a vertical axis

Rui A. has been doing a great effort in this blog trying to define what is the political left and what is the political right in Portugal. His efforts have been followed by some discussion in the blogosphere with the usual unconclusiveness, as free debates in a Catholic country always end up in anarchy.

I believe Rui's efforts are misdirected. The idea of classifying people politically along a horizontal axis going from left to right arose in the French Revolution, which was essentially an anti-Catholic revolution, and is therefore totally foreign to our culture. It is a good way of classifying people in a mostly Protestant, democratic culture like Germany, Finland, the USA or Great-Britain. Not in Portugal or any other Catholic country.

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No Portuguese man, with very few exceptions, is a real democrat because democracy is simply not in his culture. Surely, one can find lots os people in our country claiming themselves to be democrats. I do not trust them. Observing their acts, their speeches, their behaviour, the only conclusion one can reach is that they are no democrats at all. Take the case of the most basic tenet of democracy - decision by majority rule. Once elections are held, the losing party instead of cooperating with the winning party, will usually move en force, and as soon as it can, to boycott the work of the latter - that is, the losing party has no respect for the decision of the majority. Needless to say, the winning party has even less respect for the losing party and often becomes oppressive to the minority.

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The relevant axis in a Catholic country is a vertical axis going from libertarianism at the bottom to authoritarianism at the upper end. Each Portuguese man or woman is either a libertarian or an authoritarian, or some combination of the two, sometimes depending on the circumstances of time and place. Throughout his life he might change along that vertical axis - as I did myself, moving upwards.