Two Dimensional Politics

All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world
--Tears for Fears

As election banter heats up between 'liberals' and 'conservatives,' I am reminded of the imprecision in viewing the political spectrum in one dimension--i.e., liberals on the 'left' and conservatives on the 'right.'

If all political systems were grounded in big government, then a uni-dimensional scale might be appropriate. After all, ideologues on both left and right desire large powerful governments although perhaps for different reasons (although I am not convinced that their motives essentially differ).

As we've proposed before, the universe of possible political stances seems more appropriately sketched in two dimensions. One dimension is scope of government. By nearly all empirical measures (e.g., federal government spending), today's liberals and conservatives prefer a large government scope with little observable difference between the two political stances.

The other dimension is sovereignty of the individual. Here, conservatives may believe a bit more in individual sovereignty (although much of this belief seems confined to talk rather than action). But because both groups believe in big government solutions, even if the two ideologies  differ slightly on the individual sovereignty scale, today's liberals and conservatives are relatively close in two dimensional political space.

The two dimensional model of the political landscape also helps us locate the political philosphy now doing battle with today's liberal and conservative mainstream. This philosophy resides at the nexus of belief in small government scope and high individual sovereignty. This political philosophy is today referred to as 'libertarianism.' In the days of the country's founding, someone sympathetic to this philosophy was called a 'liberal' (this is before the term was hijacked by the modern left).

The libertarian ideology of small government scope and high individuals sovereignty is grounded in natural law. It is the philosophy elaborated by Aquinas, Locke, Sidney, Trenchard, Gordon, et al, adopted by Jefferson and the framers, and captured today by the Tea Party movement.

On a two dimensional scale, libertarianism is appropriately portrayed as distant from today's liberal and conservative philosophies. A nice example is how a libertarian like Ron Paul is treated in mainstream political circles--i.e., like an alien or quack.

As in the days of the country's founding, libertarianism constitutes the radical political position.