Today’s Political Spectrum VS The Founder’s Political Spectrum

Today’s political philosophy writers have taken it upon themselves to create this “spectrum” that encompasses all the parties within the United States. No one is left out, and everyone has a particular place among the spectrum that they fall.

If asked where you fall, could you say without hesitation?

I know for a fact, I would be completely hesitant to say I fall here or I fall there.  The reason being is because today’s political spectrum relies too much on the “party” and not enough on the “power” which government is given.

When the Founders were writing the Constitution, there was a spectrum that they all agreed on and all used.  It looked like this.

The 5000 Year Leap

Instead of the spectrum we have today, where Communism is on the far left and Fascism is on the far right, the Founders set up their spectrum with 100% government on the left and 0% government on the right.  The reason for this change in view is because Communism and Fascism are just two sides to the same coin.  Both are extremes that leave the government in complete control.

Quick note, the reason we use the “left, center, and right” spectrum today, is because of the Parliament in Europe.  The radical revolutionaries would occupy the far left of the room while the military dictatorship people would occupy the far right of the room and everyone else just fills in the middle.

This new “spectrum” that the Founders used doesn’t measure the party, but the power of government.  If you were asked to put yourself on the above spectrum, you could easily identify yourself by how much government you would want (what %).  Political leaders would be held more accountable with their view about how much power they think government should have if they had to answer with this graph in front of them, instead of today’s spectrum that just tells us what party they are in.

Which that statement brings me to my next point.  According to the dictionary, “government” is “a system of ruling or controlling”.  According to W. Cleon Skousen, author of “The 5000 Year Leap“, “The American Founders measured political systems in terms of the amount of coercive power of systematic control which a particular system of government exercises over its people.”

In lay terms, the system that the Founders used measures power of the government, not the political parties.

The Founders wanted to find a point on their “spectrum” where government upheld laws, but did not oppress the people.  They needed to find somewhere on the graph where we did not lean too much on government power, but we needed to be far enough away from anarchy.

The Founders saw that too much government stifled the lives of people, but anarchy kept people from creating and having order within their lives.  They realized that under anarchy, there is no law, no moral code, no sense of wrong or right, there is only the barrel of a gun or a tip of a knife to solve problems.  They also realized that when there is no order, people look to those who can get rid of all chaos and those people usually have a tyrannical solution, so the power switched from complete anarchy to tyranny.