Horseshoe theory seems to me like declaring North on a compass rose to be “middle”, and saying as you go further “east” or “west” around the compass, the extreme east and extreme west gradually become more similar to each other. This is a mismapping resulting from the confusion of “east” with “counterclockwise starting from north” and west likewise—to restore the analogy to its origin, I think the political axis has here gotten mixed up with some other attribute or set of attributes.
To look at it another way: I could place the horseshoe so it’s quasi-centered (middled?) on anything. Suppose I center it on, for example environmentalism, and declare the sides to be ordered by religion. Then I could argue that moderation is most compatible with environmentalism, while going towards the extreme end of the “religious spectrum” leads to the two sides becoming more similar to each other than to environmentalism—but this is really a feature of antitheists and fundamentalists both being non-environmentalists, which all look alike from the environmentalist position!
Horseshoe theory seems to me like declaring North on a compass rose to be “middle”, and saying as you go further “east” or “west” around the compass, the extreme east and extreme west gradually become more similar to each other.
Which is in fact true. Perhaps a more apt analogy is that, as you go north, east and west become less distinguished, up to the North Pole, where going east and going west reduce to spinning around yourself counterclockwise or clockwise while standing at the same spot.
In this analogy, the North Pole would be ideal totalitarianism, where the government micromanages its subjects’ lives in great detail, it is always right and doesn’t even have to explain itself since it is its own source of legitimacy, and nobody can question its ways. Real-life North Korea sits close to the North Pole.
Classical liberalism/”Progressivism” would be perhaps the South Pole or maybe the Equator.
Horseshoe theory seems to me like declaring North on a compass rose to be “middle”, and saying as you go further “east” or “west” around the compass, the extreme east and extreme west gradually become more similar to each other. This is a mismapping resulting from the confusion of “east” with “counterclockwise starting from north” and west likewise—to restore the analogy to its origin, I think the political axis has here gotten mixed up with some other attribute or set of attributes.
To look at it another way: I could place the horseshoe so it’s quasi-centered (middled?) on anything. Suppose I center it on, for example environmentalism, and declare the sides to be ordered by religion. Then I could argue that moderation is most compatible with environmentalism, while going towards the extreme end of the “religious spectrum” leads to the two sides becoming more similar to each other than to environmentalism—but this is really a feature of antitheists and fundamentalists both being non-environmentalists, which all look alike from the environmentalist position!
Which is in fact true. Perhaps a more apt analogy is that, as you go north, east and west become less distinguished, up to the North Pole, where going east and going west reduce to spinning around yourself counterclockwise or clockwise while standing at the same spot.
In this analogy, the North Pole would be ideal totalitarianism, where the government micromanages its subjects’ lives in great detail, it is always right and doesn’t even have to explain itself since it is its own source of legitimacy, and nobody can question its ways.
Real-life North Korea sits close to the North Pole.
Classical liberalism/”Progressivism” would be perhaps the South Pole or maybe the Equator.