I think the circular spectrum works better than a linear one, with extremes of the Left meeting extremes of the Right, snarling at each other over an ideological chasm, and yet speaking a very similar language, though pursuing different ends, using similar methodologies. They're eye-to-eye; not touching, but almost.

The Left puts human rights over property rights more and more the further left you go, and the Right puts property rights over human rights the further rightward you go, and when taken to the extremes, you get a nightmare situation for different reasons.

The extreme Left (aka, communism) kills property rights for the sake of human rights ("from each according to his ability, to each according to his need"), until the human rights they were defending themselves are sacrificed. And similarly, the extreme Right (aka, fascism) kills human rights for the sake of property rights, which doesn't safeguard the individual any better, because it leads to a master/slave, winner/loser society in the worst way, and where even the propertied and wealthy are at risk of being consumed by the fascist monster they created to protect their property in the first place -- I mean, it's telling that fascism rose as an answer to the threat of communism, creating a splendid Brownshirted Beast to battle the Red Menace.

Between those two extremes is liberal, civil rights-centered society, which seeks a public, civil space where the competing demands of human rights and property rights can attempt to be balanced. The liberal's got the toughest job, because they're trying to reconcile human rights, civil rights, and property rights at the same time -- the liberal, far from being a weak-kneed communist, is really the moderate between the communist and the fascist, the middle ground -- sacrificing some human rights for civil and property rights, but also sacrificing some property rights for the sake of civil and human rights. The conservative is to the right of the liberal, because property means more to them than human rights (and really, they portray property as a central human right, at least for those who possess it); and the radical is to the left of the liberal, because they're more aggressive in an absolute conception of universal human rights than the liberal.

That's why liberal societies look down on things like genocide, slavery, death squads, secret prisons, torture, political assassination (jewels in the fascist crown) -- but why they also reject forced collectivism, dispossession, political subversion, and command economies (medals pinned to the chest of the diehard communist).

It's also why the weakening and elimination of the civil society, and the gutting of civil rights in a society puts us in a perilous position, why privatization is so invidious, because without the civil society as the referee between those competing impulses, things begin to devolve into a clash of force versus force, instead of something that can be reasoned out peacefully.

Far from being crypto-fascists as Goldberg contends, liberals are actually the moderate bulwark against fascism, just as they're the protection against communism. The demonization of liberalism by the American right for a generation or two reflects their desire to breach that bulwark once and for all and race further to the right, in defense of property and private wealth, at the expense of civil rights and human rights.

Only a vigorous, principled defense of civil rights and human rights can keep us from reaching a tipping point into fascist country, which is a very deep pit to dig oneself out of. I dwell on the fascist side of the circle because there's no chance of the US going Communist (despite the fear and paranoia of the Cold War), but the risk of us going Fascist is terribly, terribly real.

"It doesn't matter who said what, when they said it, or what we can glean from history. I'm saying liberals are fascists, so it must be true."

I can't believe after four pages of lobbing questions to Jonah and getting unconvincing answers, Alex does not ask Jonah if the right-wing/conservative positions on religion, homosexuality, medical insurance are not at least as fascistic as the supposed liberal "fascistic" tendencies. And, as a matter of fact, most of the people shopping at the (organis) Whole Foods market near me strike me as conservatives, not liberals.

I think that the fundamental problem here is the use of old (in the sense that the terms have been around for a while) and emotionally charged labels that have squidgy meanings. I mean this from two points of view. View #1 is: What was the philosophy anyway? Most people have an impression of what the philosophies of various movements (Nazism, Marxism, Stalinism, etc, etc) are but they rarely get it right because their impressions come from what leaders who are trying to implement the philosophy actually do which frequently is at variance with the actual philosophy itself. This brings me to the second view which is: What is actually done in the name of (fill in the blank) philosophy? For those who don't know the philosophy, the actual policies form a substitute.

Personally, I care not for what is essentially an etymological argument that depends on an assumed meaning for terms which have many different meanings for many different people. Thus I prefer to go to first principles for discussions because of the emotional and historical baggage associated with many of the commonly used terms for political philosophies. The real first principle here is: What is the role of government in a society? A subtext question is: Where is the line drawn between public and private life?

In this country today we are, indeed, all fascists. There are no philosophical differences between what is commonly called the left and right wing, only differences in implementation. The underlying philosophy of both the left and the right is that the proper role of government is to shape, guide, and mold society. The only political party to offer a different philosophy is the libertarian party who believe that the proper role of government is to create a level playing field so that society can simply get on with whatever it wants to be. I'd like to point out that if you wanted to put our founding fathers in a modern political party, they'd all be libertarians because they definitely didn't believe in government driving society. They believed quite the opposite.

I use the term liberal as a label for those who feel that the government should be guiding society. Under that rubric, both the left and right wings are a load of stinking liberals and thus are both fascists if you wish to label the left fascistic.

I also think we should start using the old Venetian custom upon the election of a new Doge. The Venetians would hoist the new Doge in the air on a seat mounted on a pole and would carry him through town whilst he cast golden ducats to the crowds. The Republicans could cast their ducats to crowds of lobbyists and heads of corporations. The Democrats could cast their ducats to crowds of lobbyists and leaders of organizations seeking entitlement programs.