[rendall]

Horseshoe theory has always read like a Pythagorean epicycle to me, an attempt to redeem a broken model. For a reductive political model, I prefer the 2 dimensional Collectivist-Individualist, Authoritarian-Libertarian axes. No need to literally contort the outdated Left-Right spectrum.

An added benefit is you get to avoid annoying semantic battles such as whether Nazis or Fascists are Right wing or Left wing.

Plus you get to add other axes as needed. My favorite, perhaps relevant today, is principled vs. expedient: do we apply principles like this "Rights" stuff impartially, even to people with whom we disagree, or do we just git 'r done?

[consumer451]

To me, the horshoe theory is just a step in the right direction. It shows the limits of a straight 1D line to describe politics, and is a stepping-off point for deeper exploration.

Ideally, maybe we would describe a person's politics with something like a tensor, where each value is the person's support of a specific policy.

[rendall]

Hmm. I guess I feel that "The Horseshoe Theory" is worse than useless. It implies that as someone gets "too much" Right or Left, they inevitably become authoritarian, as if centrists cannot be authoritarian. It equates "weirdness" with "bad". I'd argue that we should skip straight to identifying "authoritarianism" as the problem, and the not having weird or even extreme leftist or rightist ideas.

[consumer451]

This is a really interesting argument that I had not previously considered. It might take me a few days/weeks/months to fully process. Thank you.

[popalchemist]

Agreed, the matrix expresses this idea more exactly.