let's take an emerson/thoreau american political position, which antedates the left-right taxonomy. it's easy to see why, if you were an extreme individualist and advocate of liberty, you would, for example, favor the abolition of slavery. but the paternalism of an obama - where we're transforming you and constraining you for your own good, providing you with health care or childcare or whatever else we in our wisdom see that you need - is closer to calhoun's argument for slavery: we're seizing control of you for your own good. in other words, the progressives of today employ the arguments of the reactionaries of yesterday. thoreau's position is perfectly coherent and consistent. for just that reason, it cannot fit into the political spectrum now at all.