by Erik Hare

Created on: June 30, 2007   Last Updated: July 02, 2007

Politics is often defined in America by an intense partisan struggle. The language used is one of division: red states versus blue, Fox versus NPR. Not only is most of this nonsense, it is actually dangerous.

The current political spectrum we know of "Left" or "Liberal" on one side and "Right" or "Conservative" on the other dates to between 1900 to 1930, forming gradually over the period of a generation. In this era, the rise of large industrial corporations like Carnegie Steel, IBM, NCR, AT&T, and GM created a new kind of private institution. Never before had our economy and our society relied so heavily on such large institutions, and there were numerous problems with them.

For example, their size swamped the individual rights of workers to decent pay and their neighbors' right to clean air and water. To counterbalance these enormous institutions, a series of populist risings created new institutions like "Unions" and "Government" in ways that had never been seen before. Our political spectrum, as we know it, is based on whether you are favoring one of these sides (left = union or government) or the other (right = big industry or church).

It should be pointed out that both "Liberal" and "Conservative" are much older words that had different meanings before this period; they were simply usurped. This was also not the first populist rising that changed the political axis in America. Once a generation or so, a similar process has occurred along the lines of hard currency versus soft currency or slave versus free or federal versus distributed. This injection of people, changing the nature of the current debate, is a fundamental part of American history.

Usually, one side or the other prevailed on the issues and the new axis that came after was one of flavors and shades of the winning side. What is most interesting about the current axis is that it has remained in place for two whole generations, surviving the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the fall of Communism. The durability of the current debate, which really boils down to which of two institutions you believe in, is unparalleled.

But a lot has changed. The economies of scale that created large industrial institutions have, in many industries, been replaced by dis-economies of scale like bureaucracy and inflated pay for managers. There have been many attempts to reform government. Percentage union membership is slipping to a century-long low.

In fact, I will go as far as to say that in this world today,

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