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Furthermore, the old fashioned left-right model is fatally flawed. The model implies that if you "go too far" (i.e., are consistent) with any political idea, you end up, in some unexplicable way, at [[totalitarianism]] or anarchism, or maybe both. Pursue conservative thought to its logical extreme, according to this model, and you somehow end up at fascism, which is national socialism, or white supremacy or some other authoritarian position. If you pursue liberal thought too far, you supposedly end up at socialism or communism. This is inconsistent, and it ignores large philosophical differences between, liberalism and communism, and conservatism and fascism.
Furthermore, the old fashioned left-right model is fatally flawed. The model implies that if you "go too far" (i.e., are consistent) with any political idea, you end up, in some unexplicable way, at [[totalitarianism]] or anarchism, or maybe both. Pursue conservative thought to its logical extreme, according to this model, and you somehow end up at fascism, which is national socialism, or white supremacy or some other authoritarian position. If you pursue liberal thought too far, you supposedly end up at socialism or communism. This is inconsistent, and it ignores large philosophical differences between, liberalism and communism, and conservatism and fascism.
==Extreme polarization==
Dacher Keltner, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, has found that people have a powerful tendency to exaggerate the views of their ideological opponents, seeing, on average, twice as much difference as actually exists. Moreover, he has turned up this “imagined extremism” in a variety of settings, including conflicts over abortion rights, the interpretation of a racial incident, the attitudes of gays and Christian fundamentalists and the choices of English professors toward use of the “Western Canon” in university classes.
Partisans and nonpartisans in political disputes, Keltner's study finds, seriously overestimate the polarization between the two sides. Although a tendency to demonize one’s opponents is not a new understanding, Keltner’s work breaks new ground in being able to measure the extent of the effect by gathering hard data on actual versus perceived differences among the parties to a dispute as well as among neutral observers. <ref>Patricia McBroom, University of California, Berkeley, News Release, 1/4/97, ''Political attitudes in the U.S. are exaggerated, according to UC Berkeley psychologist in studies of “imagined Extremism.”''</ref>
==Notes==
==Notes==