Gotcha.

As long time readers know, I have acknowledged that there are extremists on both the Left and the Right, but I have submitted that the Leftist extremists, due to their strong positions in politics, the educational system, and our cultural bastions, is a greater threat than the Right-wing extremists, who have no such placements on any large scale.

One possible measure of this might be the 2000 Presidential elections. Given the quite reasonable premise that Bush is not a right-wing extremist, and that Al Gore is not a left-wing extremist (no doubt I will get arguments on this from some people on both sides), what does that leave?

The vote tally can be found here.

Eliminating candidates that got less than 10,000 votes nationwide (an arbitrary limit), we have Patrick Buchanan and Howard Phillips on the far Right. On the far Left, we have basically Ralph Nader from the Green Party. I really don't know where to put the Natural Law Party, and frankly,I don't think they do either.

Browne, the Libertarian candidate, is neither Left nor Right. I'm sure I'd get arguments on that as well.

Results:

Patrick Buchanan = 448,895 (.42% of the vote)

Howard Phillips = 98,020 (.09% of the vote)

Ralph Nader = 2,882,955 (2.74% of the vote)

The Far Left outpolled the Far Right by over five times.

Okay, I admit it. This is nitpicking. The good news, and the important news, of course, is that the extremes on both sides got only a little over three percent of the vote. I was just trying to make a point.

Of course, that still leaves the Progressive Caucus in Congress, the universities, and Hollywood, but that's another story.

I would say the last radical right-wing electoral threat was George Wallace in 1968, on the heels of civil rights unrest, and with luck, that will be it for the rest of our history. With the same luck, the Green Party and other socialists will never achieve the successes in America that they do in Europe.