[mindcrime]

you can fall into either group by selecting what you care about the most and giving up others. Group where others in the group have made similar compromises.

Sure, you could do that, and people do. The point though, is that it makes these terms mostly useless for actually describing anything. Let's say I chose to define myself as "right" because I care more about the second amendment than abortion. You see me self-identify as "right" and then conclude that I oppose abortion, support tight border control, want a legal system defined by Judeo-Christian ethics, etc. But all of those conclusions would actually be wrong. And the same kind of construction could be applied to what would happen in the other case.

That said, of course there are some people who just happen to fit exactly into the bucket of "right" or "left" as defined by colloquial usage. But I still find that the terms are mostly useless because they lack any kind of logical consistency and because so few people actually have that "exact fit". But, that's just me.

[dominotw]

> That said, of course there are some people who just happen to fit exactly into the bucket of "right" or "left" as defined by colloquial usage.

Exactly, Unless @smitty1e knows the person personally, a generic response

> The whole left/right dichotomy is a bugaboo.

is invalid. since, as you noted, it does apply to some people.