The Politcal Compass assessment has been around awhile. I imagine most here have taken it before. In the above chart, we can see where some 2012 candidates are predicted to fall. There is a short article under it that begins, "This is a US election that defies logic and brings the nation closer towards a one-party state masquerading as a two-party state." Where do you land?
33 comments:
The great political divide is between collectivists (all Dems, most Pubbies) and individualists.
Outside government there are (probably) more individualists than collectivists.
Ergo the saying: situation hopeless but not serious.
"Outside government there are (probably) more individualists than collectivists."
So when government tanks, it'll be pretty okay? That's nice. I should do some sort of prepping, but I'm a massive procrastinator.
So there is no example of an authoritarian leftist? That's absurd. They all are.
I'm sorry, but any chart that places President Obama in the right quarter is just silly. His positions on healthcare, same-sex marriage, immigration, and abortion are all solidly left.
I agree that if you are looking at the global left-right scale he is not far-left, and the scale needs plenty of room for all out communists. But there also needs to be room on the right for a right-wing theocracy. Is Obama really closer to a theocrat than he is to the center?
Bago, here's one that shows Stalin in the authoritarian left.
Igs, Obama was very pro business/finance with TARP and the Stimulus. I would think his immigration stance has at least as much to do with pro business interests as gaining Dem votes.
I think the Clintons, Romney, and Obama are all Neoliberals...pragmatists on social issues, which will ultimately streamline business.
Where does one belong on this diagram if your strongest desire is to be the last man on earth, alone, no vampires, no zombies, just a man and his butterflies?
Given that Obama lies about just about everything (He gives the names of his daughters correctly. I think.). Or changes his mind minute to minute, not to mention his "transformational" attitudes it is impossible to believe he is situated where he is on this grid.
That guy is floating somewhere beyond the boundaries of the chart, bago :) Have you gotten the buckwheat in yet?
Good point, JAL.
@ deb Igs, Obama was very pro business/finance with TARP and the Stimulus.
Screwing the GM bondholders doesn't fit the model.
It -- "saving the businesses" -- using the authoritarian government somewhat with his magic fiat wand (joke) that wanders away from the entrepreneurial model of business. I think.
How can BHO be to the right when he is a "community" organizer? It's all about the collective, redistributing wealth (that's really what Obamanotcare is all about) and getting reparations, one way or the other.
The stimuli were not pro business - they were pro union. Most of the money went to keep public employees working and their benefits accounts from going to crap. That's why they didn't work. The weakest recovery since the middle ages. Keeping the Bush tax cuts was a form of stimulus that worked better, but enough other instability and fear was injected to wipe out the effect. The pro-business thing would have been to let more banks and businesses fail to open up those assets to better management and reorganization. When I think of pro-business I think of it in terms of all business, not just large connected ones which are a minority, but heavy donors. Helping them is more paying to grease the skids, and keep them from turning against you. For someone with Obama's ideology spreading a lot of money around where you want - picking winners and losers IS the end game.
Deb,
After an extensive search, the Sea Cliff Buckwheat was located, acquired, and is thriving all around my place. No butterflies yet, but I keep hearing voices in my head that say "Plant it, and they will come." Of course that might just be my pothead neighbor whispering behind the fence.
I don't see how the stimulus could be counted as pro-business or pro-finance. It mostly fell into three categories: Tax cuts, grants to states that paid for typical government spending, and infrastructure spending. The last is the only one that could be considered pro-business, but even there it was standard government spending for government purposes.
And if you look at the TARP money that actually cost the US government ( in other words, the money that hasn't been paid back ) it mostly went to the automakers to protect their labor, and to state programs to help refinance homeowners who were underwater.
As some of you may know I am obsessed with the movie Argo and finally found out about the sexy Iranian American actor Farshad Farahat. In Argo he plays the last check point interragator. He was so mean and hateful....I wanted him to shit some Iranian couscous on my face he was so fucking hot.
Well of course it went to college in Mass. We have tons of Muzzie terrorists walking the streets but he is special.
I want him to interragate me.
He is fucking so beautiful and so hot.
JAL, Ig, I don't know from economics, really, but I was under the impression that TARP bailed out Wall Street, which saved the whole shebang with regard to a world-wide meltdown. I thought the point of the stimulus was to give people money to spend, which would benefit some American business. As far as GM, that was a travesty of justice used to bail out Dem supporters (the union). Yes, he does have to work both sides of the street.
Yes, I agree, the side of entrepreneurial business was overlooked, but big business was benefited, and will be under ACA. Neoliberalism.
" For someone with Obama's ideology spreading a lot of money around where you want - picking winners and losers IS the end game."
The end game may be an authoritarian command economy, but I hope not. There was a very interesting TARP era Taibbi article that said a bill was up for passage that would give the Executive the power to shut down or take over companies that were out of control or in danger, or something. He was frantic about it. I need to look it up...don't know if it was passed.
I look forward to the pictures when you get them in.
Aside from old Uncle Joe, they also list Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez as upper-left-quadrantists. So he's not all alone up there in the pink.
Still, looking at all their sample graphs, there is a noticeable axis forming: most people fall along a line that runs from lower left to upper right, 'libertarian left' to 'authoritarian right'. And it looks like a majority, or at least a good plurality, of all people still fall into the upper-right 'authoritarian right' quadrant. This makes me wonder about the calibration of their instruments, so to speak; some of their questions are quite ham-handed and clearly leading. But I guess it still has use for strictly comparative purposes.
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: 1.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.59
A smidge into the purple zone for me. I note that I am slowly edging rightward as the years go by.
I can't give credbility to any "test" that places Obama in a high Authoritarian Right position. I agree with bagoh20, it is absurd.
That said, I took the test. Apparently I am a slightly leftist slightly libertarian. Go figure.
Choom is slightly to the Right of the Romster?
By that graph, so was Uncle Joe.
Whooops, s/b Left
According to our relative chart placements, the two candidates on that list that I should feel most simpatico with would be Rocky Anderson (who?) and Jill Stein. But there's not a chance in a billion years I would have voted for either one of them. And me, to the left of Barack Obama? I effing think not.
I think their assessments of political figures are skewed by the assessors' own generally 'left-libertarian' viewpoints. E.g., Obama isn't as far left as they are, ergo he's really on the center-right!
Probably all the 'public figure' scorings need to be moved several squares to the left, except the ones that are already near the left edge of the chart.
It's nothing new to note the progressive "authoritarian left" (excellent description) think Obama is a centrist.
On the flip, If Obama were a CEO, he'd be in jail.
I recall when I took the test for the second time, a couple years ago, thinking a few the questions were not well written. The ones I would think really hard on, someone else might breeze by, by assuming the writers' intent, which was probably a correct assumption. That is to say, I think I knew what they intended, but was compelled to answer them as they were worded.
I ended up where Ari is.
I plot about where I've plotted other times I've done it.
I question the questions, though. There were few questions that made a distinction between asking your opinion on a subject and asking if you felt the need for government enforcement of your opinion.
They've got Milton Friedman coming out closer to the center... and sure he's not ever an anarchist, but how do they get 2/3rds of the whole spectrum of center-to-anarchist between him and anarchist? What exists there?
I realize that I'm libertairan-lite but it put me on the plus side (ever so very slightly) toward authoritarian.
You get Hitler way way up at the top edge and Thatcher just a row or two below him...
The whole chart is obviously shifted downwards about four rows so everyone is charting more authoritarian than they ought.
And there is a big big big difference between believing in teaching discipline and understanding the need for personal discipline and thinking it's okay for someone else to have authority over you.
Conservatives tend to be rule-followers and believe in and value order.
This also is not the same as accepting someone else having authority over you. It's the basis for autonomous individuals to cooperate with each other, not for top-down authority to decide what is what.
Well said, Synova.
That chart looks like Windows! And I'm STILL trying to install Service Pack 1 on Windows 7!
Now, where do we put Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer on that?
Dude, even I could put service pack 1 into windows 7! However, apparently, my computer was too old to install windows 8 on.
phx, ari, and I were in the lower left corner...hangin' out with Gandhi :)
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