haroeris_astrum
August 29, 2004 6:09 AM [link]

I am pretty much near you: Economic Left/Right: -4.88 and Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26

alt
August 29, 2004 1:40 PM [link]

also on that page, in the iconochasms section, this blew my mind:

"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."

George Bush Snr, in A World Transformed, 1998

Nereus
August 29, 2004 7:27 PM [link]

btw, did you do the compass test Altie?

alt
August 29, 2004 7:50 PM [link]

i took it, it was something like (-3,-5), same plane as you are. the test was amusing.

Nereus
August 29, 2004 9:10 PM [link]

Hmm.. now if this trend continues, why is it that the people who represent us don't have the same belief system?

Nereus
August 29, 2004 9:22 PM [link]

Yeah you're probably right. Kind of a 'walk a mile in my shoes and see how you feel then' type deal.

Nereus
August 30, 2004 1:24 PM [link]

nods, with the amount of backstabbing that goes on in politics.. as you said, regardless of how noble your reasons for starting into politics, once you start climbing the ladder of power, I think it becomes more about forming power bases and strategies rather than anything to do with the interests of the people you are supposed to represent. Of course many are there purely because they are power-hungry in the first place, hence the mass of politicians in the authoritarian quadrants, and the idealists in the anarchism quadrants.

I think anarchism is the wrong word to use in covering those quadrants though. Anarchism is the theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished, and that is as closed-minded as dictatorship imho.

david
August 30, 2004 6:04 PM [link]

I think anarchism is different than libertarianism. I think most libertarians would prefer the preservation of things like law enforcement but don't believe the government has any authority to dictate a person's actions if it doesn't hurt anyone else.

Dana
August 30, 2004 7:33 PM [link]

Yeah my sentiments exactly David!

Colleen
September 4, 2004 8:26 AM [link]

I was -2 something. I think i was a few squares over the right of you. dont even know what it means. Im not really good with politics :P

Nereus
September 11, 2004 10:28 AM [link]

Ok results are in:

New Zealand:
-1.00 , -0.97
-5.88 , -3.03
-5.80 , -3.00
-5.10 , -5.80
-3.25 , -1.54
-3.50 , -4.57
-1.75 , -1.28
-5.88 , -4.10
-3.00 , -0.87
-1.25 , -0.87
-4.62 , -1.23
-5.62 , +1.18
+1.38 , +0.56

United States:
-4.88 , -4.26
-3.00 , -5.03
-3.75 , -2.15
-5.62 , -1.08
-4.50 , -3.08
-7.50 , -5.95
-6.25 , -2.77
-2.75 , +0.05
-5.62 , +1.18
+4.88 , -0.92
+2.10 , -2.03
+0.12 , -3.79

Canada:
-1.50 , +1.13

Russia:
-4.00 , -0.51

Ukraine:
-4.88 , -0.87

Lithuania:
-3.50 , -0.15

Kuala Lumpur:
-1.38 , +1.08

Singapore:
-2.75 , +3.38

France:
-3.12 , -2.62

Interesting. Note the two asian countries are both right (libertarian). There's a few deviations, but the overwhelming amount are in the lower left quadrant. A few comments were made in collecting this data which is also worth considering. I'll just quote them all here, feel free to discuss:

There's some severe question effects in the test- i.e. encouraging certain answers so that people appear to be more in the bottom left. This is for the sake of proving a point I think- that the leaders of the United States and Great Britain are bad, and people are inherently good. Also, there is no neutral option for you to pick- kind of difficult when you don't have an opinion, or your opinion on some of the quesitons doesn't fit into any of he above categories.

There were an awful lot of statements that had there been the option i would not have agreed or disagreed with....looking at everyones survey results im thinking the questions are pretty leading.

Many of the questions were heavily weighted to be answered a certain way. I'd be surprised if anyone didn't end up in the Ghandi quadrant.

The opinion I'm glad to share is that some collectivism's ideas are good in nature but impossible to apply successfully given modern man's egocentric nature. They could be applied if authority was concentrated in the hand of a few, but those few should be close-to-holy men (hmmm forget "holy" in those troubled religious times, "perfect" should do better) to avoid to be corrupted by the power they'd get (we got enough exemples of the result of too much power in the wrong hands). All in all, the democratic system is a good compromise because it's damn slow to change anything : thus we won't get anything worse in a rush... or anything better either. Example of badly asked question:
"A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system."
Well as a matter of fact this is true, no one can contest this ! When no one tries to discuss a point, it goes faster to edict a Law Smile. But the question doesn't ask you if you like it or not, or if the "quality" of laws created this way is good/bad. Thus everyone who carefully read the question and didn't extrapolate it to "It is true and I like it"/"It is true and I don't like it" should have answered agree/strongly agreed.

Have you ever noticed how the definition of "left" and "right" in politics is completely nonexistent?
I mean, it isn't even unclear... people try to combine so many things into "left" and "right" that it's like classifying religion by leader(s) shoe size.
Political commentators call the Communists "conservative" and even "right wing"... so long as they are talking about a country from the former Communist block. In any other country, the Communists are "left wing", "radicals", and the exact opposite of conservative.
In countries with wide political spectrum, "fascism" and "communism" are considered "far right" and "far left" respectively... but they are both totalitarian, both are single-party, both believe that They know better than anybody else (and anybody else better shut the **** up or be killed/jailed), both tend to be anti-immigration, both are anti-religion...
right and left? my hands.

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from the highest motives for the greatest good of the greater number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.
- Robert Heinlein -

Interesting.