Antony Beevor in The Spanish Civil War (Orbis 1982, Penguin 2001, p. 279) writes that in the aftermath of the war both sides engaged in gross simplifications for propaganda purposes:
As a result, the three axes of conflict (left-right, centralist-regionalist, and authoritarian-libertarian) have often been crudely amalgamated, leaving the ferocity of the war partly unexplained.
Philosophers do well to study history to offset their penchant for the bird's-eye view. They need to come to ground from time to time if only to fuel themselves for further flight. Feasting on the carrion of fact, however, is not particularly nutritious. So what caught this philosopher's eye was the three-axes schema. Philosophers love schemata. They love the synoptic and panoptic survey. We philosophers are “spectators of all time and existence . . . ." in the immortal words of Plato.
The three-axes schema strikes me as relevant to the current political war in the USA as we teeter on the brink of World War Three thanks to the stupidity and criminality of the Democrat Party and the useful idiots who support it.
1) Left-Right. It is useful to distinguish between the Old Left, the New Left, and the 'Woke' Left. (Having sneered, I now drop the sneer quotes, at least for the space of this paragraph.) What distinguishes the Woke Left is globalist corporate capitalism, the trans-nationalist capitalism of mega-corporations. The economic clout of these corporations enables them to bend both government and the Fourth Estate to their collective will, thereby destroying the independence of both of the latter and eliminating checks on their own unbalanced power.
2) Centralist-Regionalist. Liberty versus tyranny defines the battle for the soul of America. Tyranny emanates from the woke-leftist central government which, while endlessly mouthing 'democracy' and 'rule of law' respects neither. Liberty, if it can survive, will be defended locally and regionally by citizens with the civil courage to speak out and face 'cancellation' and worse. I am thinking, among other things, of ordinary citizens who attend school board meetings and protest being labelled 'domestic terrorists' for rejecting the indoctrination of their children in Critical Race Theory, in 1619-type historical revisionism, in transgender ideology, and in anti-Caucasian ethno-masochism. Regionalism is or is closely related to federalism. The overturning of Roe v. Wade scored a point for the latter with the Left's febrile outrage clearly demonstrating its anti-federalism and anti-democratic spirit.
3) Authoritarian-Libertarian. The American conservatism of the Founders is not authoritarian but classically liberal. But while classically liberal, and thus opposed to throne-and-altar paleo-conservatism, one version of which is integralism, it also opposes the anti-religionism and anti-traditionalism of the Left, especially that of the 'woke' Left, which is a particularly virulent and lethal strain of leftism. The American conservative thus treads the via media avoiding both the Road to Serfdom (you get the implied reference, of course) and the road to anarchy as lately instantiated by Antifa black shirts and Marxist BLM thugs.
We American conservatives are rightist, regionalist, and libertarian. We are on the right side, and the Right side of the above three axes of political conflict. Our libertarianism, however, is far from the open-borders lunacy of the Libertarian Party. Party-line Libertarians overestimate the importance of the economic while displaying little or no understanding of the importance of the cultural. They seem not to realize that immigrants, especially those whose entry is illegal, bring their culture with them, a cultural inimical to classically American culture with its libertarian values.
What makes these Libertarian Party libertarians think that these immigrants will support such libertarian values as limited government, gun rights, and healthcare free of government control? In the main, the illegals ‘migrate’ here for the social services, for ‘free’ health care, education, and what all else, not to embrace classically American values. They are invited in by Obama, Biden and their ilk intentionally to support the socialism of the Democrat Party. One would have to be pretty dumb to not understand that a stripped-down, Nozickian ‘night watchman state' is incompatible with a welfare state that offers a vast panoply for ‘freebies.’ You can have one or the other but not both. By supporting illegal immigration as they do, Libertarian Party libertarians work against their own interests. They are indirectly supporting the very welfare state that they are supposed to oppose. Wise Libertarians therefore jump ship and join the Republicans to push that stodgy bunch in a meaner, leaner, and more libertarian direction. (Ron Paul comes to mind.) Libertarians are ‘losertarians’ ( a term I learned from Michael Medved) who throw away their votes on unelectable candidate thereby indirectly aiding and abetting their political enemies. Pretty stupid, eh? The same goes for anyone who votes for (almost) any third party. Read on, if you have the attention span.