February 14, 2004

• I scored a -2.62, -6.26. All hail the libertarian left!
• Much more importantly, which composer are you? I'm Chopin, whee! (2.38 right, -2.51 libertarian) /returning to etude Op 10 No 1
• Economic Left/Right: -6.00; Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: - 4.56. (I once scored -7.12/-5.95... I must have put down a lot more "strongly agree/strongly disagree answers that time)
• Economic Left/Right: -6.50 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.18 As to composers: "Those fat monkeys covered in banknotes Have champagne and brandy on tap; They're up to their eyeballs in franc notes, We're up to our noses in crap. "Those gorilla-mouthed fakers Are longing to see us all rot. The gentry may lose a few acres, But we lose the little we've got." ---Peter Weiss' Marat/Sade
  
• Economic Left/Right: -7.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.05 ...it's interesting to note that several of us monkeys 'beat' Gandhi. In yer face, pacifist scum! We're more liberal-left than you'll ever be! Having said all that, I had some difficulty answering several of the questions, either because they seemed to be asking more than one thing, or simply because they didn't actually make any sense in the English language (eg "Multinational companies are unethically exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries").
• Political Survey: an open, honest version of politicalcompass.org.
• Economic Left/Right: -5.00 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.13 I was most surprised by how far left Saddam Hussein was on the compass.
• I hate the way you have to profess an opinion on something, no matter what. Skews the answers somewhat, surely. (Not that this has any real statistical or moral basis, I expect.) They've got rid of a question about whether the Jews deserved to be persecuted by the Nazis, too. Economic Left/Right: -8.62 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.90 I always knew I was an evil liberalcommunist. Hopefully the results of this are sent to David Blunkett, and I can be arrested for the good of the country. From verstegan's link 1 left/right -9.4280 (-0.5675) 2 pragmatism +1.7161 (+0.1033) I don't really understand what the pragmatism/idealism represents though: maybe its the amount of no opinions I used, or something.
• Economic Left/Right: -3.50 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.85 It is intriguing to see how Libertarian everyone is. The second survey: 1 left/right -2.2720 (-0.1368) 2 pragmatism +1.2392 (+0.0746)
• Left/Right: -1.00 Lib/Auth: -4.25 Whoo.. Mozart.
• re verstegan's link: left/right: 10.0525(-0.651) pragmatism: +0.67(-0.0408) Can't say I grasp it, either, dng.
• According to the author, rather than try to map values onto existing political notions, he extracted the eigenvectors of greatest variance, which don't necessarily map to "naughty" or "nice." Second eigenvector ("pragmatism") This axis is much less important than the first. It represents a combination of philosophies you could call "pragmatism", "utilitarianism" and so forth, mixing social, religious and economic issues. We have chosen to give an atheist, utilitarian perspective positive values on this axis. left/right: +0.7683 (+0.0462) pretty damned centrist pragmatism: +6.6176 (+0.3983) whoa, I'm off the chart The author's bloggish thing is pretty amusing, for a sufficiently geeky value of "amusing."
• from verstegan's link, i'm left/right -7.5976 (-0.4573) pragmatism -0.7840 (-0.0472) very close to Tony Benn, whoever that is. in the original i was one of the most far left on mefi when it was posted there.(although i don't think i'm very leftist at all, just a good liberal) : >
• Tony Benn
• From the new survey: left/right -2.7095 (-0.1631) pragmatism +2.0241 (+0.1218)
• thanks, dng--so i'm socialist(ish) : >
• I lost.
• The most interesting thing about Political Compass is the refusal to equate left economic values with authoritarian political values, or right-wing economic values with libertarian political ones. The point is that Saddam Hussein could be left wing economically and highly authoritarian - whereas I am an anarcho-communist (my friend coined this for us extreme left/libertarians :) In fact, I have heard it suggested that more dimensions could be added, such as how conservative one is, in the sense of "how much do you like change". Many people who are left are also conservative to some degree, myself among them - we like the semi-socialist society our parents and grand-parents have made, and we don't want so-called neo-cons to destroy it. Oh - did the survey ages ago and I forgot my score, but suffice to say it's somewhere in the lower left hand corner. Mellowing on the anarchism in my old age, but probably getting more socialist the more I learn about the nature of poverty and society.
• Economic Left/Right: -4.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.15 The last time I took this test I was about +1 on the Economic Left/Right score. I've been unemployed two days and already I'm a socialist!
• Economic Left/Right: 2.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.85 Tchiakovsky!
• I'm interested in this critique of Political Compass: "there is a suspicion that its questions are designed to make respondents lean towards an economically right-wing, socially liberal ("right libertarian") position .." If true, that might explain why all of us seem to have come out as "libertarian" regardless of political affiliation. My own view, for what it's worth, is that there's a big difference between "liberal" (= belief in personal freedom) and "libertarian" (= belief in the efficiency of the free market), and that the Political Compass survey doesn't make a sufficiently clear distinction between them. I think of myself as liberal but not libertarian, so it was rather a shock to take the survey and find myself in the "left-libertarian" camp. I have a suspicion that the Political Compass is designed to delude left-wing liberals into believing that they are actually "libertarian", thus encouraging them to support right-wing libertarian proposals to roll back the frontiers of the state.
• Actually, I had always thought (based on the way the question was framed) that Political Compass was started by leftists who wanted to show how left!=Stalin (a "mistake" often perpetuated by economically right wing commentators). I did note that they are apparently British, which would suggest that whole left/right scale would be shifted to the left from an American perspective, though, of course, not as much since Thatcher. I had thought that the bias in the language of the questions in Political Compass was towards economically left, morally liberal = good, while in the Political Survey, the framing of the first questions I had (they change order, unlike Political Compass) seemed towards socially conservative, economically right wing = good. Maybe I was reading too much into this, but the first questions I had were "Is the family more important than society", which a leftist would never think of. Also, I was scored more communist on the Political Compass than I was on the Political Survey. Incidentally, Political Compass.org response to accusations of bias are that "Most of [the statements] are slanted! Some right-wingers accuse us of a leftward slant. Some left-wingers accuse us of a rightward slant. But it's important to realise that this isn't a survey, and these aren't questions. They're propositions - an altogether different proposition." In response to the comment "You can't be libertarian and left wing" (in the FAQ) the makers of Political Compass say: --- "This is almost exclusively an American response, overlooking the undoubtedly libertarian tradition of European anarcho-syndicalism. It was, after all, the important French anarchist thinker Proudhon who declared that property is theft." --- (continued next comment)
• The rest of the response to this question seems to suggest even more to me that the makers of the Political Compass are leftists, who wish to point out that liberalism is compatible with leftist economic beliefs (and indeed, some believe that democracy itself is undermined if the society does not reduce economic inequality). --- "On the other side of the Atlantic, the likes of Emma Goldman were identified as libertarians long before the term was adopted by some economic rightwingers. And what about the libertarian collectives of the mid-late 1800s and 1960s? Americans like Noam Chomsky can claim the label 'libertarian socialist' with the same validity that Milton Friedman can be considered a 'libertarian capitalist'. The assumption that Social Darwinism delivers more social freedom is questionable. The welfare states of, for example, Sweden and The Netherlands, abolished capital punishment decades ago and are at the forefront of progressive legislation for women, gays and ethnic minorities - not to mention anti-censorship. Such developments would presumably be envied by genuine libertarians in socially conservative countries - even if their taxes are lower. Interestingly, many economic libertarians express to us their support for or indifference towards capital punishment; yet the execution of certain citizens is a far stronger assertion of state power than taxation. N.B. The death penalty is practised in all seriously authoritarian states. In Eastern Europe it was abolished with the fall of communism and adoption of democracy. The United States is the only western democracy where capital punishment is still practised." --- I think the Political Compasses' point - one which Political Survey does not seem to understand, and which I believe is very very important: the recognition that economic and political beliefs don't fall on one axis. The US Republican party denounces big government and governmental interference in the economy, and yet happily increases governmental interference in the lives of its citizens, through both the Patriot Act and the anti-gay marriage bill proposed. Just in the same way, one can hold communist ideals (that we should promote common property, reduce the power of capitalism) without being a Stalinist or even a Marxist. (Incidentally, both Leninism and Stalinism are their own brands of political thought separate from Marxism - the three were mixed under Stalin, but things changed after his death.) As for verstgan's suggestion that this website might encourage the rolling back of state infrastructure, I don't believe that is a problem. I noticed that the website also makes a strong distinction between state services and state restrictions - the up-down axis is not "government interference" but "authoritarian/libertarian". Despite the fact that I answered "agree strongly" to all proposals for government interference in the marketplace (particularly in the form of social welfare), I was rated as a libertarian because I believe in stongly protected personal freedoms. If I were to accuse this website of any agenda, it would be to make us all into Swedish style pinkos - power to them.
• PS - sorry for again posting a comment so long that it had to be broken into two, and in the first sentance, just to clarify - I meant that right wing commentators (and random people on the street, esp since I moved to the US) seem to make the "mistake" that left=Stalin, and perpetuate it as so. I blame the cold war... and Fox News.
• PPS - Bartok all the way! I love his work.
• Sorry - just one more point. In exploring the FAQ, I found confirmation that the makers of the site are, in fact, British. Q: "When are you guys gonna learn to spell?" A: "This grievance comes from those who aren't aware that British and American spellings sometimes differ. We've been at the centre of some rancour, but we're not going to take offence or harbour any grievances. The catalogue of complaints won't colour this organisation's programme. It's a grey area anyway. And we don't want to labour the point."
• bees: I played Jacques Roux in a college production. Economic Left/Right: -5.88 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.74 Fairly close to Mandela, which is heartening.
• Good man, forky. Up la Republique!
• According to Harvard, college students have an particular set of political beliefs, against which you can measure yourself. [As seen on TVMefi]
• You are a Traditional Liberal. Traditional liberals like you tend to be: Against pre-emptive strikes as a policy. Strongly supportive of gay rights. Of the belief that immigration has been good for this country. Supportive of affirmative-action. Oppose tax cuts as an economic policy. Of the belief that basic health insurance is a right. Yep.
• Seconded.
• Can I be pedantic and say that really traditional liberals are against high taxes or government interference in society or the economy, and never said anything about pre-emptive strikes or affirmative action, though I believe they were generally against slavery. Also not always fond of kings, at least the ones named Thomas Paine. /stuck in the past, and missing my really traditional paternalistic conservatives, ala Thomas More.
• The Liberal Party in Australia are the conservatives, and the liberals are the Labor Party. That's just how it happened!
• Secular Centrist here. Damn, the calluses on my knuckles are showing.
• Another traditional liberal. [Never jb's kind.]
• I didn't say they were my kind. Just that that's what liberals were. I thank Lloyd George for fixing them (Old Age pension and all).
• I was clumsy there, jb, and I'm sorry. I meant only by "jb's kind" the ones you described above, as opposed to the more common modern definition.
• Another Secular Centrist here. I would have been clasified as Traditional Liberal during most of my high school and college years. I blame the internet for the change.
• Speaking as an apparent Traditional Liberal, I find it odd that according to this, one can either be secular or liberal, but not really both; any significant move down the secular axis, and you're automatically placed as a centrist. That's weird. Where's the atheist socialist democrats gone? Can't work out if this is a "bad study" thing, or an "America" thing...
• Both :)