system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: the left-right political spectrum is a largely useless classification system that does more harm than good.

Politics, and its related topics, are an exceedingly multidimensional space and our obsession with mapping people and organizations to an approximate coordinate on a single dimensional scale does more to obfuscate our convictions and beliefs than it does to help identify them. In addition to being insufficient as a classifier, it imparts undue baggage due to "spectrum proximity" with unrelated views. As an example:

* If I am a strong proponent of states' rights and individual responsibility, then these convictions would be more typically associated with *right\-wing* politics, and therefore I would occupy a place on the spectrum that is "closer" to *extreme\-right* views like, say, white nationalism.
* On the other hand, if I'm in favor of amnesty for large swaths of undocumented immigrants, then this conviction would be more typically associated with *left\-wing* politics, and so now I'm positioned closer to *ultra\-left* views like, say, Marxism.
* But let's say I hold both of the above views. When I've actually expressed both of these opinions before, I've been accused of political *centering*, as though the only option we have left is to "average it out", because darn it if we don't somehow reduce it all back down to a single dimension again.

The above are obviously just specific examples \(and perhaps not the best ones\), but the root of my view here is that despite the ubiquitous usage of the left\-right spectrum, I find that it:

* doesn't accurately indicate which positions *are* held by an individual
* can implicitly suggest positions that *aren't* held by an individual
* and is ultimately counterproductive to the point that it should be eschewed unless accompanied by sufficient clarification so as to render it redundant anyway.

Update: ~~a family thing just came up and I need to take a couple hours. I got a few responses out, and I'll post some more later \- thanks for all the replies, though! Really enjoying reading through them.~~  Aaaaand I'm back. Lots of really thoughtful responses in here, so I'm doing my best to work through them with an appropriate level of consideration.
gpt
Would you refuse to punch your father in the face, even if he told you to?

Do you find it disgusting to wash your hands in a public bathroom? 

Those questions are not of a political nature, and nobody campaigns on either issue. However, they track very well with political views: conservatives say yes, liberals say no. 

This shows that certain viewpoints do naturally cluster together. There are different outlooks on life, and they affect the opinions that people hold on many issues. 

Nobody is saying that everyone has to be either fully conservative or fully republican. Even lawmakers all have a few issues in which they vote against party lines, and if someone assumes you hold one view because they know you hold another, that person is a bigot. 

But that doesn't mean the connections don't exist. Someone who champions women's rights is also likely to be in favour of immigrants' rights. 

This means that the political spectrum is useful in that it helps us understand what general position a party or a body holds. You can't list every opinion for everyone, so it's handy to be able to say "this person is a medical expert and outspoken liberal commentator", or "this article was taken from a popular conservative news outlet". It's shorthand. 

So long as nobody goes to the extreme of trying to pigeonhole people based on their beliefs, it's useful to be able to express the broad strokes quickly. Not the whole story, sure, but not pointless or counterproductive either.