FlashFeed

Why do we grade politicians on a spectrum from left to right? Blame the French. On September 11th, 1789, France’s newly formed National Assembly voted on whether to grant the king a veto over its laws. This was no arcane point of procedure. As a direct challenge to Louis XVI’s absolute power, it was a hinge moment in the French Revolution. Defenders of the monarchy, pro veto, gathered to the chairman’s right. Radicals in favor of clipping the king’s powers drifted to his left. From that fateful seating arrangement — in a meeting now more than two centuries past — comes the most powerful shorthand in democratic politics: left versus right. La gauche, the left, became synonymous with pro-revolutionary forces who wanted to abolish privilege and empower the common citizen. La droite, the right, were the anti-revolutionaries — conservatives scrambling to prop up an old order that was crumbling around them. Within a year, the terms were common parlance in French politics. Over the next century, “left” and “right” colonized conversations across the world. This directional shorthand for political persuasions remains in daily use today. But as the centuries wear on, the model is showing its age. And it had flaws baked in from the very beginning. The propaganda gift that keeps on giving One problem was right there in the language itself. In French, gauche means clumsy or awkward. And, as in English, droit doesn’t just mean right-as-opposed-to-left, but right-as-opposed-to-wrong. This intrinsic bias is much older than the French Revolution, or even the French language. In Latin, “left” is sinister — the root word of all things foreboding and malevolent. “Right” is dexter, which gives us “dexterity,” a decidedly positive trait. In the Bible, Jesus sits at the right hand of God, not His left. Supporters listen to Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich speak in Tampa in 2012. Left and right are flawed political terms, if only because of their loaded pre-political meanings. (Credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images) It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to connect this bias — repeated across dozens of languages and worldviews — to the prevalence of right-handedness. Only about 10% of us are “manual lefties.” For the political descendants of those pro-monarchy assembly members, being “right” is the propaganda gift that keeps on giving. For those on the other side, their position on the political spectrum requires overcoming associations of “left” with everything sinister. Communists, Nazis, and horseshoes But it’s not just the lingo of the model that’s flawed. In 1972, French political scientist Jean-Pierre Faye coined a term for a phenomenon he’d noticed while studying Weimar Germany: the political horseshoe. Observing how Communists and Nazis had frequently collaborated in the early 1930s to undermine Germany’s liberal center, Faye proposed that the farther you travel from that center, the closer the two ends of the spectrum grow to each other — bending into a horseshoe rather than stretching into a line. Horseshoe-shaped or not, the left-right divide animated most of the 20th century, which can be imperfectly summarized as: capitalism tempered by democracy first defeating fascism on the right, then communism on the left. But those old divides no longer map neatly onto the politics of the 21st century. People can feel strongly “left” on some issues and strongly “right” on others, which makes for strange political bedfellows and acrobatic vote-switching. The old paradigm struggles to explain the many Bernie Sanders supporters who in 2016 went on to vote for Donald Trump. But those voters weren’t confused or irrational. They were responding to a signal the standard model can’t process: a profound distrust of the establishment — whether left or right — and an equally profound desire to upend the whole apple cart. Economic and personal freedom To better capture such signals, it helps to think of the political landscape not as a one-dimensional line, but as a two-dimensional field. A map, in other words. Left: David Nolan s political chart, using two axes to give the political spectrum an extra dimension, and four extremes instead of two. (Credit: Explorers Foundation); Right: Nolan in 1996, with a version of the Nolan Chart distributed by Advocates for Self-Government. (Credit: Carolmooredc, CC BY-SA 3.0) Arguably, the most influential is the Nolan Chart, published in 1971 by David Nolan, the founder of the Libertarian Party of the United States. Nolan argued that any ideology should be measured along two distinct dimensions: how much government control it allows over your economic decisions, and how much over your personal life. The traditional left-right spectrum, he complained, collapses those two very different things into one. By giving economic and personal freedom each their own axis, the Nolan Chart generates four quadrants, not coincidentally with libertarianism at the top. That bit of self-serving design aside, the underlying insight is real. Societies can be socialist and free (the Nordic social democracies), socialist and unfree (the Soviet Union), capitalist and free (Singapore, Switzerland), or capitalist and unfree (Chile under Pinochet). These four permutations are nearly impossible to distinguish on a simple left-right line. The chart also stakes out a coherent position for libertarianism — a distinctly Anglophone political tradition that is neither conventionally left nor right, and is essentially homeless on the traditional French-inspired linear spectrum. And it helps visualize where modern authoritarian movements sit: at the bottom of the chart, on both sides of the vertical axis, which goes some way to explaining why the old labels feel so inadequate when applied to them. George Orwell would have agreed The political diamond shown below — clearly indebted to Nolan, and circulating on the internet since around 2000 — updates his chart with a different orientation and a richer menu of political persuasions. The axes still denote the same scales, but the extremes are now labelled Marxism and Liberalism (on the economic horizontal) and Anarchism and Fascism (on the authoritarian vertical). Each of the diamond’s four sides is labelled with the characteristic uniting two extremes: Marxism and Anarchism can both be called “socialist,” certain strains of Marxism and Fascism can be called “statist,” and so on. The political diamond s four extremes double as the boundary markers for four different political philosophies Socialism, Liberalism, Capitalism, and Statism. (Credit: Ruland Kolen) In places, the chart is genuinely illuminating. It captures the intuition that Anarcho-communism and Stalinism both occupy the socialist side of the diamond while sitting at polar extremes on questions of state authority — a distinction the left-right line simply cannot make. George Orwell would have agreed: In the Spanish Civil War, he fought with an anarchist-leaning militia against communists loyal to Moscow. The chart also usefully separates Libertarianism from Conservatism, disentangling two forces of the American right that are often conflated but have very different souls. But the diamond also traffics in significant fictions. Anarcho-collectivism and Anarcho-individualism are placed near the same apex, implying a similarity that isn’t there. The freedoms they envision are radically incompatible: collective freedom from property and hierarchy versus individual freedom from collective obligation. There is also false precision in giving each ideology an equal-sized cell. Real ideological traditions are fuzzy, contested, and historically evolving. Populism, to take one example, is treated by most scholars not as a distinct ideology at all, but as a political style that can colonise virtually any point on the map. And placing Fascism at the pole of extreme Statism strips it of its specific content: the ultra-nationalism, racial hierarchy, and cult of violence that define it. This flattens something monstrous into mere bureaucratic overbearance. Attitudes toward immigration, identity, and social values So, why not add a third dimension? Ronald Inglehart’s decades of cross-national surveys identified an additional axis along which values shift from materialist (security, order, strength) to post-materialist concerns (self-expression, environmental concern, quality of life). This shift — and the fierce cultural backlash against it — has arguably reshaped recent politics more profoundly than any conventional swing between left and right. A similar dimension is the GAL-TAN axis, running from Green, Alternative and Libertarian to Traditional, Authoritarian and Nationalist. Developed for studying European party systems, it captures attitudes toward immigration, identity, and social values that neither of the earlier models fully addresses. But here is the cartographer’s dilemma: Each map is limited by the intentions of the mapmaker. Every political chart discussed here reveals as much about its maker as about the landscape it purports to chart. The horseshoe implicitly elevates the center. Nolan placed his own preferred ideology at the apex. The diamond shows a soft spot for Anarchism. And all of them are Western in their categories. There is no obvious space on any of these models for Confucian political thought, Islamic governance theory, or the African concept of Ubuntu. Political groups in the current European Parliament (pictured right, in plenary session in Brussels on March 26), their position largely corresponding to their ideological stance, with on the far left, the far-left group appropriately called The Left (including members from Syriza in Greece and Sinn F in in Ireland), and on the far right, the far-right group called Europe of Sovereign Nations (with among others members from the AfD from Germany). In the middle: the Christian-Democratic-leaning European Peoples Party and the economically liberal Renew Europe. (Credit: European Parliament; credit: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images) The old cartographer’s saying applies: The map is not the territory. As political charts grow ever more elaborate in the pursuit of completeness, they trade away the one thing that made the original so durable: simplicity. Despite all its limitations, we’ll be living with the left-versus-right paradigm for a while yet. The model may not be entirely true, but it is reassuringly simplistic — just like a lot of political discourse today. The vote that started it all So, how did that original vote between left and right actually play out? The National Assembly voted 673 to 325 to grant the king a suspensive veto — allowing him to delay legislation, but not block it permanently. A compromise that satisfied no one: the monarchists had wanted a stronger king; a bloc of about 150 radicals didn’t want any royal veto at all. Nor did the vote do anything to endear the crown to the starving masses. A few weeks later, they would march on Versailles, invade the royal palace, and take the king and queen back to Paris as prisoners — and, eventually, to the guillotine. The left had won. For now. Strange Maps #12xx Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com. Follow Strange Maps on X and Facebook. This article The doomed quest for a perfect map of political ideology is featured on Big Think.

The Expedition 73 crew attends a debrief and awards ceremony at Space Center Houston’s IMAX theater on June 16, 2026. NASA/Luna Posadas Nava On June 16, astronauts and cosmonauts gathered at Space Center Houston to share stories from their missions aboard the International Space Station and recognize the teamwork and people on the ground that made their missions possible. The Expedition 73 Welcome Home Ceremony brought together members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10, Soyuz MS-27, and NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 missions. During the event, the crews reflected on the science, partnerships, and international collaboration that defined their time in orbit. Remarks were delivered by NASA’s Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche, Low Earth Orbit Program’s Deputy Manager for the International Space Station Dina Contella, Richard Jones with NASA’s commercial crew office, Flight Operations Director Norm Knight, Johnson Employee Relations Lead David Kelley, and Space Center Houston Chief Operating and Strategy Officer Keesha Bullock. Together, they recognized the accomplishments of the crews and the team members who helped make the expedition a success. NASA’s Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche gives opening remarks at the crew debrief and awards ceremony. NASA/Luna Posadas Nava Wyche welcomed the crews home and reflected on the accomplishments of Expedition 73. “Together, these crews exemplified professionalism, resilience, and the spirit of international cooperation,” Wyche said. “Their work ensured the continued success of the International Space Station Program and demonstrated the strength of our multi-vehicle crew transportation strategy.” During the expedition, all available docking ports were occupied simultaneously for the first time, with eight spacecraft attached to the station. The crew also supported visiting missions, including Axiom Mission 4, and multiple cargo deliveries while maintaining a full schedule of scientific investigations. Crew members completed three spacewalks, installing hardware that supports future solar array upgrades and maintenance activities critical to station operations. NASA astronaut Anne McClain is photographed near one of the International Space Station’s main solar arrays during a spacewalk to upgrade the orbital outpost’s power generation system and relocate a communications antenna on May 1, 2026. NASA The ceremony also recognized the workforce whose dedication supported every aspect of Expedition 73, from mission planning and operations to research, training, and crew safety. “You learned each other’s languages, and often, when we didn’t know the right answers, you partnered with us, and you would come up with the answers and help,” said International Space Station Program Deputy Manager Dina Contella. “You really helped make us successful.” She noted that collaboration extended well beyond the crew in orbit, with teams across the program matching that dedication throughout the expedition. Contella shared that Expedition 73 included six cargo missions, the inaugural flight of JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) HTV-X1 cargo spacecraft, and more than 37,000 pounds of supplies, equipment, and scientific investigations delivered to the space station. She also thanked the Commercial Crew Program and Flight Operations teams for helping safely transport crews to and from the station and support mission operations. More than 1,000 employees representing 40 teams received NASA Group Achievement Awards, while 23 individuals were honored with Superior Achievement Awards for their contributions to the mission. NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui receive the NASA Exceptional Bravery Honors at the crew debrief. From left: NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche, Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager Richard Jones, International Space Station Program Deputy Manager Dina Contella, and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui. NASA/Luna Posadas Nava NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui received NASA Exceptional Bravery Honors for demonstrating exceptional courage, leadership, and composure during a medical event. NASA astronaut Chris Williams also received the honor but was unable to attend because he remains aboard the space station. Flight Operations Director Norm Knight thanked the teams that supported Expedition 73 from the ground while recognizing the crews’ contributions throughout their missions. “You represent an astronaut corps that is the best of the best, epitomizing courage and teamwork,” Knight told the crew. “Every opportunity or challenge that came your way, you met with confidence and creativity.” NASA astronaut Jonny Kim conducts an investigation to assess the effects of microgravity on bone marrow stem cells, including their ability to secrete proteins that form and dissolve bone.NASA Crew members reflected on the station’s legacy as a platform for discovery, innovation, and international partnership after more than 25 years of continuous human presence in orbit. Research conducted during Expedition 73 included investigations in human physiology, biology, materials science, pharmaceutical development, and technologies designed to benefit life on Earth and future exploration missions. The crews also discussed research aboard the station that will help prepare NASA for future missions to the Moon and Mars, including advanced life-support systems and water recovery technologies. NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers holds space botany hardware that supports the low Earth orbit Integrated Flori-culture Experiment (LIFE) investigation as she floats inside the space station’s cupola. The study examines how radiation and microgravity affect plant growth to support future exploration and improve crop production on Earth. NASA Beyond science and operations, the crew built strong bonds during their months in orbit. They marked birthdays, holidays, and mission milestones together, often creating elaborate cakes from the limited ingredients available aboard the station.  NASA astronaut Anne McClain celebrates her birthday with a cake, gifts, and cards aboard the space station’s Unity module. NASA Many crew members said their strongest memories centered on the people around them, and that trust and teamwork remained essential to mission success. Viewing Earth from orbit provided the crew with a powerful reminder of humanity’s shared connection. “When you look back at Earth, what we have in common is so much more important than what makes us different,” said McClain. “We’re all on this one planet. We’re all on the same crew.” Awardees pose for a group photo from the Expedition 73 crew debrief and awards ceremony.NASA/Luna Posadas Nava The evening concluded with the crew expressing gratitude to all those who supported their missions from launch through landing. “It was overwhelming in the most wonderful way to step off that aircraft and see so many team members who had supported us and see family and friends for the first time,” said Cardman. “We are so grateful.” View the list of award recipients here. Watch the full Expedition 73 crew debrief and awards ceremony below. Explore More 3 min read A Turquoise Tint for the Black Sea Phytoplankton added a milky blue hue to the waters of the Black Sea and nearby Article 18 hours ago 5 min read NASA at the Ion: Orion Lessons from Artemis II Shape NASA’s Moon to Mars Path Article 1 day ago 2 min read Astronaut Jessica Meir Assists With Hardware Updates for NASA’s Cold Atom Lab Description NASA astronaut Jessica Meir inspects optical fibers while installing hardware updates to the agency’s Article 1 week ago