> In most of political theory, the spectrum breaks down roughly into two…
As a Ph.D. candidate in a top tier political science program, let me just stop you here and assure you that whatever follows is almost certainly categorically incorrect. Political theory is so wildly diverse that one strains to appreciate the relevance of large chunks of it, but it, without a doubt, does not generally/roughly/approximately break down into the positions of the U.S.'s two major parties.
> I won't pretend to be a master political theoretician, but…
This is kinda like when someone starts a sentence, "I don't want to be an asshole, but…" or "I'm not a racist, but…" or "I don't want to interrupt, but…".
Thanks for the spirited reply, Perceval, but I don't see a place where you justify a disagreement with the substance of my position. What I do see is you bragging about your acceptance to a nice school. Not to belabor the obvious, but lording your supposed superiority over opponents is not a good way to conduct a discussion.
Maybe the first part is going in the direction of a productive discussion -- are you complaining that the split between "right wing" and "left wing" is so general as to lose all salience to the discussion at hand? I assume that can't be your position, because that's pretty obviously wrong.
> lording your supposed superiority over opponents is not a good way to conduct a discussion.
It wasn't really an invitation to discussion.
> the split between "right wing" and "left wing" is so general as to lose all salience
No, the left–right split is just fine for talking about U.S. politics. It becomes more problematic when you begin to include other countries whose political divisions split along different issues.
But it becomes almost totally useless if you try to shoehorn "most of political theory" into two categories based on only two criteria (social, fiscal) that, gosh, just happen to match up with the two present day U.S. political parties.
I don't want to be an asshole, but…instead of prancing around like you actually know something why not correct what you think is "certainly categorically incorrect".
There's no quick fix for this level of misapprehension. You would just have to start at the beginning, Political Theory 101, bust out your copy of Plato's Republic and read your way back to the present.
You've added nothing to this discussion and look like a dick to boot.
Moreover - I usually find that people who know something well should be able to summarize/explain it to laymen. Those who resort to 'Oh, you are so wrong, it would take years of study for you to begin to appreciate how complicated an issue this is' do not.
No, it would take about one semester to begin to understand why two parties representing two branches of the liberal tradition within political theory cannot represent "most of political theory." Just like it would take about a semester of intro level computer science to understand that "most of programming" cannot be reduced to the differences between Obj-C and Java along two criteria (e.g. typing discipline and messages/methods). Anyone who claimed such a thing would be wildly, objectively, prima facie wrong about the history/diversity/breadth of programming—certainly not the top post.
As a Ph.D. candidate in a top tier political science program, let me just stop you here and assure you that whatever follows is almost certainly categorically incorrect. Political theory is so wildly diverse that one strains to appreciate the relevance of large chunks of it, but it, without a doubt, does not generally/roughly/approximately break down into the positions of the U.S.'s two major parties.
> I won't pretend to be a master political theoretician, but…
This is kinda like when someone starts a sentence, "I don't want to be an asshole, but…" or "I'm not a racist, but…" or "I don't want to interrupt, but…".
Please don't pretend to be a political theorist.