Political Right, Political Left, Political Foolishness, and My Great Wisdom as a Young Man

Back in the early 1920s, when I was in high school, my teacher in a class in either American government or American history — I can’t recall which it was, nor his name — was a specimen of that rara avis, a card-carrying member of some socialist political party or other.

His party membership may or may not be relevant to the little episode I’m about to relate, but I found it interesting.  I’d never met a real socialist at that point.  And I’ve met only a few of them, in America at least, since then.

Anyway, he set out one day to explain to his students the difference between political left and political right.

Now, I was already familiar with the terminology.  And, as it’s often used, it made no sense to me.   It still doesn’t.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, he told us, had been on the extreme right.  Thomas Jefferson, were he alive today, would be on the more respectable right.

I immediately raised my hand.  I asked the teacher whether he was saying that Jefferson was a moderate Nazi, or that Hitler was an extreme Jeffersonian democrat.

“That makes no sense!” he responded.

“Exactly!” I replied.

We went back and forth a few times, and then he indicated that my wisest course of action would be to shut up.  Which, for once, I did.

But a comment on my Facebook page this evening — putting the Republican Party somewhat to the right of political center and fascism on the far right — has prompted me to post this little anecdote, with a comment.

To me, the most sensible left/right spectrum runs from total government control or totalitarianism on the far left to zero government control or anarchy on the far right.  In this scheme, fascism and Nazism (a term that, after all, is short for National Socialism) occupy the extreme left along with Communism.  Mr. Jefferson (who believed that “that government is best which governs least”) shares very little common ground with Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao in that regard.  He has much more in common with libertarianism, which I would describe as being on the right.

My proposed spectrum has the substantial benefit of actually making sense.

It also has this virtue:  It puts me precisely in the center.  Anybody to my left, who wants more government control than I do, is wrong, as is anybody to my right, who wants less government control than I believe to be warranted.

It’s always a comfort to have my views vindicated!

Posted from Carlsbad, California