Given your civility, I hope I won’t be “one note.” I have commented in the past.

My dad explained the circular political spectrum to me when I was a kid in response to questions about “None Dare Call it Conspiracy.” I recently used it as the basis for a critique of the media’s portrayal of the 2006 mid-term election as evidence of a movement to the middle. I think a significant number of voters took a quantum jump, bypassing the middle.

But I’m troubled by the circular model of the political spectrum. Granted the model seems to “explain” the “left” regimes that exhibit centralized power like a right-wing dictatorship. But, are they honestly “left,” or rather, is that how we want to define the left?

I’ve run across people who have returned to the linear political model based on thinking of Karl Hess. Perhaps it’s an effort to reframe the concept of “left.” In a nut shell, “right” wing implies power in the hands of a few, and “left” wing implies distribution of power into the maximum number of hands. * Shrug ?*

Yes, I think the political elite is discredited from a growing number of the people from whom they derive the “consent” to govern. The elite seems to be preparing for a global debacle. The US dollar reserve currency is slipping. They’re running out of places to reinflate speculative bubbles; Thailand has just waved off some capital flows in a pretty desperate way. The gig is up on corporate globalization (neoliberal economic model) even if the payola pundits don’t yet know it; the plutocrats do. I guess I buy into William Grieder’s thesis that The Future is Now.

There are endless discussions about the nature of that elite on this and other leftie blogs. If you think the leftie bloggers are “accepting the rules of the game” it makes me wonder who the hell you’ve been reading.

How I define left — Dig out a copy of Arthur M. Schlesinger ’s The Vital Center. Find the Schlesinger - Poole diagram. Study it.

Sorry if my earlier comment had a sting.

It didn’t. I just hope you aren’t one of those tiresome one-note wonders who thinks he’s found the magic solution to all political problems and won’t accept disagreement. I hate that.

I presume you accept that there is a “political elite.” Do you think it is discredited? I don’t hear a lot of the “Left Blogosphere” delving into that level of discussion. Instead, they seem to accept the legitimacy of the rulers and the rules of the game, which work so much in favor of those with legions of lobbyists and lawyers who can negotiate their way through the complex rules (they wrote most of the rules). That level of discourse doesn’t seem very “original” to me.

The proposed remedy of “Restrict[ing] corporate rights at the constitutional level,” might not be “original,” but it at least attempts to take the discourse beyond the superficial level of “to surge or not to surge,” or Parenti’s “original” quip about “Defeat with Honor.”

Sorry if my earlier comment had a sting. I really appreciate do your blog. I just want people with good minds like yours to take the dialogue to a deeper level.

‘Twould be good for the country if the Republicans became “regular” again, though.

All the Gerald Ford nostalgia has had me pondering the slimy, slippery slope of the GOP, from Ford’s caretaker mini-presidency to the Cabal of Pure Evil that the party is today. Maha, as usual, provides a concise and fascinating summary.

Eff Cheney …I hope his heart seizes soon.