Check out the August 28, 2006 Issue of American Conservative Magazine for a wide range of views on the following questions:

1. Are the designations “liberal” and “conservative” still useful? Why or why not?

2. Does a binary Left/Right political spectrum describe the full
range of ideological options? Is it still applicable?

Most of my views on economic issues seem to echo Kevin Phillips who was a Nixon Republican 35 years ago, but is now labeled a "Populist".  On the other hand, I find that I identify with the paleo-conservative view of Pat Buchanan when he wrote: "We are old church and old right, anti-imperialist and anti-interventionist, disbelievers in Pax Americana. We love the old republic, and when we hear phrases like ‘New World Order,’ we release the safety catches on our revolvers."

Of all the commentators that TAC chose, the view on the left-right divide that comes closest to my own is that of  Michael Lind, co-author of the political essay, The Radical Center that advocates a "third way politics".  Lind believes that today's political division can be traced back to 60's era "Identity Politics".

Excerpts from Lind's commentary in TAC:  

The meanings of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” (and its synonym “progressive”) have been altered by two long-term trends in American politics. The first is the replacement of ideology by partisanship; the second is the alignment of partisanship and identity...In living memory conservatism and liberalism referred to ideological movements, not political parties...This is no longer the case. Today conservative means partisan Republican and liberal means partisan Democrat.....

The major divide between American politics is (between)....red states and blue cities. But the city-suburb divide itself is merely a surrogate for an ethnic and religious divide. Today the Republican Party is the party of the ethnic and religious majority, white Christians, and the Democratic Party is the party of ethnic and religious minorities—non-whites (blacks and Latinos) and non-Christians (Jews and post-Christian secularists). The fact that the Republicans get some non-white and Jewish and secularist votes, while the Democrats get a minority of white Christian votes, does not alter this pattern. The big cities are Democratic because that is where blacks, Latinos, Jews, and post-Christian secularists are concentrated, and the suburbs and small towns are Republican because that is where most white Christians live.

The emergence of a pan-white, pan-Christian majority party, the Republicans, shows that the melting pot worked for whites. The ethnic divisions among Anglo-Americans and European-Americans have been effaced by assimilation and intermarriage. The once deep theological divide between Protestants and Catholics in the U.S. has been replaced by an alliance of conservative Christians against moral liberalism in both its secular and religious varieties.

By contrast, the core of the Democratic Party is a coalition of ethnic and religious minorities that have little in common other than suspicion of the white Christian majority. Blacks fear white racism; Latinos fear Anglo nativism; and Jews and post-Christian secularists fear Christian triumphalism. A traditional big-city patronage machine, the Democratic Party offers each minority what it wants: affirmative action (blacks and Latinos), mass immigration from Latin America (Latinos), and strict separation of church and state and moral liberalism (Jews and secularists).