I’m a big fan of the Information is Beautiful blog, and increasingly coming round to the value of infographics as a pedagogic or communicative tool. But even by that blog’s high standards, this is terrific – created by its author, David McCandless, in association with London-based designer Stefanie Posavec – it’s a map of left and right in the world of politics, taking into account beliefs, instincts and ideals. One can probably tell it comes from an author of the left, but I’d like to know what right-wing readers think of it – it may not be particularly fair and balanced to me, but it’s a decent effort at itemizing something intrinsically complex and hard to prove. And of course, it’s very nice to look at.
Click to enlarge – or rush out and get a copy of today’s paper to get a nice print out of it.
I think of myself as slightly to the right of centre. However when speaking of the Left and Right I think it’s worth noting the difference between where the American Centre is and the European Centre is. To me the infographic reads as a European commenting on the American. Not-with-standing this, the two things that leap out at me are: 1) the separation of morals and ethics between Right and Left – whereas I tend to think of ethics building from morals; and 2) the ideal of the Right being more aggressive. I tend to think of the Right as more assertive and associate the Left as more aggressive – not so much on a world stage, but certainly in terms of radicalisation of even the reasonably Centre Left. (In contrast, I think of radicalisation only happening much more to the very far Right.)