On political classification

I have, in the past, favorably commented on Dennis Sanders' excellent blog, "Big Tent Revue." His opinions are frequently close to mine, and even when they differ, they tend to be reasonable. But another thing I like about his blog is that, through it, I often find out about other bloggers with good ideas. One example is Sanders' post, "Wheel of Politics, Turn, Turn, Turn." This is primarily a pointer to another blogger's posting, "The wheel of politics," which is an interesting effort to take another stab at political classification. This blogger is unhappy with the diagram used on The Political Compass and similar sites, about which I have remarked before, and proposes his own system. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things I don't like about it.

For one thing, his terminology is awful. He uses the term "corrupt" in an idiosyncratic manner, which tends to charge with corruption all those people in both parties who are interested in finding common ground. Yet while the "progressives" and "conservatives" are divided into "idealistic" and "corrupt," a similar division of the "libertarians" uses the terms "dogmatic" and "pragmatic." To me, the "idealistic"/"corrupt" and "dogmatic"/"pragmatic" distinctions are about the same, except that you use a nice-sounding word for the first one in one case and for the second one in the other. A little bit of prejudice, perhaps?

Another problem is his choice of issues. He seems to think that legalizing mind-altering drugs is a major issue that should be, but hasn't been, taken up by our politicians. I wouldn't agree. And anyway, he doesn't really give a good set of criteria to put us into his six categories. I'm not certain, for example, where I belong.

But it is nice to see another attempt at classification. I'd like to see more. (And if anyone knows of more sites with classifications like these, please let me know!)