What would a politics-related website be without some insight as to
politics, and where individuals can and do stand on that spectrum? Here,
we'll look at a few ways of representing political "orientation," for
lack of a better term. Many people refer to the "left" and "right," or
liberal and conservative, but here we will look at a few other, more
complex representations.
This chart uses two axes, as most we will look at here do. The two left
boxes in this particular chart would be the ones more associated with
today's "liberals," while the right side would go more along with
today's "conservatives," although there are certainly exceptions and
nuances. A more commonly used model that may be even more relevant today
is the Nolan chart, originally created by David Nolan. Here's the Nolan
chart:
The Nolan chart's two axes relate to personal freedoms (drug
legalization, abortion, the draft, etc), and economic freedoms (taxes,
trade, free markets, etc). This leaves us with today's "liberals" in the
upper left, libertarians in the upper right, today's "conservatives" in
the lower right, and authoritarians and communists in the lower left.
This chart seems more reasonable in terms of accuracy, and more closely
representing typically inclusive beliefs. For example, the first chart
we looked at suggest that anarchists generally reject private property,
while in reality that is not necessarily the case.
Here's another way to look at the political spectrum in a more linear
fashion. What's interesting about this one is that it places both
stereotypical extremes of the Democratic and Republican parties
(communism and fascism, respectively) together at the top, with
libertarians at the other end.
Here's a visual representation of many world leaders and US presidents:
The last images here put the 108th United States Congress, both House
and Senate, on a political spectrum. These are larger images I had to
shrink down, so click them to see the full-size, which will make the
text readable:
