First of all, my apologies for getting preachy. I can now see that, except maybe in the matter of degree, I did almost the same thing that alcaray did, which had Larry come tearing out of his corner with his verbal "trench knife" and had this board steamed up for a while.

A lot of good posts down below...it is becoming increasingly obvious that the current bipolar political labeling has way too few labels, even if you throw "libertarian" into the mix. I am no longer satisfied with the labels I have been using. When my terminology is misread as often as it has been, then obviously my terminology is flawed. The whole purpose of a label is to accurately identify something, and if it is not doing that, it's a lousy label.

It became clear to me a while back that "liberal" was falling into this category, and although "leftist" was better, it may not be good enough. And what of "conservative?" I have considered myself one, but if another conservative brings up the draft, or legalizing marijuana, then suddenly I seem to be on the other side of the line. Politically, I fall into the "libertarian" category, but am uncomfortable with the moral relativism or downright amorality that seems to permeate that category. I can't forget the one Libertarian Party convention I attended many years ago that had a literature table from NAMBLA, complete with friendly people anxious to explain their position.

The $64,000 question: why label people in the first place? Isn't that overly simplistic? Maybe so, but it is necessary when discussing things like we discuss here. In an age where a person's philosophy can mean life or death for himself or others, it is critical to get at least an idea of where a person stands without the luxury of hours of long conversation to clarify every position. How else to transmit a gestalt into the mind of your reader? As an example, the terms "Taliban" or "Nazi" project an entire philosophy with one word, since they are extremist positions with little room for dissent. Not many labels are this easy.

And there ARE categories you can lump people into, because that's where they lump themselves. A rule of thumb: if you can predict the answers a person will give to a large number of political questions, he probably fits into one of the standard categories. Unfortunately, labels for these categories that are accurate enough and universally-understood enough to use on this board--or elsewhere--do not seem to be readily available.

Political pundits and talk show hosts can toss around labels like "right-wing," "left-wing," "liberal" or "conservative" and get away with it. That ain't working here.

Following are some other attempts to create more accurate political categories. What do you people think? I'm open for suggestions.

Category chart