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Has the American Right gone down a stage?
Posted March 3rd, 2010 by Jonathan Cobb in Spiral Dynamics
Generally, the stage we most associate with conservatism is Blue: law and order, God and country, the American way, etc. But when I look at the Tea Party movement, I don't see much of the hard-nosed, principled orderliness that one would associate with Blue. Instead, they seem to be angry, loud, and impulsive, without a real clear vision of what exactly they're fighting for. It looks a lot more Red than Blue to me. Ken Wilber has been saying for a while that pre-conventional always allies itself with post-conventional, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The leaders of this movement, like Dick Armey(I couldn't conceive a more fitting name if I tried), are pretty much Blue, and they're leading an angry mob of people at Red. Anyone else notice this?
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Maybe, but the anger may just mask fear.
Posted March 4th, 2010 by Timothy ParishHi, Jonathan.
One way I was taught to percieve politics is through how power is exercised: Communistic Socialists use covert hostility, i.e they induce fear. Fascistic Socialists use overt hostility, promote anger, to reach their goals. And progressively higher stages of political leaders excercise power through encouraging the use of conventional and formal operations logic, consensus, and vision. We can find Republican, Democratic, and Independent political leaders spead through all of this spectrum.
Especially to my dismay, as a life-long Republican, has been the tendency of my party to call the far left (fascistic) wing of the party the American Right. It may be to the right of communists, but is so far left it is scary. Shades of McCarthey and Hitler. They are so far left that they cannot concieve that anyone higher on the development ladder could be higher, or further "right" in recent vernacular.
I see the people who call themselves the American Right as socialists, fascistic socialists to be sure, who mistakenly refer to those of more enlightened views as socialists, trying to induce fear and anger to regain power lost in recent days to those who appealled to higher logic, to consensus seeking, and to vision. Left and Right have lost almost all meaning, with the left wing of the Republican Party still calling themselves the American Right.
Has the American Right gone down a stage? Or have they just become the American Left as most of America has moved to their right?