Left - Right : Epiphany

[maskedmelon]

As most of you know, I am somewhat politically confused with a mix of views from different points along the left-right continuum and have expressed (or maybe not?) somewhat dissonant views on various topics. Most of this I've attributed to differences in reasoned understandings and preferences.

Well, yesterday I was struck most gently with revelation. It occurred to me that my preference for limited government is strongly correlated with combatting some of the nastier aspects rightist individualism while my understanding of the necessity for a strongly authoritarian state to advance man is strongly correlated with tempering less palatable aspects of leftist collectivism.

This epiphany helped me better understand why I generally identify as a moderate centrist while holding seemingly incongruent extreme views. It also led me to clearly identify the libertarian left and authoritarian right and the most deplorable realms of political ideology because the outcomes of both are necessarily stagnation or worse.

Why?

Well, limited government is necessary to minimize government corruption on the right because if the state does not control the money, the money controls the state... a condition we see increasingly today in the US.

On the left, if the state commands the resources then it is responsible for caring for its collective citizenry and determining the best use of said resources, which always should be advancing the state. Individual liberty in that setting becomes a threat to the livelihood of the state.

Currently, the US is becoming increasingly authoritarian and I actually agree with Alarti's suggestion that HRC exists in the realm of the authoritarian right, but would add while pandering to the libertarian left. The US is too caught up in social issues and abuse of government to pummel dissent. We either need less government or a massive shift to the left and if we are going to go there, it needs to be absolute.

I don't really see any practical solution and it is why I prefer things to just stay where they are, so that I can go about my life and be left alone. If we are keen on change, we either need a Vulcan overlord or the freedom to destroy one another.

I need to give more thought to what this means as we move to the center though, which is where I sit. Is the plot of 'ideal government' from left to right just linear and downward sloping, or is it varied in slope?

Thoughts?