It's That Time Again! Political Compass 2014

Only Dan Leach and Jenee are more pinko than you.

Of course I don't. It's TLS' equivalent of "Some of my best friends are (insert minority), that he regularly used at TrekBBS year's ago.

(I get a chuckle out of the idea that even an imaginary wife only married him for some ulterior motive.)

You're right, Jenee. I hate brown people!

My dad and uncle have been calling me a bleeding heart liberal since I started talking. I'm all about helping the people.

When will somebody else from Rightforge post their results? Is TLS the only conservative who can make it through a simple six page quiz? I mean, granted that's too much to expect from Federal Farmer, but what about Volpone?

Or shootER, or Forbin, or ... Tuttle - he was on this morning wasn't he?

I've always been uncomfortable with some of the questions, as not being nuanced enough so I don't "Strongly" very many of them so I end up closer to the middle.

I've got a feeling that they keep taking the test, with different answers, desperately hoping to earn a score that matches the Libertarian drivel they spew. One thing I remember about the last time The Political Compass surfaced at TrekBBS, is that the Liberals consistently scored well into the Libertarian end of the chart, while the self-professed Libertarians consistently wound up with marks that were well into "Authoritarian" territory.

Economic Left/Right: 0.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.56

Rusty Trombone.

I got this.

A lot of the questions sound like they were written by a college kid who equates "corporation" with "boogeyman".

Interestingly enough, as I'm also running this over on TBBS, one of the guys there felt this test had too libertarian a bias.

There are no boogeymen.
Only selfish, grasping, gluttonous, humans.

[quite="Prufrock, post: 2659642, member: 10"]A lot of the questions sound like they were written by a college kid who equates "corporation" with "boogeyman".[/quote]
So I

Exactly. I thought one of the kids here wrote it.

Case in point....

I've practically become a bleeding-heart liberal. More agrees and disagrees (as opposed to strongly agrees/disagrees) than there used to be, mostly because I dislike the mapping of the questions to score, given the wording on those questions, more than I used to.

Economic Left/Right: 6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.23

ec=2.38 soc=-2.31

I think a better approach would be to first plot various leaders or political platforms along an axis, then use "agree/disagree" in a binary search algorithm to home in where a person stands on that particular issue. Do that for perhaps a dozen economic issues, then a dozen on laws and international relations, etc.

I think a more interesting test could be based on Walter Russel Meade's four archetypes of American foreign policy, which I'll quickly excerpt as:

The Wilsonians
The Wilsonians are the idealists of American foreign policy. Coming out of the Protestant missionary tradition, the Wilsonians hold that the U.S. has a moral obligation to spread American democratic and social values to the world. The goal of the Wilsonians is to create a peaceful planet based on the rule of law.

The Wilsonians take almost a religious view of American values and thus believe they should be spread to civilize the world. They believe that foreign policy is a moral undertaking and that wars should be fought to further the aims of democracy and protect the innocent against violence and genocide. This obligation often requires a muscular military response.

...

The Hamiltonians
Simply put, the Hamiltonians support a strong alliance between big business and government and want foreign policy designed to further such ends. The Hamiltonians want to boost commerce and the standing of U.S. companies in world markets. Most analysts would place the Hamiltonians in the sphere of foreign policy “realists.” However, such a characterization is probably too simple.

The Jeffersonians
The Jeffersonians, like the Wilsonians, also believe that American values are special. However, unlike the Wilsonians, they believe those values are so precious that they should be protected by avoiding interaction with other nations. The Jeffersonians are, for the most part, libertarian isolationists. The Jeffersonians are uncomfortable with the Hamiltonians‟ willingness to deal with unsavory foreign
governments and recoil at the Wilsonians‟ openness to use military power to spread the “gospel” of American democracy.

Jeffersonians believe, like the Wilsonians, that the world would be a better place if American values were adopted; however, they have little expectation that corrupt foreigners will ever do so. Instead, the goal of Jeffersonian foreign policy is to protect U.S. values from foreign corruption.

The Jacksonians
The Jeffersonians and Jacksonians are the more uniquely American of the four archetypes. Strains of the other two can be found in the foreign policy of other states. And, of the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians, the latter is the one that probably most confounds foreigners.

The Jacksonians believe that the most important goal of foreign policy is the physical security and economic well-being of the American people. Thus, they oppose the Hamiltonian approach to policy as too willing to support business to the detriment of American workers. They also find the Wilsonian position on fighting moral wars repugnant. Why risk American lives because some dictator is abusing his own people? That problem is someone else‟s worry.

The Jacksonians are most similar to the Jeffersonians. Both oppose big government and support broad democracy. What separates the Jacksonians from the Jeffersonians is the role of national honor. According to the Jacksonians, it is dishonorable to back down from a real threat to American freedom and security.

Jacksonians generally oppose war; however, once war is deemed necessary, the Jacksonians show no quarter. Wars for Jacksonians end with unconditional surrenders by the enemy. Limited wars are of no use. If the government decides to commit itself to a war, then the enemy must be destroyed.

The inability of foreigners to understand Jacksonians has been to their detriment. Foreign governments tend to view Jacksonians and Jeffersonians in the same light; both fear war and prefer not to fight. However, what they often fail to grasp is that once committed, Jacksonians are hell-bent on winning unconditionally. Because of their full commitment, Jacksonians do not take war lightly. But, once committed, an enemy finds itself facing a formidable foe.

Jacksonians are probably the least understood of the four archetypes. To some extent, this was due to the lack of an intellectual tradition; the other three archetypes have ideological roots. Hamiltonians developed from the British conservatives. Wilsonians come from the Protestant missionary Social Gospel movement. Jeffersonians have been aligned with Libertarianism. Jacksonians are the closest the U.S. has to a folk movement. Ethnically, the Jacksonian roots spring from the Protestant Scotch-Irish that initially immigrated into the Carolinas and Virginia and spread to West Virginia, Kentucky, and parts of Illinois and Indiana.

...

In sum, the Jacksonians are probably the most uniquely American of the archetypes and most difficult to categorize. They are generally held in the least regard by the media but as the most necessary when the country is in danger. Being driven mostly by group interests instead of ideology, they are the hardest to figure out and thus ignored by most political scientists.

...

Generally speaking, all four archetypes exist in both the major political parties. The Libertarian wing of the Republican Party and the isolationist left of the Democratic Party are Jeffersonians. The Jacksonians are the Tea Party of the GOP and the labor wing of the Democratic Party. The Hamiltonians are the “country club” Republicans and the Democratic National Committee in the Democratic Party. The Wilsonians were heavily represented in the Clinton State Department and are the “neo-cons” within the GOP.

It is important to remember that the two major parties in the U.S. are essentially coalitions. Successful presidential candidates work to show these four archetypes that he represents their interests. When divisions within the parties become apparent, it is usually because these four archetypes are in conflict.

TLDR.

I'm typically around -8, -8

I was a bit surprised where I ended up. Although I have been leaning anti-GOP over the last few years.



Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.36

Just checked the site out. What a bunch of bullshit, leading questions.

You expected something different?

So, I have to ask, does this graph mean I'm a leftist? Because, that's not what everyone in Seattle tells me.

Because you didn't "occupy" the graph.

Context.

Nah. The Political Compass is screwy at best. I've done it before, but the questions are really bad and the scoring is opaque. On the first page of questions we have 1) a false dichotomy, 2) unstated assumptions about what it means to "support my country," 3) exclusion of multiple reasons other than "not a choice" for why people might or might not be proud of their country of birth, 4) a question that isn't so much about about economic left/right or authoritarian/anti-authoritarian but rather about not idiot/idiot, 5) a question that eliminates important context and that excludes the possibility of provisional assessment until additional information is gathered, 6) a question that assumes some kind of uniform understanding of what "international law" is, and 7) a multiply compound question that excludes important context. Some of these issues are more problematic than others, but they've all been noted from the start and none of the questions appears to have ever been revised, at least in my experience of observing the political compass page.