As we once again struggle to talk about what is happening in the White House it is important to understand that our customs regarding how we talk about politics, politicians, and political power are taxonomically flawed. The use of a Right = Conservative, Left = Liberal dichotomy doesn’t fit with the use of a Conservative-Moderate-Liberal spectrum because the ideologies that gave each of them to us were not only separated by decades and oceans, but neither remain.
Instead we are better served simply talking about power, what kind of power it is, and how a politician thinks about and uses power.
what is power?
Power is the ability to control the actions of others.
kinds of power
There are four kinds of power, differentiated by how they coerce you to act.
The first and most simple is physical power. “Do this or I will hit you, hurt you, or kill you.” and variations on the theme like violence against someone or something you care about. Or physically keeping you in or out of a place. Or violence in the name of something like the state, the leader, God, or an idea as justification by way of an appeal to authority. And sophisticated violence of modern military, police, and intelligence services.
Next is financial power. Using money to buy compliance, using money to buy other people to use their tools to force you to comply, often physical violence. Using wealth to avoid consequences of your actions, either by receiving preferential treatment or paying fines that amount to nothing more than pocket change. Being rich is a superpower.
While Physical and Financial power are very old and very established, the next two powers are less so. Reputational power is the ability to coerce using shame or glory. If someone can paint in the minds of others the picture of you, they have the power to control your actions.
Finally, Cultural power is the ability to use ideas and your own behavior to coerce others. The idea of God is the most basic example, which the Church has used for centuries to control others. But the idea of America, both the American Dream, and the exported Americana of Pop Culture, crafts and shapes how people act domestically and abroad. The master class of wielding cultural power belongs to the non-violent protester who wins by demonstrating superior ideas through the exercise of superior will in the public view so as to demand in the hearts and souls of bystanders action in support of their cause.
Kind | Description |
Physical | the ability to use physical violence to coerce |
Financial | the ability to use capital, currency, and commodities to coerce |
Reputational | the ability to use shame and glory to coerce |
Cultural | the ability to use ideas and behavior to coerce |
the spectrum

Independent of what kind of power is in play, the range of positions you can take about how to use it is limited.
The passive position, what we call today the political moderate, is the stance that above all else, power should be used to maintain the stability of the status quo, because instability is chaotic and chaos can’t be controlled. In the cold war this was a very desirable trait in a politician, because chaos could have escalated quickly to apocalypse.
The two active stances on how to use power are mirror images of each other. The Progressive wants to use power to change things so that they get better for almost everyone. They believe in win-win scenarios but think that if there must be a loser it ought to be the one who started with the most power, because their ultimate goal is to close the gap between the powerful and the powerless until they are peers. In today’s system, we occasionally call political liberals Progressive, but they almost never deserve it.
The Regressive is the opposite; they want to use power to make things better for a few, usually their friends or donors or the people who are ideologically aligned with them. They don’t care if there are losers because they believe all scenarios are win-lose. They are happy to undo progress and unmake precedent because their ultimate goal is to widen the gap between the powerful and the powerless so that the powerful can be in control.
Finally we have extremists. The ideology of extremists is irrelevant because an extremist is, consciously or not, a nihilist who gets off on chaos. While both Progressives and Regressives consent to the existence of the status quo and use power to move it in the direction of their liking, the Extremist will use power to destroy the status quo and subjugate anyone who defies, denies, or derides them because for them the only scenario is winner-take-all.
Dynamic | Description | Vibe |
Conservative | Conserve power; maintain the status quo; reinforce the hierarchy. | Stability |
Progressive | Use power to move the status quo to empower the powerless, narrowing the gap between have and have-not, raising the mean. | Progress |
Regressive | Use power to move the status quo to empower the powerful, widening the gap between have and have-not, lowering the mean. | Fear |
Extremist | Use power to destroy the status quo to enshrine the powerful, subjugating the have-not. | Volatility |
contextualizing the spectrum to the United States
The United States has two political parties, and up until 2007 they were both Conservative, with the Republican Party being on the Regressive side of Conservative, largely do to pro-business membership and casual attitudes about racism entrenched by geography, history, and religion. In 2007 the Tea Party Movement pulled the Republican Party out of Conservative and into Regressive as it’s ideas became the mainstream ideology of the Republican Party by the 2016 election and the flag of pulling the party to the towards extremism was handed off from the rank and file members of the party to the Congressional Representatives in the Freedom Caucus who fanned the flames of the cult of personality and pulled the Republican Party from Regressive to Extremist using Libertarian rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party had it’s own internal movement trying to pull it from Conservative to Progressive starting in 2003 that was beat down by the party leaders and crushed, the final blows coming in the form of funding challengers to Progressives who did not toe the party line of unwavering support for Israel in 2024. So while the Republican Party has been dragged from Conservative to Extremist in the course of 17 years, the Democratic Party has remained pat, choosing in each of the 9 elections during that time to offer only the status quo and the reinforcement of the hierarchy and no counter offer to those most desperate for change.
