions and customs grown up over generations in that locale, it is simple enough, nay, it is inevitable, that the Nowhereans would regard this local love as hateful and call a preference for one’s kin and cousins over aliens and strangers by smear words like racism and xenophobia.
After all, if I am white, and nearly everyone related to me is white, and we have been living in one area since time out of mind, the same love I have for my kin and cousins can be called white nationalism and racism, even if a black man living among his folk feels about his kin the same way I do.
The Nowhere Men have no kin. They have no roots. They have no love of liberty. They hate us, and so they call us racists.
And that is why Mr Trump, and all white men, and all non-whites loyal to Western Civilization in any form, or who have any religious faith, national patriotism, common decency or local pride, are all condemned in the most absolute and hysterical terms, as racists.
Whether any of them mean the meaningless words echoing from their mouths, is a matter for the psychiatrist, or perhaps the exorcist, to determine. They think the word has power, so they use it.
Whether the word is true or untrue is the proverbial color that the man born blind cannot imagine.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
