This diary was originally two comments in Kula2316's Morning Reaction daily feature yesterday. By request, I'm combining and expanding them a bit, and publishing them as a stand-alone diary.
We've heard a lot lately that the U.S. is "a center right nation." There's a way in which that's true, sort of, but not the way the Republicans and the pundits mean. Indeed, the Left/Right model for evaluating government and popular will is so simplistic as to be useless. I propose that you can get a clearer view of government by looking at three axes - public vs. private capital, state enforced class/caste vs. legal equality and social mobility, and militarism vs. social welfare - that yield the Six Colors of Government.
More below the fold.
First let's dispense with the 'center right' narrative. To the extent that a Left/Right model is meaningful - and I don't think it is - yes, the U.S. is a 'center right' nation, relative to other Western, industrialized democracies. Leaders on the 'far left fringe' of U.S. politics, such as Dennis Kucinich, would be squarely in the mainstream in countries like Germany, France, Canada, or Britain. And Kucinich would actually be to the right in countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, or Holland. So in that sense, the U.S. is certainly a 'center right' nation.
But while Republicans and pundits might cite that as evidence that the U.S. is a 'center right' nation, that isn't their real argument. They then play an equivocation fallacy - a subtle, pernicious lie - taking that 'center right' evidence relative to other countries as proof that the GOP is really at the 'center' of U.S. politics. "If the U.S. is a center right nation," their argument goes, "then our right is actually our center."
In short, never mind that the Republicans have been soundly defeated in two consecutive Congressional elections, and in many governorships and state legislatures, and that Barack Obama carried 365 Electoral College votes, a wider margin than George W. Bush ever held. Ignore all of that. The U.S. is a 'center right' nation, so the GOP - increasingly our 'far right' - is still our 'center.' Balderdash.
Indeed, the entire Left/Right model is so simplistic as to be useless. It stems from the Revolutionary French Assembly, where the aristocracy sat to the right and the newly empowered commoners to the left. We are not Revolutionary France. Neither, really, was Revolutionary France, but that's another story altogether....
The Political Compass expands the Left/Right model by adding a second axis, Authoritarian/Libertarian, yielding the four-paned model. But even that is too simple to be meaningful. It's better, I think, to imagine a three-axis graph, where all three axes lie on a plane and yield a six-point "wheel." Picture a color wheel for illustration, though I'll refer to only the six primary and secondary colors.
The three axes can be named by their endpoint colors:
1. Red-Green Axis - Public vs. private capital.
2. Orange-Blue Axis - State-enforced class/caste vs. legal equality and social mobility.
3. Yellow-Violet Axis - Military vs. social welfare in government spending and cultural esteem.
These three axes yield six basic 'colors' of government:
Red (Communist) - Entirely public capital with little or no private property. Tends toward social welfare (all jobs are state jobs) rather than militarism (unless under threat), and toward state-enforced classes (based on party standing) rather than legal equality and social mobility.
Orange (Aristocratic) - All rights and opportunities accorded by state-enforced class or caste. Tends toward public rather than private capital (don't let the serfs get rich), and toward militarism rather than social welfare (serfs don't matter).
Yellow (Fascist) - Government and society are strongly militarist, with little or no social welfare (can't afford both). Tends toward private rather than public capital (profit attracts money needed to fund military contract spending), and toward fixed social hierarchies (militarism) rather than legal equality and social mobility.
Green (Corporatist) - Entirely private capital and property with low taxation or regulation (laissez faire). Tends toward militarism rather than social welfare spending (too redistributionist), and toward legal equality and social mobility (if you get rich) rather than fixed class/caste systems.
Blue (Libertarian) - Full legal equality and social mobility, regardless of class or government status. Tends toward private rather than public capital (taxation = government = threat of state-enforced class/caste system), and toward social welfare (schools, roads, etc.) rather than militarism (military is a rank/caste system).
Violet (Socialist) - Full social welfare network with minimal military (again, too expensive to do both). Tends toward public rather than private capital (taxing and spending for the public good), and toward legal equality and social mobility rather than fixed class/caste systems.
In this model, I believe societies trend toward the antithesis of their fears. That is, they try to get as far as they can away from the type of government they most fear. Consider:
When the U.S. was founded, our greatest fear was Aristocracy (what Britain had), so the Framers at least tried to imagine a Libertarian society, although only white, male landowners could vote. As it happens, a lot of those Framers didn't so much hate Aristocracy as they hated not being the top-tier aristocrats (who were in England), so the Libertarian ideal was deeply compromised from the start.
Fast forward to 1945:
Europeans feared Fascism, as that form of government in Italy and then Germany had started a war that had killed over 100 million people and laid waste to the entire continent. So they fled to its opposite pole: Socialism. This gave rise to the social democracies that dominate western Europe.
However ...
Americans feared Communism, as we had dabbled with it before the war and were told it threatened to engulf the entire world. So we fled to its opposite pole: Corporatism. By 1960, Dwight Eisenhower was warning of the "military-industrial complex," which is practically the definition of Corporatism.
Fast forward to 2001:
The threat of Communism was extinct with the fall of the Soviet Union (remember Francis Fukuyama?), so what was left to fear? "Islamofascism" is not Fascism in any meaningful sense of that word. Islamism is instead a populist movement with no statehood; it is Libertarianism's evil twin: Anarchy. So we fled Anarchy/Libertarianism, moving away from Corporatism and passing into Fascism (the military is our most respected institution) and toward ... the very form we (at least in theory) rejected in 1776: Aristocracy.
Voters rejected Aristocracy in 2008, first in the Democratic primary (turning down Clinton II) and then again in the general election (repudiating Bush II).
Where are we trending, or will we trend, next? I think a lot of that depends on what we fear, what we do not want to be.
If we are stoked to fear the rise of the European Union, as the euro increasingly displaces the U.S. dollar as the de facto world reserve currency, look for us to flee Euro-style social democracies (Socialism) toward its opposite pole ... more complete and blatant Fascism.
By contrast, if we are as war-weary as I suspect, and we see our immense and immensely expensive military as a draining our resources and blinding our foreign policy ("If the only tool you have is a gun, everyone looks like a target"), rather than an essential safeguard of our sovereignty, look for us to flee Fascism (where I think we are now) to its opposite pole, Euro-style social democracy ... Socialism.
I know some cringe at my assertion that we presently have a Fascist government. That historically loaded term calls to mind images of death camps and swastikas. But at its core, Fascism is the militarization of both government spending and cultural mores. And that's exactly where I think the U.S. has been during the Bush Administration.
When the military is the only institution that has widespread popular approval - and studies say that is presently the case in the U.S. - that is Fascism.
When senators publicly say that their colleagues should fear the reaction of the military more than the reaction of the voters - as they did during the debates on the Military Commissions Act and the timelines legislation - that is Fascism.
When elected officials tell voters we should obey the polling of our military - and they did, arguing that "the military want John McCain as their next Commander in Chief" - that is Fascism.
When one of our most widely-read newspapers prints that we have betrayed our Commander in Chief by criticizing him in time of war - as the Wall Street Journal did Wednesday, repeating a narrative we've heard countless times over the past eight years - that is Fascism.
When our President, who by our Constitution is only "Commander in Chief of [the military]," is commonly referred to as "The Commander in Chief of the United States," and for the first time in our history appears in public in military uniform - as happened with George Bush - that is Fascism.
I fear Fascism in America more than I fear Al Qaeda, Iran, or any other threat. My fear of Fascism is a big part of my hope that we will, under President Obama, become "a more perfect union," where "I am my brother's keeper" - by providing universal access to health care, more and better-paying jobs, investment in public works projects to upgrade and 'green' our infrastructure, and a better social welfare network so that fewer of us are one lost job or one serious illness away from dire poverty.
That is Socialism, yes. I'll come right out and say it, because I don't fear Socialism. I hope for it, because I think it offers the best chance to reinvigorate our economy and improve our lives.
But I also hope for it because I fear its opposite pole, where we've been and whence I pray we'll flee ... Fascism.
P.S.: I want to apologize to any Kossacks who are offended by my use of orange ("our" color) to denote Aristocracy. That choice is based solely on the relative positions on the color wheel, and should not be read to imply that "The Great Orange Satan" is or advocates an Aristocracy.