What is your political leaning/compass test.

[mixed_biscuits]

Economic Left/Right: -2.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.79

As I suspected - I'm so much better balanced than the other posters here.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Dunno about that. The neocon agenda is going just swimmingly, isn't it?

I'm not sure I get you - neocons aren't exactly centrist, are they?

 

[swears]

Sorry, wires crossed. I was agreeing...

And hopefully the US can get back to some centrist (if not leftist) politics soon.

 

[vimothy]

I'm not sure I get you - neocons aren't exactly centrist, are they?

Depends what you mean by 'neocons'.

 

[nomadthethird]

Centrism sounds great, doesn't it? But let's look at famous centrist JOHN MCCAIN and you'll see that centrists are just another group of lobbyist-indebted opportunists who embrace anything if they think it'll get them elected.

 

[nomadthethird]

Economic Left/Right: -2.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.79

As I suspected - I'm so much better balanced than the other posters here.

Can you think of any progressive agenda, historical movement, or forward-thinking intellectual pursuit that hasn't been denegrated for being too "unbalanced"? I'm sure they thought Galileo was quite unbalanced--as a matter of fact, they did! Imagine what life would be like had we never benefited from the imbalance of great minds past.

Leonardo Da Vinci was pretty crazy, spent all day writing backwards in a diary and muttering to himself...Susan B. Anthony was a crazy radical in her day...Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks weren't graciously bowing down to the status quo either.

I wouldn't be so proud of being "balanced" if I were you

 

[josef k.]

I would like to raise some objections here.

Firstly, I have never met anyone who hasn't featured in the lower left of the graph - including confirmed Tory supporters. This leads me to question whether the system is nuanced enough to register real political differences.

Equally, the graph asks you questions about your opinions. But is politics really a matter of opinion - as opposed, say, to a matter of habits?

Finally, there is a sense in which almost every question which the test asks is itself questionable... In particular, it seems that "Dis/Agree" really means "Dis/approve of" - but the idea of politics as a matter of sentiments is already a particular kind of politics, and one which intransigent right-wingers - say, Hayek - would not accept as valid.

 

[vimothy]

I have never met anyone who hasn't featured in the lower left of the graph - including confirmed Tory supporters. This leads me to question whether the system is nuanced enough to register real political differences.

Yep.

The very first statement:

"If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations."

??

 

[IdleRich]

"Firstly, I have never met anyone who hasn't featured in the lower left of the graph - including confirmed Tory supporters. This leads me to question whether the system is nuanced enough to register real political differences."

You may not have met him but Oliver Craner said this on the previous page:

Economic Left/Right: 1.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.41

Pretty boring!

 

[nomadthethird]

I would like to raise some objections here.

Firstly, I have never met anyone who hasn't featured in the lower left of the graph - including confirmed Tory supporters. This leads me to question whether the system is nuanced enough to register real political differences.

Equally, the graph asks you questions about your opinions. But is politics really a matter of opinion - as opposed, say, to a matter of habits?

Finally, there is a sense in which almost every question which the test asks is itself questionable... In particular, it seems that "Dis/Agree" really means "Dis/approve of" - but the idea of politics as a matter of sentiments is already a particular kind of politics, and one which intransigent right-wingers - say, Hayek - would not accept as valid.

Did anyone really say it was a hard and fast calculation going on here? I mean it's about as scientific as a personality test on Emode.com, or a MENSA IQ test-- which is to say, not very.

I don't think this test is very meaningful, it's just a general grid representation of where you stand with regard to broad political categories...

 

[josef k.]

You may not have met him but Oliver Craner said this on the previous page:

Craner remains the universal exception.

 

[josef k.]

Did anyone really say it was a hard and fast calculation going on here? I mean it's about as scientific as a personality test on Emode.com, or a MENSA IQ test-- which is to say, not very.

I don't think this test is very meaningful, it's just a general grid representation of where you stand with regard to broad political categories...

I wonder if there could be a meaningful test on this question (though perhaps all tests are in some sense meaningless...) In any event, my major point is that the sentimental and abstract conception of politics which it is based on is highly problematic. As evidenced by:

Yep.

The very first statement:

"If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations."

??

 

[mos dan]

Economic Left/Right: -7.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.72

which is quite a bit less left and libertarian than when i did this back in 2004, according to my email search function

the questions are definitely loaded leftwards, i agree, lots of quite provocative language there.

Hmmm looks from that previous thread like I am still creeping towards the right and authoritarianism.

Very slowly.

i refer you to one of the statements:

"Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity."

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Can you think of any progressive agenda, historical movement, or forward-thinking intellectual pursuit that hasn't been denegrated for being too "unbalanced"?

That's all well and good, but little did you know that my ostensibly centrist scores came from having been given the mean of twenty diametrically-opposed pairs of utterly extreme views, making me the first person in history to be foward-thinking in both directions.

 

[gabriel]

yeah i agree with josef k, i answered all these questions truthfully about how i feel about stuff, what i think etc, but in terms of how i act, how i live my life, the choices i make day to day, which is surely more important, i don't think i'm at the same point of the chart as where i ended up...

 

[Mr. Tea]

Centrism sounds great, doesn't it? But let's look at famous centrist JOHN MCCAIN and you'll see that centrists are just another group of lobbyist-indebted opportunists who embrace anything if they think it'll get them elected.

I'm not sure there are, or in living memory have been, (m)any American politicians I'd really call 'centrist'. Maybe FDR.

 

[vimothy]

Clinton?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well I just took the test again with the express intention of being the most humungous arsehole possible. This is what you get if you're a religious, astrology-loving, nationalistic, homophobic, pro-business, pro-hanging, anti-BBC moral relativist:

You Couldn't Make It Up!!!

 

[craner]

Craner remains the universal exception.

What, mildly non-collectivist? It's true, I am a wild and crazy guy.

 

[josef k.]

The word, I believe, is "maverick."