The Political Spectrum Revisited.

For some time I have been reviewing and mulling over the “Political Spectrum”. An early reference was Wikipedia but I found it wanting in that most of the diagrams summarising the various ideas are two dimensional except for the Vosem Chart. The latter I have to agree with in that we are dealing, from a society perspective, three primary measures: society, economic and government. These can be summarised as describing degrees of Freedom.

It has taken me some time to try and get this in an easy to understand form, but I think I have something that works. What I have done is modified the Vosem Chart idea by setting my 3 axes as being a measure of Personal Freedom, Economic Freedom and Democratic Freedom (the reciprocal being increasing Government control). Then I gathered what appear to be the dominant Political Groupings, created a table and then gave each a subjective score:

	Freedom
Category	Economic	Personal	Democratic
Anarchist	10	10	10
Libertarian	9	9	8
Conservative	6	7	6
Liberal	5	5	5
Social Liberal	3	3	5
Socialist	2	2	4
Fascist	2	1	1
Communist	0	0	1

An Anarchist believes in total personal and economic freedom with no government control. As “Democracy” is all about freedom of personal choice then the situation where there is no government, I give a Democratic score of 10 with Personal and Economic freedom scores also being 10. Libertarians typically are those who understand the need for common services and thus limited government yet still value maximum personal and economic freedom. Classic “Liberal” is typically middle of the road so that is how I scored it. Because “Conservatives” usually want a bit more economic and personal freedom as well as smaller government than classic liberals I scored them accordingly.

One class that has bothered me, and something I have previously written about, is where does Fascism lie? For the last few decades it has been a catchall term for the “alt-right” and the “extreme right” but the “right” is a term firmly connected to those who value maximum personal and economic freedom with limited government. That does not fit with the Fascism of the early 20^th century where personal freedom was greatly limited under severe government control yet with some economic freedom in that individuals outside of government still ran businesses (some economic freedom). Now I understand that why I was so troubled by this problem is that the extreme left (Communists and Marxists especially), in an effort to redirect attention from their cruelty have used successfully “Projection” to apply their flaws on the innocent.

Here is the result in graphical form:

I must point out that I did not intentionally have the “left” side of the graph being populated by those ideologies that favour reduced personal and economic freedom along with maximum government control! But that is how it works out.

Now I admit this isn’t perfect, but it does a better job, I think, that other schemes I have seen. A wild card is that there is a force that corrupts the right leaning ideologies and that is extreme environmentalism. The sad thing is that these people do not look at the Human Race as being a part of the global ecosystem but instead as a blight that needs to be eradicated. Think of Jim Jones and the mass suicide he encouraged his followers to commit at Jonestown in 1978. 

In conclusion I need to make some admissions. The first is that the “Liberal Party of Canada” (LPC) is not “liberal”. It was at one time but has been degrading itself over the years into a group of socialist’s thanks primarily to the infiltration of the Greenies (Environmental Activists). When you get right down to it they have also infiltrated the NDP to the point there is little difference ideologically from the LPC. Ironically the “Conservative Party of Canada” (CPC) now fits the more classic liberal description. That leaves the “Peoples Party of Canada” (PPC) as the only right of centre party in Canada and one that so far has not been corrupted by the Greenies. As I see it the PPC is the best choice for Canada but since when does logic decide the outcomes of “democratic” elections.

The Liberal Party has become a monster that needs to die.

The following I submitted recently to the local news paper. When I did so I knew that it likely would not be published as is so common these days typically only a view that is favourable to the Liberal Party is published, even when they say in writing "they respect opposing views"; they do not. So, here it is unchanged:

I have been a long-time resident of Northwestern Ontario with a 19-year hiatus in northern Manitoba. While my body is less tolerant of the deepest cold of winter I have, and still do, enjoy the extended seasons with Spring and Fall being especially enjoyable. I grew up in a blue-collar family and though university educated still prefer to get my hands dirty doing “real” work. As such for as long as I can remember my personal mantra has been, and continues to be, “Fiscally Responsible yet with a Social Conscience”. The one political party that for many years aligned with that philosophy was the Liberal Party, both the Federal and the Provincial varieties. But then things changed, not with me but with the Liberals. For example, I supported the repatriation of our Constitution. Back in the 1980’s I was totally disgusted with the outright thievery by the federal Progressive Conservatives (PC’s). I was a big fan of the needed financial controls and restraints implemented by Paul Martin, Finance Minister under Chretien. 

Then, beginning with Chretien, things began to change with the Liberal Party. Justice Minister Allan Rock brought forth the gun registration legislation that turned out to be the boondoggle I knew it would become right from the get-go. I had been an avid gun owner and hunter since an early age and even though I despised the PC’s I agreed with the concepts of safe gun storage that they legislated, because they made sense. The long gun registration system, implemented in 1995, did not, especially when you take into consideration that handguns had been registered since the 1950’s with no impact on their use by criminals. Where was the “social justice” in this? I couldn’t, and still can’t find it. This is the point that, while my personal beliefs have not changed, my allegiance to the Liberals started to wane.

Then in 1997 along came a group within the United Nations called the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”, or IPCC who proposed the Kyoto Protocol which the Chretien Liberals gleefully signed on to. I love nature and the outdoors and respect the environment. That was the primary reason I became a Geologist. But nothing presented in support of that protocol made sense when measured using the tools I had acquired through my science training. At the most basic level how could we Canadians, now at about 35 million (or to put it a little differently, 0.035 billion), make a difference compared to the rest of the world, current population of 7.6 billion? Yet we will somehow show the rest of the world how it should be done by us making the required, so we are told, sacrifices?

It was then I started to realise that the Liberal party had changed, and not in a good way. It no longer aligned with my basic principals. Rather than stealing money from we the taxpayers and lining their own pockets like the PC’s did they instead are throwing it away to line other people’s pockets just so they can be re-elected. In doing so they have become addicted to OPM (Other Peoples Money) and like all drug addicts have become severed from reality. No longer do they care about what is good for society. “Green” policies have nothing to do with the betterment of society. Another area where “social justice” has been abandoned by the Liberals, and ironically the New Democrats as well!

In 1993 the PC party, thanks to their blatant dishonesty, got almost wiped out. Out of their ashes has arisen the current Conservative Party of Canada. What was left of the PC’s merged with the Reform Party with the goal to represent the best interests of Canadians being at the fore front rather than the best interests of party donors. Unless the Liberal Party does a similar rebirth of representing the best interests of all Canadians it too should be cast into the dust bin of history. 

It is time for a lot of people in Northwestern Ontario to come to the same realisation I did years ago; the Liberals have no desire to represent our best interests and a vote for them will continue the economic downward spiral that began back in 1995. To illustrate, 20 years ago there were 10 pulp and paper mills between Marathon and the Manitoba border. Now there are 3. The same can be said for sawmills; their numbers have been decimated. Mining shares a similar story. But resource industries like these are passé you say. Okay, and where are the new age industries and associated jobs? No where to be found. And where have the Liberals been, both Provincially and Federally? Again, no where to be found although working hard to kill what industry we still have and taxing us heavily so they can help their donor friends like SNC Lavalin and Loblaws. Nope, they are not our friends and anyone who supports them is living in a dream world. It’s time we come to our senses and stop supporting these scoundrels!