The Left-Right Spectrum Is Mostly Meaningless

Here is one version of the left-right spectrum, as described in 1975 by a former Barry Goldwater speechwriter who had left the conservative movement to break bread with Black Panthers and Wobblies. The far right, Karl Hess wrote in Dear America, was the realm of "monarchy, absolute dictatorships, and other forms of absolutely authoritarian rule," be they fascist or Stalinist or anything else. The left, conversely, favored "the distribution of power into the maximum number of hands." And the "farthest left you can go, historically at any rate, is anarchism—the...