Here's another way to look at political philosophies:

[MineralMan]

I don't think this accurately reflects numbers at all, but representing the political spectrum on a circle seems to better represent what is going on, as far as I'm concerned. I'd like to see it quantified better, though.

[PatrickforO]

1. I've seen this circle before. However, I'm reading a new book

which is blowing my mind. It is called "Democracy in Chains" by Nancy McLean.

This book talks about John C. Calhoun as the 'Marx of the monied class.' It then talks about this Virginia economist Buchannon, whose ideas were picked up and well funded by billionaire freaks like Charles Koch. These ideas became the intellectual basis behind the Cato Institute and ALEC. What they are trying to do is chain the people procedurally so that they can't push back (think voter suppression, binding arbitration agreements, ISDS provisions on 'free trade' agreements, and laws that take away the power of labor unions, such as the Sedition Act, and Taft-Hartley, enacted later).

Basically, this is the idea:

If you think about it, there are two classes of people.
One is the very rich, which usually has to subsidize services when groups of people make demands, like the elderly for Social Security.
The other is the rest of us, who would like to see our taxes be used for stuff that makes our lives better.
Calhoun's ideas are basically radical libertarian - he wanted unrestrained capitalism, which he thought of as 'economic liberty.'
Unfortunately 'economic liberty' basically enslaves the rest of us.

So that's the idea behind Democracy in Chains in a nutshell. I've been recommending it to everyone, because people need to be really educated on what's happening to us. Because if we don't get educated, we'll end up being enslaved by capitalists, and our earth will end up a lonely, smoking, lifeless cinder revolving around an impersonal sun. (Yeah, I know...but I can't resist rhetoric like that!)

[Towlie]

2. Looks like right now we're close hauled on a port tack.

https://www.google.com/search?q=points+of+sail&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X

[Hortensis]

3. Interestingly, studies show most people don't know enough to adopt an ideology.

In fact, most don't HAVE an ideology. They choose a group, a label, a leader to parrot and follow, and some become especially good at repeating insults about the other side.

We had two iconoclastic leaders last time, one on each side, who were able to stir many emotionally and sell very simple, authoritative messages. No need to explore an ideology, just thrill to what pings.

So, of course, our own personal mixtures of inborn personality traits combined with external influences are what social scientists evaluate to place us somewhere on charts similar to this.

Speaking of, quantifying would be very good. While there are some on the farther left who are drawn to authoritarian leaders (needless to say, those didn't like wonky Hillary), the hard cores are only a small fraction of those on the right.