An interesting perspective from the left

I was having a conversation with my neighbor yesterday, a well-educated, well-meaning man whose politics lean strongly to the left (once, in an unguarded moment, he referred to the right as "the dark side," but he's not one of those "angry left" types). Anyway, after the initial pleasantries about mulch and the amount of rain, the talk veered sharply into politics; specifically, the polarization of the American electorate.

I must admit here that I don't feel that the electorate is particularly polarized. Things always get heated around election time, since we are generally presented with two candidates, and we always choose between them whether they are distasteful or not. Most people are sensible, most people are "moderate," and most people do not live their lives based on the teachings of Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken.

But I was shocked to hear my neighbor's explanation of why the "extreme right" is so "feared": apparently, at the extreme right end of the political spectrum lies fascism. I immediately objected and talk was carefully steered elsewhere before I could spell out my arguments against this view.

There are many obvious problems with this simplification, such as the fact that the GOP generally prefers smaller government over state control. Surely, this is being challenged by the so-called "culture wars," but it is no straight-line trip.

But I think the most compelling part of my neighbor's view is that it makes no account for what lies at the extreme left. I suspect he believes that the spectrum looks something like:

Left<------------------------------------->Right
Power to the People<--------->Power to the State

My advantage here is that I have seen, with my own eyes, the extreme left in action, in perhaps its most innocuous form. I spent time in the USSR in 1988, during the years of perestroika and glasnost, and what I saw (even the sanitized Intourist view) scared the bejezus out of me. This was a state which considered things like individual choice, religion, and free speech to be contrary to the good of the state, and in which democracy was viewed as an evil to be (at best) kept firmly under lock and key. Allowing the people a say in how they lived their lives could well have resulted in a rejection of the Marxist-Leninist worldview of the state, and this could not be tolerated. Give the people the right to choose and they may make the "wrong" choice.

The USSR was a totalitarian, repressive state, pure and simple--just as were the fascist states of recent memory. Neither extreme is acceptable.

My worry is that my neighbor might well be right--if the people as a whole are more afraid of a fascist takeover from extreme rightist elements than from an assault from the left, then there is a dangerous historical ignorance at work in the electorate.

Left<------------------------------------->Right
Dictatorship<---------------------->Dictatorship