George Rebane
“Read with Caution” is the warning label on the column of blogs to which RR is consigned on Nevada County Voices. And so is the website of the non-partisan SESF (of which I am the Director of Research.) Of continuing interest are the left-liberals who deny vehemently that self-declared progressives, who overwhelmingly make up the content providers in the mainstream media, can create an industry that has no political bias. However, if a conservative or libertarian contributes a non-partisan piece to a non-partisan information outlet that by law must remain so, that outlet is still labeled right-wing regardless of the lack of any supporting evidence. In short, the lefties can control themselves to be non-partisan. But the righties, not similarly blessed, are condemned forever to spew forth only partisan output from which the unsuspecting readers must be protected with warnings and other proscriptions.
The actual political spectrum is a bit more complicated than the linear left-to-right or liberal-to-conservative. The two major dimensions of socio-political thought involve personal freedom and
economic freedom. The modern left-liberals are thought to occupy the space where personal freedoms are high (moral relativism, et.al.) and economic freedoms are low (central control of wealth and its distribution). The conservative right is ascribed a region near high economic freedoms and low personal freedoms (rules for bedroom and abortion). People of the libertarian persuasion claim the area that maximizes both personal and economic freedoms. Finally the manipulated populist is the citizen stupid (not ignorant) enough to be persuaded that s/he will do best under an appropriately configured authoritarian regime providing little personal and economic freedom. The Nolan Chart here shows how these political belief systems relate to one another. A short quiz here lets you place a dot at the coordinates of your socio-political orientation.


Leave a comment