Sunday, February 26, 2006

The Political Compass

Thanks to Sad Faced Boy for pointing me to The Political Compass. Here, once and for all, is where I stand politically:

Economic Left/Right: -5.88 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.54

Gee, this should surprise like, no-one that has ever read my blog or met me. :)

I guess a little explanation is due. From the page:


There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left' , established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

That's about as much as we should tell you for now.



So take the test, and if you want to, feel free to share the results in the comments section. Just paste in the "Show graph on separate page for printing" link that shows up beneath the graph of your results.

3 comments:

SFB said...

You were a little more left than I was, but we were close. It would be neat if Osama and Dubya would do their political compasses, that be pretty a-ok.

Josh Glover said...

Did you not see this page?

Now do you see why I would have voted for Nader if that would not have been, in effect, a vote for Duyba? Kerry... not such a liberal in my book.

I want to see the return of the Dean Machine in 2008! Though it is almost certainly going to be Hillary, and you *know* that both Clintons are in that upper left quandrant, along with all of our presidents since Jimmy Carter! :(

Anonymous said...

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/printablegraph.php?ec=-1.25&soc=-4.05

I'm glad that I am kinda close to the middle. Less chance of irate conservative students putting me on a website or something....

Hey Kohler, post your results, will ya.