The end of the political spectrum

Left, right, and center is obsolete. Now it's top, bottom, and middle.

Broken political spectrum.
(Image credit: Illustrated | IStock/IIIerlok_Xolms , iStock/Artis777)

The time has come to scrap the political spectrum.

Political metaphors help us to make sense of the world around us. The metaphor of left, right, and center has done that for well over two centuries now. We should be grateful that the arbitrary seating arrangements in the National Assembly during the early stages of the French Revolution provided us with such a useful means of ideological orientation for so long. But it no longer does. In fact, the metaphor now obscures more than it illuminates. We need to move on.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.