Where do you fall on the political compass?

a reply to: Aazadan

Apparently I'm slightly leftist:

Yup. I'm a Centrist:

Economic Left/Right: -1.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.64

www.politicalcompass.org...

Apparently I'm the most radical leftist anarchist/libertarian around. No one's been farther into the bottom left corner then me so far.

Economic Left/Right: -6.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.44

Hahaha oh wow, I used to think my ex was nuts for claiming to be an anarchist, now I find out that I'm on the same spectrum as him!

I'm going to take this one with a grain of salt like others have said, it's doesn't give the option of 'I don't care'

The test called me a "people like you" and told me that my answers don't matter anyway!!

fun quiz. i got;

Economic Left/Right: -5.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.87

pic of my graph - files.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: Aazadan

Data is skewed on the vertical axis. It asked what you thought about this or that situation, not what you thought the government should do about it, and so was not a proper representation of your "authoritarian vs libertarian" score. One can be strongly opinionated on a subject, and also be strongly opinionated that it isn't the government's business to handle.

Questionaire flawed in design.

originally posted by: nwtrucker
I suppose in a way this proves most think in freedoms. Just different ones stressed or considered important? That make any sense?

It makes perfect sense

My view of a 'conservative' - I speak for no one else- is a balance between 'freedom' and rules. Perhaps the freedom within the framework of those rules is a better way of saying it.

Why think in terms of liberal or conservative then? Those are merely terms to create branding for a broad base of ideas for big tent parties. To use the issue of Net Neutrality for example, 85% of Republicans and 81% of Democrats support it yet the official Republican/Conservative stance is to remove it. We could flip that around too and look at immigration, a large segment of the population including those who self identify as Democrat or Liberal disagree with the amnesty for all with no preconditions policy yet that is the official Democrat stance.

I guess that what I'm getting at is that while parties are a political necessity, no one should follow the stance of a party just because it happens to be their team... by their nature you're only supposed to agree with some of it, the rest is merely compromise (can you guess how I answered the authority is to be respected question?).

For example, I view the EPA as having run amok. Literally insane. Yet, I wouldn't go the 'Libertarian' route and rubber stamp it into non-existence because it violates the 10th. I also don't want free rein by corporations to run completely unfettered in the name of stock options gained due to a great quarterly report, profit-wise.

I find the EPA like most regulatory bodies to be an interesting issue. On the one hand I want regulation that protects the populace which makes me want the EPA to be strong, but then other times as a result of that strength I see bureaucrats harass companies just to justify their jobs. I think that perhaps the answer is an EPA with more power to act, and more transparency to prevent corruption (see the California wastewater dumping thread recently) but at the same time a more narrowly defined scope so that we can ease up on regulations in areas where there isn't any real harm.

originally posted by: nenothtu
a reply to: Aazadan

Data is skewed on the vertical axis. It asked what you thought about this or that situation, not what you thought the government should do about it, and so was not a proper representation of your "authoritarian vs libertarian" score. One can be strongly opinionated on a subject, and also be strongly opinionated that it isn't the government's business to handle.

That's because it's not asking about government specifically but rather a power greater than an individual. If it's a corporations business to handle that is the same thing as the governments business to handle. It's just trading one master for another. The bottom of the graph is anarchy which could also be expressed as individualism. The top of the graph is a strong collective in control whether that's congressmen or a board of directors.

Wow. I am less authoritarian than Ghandi, Mandela, and the Dali Lama, lol. My results were:

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.15
According to this test, I'm 2/3 of the way down to anarchy. Sounds about right.

Economic Left/Right: -3.00. Supposedly, where Mandela is. Dunno much about his economic policies or whatever, so I can't verify the accuracy there.

So, my dot falls pretty firmly in the lower left green square, which is the second least populated section of this graph, so looks like I really am far outside the mainline. The only square with less is my neighbor to the right, the purple square.
Unsurprisingly, the upper right square, the one labeled Auhoritarian/Right, is the most heavily populated one, and is filled with pretty much all the major players of the so called "free" world. This square is also in direct opposition to my own placement, which again, pretty much sums up my opinions of our "leadership".

originally posted by: tavi45
Apparently I'm the most radical leftist anarchist/libertarian around. No one's been farther into the bottom left corner then me so far.

As for me I am the exact equilibrium between libertarianism and authoritarianism.

I trust not governance in the people's hands, because History shows how dark such people become once they have total governance powers;

but I believe that any government has a vital duty to serve the people, to account for the people's interest, instead of a mad and bloody scramble for personal profits and/or political priviledges.

Interesting test. i seemed to come out more as i expected in this one than in the one posted by FLyersFan last week.....



Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.28

sometimes the questions being asked, are more important than the answers that are given

a reply to: jimmyx

Sometimes the way the questions are worded, or the answers that are allowed are more important than the questions themselves - that's how you get the results you want to get out of a poll.

The very first question FORCES one to prefer one collective or another, one "authority" outside the self or the other.

a reply to: Aazadan

I rebut, why not think in terms of Conservative or liberal? As you point out, as voters we don't agree on all points in any political party. I merely suffer the least bruises when squeezed into the Conservative cubby-hole..LOL. It's the elected representative that suffers from the party 'whip', not we, the voters, and that isn't going to change any time soon.

So we add the complexity of redefining ourselves to list of things to be done? Low on my priority list.

I agree on your EPA evaluation. Of course, it violates the 10th amendment by even existing. Yet, there's a fair amount of agreement that this entity should, in fact, exist.

This does provide a venue to look at ideas newly or at new ideas. Let me throw this one at you..

In the spirit of 'definition', perhaps what needs redefining isn't the parties and their labels but the Constitution, itself.

It has already been, over a period of time, redefined for us, like it or not. By precedence, by interpretation, by expediency and activism. It, in fact, no longer exists as an agreed upon fundamental of this nation. Those that argue re-instituting the Constitution is the basic fix miss the glaring fact that doing so would violate that constitution. Every move to do so would be challenged in the Judicial branch by appointees who got their tenure via the existing system. Good luck changing it..LOL.

'Laws' have become 'policy', perhaps 'guidelines' to be applied/ignored when and if expedient. This has moved right on up to the Constitution, itself.

How we define ourselves is moot. Our nation has been redefined while we slept right through it.

Well there is one thing the test got right. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you can see Obama and Romney are cut from the same political cloth. That says a lot about Democrat and Republican unless the agenda is to skew the data to show that the left is actually right and black is actually white. No pun intended there..

Whatever..

tldr at its finest.

I am in the UK and although we here have a similar Right/left divide it's not as clear cut as the American Republican/Democrat system of politics. Having been born in the 70s, a decade where the political leadership was a completely inept Labour (left) government that were controlled by unions. As such as we went into the 80s there was a political backlash and Thatchers conservatives (right) government came in and she smashed the unions to pieces! We had a period of economical boom and with this also being the height of the cold war we were taught through media that communism was evil and left wing proponents we're "loony lefties"! So that is the " text book" that formed my early understanding to the political world!!! Now as I have grown and seen that politics is just a platform for power and control and the message remains the same regardless to what doctoring they claim to come from!!! So this has lead me to think there must be a third way which I like to call "common sense"! I will give an example! The right are all about business and pandering to the money machine, where as the left look to the people coming together and making a better society! Well why not use a commercial solution to a social problem? Bring in big business and providing that the employ above a set amount of the local population then they will receive tax breaks! This will take people off the welfare bill and they will then be contributing to the nation rather than taking from it! Just an example and I am not blessed with great intelligence and will proberbly be shot down on here but that to me makes sense!

originally posted by: freethinker123
In my opinion the up down scale is incorrect it should read "statist" at the top and "anarchistic" at the bottom.
Not only is it more accurate, but two other imortant reasons - authoritarian is a negatively loaded word and used to describe say a government that is dictatorial and undemocratic.
Also almost everybody in the US these days thinks they are a libertarian - it is seen as a positive word in the US mindset. I feel like anybody who takes this test more than once will conciously or not ansnwer the questions to be more libertarian and to be less authoritarian.
There are also people that say that the test is pro libertarian.

I used to score in such test highly free market + authoritarianism. It has negative connotations, but there is no other good way to express that.

Nowadays I usually score somewhere around center. But it in my case it is somewhat misleading, because it more means that I give mixed answers for mainstream issues and no one dares to ask me about non-mainstream issues.

Anyway I thought that people here would be more right wing.

originally posted by: truckdriver42
Well there is one thing the test got right. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you can see Obama and Romney are cut from the same political cloth. That says a lot about Democrat and Republican unless the agenda is to skew the data to show that the left is actually right and black is actually white. No pun intended there..

Whatever..

It's easier to have views and great vision when you are out of office. Empty promises are also easy. Real governance involves lots of building compromise between factions, day to day administration and making pragmatic decisions. In other words the difference can be rather small.