For years conservatives have called liberals communists, leftists and even fascists. Jonah Goldberg, of National Review, has recently written a silly book Liberal Fascism in which he uses liberal stereotypes and parallels them with things known about Hitler to make his case. Such as Animal rights and organic foods.

But now there appears to be a new book on the horizon - Conservative Communism. The following blogger has read the final draft of the book and he says that both communism and fascism are both manifestations of the right and not the left.

http://stumpspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/conservative-communism.html

Very interesting line of reasoning. That's on my reading list, for perspective, if nothing else.

Stalin, Mao and other authoritarian "communist" leaders have perverted the original intent of Communism, turning it basically into fascism without property rights. As originally conceived, communism might very well belong on the left end of the spectrum, but the incarnations of communism that we have seen over the 20th century couch what we think of as "communism" firmly on the right. Conservatives know that communism is bad, and they have been taught it is an extreme left position, thus affirming their fears. But as pointed out in the book review, authoritarianism (be it Hitler or Stalin) is the province of the right.

If you take the ends of the traditional linear political spectrum and bend the ends toward each other until they touch and you have a circle, then you can see where these kind of conclusions can come from. Or, you can think of the political spectrum (linear, "one dimensional") rather as a political field (two dimensional).

This website is enlightening - take their test to see where you are politically. You might be suprised:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.49

---Some of those questions were crap :P

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -7.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.56

Yes, some of the questions were bad.

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.77

But hey, we're all hanging out with Gandhi, the Dali Lama and Nelson Mandela. Not bad company.

Not bad indeed. We could very easily do worse!

IMHO, the real value on that site lies in the commentary. Liked the composer section too! It makes perfect sense. (always thought some of them had control issues --many of them do!)

I don't think I know anybody that would be characterized in a way that falls into the lower right corner. It's a political blind spot, I didn't know I had.

After thinking about it, I was missing what they call neo-liberal, leaving my political field more like a triangle than a square.

I was about a Upper +2, right +4
I was disappointed, I expected to be at least as far right as the President.

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -4.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.41

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.08

Hey Missing, Pete, Vitalogy & Edselehr,

Since you're in the neighborhood,
bring Nelson, and the Dali Lama over.
Gandhi & I are having a beer at my place!

Mohandas isn't drinking much, so there's plenty.

Economic Left/Right: -3.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.15

If you have some Makers Mark, I'll pour a little bit of that over some crushed ice.

Better hurry.
Gandhi is starting to piss me off.
He gets kinda nasty when he's drinking.

Beer it is! (holds glass high)

Had a co-worker take this today. She ended being as annoyed as I was on the questions.

Well, that happens to be the point of it. According to their FAQ, they are propositions, not questions. IMHO, they could frame that a bit, eliminate some confusion and perhaps make things a bit easier.

That FAQ section is an interesting read, BTW.

I took it again and wanted to see how far right I could get.

I achieved the Bush/Thatcher level:
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 7.18

OMG
This guy is leading our country!

Economic Left/Right: 2.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.44

Hmmm.....

Economic Left/Right: 1.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.74

Herb

Damn! You and Skybill are damn near moderates, according to this thing.

Absolutely.

I'm a Huckabee guy for the primary, not a Romney man.

And Mr. Nixon, with his founding the EPA, is often called a moderate compared to some.

Herb

Nixon was a flaming liberal compared to the trash that has hijacked the republican party today. Nixon authorized Amtrak and signed a lot of important environmental legislation. He believed we are stewards of the earth (did I get that one right Herb) and not what Bush believes that God will take care of our carelessness. Say what you want about Watergate, but he did a lot of good things too.

Amen.

Herb

Nixon RESIGNED in DISGRACE!

He wasn't impeached.

Herb

I am suddenly reminded of a song by Ratt!

Round and round
What comes around goes around
I'll tell you why, why, why, why
Round and round

Saw them live. Excellent show. Fast way opened too. Liked them almost as much.

I was being sarcastic in light of Trixter and Herb going around the Nixon Pole again!

I bet it was a good show anyway though.

Nixon was not impeached because he resigned. I'm not so sure that's a positive thing. That's like bragging that you quit your job before you were fired.

Like Mr. Cobain once sang, "You can't fire me because I quit."

Who cares if he wasn't Impeached!
But if he wouldn't have turned tail and run like the YELLOW coward that he was he would have been! And I GUARANTEE you he wouldn't have been EXONERATED by the Senate EVER!

Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.36

Gandhi, you're sitting in my chair.

@Darktemper: I did the same exercise. Answering some of those actually hurt!

Jeez...

Yeah, I felt a Nixon love fest coming on, thought maybe we could derail it. No such luck. Yeah, it was a good show. Ended up getting dragged to this one, as somebody got sick.

"Gandhi, you're sitting in my chair"

Not anymore.
He's dancing on the table now.

I took the test--
Economic score: +4.12
Social score: -2.62

Some of those questions were tough to answer, since the questions have to be answered as they are written.

The Libertarian Party has a simpler political quiz that plots the result on a Cartesian coordinate system, just like this one did. The only difference is that the axes are rotated 45 degrees clockwise, making the chart look like a diamond. People in the party call this rotated version of the chart the "Nolan Chart" after one of the party's founders.

Critics have said that the Libertarians' political test is designed to be used as a recruiting tool, and as such, the scoring is biased so that most people end up in the libertarian quadrant--that is positive economic score, negative social score--of the chart. Thus, I was mildly surprised to also end up there when I took the politicalcompass.org version of the test.

So, you be partying with Pope Benedict XVI.

They have wine and those cool wafers.

Ya, but how many little sippy glasses will it take to cop a buzz?

About 20 of them!

> So, you be partying with Pope Benedict XVI.

He's in a different quadrant. He's negative on the economic scale, positive on the social scale. I'm on the quadrant that the website left blank.

Well, I got that backasswards now didn't I.

You sort of a mix between Gandhi and Friedman.

I also think that the test had some bad questions. When I was done, the Dalai Lama graciously moved his laptop so I could sit down.