I'd love to be able to add a third axis to the classic left-right/authoritarian-libertarian political compass:

Dogmatism.

I feel every bit as removed from highly dogmatic people as I do from highly authoritarian people. I don't trust people who think that their choice of cause is more important, morally speaking, than the way they pursue it.

(Let's put it this way: while I'm not especially fond of right-wing authoritarian J.R.R. Tolkien, I'd rather hang out with him than, I dunno, Valerie Solanas or Cinque Mtume any day...)

(On the other hand, I had to pick Tolkien because it took a HELL of a long time to come up with anything approximating right-wing authoritarian who [a] wasn't necessarily that puritanically dogmatic and [b] I didn't instantly want to stab in the face with a dinner fork. The point's not so much that I'm fond of any right-wingers, so much as I *also* dislike a whole lot of dogmatic leftists. :) )

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(In fact, maybe a better example of a right-wing authoritarian who was on the "flexible/eristic" side of the Dogma axis would be Prince Machiavelli. And oh my god, my opinions about that guy are complicated and would not fit into 5000, let alone 500 characters...)

(Or Avon from Blake's 7, who is my favorite kind of villain, my favorite kind of anti-hero, and my least favorite kind of real-world company...)

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