Taxonomy

With the holiday season upon us, it means I clean out the podcast addict of topics I thought about doing but did not do for some reason. One topic is the categorization of the political tribes and subcultures in this age. Despite the billions of words spewed forth by the internet every day, we lack a sensible way of describing our politics. We still fumble with antiquated terms like left and right.

It can be frustrating for people with a speaking role in politics, as you are often lumped in with people with whom you have little in common. An example in the show is Keith Woods, who claims to be a leader of the dissident right, even though the term was invented before he was born by and for people in a country with whom he shares little in common in terms of politics.

Of course, the reason he embraced the label "dissident right" is that the prior labels he used got a bad odor about them. His politics have not changed as the labels changed, so the labels only confuse things. This is why the term "dissident right" has lost its meaning and is no longer useful. As with citizenship, if anyone can join the dissident right, then there is no reason for it to exist.

This is not unique to the dissident right. “Conservative” has been a meaningless label in the United States since the Cold War. At one point, Bill Kristol, Bill Buckley and Goth Fonzi were all on Team Conservative. The only thing they had in common was the guys signing their paycheck. Conservatism became a land of unwanted toys and now it is just a punchline.

That is the show this week. It is a disorganized mess as I was mostly thinking out loud about the obvious political categories. At some point I would like to create a map like the one done years ago for the so-called right. Maybe something not tied to individuals who come and go, but to more permanent categories of political thought. It would also be nice to have some useful labels for these things.

This Week's Show

Contents

• Intro

• The End Of Dissident Right

• Labels & Ideology

• Naming Names

• Dissidents