The other day, my wife asked, "So, would you say you are a liberal conservative, or a conservative liberal?"

To this I could only respond, "I am a philosopher."

I've mentioned before that I am registered as a Republican in the State of Arizona. I first registered to vote for the presidential election of 2000, but my involvement in the Republican Party dates back much further, thanks to a politically active father. In the last seven years, though, I've said a lot of things that would likely upset toe-the-line Republicans, but the same could be said for toe-the-line Democrats. This has the (misleading!) tendency to paint me as some sort of ideological centrist. Thanks to the two-party system, the average politically aware American wants to cubbyhole me as "good" or "evil" and grows frustrated when I decline to fit a mold for them.

From an American civics perspective, my wife's question naturally follows; if I'm not a "conservative" or a "liberal," I must be a "slightly-more-conservative-than-average liberal," or a "slightly-more-liberal-than-average conservative." I mean, this is the political spectrum we're talking about: left, right, middle. Good, evil, confused. Or should that be, "Evil, good, stupid?" Whatever; those are the only options. Right?

Of course not--but political "scientists" have been struggling with the alternatives for decades. More, probably. The Wikipedia link (this one) gives a basic overview; the "multi-axis models" down the page are especially fascinating.

But are any of them sufficient to the human experience?

If we can back up for a moment, it might be valuable to ask, what is the point of political spectroanalysis? What do we gain from this kind of analytic division? From a practical perspective, one might "game the system," so to speak, in the pursuit of political power. From an historic perspective, one can perhaps more easily spot trends and contemplate patterns. But every approach I can think of seems uniquely situated for group analysis. In other words, the concept of a political spectrum is statistically valuable, but it is a tool for individuals contemplating group behavior, not the other way around.

In yet other words, knowledge of any given candidate's position in the political spectrum is at best a strong indicator of their future behaviors--never a predictor, and often not even a particularly effective indicator.

Let's take a few judicial-types as examples. Robert Bork, historically a champion of tort reform, recently filed a lawsuit seeking some $1,000,000 in damages. And of course there is what one commentator has called "The Souter Factor," in which Supreme Court Justices tend to drift left (or, the author suggests, toward the center). But I chose the judiciary for a specific reason: they are somewhat less bound by the demands of politics, so the effect may be more... public? Pronounced? Something like that.

I guess the argument could be made that this is a bad thing, but I won't make the argument here. Though it is perhaps more obvious in the judiciary, I have no doubt that similar observations could be made, though the effect might be somewhat more subdued, for every politician and, indeed, for every human being. We are not fixed points in time.

To draw this back to the "spectrum," consider the emission spectrum used in identifying the chemical makeup of various substances. Every substance has a unique spectral fingerprint, and it is always the same. What if politics is more like this? What if we considered one's political position to consist, not on some fixed point along a line or a Cartesian plane, but as a unique fingerprint made up of positions on every conceivable topic? This would be difficult, perhaps impossible, but we shall find some use in breaking the metaphor.

For I think that, while a sort of "political emission spectrum" would be a fascinating bit of work, it would differ from chemical emission spectrum analysis in one crucial and revealing way: no person's fingerprint could possibly remain fixed. We do things to contradict ourselves all the time. Some see this as a lack of integrity, but it could just as easily be a growth of wisdom or a change of circumstances. So once again our political spectroanalysis would be much more useful in considering broad trends than in judging an individual.

And this, I think, is a natural consequence of modern, celebrity-driven American politics. We don't judge the candidates; they judge us. They find the break between the "right" and the "left," uncover which unlikely allies will join forces to defeat some perceived "evil," and put on a show. I have often wondered what on Earth the Religious Right could possibly have in common with Corporate Interests, or why the Environmentalists vote in lockstep with Unions. There's some overlap there, to be sure, but there's also a large degree of outright contradiction.

It turns out, everyone has their hot-button issues. This time around, mine has been the unacceptable treatment of individuals brought to the legal limbo of Guantanamo Bay, where they are in neither their own country or ours, subject to no laws at all; whether guilty or innocent it would be impossible to say because we refuse to give them even show trials, let alone real trials. I admit some embarrassment at how much that single issue has crowded out my interest in anything else the candidates have to say, but I doubt I will care about Guantanamo so much four years from now. I hope it will no longer be an issue! Will my politics have changed? Will I have changed?

Or will I simply be responding then as I am responding now, a single being reacting to the world around him?

For you see, despite our capacity to mark trends and categorize people, we are not a hive mind. We are individuals, and no amount of pretending at organization will change the fact that we are, in the end, absolutely discrete. We build bridges with language and highways with tradition and connect ourselves on to another as best we can, but (at our present level of technology, anyhow) there is no collective consciousness.

Not that it wouldn't be kind of cool, but such a thing would bring challenges anew, I imagine...

Anyhow. The point is, we need to let go of this "good versus evil" mentality, and I don't think it will happen while the two-party system remains entrenched. People get so antagonistic over such tiny differences! We're all trained to fight one another and fight for the "right side" when in fact there are millions of shades of grey, perhaps one shade for every thinking person on the planet. Even those who simply take up their "party line" and adopt whatever position the leaders of their pet organization preach find themselves occasionally at odds with others on "their side." Just look at the Evangelical Christians and Mitt Romney, for heaven's sake!

So I shall continue to be a philosopher. I would like to participate in politics someday, but I often doubt my ability to overcome the system, to demonstrate that what I offer--reasoned consideration of every problem from every possible perspective--really is better than blindly holding to the party line.