-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: jimo@astea.com, cypherpunks@toad.com Date: Tue Nov 19 01:59:15 1996

I always had trouble understanding what people meant when they used the terms "extreme left" and "extreme right". Then, about 4 months ago, I saw a guy define the "political spectrum" the way (he said) it used to be defined before the definitions were corrupted (by whomever wants to divide - and conquer - the people). It made sense to me. A spectrum afterall, at least when we're talking about colors, starts with one type of color and graduates to other, DIFFERENT colors.

The real problem you are having is that the political 'spectrum' is not 1 dimensional (a line). If you describe it in 2 dimensions, it makes a lot more sense. The libertarians have a diagram they call the worlds smallest political quiz that describes it fairly well. It can be found at http://www.libertarian.com/wwlp/docs/awspq.html?quiz I first saw mention of a chart similar to this in the 60s. It was a way of describing beliefs politically that was put forth by Jerry Pournelle. (Who is available on the net btw.)

When I used to listen to a certain "leftist" radio station broadcasting out of New York City, they would talk about "left-wing", communist dictatorships and "right-wing", fascist dictatorships. A dictatorship is a dictatorship!!! The "wing" that it comes from makes no difference!!

Yup. You hit the nail on the head here. This is something that any thinking person should recognise. The basic way we are taught to understand and reference politics =makes=no=sense=.

The way the media defines these things makes no sense; you can't have a dictatorship on BOTH sides of a POLITICAL SPECTRUM no more than you can have YELLOW on both sides of the COLOR SPECTRUM.

Take a gander at the libertarian's chart. I think it is a more accurqte way of describing people, and in fact is similar in some ways to what you describe. A philosophy is charted based on how one views personal and property rights. amp === amp@pobox.com Earth First! We'll strip mine the other planets later! === -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMpFo01UbR1RWr40pAQG9Xwf/YN1d9WYNjX4NG9J2O5w78+c1XWPXVVII b8vN9UmfsaG4fXvo+1RY2nwCm20riAQ+4KPpzANSMI5T7LePRuHHR6NcHIDbVnNv zb7mlxfsvgpUR+cvNDWOsi2gkJoxhJhBn9x3gvsdGKSz2fTUA+5LUgVIrkZjicll qro7d3omrf4OetDmkehYK1YeAJg3bv1yGj5HMxaMrT8RBzU625goyxz8MBc0PlkL NrXz7uUdFd1AAElmqenkRp2jjSiZ3dQkenOuaN8T8eV5hAAdnUKLQd36ffBclqKj D4ggCz27CCvTFtC/wFXFbKOhHXqARk06o4ELJBcVO/Ka8FBVi5+C4Q== =suQe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----