Is the old Left/Right dichtomy insufficient for 21st century politics?
by 
Cuttlefish
ANSWERS: 6
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Yes, but it has never really been a fair description anyway. It is more of a circle rather than a line to me.
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Yes and no. I think in terms of a line (left to right), but I think that the answers to most of our problems fall somewhere in the middle. Also, I tend to fall just to the right of center on international and fiscal matters but I fall much further to the left on social issues, so how would I know where on the line I stand? I think most Americans fall closer to the center than to one extreme or another. I think there are some outstanding politicians out there who end up pigeon holed by their political label and it ends up being a detriment when their own party outcasts them for having views too close to center.
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My feelings are that the "Right" side is sufficient for people who occupy the right, because their are some unifying beliefs. As far as "Left" is concerned, as a Democrat, I can say the only thing that unifies us as Democrats is that we are not Republicans, but don't want to be thought of as crackpots. I think there is a real need for a major Centrist Party, and if anyone wants to start one, let's do it!
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The left/right spectrum is not obselete, at least not yet. But I would comment that it is becoming increasingly crude. Politics has become somewhat is a popularity contest. People vote for who they like as a person judged on what they read in the newspapers and the average Briton will vote for anyone who offers them more money through any medium. Of course there is also the case of the minor parties such as the BNP. The BNP is not quite as right-wing as it professes in that it displays a fair number of left-wing tendencies in areas of economic policy. They parties are now becoming more integrated as they all fight for the middle ground. There is simply no victory in the extreme wings so distinction between ideologies is unecessary. As I am fond of saying, the current Labour Government is the best Tory Government we never had.
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It was never sufficient even for 18th-century politics. The whole notion that liberal and conservative are coherent world-views made up of naturally interlocking and mutually exclusive sets of beliefs is silly: reality has never been divisible into two simplistic and sealed camps of ideas. What really drives these divisions is "herd mentality" -- the craving to belong to a group, the fear of being ostracized, and the need to be able to label oneself and have an identity, regardless of how ill-founded such an identity might be. Once the mind has identified with one or the other popular sets of beliefs (belief systems), it expends great energy in defending and promoting that system -- essentially, the cognitive powers of the mind get co-opted for the survival of the belief system. There is really no WORSE way to operate a mind, this is just what happens in the absence of clear awareness. To create public policy from such a mindset is pure folly.
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Yes - political beliefs are way too complex to be split into just two categories. this opinion is expressed particularly well on: http://www.politicalcompass.org/ which also has a really good quiz to work out where you stand on the spectrum.
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