On The Political Spectrum

[Kosmo]

I have an ID like hundreds of millions of Europeans and I have no problems with that. It serves to identify a person and that's useful with "marriages, births, school enrollments, credit ratings, insurance policies, membership in political parties and unions and churches". It does not mean that someone gathers all this data and then uses it against me. And it does not mean that the state can deny me my rights.

[M. Porcius Cato]

I have an ID like hundreds of millions of Europeans and I have no problems with that. It serves to identify a person and that's useful with "marriages, births, school enrollments, credit ratings, insurance policies, membership in political parties and unions and churches". It does not mean that someone gathers all this data and then uses it against me. And it does not mean that the state can deny me my rights.

 

By itself, the ID doesn't deny you your rights--but it is a tool by which the State can deny you your rights. Why make it easier for them?

[ASCLEPIADES]

Personally, I agree with Ayn Rand: "... The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe..."

I know I should have asked Mrs. Rand, but that phrase just doesn't make any sense.

[P.Clodius]

"We" could also check them at airports--and keep track of who goes where and when. "We" could require them for employment--and know where every drop of a citizen's economic blood comes from (the better to drain it). And "we" could also use them to validate marriages, births, school enrollments, credit ratings, insurance policies, membership in political parties and unions and churches, so that "we" the State can track, monitor, and approve or deny every aspect of our private lives and social intercourse.

Ahhhhh....Utopia

 

Wasn't it easier chasing Ibex an clubbing women over the head for Saturday night amusement?

[Nephele]

Personally, I agree with Ayn Rand: "... The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe..."

I know I should have asked Mrs. Rand, but that phrase just doesn't make any sense.

 

Maybe you need to read The Fountainhead.

 

-- Nephele

[Ursus]

Here, I think this quiz is a bit more comprehensive.

 

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

[ASCLEPIADES]

Here, I think this quiz is a bit more comprehensive.

 

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Salve Ursus et Gratiam habeo for that link.

 

And comprehensive indeed it is; whole politics, economics and sociology class in one shot.

[Faustus]

Here, I think this quiz is a bit more comprehensive.

Interesting, this is a "thinking person's test. and certainly more painful to take! On this I moved 3/4th square left of center, and one and one and 1-3/4th square south of center towards Libertarian; painfully in the middle. Feeling strongly only 3 or 4 times, the questions led me to frustrated ambiguity. This from a former Goldwater supporting (1964), Ayn Rand reading (Fountainhead/Atlas Shrugged), "Australia-immigration-idealizing" person as a young man.

 

The first TEST had the benifit of defining a central region ("centrist"), and on which I was 70P and 80E, well outside the"centrist" regions.

 

Ursus, your test may just remove the "shooting from the hip" feature of the first test, spontaneity or the first "gut reaction" we (some of us) employ in our personal and economic thinking.

 

Faustus

[Nephele]

Here, I think this quiz is a bit more comprehensive.

 

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

 

Some of those propositions could be answered either way, depending on what one imagines is meant by them. Such as "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Is that asking whether one believes one's government has the right to impose capital punishment for a crime resulting in the death of the victim -- or simply whether you are justified in punching someone back who punched you first?

 

Anyway, here's how I fared on this test:

 

http://www.politicalcompass.org/printableg...0&soc=-6.05

 

While I was somewhat surprised to see myself placed so far to the right, I was interested to read this in the FAQ:

 

You've got liberals on the right. Don't you know they're left ?

This response is exclusively American. Elsewhere neo-liberalism is understood in standard political science terminology - deriving from mid 19th Century Manchester Liberalism, which campaigned for free trade on behalf of the capitalist classes of manufacturers and industrialists. In other words, laissez-faire or economic libertarianism.

In the United States, "liberals" are understood to believe in leftish economic programmes such as welfare and publicly funded medical care, while also holding liberal social views on matters such as law and order, peace, sexuality, women's rights etc. The two don't necessarily go together.

Our Compass rightly separates them. Otherwise, how would you label someone like the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who, on the one hand, pleased the left by supporting strong economic safety nets for the underprivileged, but angered social liberals with his support for the Vietnam War, the Cold War and other key conservative causes ?

 

-- Nephele

[M. Porcius Cato]

Strictly as a poll, the alternative quiz is poor. Assessments of political philosophy shouldn't be filled with biased language like "predator multinationals" or contain questions about hopelessly vague policies like "an eye for eye" or non-political issues like the value of non-representational art. How this last issue puts one in the grid is beyond me.

 

Anyway, my results HERE.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Strictly as a poll, the alternative quiz is poor. Assessments of political philosophy shouldn't be filled with biased language like "predator multinationals" or contain questions about hopelessly vague policies like "an eye for eye" or non-political issues like the value of non-representational art. How this last issue puts one in the grid is beyond me.

Salve, MPC.

The mere fact that you consider the phrase "predator multinationals" biased or not is an actual measure of your political attitudes.

 

Lex talionis ( "an eye for an eye" from Exodus 21:23

[Nephele]

Lex talionis ( "an eye for an eye" from Exodus 21:23

[ASCLEPIADES]

...the quiz does not make clear whether that "eye for an eye" proposition applies to capital punishment or merely to personal retribution.

-- Nephele

From where I am, "eye for an eye" implies damage and punishement are identical. Then, capital punishment would be the retribution for killing. Am I wrong?

[Nephele]

From where I am, "eye for an eye" implies damage and punishement are identical. Then, capital punishment would be the retribution for killing. Am I wrong?

 

Not if you're comfortable with your government having the power of life and death over you. Frankly, I'm not comfortable with that at all, especially since our government makes mistakes (and sometimes those mistakes are deliberate).

 

As I said, the power of life and death over us is too much power for our government to wield. And that is the reason why I am opposed to capital punishment.

 

-- Nephele

[ASCLEPIADES]

From where I am, "eye for an eye" implies damage and punishement are identical. Then, capital punishment would be the retribution for killing. Am I wrong?

 

Not if you're comfortable with your government having the power of life and death over you. Frankly, I'm not comfortable with that at all, especially since our government makes mistakes (and sometimes those mistakes are deliberate).

 

-- Nephele

Don't get my wrong, Lady N; I'm not defending the Lex Talionis or capital punishment, even less its implementation by anyone, but just trying to explain what I think that specific question on the political compass' quiz means and what it is intended to measure.

Edited June 23, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES