Political spectrum reference
“Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
Robert A. Heinlein
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/128888
“Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
Robert A. Heinlein
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/robert_a_heinlein_136368
The political spectrum really only has two sides: Collectivism and Individualism.
These correspond to left and right.
Left - Control - Collectivism Right- liberty-Individualism
Definitions of left
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/left
2 Relating to a person or group favouring radical, reforming, or socialist views:
Left politics
left periodicals such as Marxism Today
2 (often the Left) [treated as singular or plural] A group or party favouring radical, reforming, or socialist views:
the Left is preparing to fight presidential elections
he is on the left of the party
Origin Old English lyft, left 'weak' (the left-hand side being regarded as the weaker side of the body), of West Germanic origin.
Definition of collectivism:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/collectivism
collectivism
noun
mass noun
1The practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it.
‘the Church has criticized the great emphasis placed on individualism rather than collectivism’
collectivism, state ownership, socialism, radical socialism
1.1The ownership of land and the means of production by the people or the state, as a political principle or system.
‘the Russian Revolution decided to alter the course of modernity towards collectivism’
Definition of right
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/right
4 (often the Right) [treated as singular or plural] A group or party favouring conservative views and supporting capitalist principles:
Origin
Old English riht (adjective and noun), rihtan (verb), rihte (adverb), of Germanic origin; related to Latin rectus 'ruled', from an Indo-European root denoting movement in a straight line.
Definition of individualism in English:
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/individualism
individualism
noun
mass noun
1The habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant.
‘a culture that celebrates individualism and wealth’
independence, self-direction, self-reliance, freethinking, free thought, originality
View synonyms
1.1Self-centred feeling or conduct; egoism.
2A social theory favouring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control.
‘encouragement has been given to individualism, free enterprise, and the pursuit of profit’
Political spectrum definitions
Definition of anarchy
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/anarchy
1A state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems:
'he must ensure public order in a country threatened with anarchy'
2 Absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.
Origin Mid 16th century: via medieval Latin from Greek anarkhia, from anarkhos, from an- 'without' + arkhos 'chief, ruler'.
Definition of libertarianism
www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/libertarianism
An extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.
Its adherents believe that private morality is not the state’s affair, and that therefore activities such as drug use and prostitution that arguably harm no one but the participants should not be illegal. Libertarianism shares elements with anarchism, although it is generally associated more with the political right, chiefly in the US
Definition of conservatism:
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/conservatism
conservatism
noun
[mass noun]
1Commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation.
‘proponents of theological conservatism’
2The holding of political views that favour free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.
‘a party that espoused conservatism’
2.1 The doctrines of the Conservative Party of Great Britain or a similar party elsewhere.
‘the thrust of post-war Conservatism’
Definition of liberal
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/liberal
adjective
1.1Favourable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms.
‘liberal citizenship laws’
1.2(in a political context) favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate political and social reform.
noun
1A person of liberal views.
‘a concern among liberals about the relation of the citizen to the state’
1.1A supporter or member of a Liberal Party, especially (in the UK) a Liberal Democrat.
Origin
Middle English via Old French from Latin liberalis, from liber ‘free (man)’. The original sense was ‘suitable for a free man’, hence ‘suitable for a gentleman’ (one not tied to a trade), surviving in liberal arts. Another early sense ‘generous’ (compare with liberal (sense 4 of the adjective)) gave rise to an obsolete meaning ‘free from restraint’, leading to liberal (sense 1 of the adjective) (late 18th century).
Definition of socialism
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/socialism
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.
(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism.
Synonyms of socialism
https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english-thesaurus/socialism
noun
leftism, Fabianism, syndicalism, consumer socialism, utopian socialism, welfarism;
communism, Bolshevism; radicalism, militancy; progressivism, social democracy;labourism; Marxism, Leninism, Marxism–Leninism, neo-Marxism, Trotskyism, Maoism
[Antonyms] conservatism
Fascism
For these and other reasons, there is no universally accepted definition of fascism. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a number of general characteristics that fascist movements between 1922 and 1945 tended to have in common.
Despite the fascists’ violent opposition to Marxism, some observers have noted significant similarities between fascism and Soviet communism. Both were mass movements, both emerged in the years following World War I in circumstances of political turmoil and economic collapse, both sought to create totalitarian systems after they came to power (and often concealed their totalitarian ambitions beforehand), and both employed terror and violence without scruple when it was expedient to do so.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/202210/fascism
Full Definition of FASCISM
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge
Examples of FASCISM
the rise of Fascism in Europe before World War II
From the first hours of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, the propagandists on both sides of the conflict portrayed the struggle in stark, Manichaean language. The totalitarian nature of both regimes made this inevitable. On one side stood Hitler, fascism, the myth of German supremacy; on the other side stood Stalin, communism, and the international proletarian revolution. —Anne Applebaum, New York Review of Books, 25 Oct. 2007
Origin of FASCISM
Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
First Known Use: 1921
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
Definition of communism
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/communism?
[mass noun]
A theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs. See also Marxism.
The most familiar form of communism is that established by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and it has generally been understood in terms of the system practised by the former Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe, in China since 1949, and in some developing countries such as Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. In this form of communism it was held that the state would wither away after the overthrow of the capitalist system.
In practice, however, the state grew to control all aspects of communist society. Communism in eastern Europe collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s against a background of failure to meet people’s economic expectations, a shift to more democracy in political life, and increasing nationalism such as that which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Origin
Mid 19th century: from French communisme, from commun (see common).
Communism
http://www.britannica.com/topic/communism
Communism, the political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of socialism—a higher and more advanced form, according to its advocates. Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists’ adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx.
Definition of authoritarianism
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/authoritarianism
noun
[mass noun]
1The enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
1.1 Lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.
Definition of totalitarianism
noun
[mass noun]
A system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
‘democratic countries were fighting against totalitarianism’
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/totalitarianism
La politique: French political vocabulary in English
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2017/05/french-political-vocabulary-english/
The French presidential election has brought French politics into the limelight; but it’s worth remembering that, even in English, the language of politics is full of words with a French connection. And this applies not only to the vocabulary of specifically French politics—words such as Gaullism and Mitterrandism, for example, referring to the ideas or policies associated with particular politicians—but also to more general terms. Poujadism, for example, may originally have been used (like its French antecedent poujadisme) to refer to the right-wing populism of Pierre Poujade in 1955, but it has now come to be used more generally of any populist movement which similarly aims to appeal to the interests of small businesses. And the rather more familiar communism (or rather communisme) appears to have been coined independently by three different Frenchmen in 1840—whereupon it was immediately borrowed into English.
But of course politics is about more than isms. France has also given us groupuscule—usually meaning a radical or extremist splinter group, and first used as an English word to refer to left-wing groups in 1960s France—and the slightly older word relance, meaning a political revival or relaunch. A phrase from another period of French politics, namely the political scandal of just over a century ago that became known as l’affaire Dreyfus, is j’accuse—literally ‘I accuse’, and made famous when Émile Zola used it as the title of his open letter to the President of France in 1898 condemning the imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus. (Dreyfus’s supporters became known as Dreyfusards, another word which entered English political discourse.) J’accuse is now widely used in English, despite its evident French origins, with reference to any public accusation or denunciation.
More fundamentally, our use of left and right to refer to the opposing ends (from one perspective at least) of the political spectrum also has a French origin. One widely accepted version of the story has it that in 1789, at a meeting of the Estates General—the great deliberative assembly of the three ‘estates’ of France, namely the clergy, the nobility, and the common people—the first two estates were seated to the right of the presiding member’s chair, and the third estate to the left. A similar disposition of parties occurred at a meeting of the new National Assembly later that year, at which the supporters of the ancien régime were grouped on the right—le côté droit, the right wing or side—while their opponents made up le côté gauche. Within a very short time right and left became shorthand for these two political positions, a distinction which continues to this day.
Even the political associations of the colour red have a French origin: the radicals of the Revolution were known as bonnets rouges because of their red caps (in fact both redcap and bonnet rouge have been used in English to refer to this), and the use of the English adjective red to mean ‘revolutionary’ or ‘republican’ can be traced back to the time of a later French revolution, the so-called ‘February Revolution’ of 1848. (The specific association of red with socialism and communism came later.) Blue, by contrast, started its political life in Britain, and somewhat earlier: our earliest evidence of blue being applied to a political party comes from a political pamphlet published in Bristol in 1781.
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"Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty" - Ronald Reagan
"Man is not free unless government is limited"- Ronald Reagan
“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
Do you know the difference between a leftist and a liberal?— PragerU (@prageru) November 29, 2019
In fact, liberalism and leftism have almost nothing in common.
Here are the facts: https://t.co/g9NoyiK3vP
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