I’ve discussed the so-called political spectrum repeatedly. And see here, here, here and here. Today on Twitter, biologist Colin Wright offers this helpful illustration as a cautionary tale of what it means to be somewhere along the political spectrum.
This should be required reading before being allowed to interact with adults. When I tell people I’m a liberal, they immediately assume I want high taxes. On the contrary, liberty thrives in a free economy, and government’s breadth and depth of control needs limiting. Then I’m corrected and told I’m a conservative. I tell people that I favor same-sex marriage, and their heads swivel to the left. I add that I oppose capital punishment and their heads turn slightly more to the left. Then I say I oppose abortion on demand, but would never break the law to interfere with a woman’s right to choose, and most people conclude I’m confused.
I’m not at all confused. Low taxes and minimal government used to be hallmarks of American liberals. It astounds me that people can favor capital punishment but oppose abortion, or favor abortion and oppose capital punishment. As for the rest of it, I’m fundamentally a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. We had a dinner table conversation tonight about relative punishments meted out in court and a disparity in sentences for whites and people of color. I offered another data point, that the real disparity is in sentences where the victim was white and where the system was a person of color. The perpetrator of a crime against a white victim was punished more harshly than the perpetrator of the same crime against a non-white victim. That disturbed me more than simple disparity in harshness of sentence by race. The latter can be explained by circumstances peculiar to poverty, but the former cannot. White lives and non-white lives are equally valuable; all human life is equally valuable.
To fail (or refuse) to see the nuance of another person’s political positions causes us to slip into tribal, us versus them. To understand the nuance makes prevents the Manichean mindset. Understanding the nuance makes it harder to villainize others and makes it easier to compromise with others.