# The Political Compass- Where are YOU?



## adambyte (Mar 28, 2004)

I'm going to apologize ahead of time... I have no idea where I got this, but if I got it from somehwere on this board, feel free to point out my idiocy. 

Take the quiz found here:
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/questionnaire.pl?page=1

...and tell us where _your_ dot lies on the political compass.

Mine's right near Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. And as I recall, I haven't heard a bad thing about Ghandi. 

(Another interesting pages is the "US Primaries 2004" chart on the left menu thingy.) 

So where are you?


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## bobw (Mar 28, 2004)

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.21


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## mdnky (Mar 28, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -2.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.44


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## markceltic (Mar 28, 2004)

Economic Left/Right:-4.00                                                                                          `Social Libertarian/Authoritarian:-1.13   That puts me in the league of Mandela.::love::


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## ora (Mar 28, 2004)

Ha Ha Ha, i come out as L/R -7.25   Lib/Auth -7.74, so i must be the local lefty-liberal wimp, ahh well, there are worse things to be. 
On the other hand, who is gonna put in anything but strongly disagree to "People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce." I mean really!


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## JetwingX (Mar 28, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -5.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.00


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## markceltic (Mar 28, 2004)

Well ora it does say you have an "addled brain"!


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## The Memory Hole (Mar 29, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -4.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.31

Dummied (very much so) down version: http://www.loveinwar.com/game.cfm

Btw ora, I pretty sure quite a few people would just love to stop those with inheritable diseases from reproducing.


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## Cat (Mar 29, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -4.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.08


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## ksv (Mar 30, 2004)

-7,62, -7,54 here. That leaves me 2,38 points right of my brother


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## Ricky (Mar 30, 2004)

-0.25, -2.62.  I'm not close to anyone.


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## brianleahy (Mar 30, 2004)

-6.75, -3.03

I think it's interesting that so far, nobody here has a positive number for either score.

I did not, however 'strongly disagree' with "People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce."  

I would make no blanket statements about "disabilities" in general -- that covers MUCH too wide a swath (including my own wife, who has MS).  

However, there are some disabilities which are serious enough that it would be an inexcusable cruelty to knowingly pass it along - or even take a 50% chance of passing it on - to an innocent child.  Further, parenting is an awesome responsibility, not to be entered into lightly.  Far too many "healthy" people become parents without any sort of real understanding what they are getting into.  Someone with a serious mental impairment is even less likely to appreciate the magintude of the task beforehand, and may have far greater difficulty living up to those responsibilities.  The consequences of bad parenting - especially VERY bad parenting - can affect families for many, many generations.


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## Ricky (Mar 30, 2004)

We're all Ghandi on the inside.


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## chemistry_geek (Mar 30, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.87


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## adambyte (Mar 30, 2004)

What a bunch of $%&*ing liberal dope-smoking hippies! All of you! Commie bastards!

Except for Ricky. Ricky's the crazy right winger, what with him being in the center and all. lol


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## scruffy (Mar 31, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -6.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.23

Yep.  Us Mac using commies...  Funny, if anything it's Linux users that are the (to me) weirdo Libertarians; even though they used to be the ones branded as commies a few years ago.


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## diablojota (Mar 31, 2004)

Wow,
I am far off from all of you...
Economic Left/Right: 0.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.21


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## pds (Mar 31, 2004)

Ah, a headwinger like me. 0.17 and 0.28. Middle of the road is the dangerous place to be ('you karate do yes- ok, you karate do no -ok, you karate do maybe - get sguish rike grape!'  ) but it is probably closer to correct.

The questions themselves are quite skewed and have many prejudices hidden within. I don't think that access to better health-care is a right, but an opportunity, so how should I respond to the hidden question in a question. In general the other stuff on the site were useful, like the who-said-that bit. It was fun with my history class.


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## brianleahy (Mar 31, 2004)

You raise a good point; the wording of a question can reveal almost as much about the asker as the answerer.   

Consider the questions: "A) Should we forbid X?"  and "B) Should we permit X?"

The two have opposite meanings, so if 20% of people say "no" to A, then 20% should say "yes" to B.   

But historically, this isn't what happens.  In many cases, both questions make people want to answer "no", because in each case the wording suggests that the asker considers a "yes" answer to be shocking or scandalous.


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## MDLarson (Apr 2, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -0.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.59

There were maybe 5 questions or so I didn't feel 100% comfortable answering.

Funny, I thought I'd be much more towards the traditional right side.


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## scruffy (Apr 2, 2004)

brianleahy said:
			
		

> Consider the questions: "A) Should we forbid X?"  and "B) Should we permit X?"
> 
> The two have opposite meanings, so if 20% of people say "no" to A, then 20% should say "yes" to B.
> 
> But historically, this isn't what happens.  In many cases, both questions make people want to answer "no", because in each case the wording suggests that the asker considers a "yes" answer to be shocking or scandalous.



Actually there's a large number of possibilities in between, depending on what X is.
- permit only a limited form of X
- permit part but not all of X
- don't permit X indiscriminately, don't ban it outright, but limit it.

So, for example, if X is "all narcotic drugs", probably a majority of people would answer "no" to both questions.  They would probably consider different approaches appropriate for caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, pot, mushrooms, methamphetamines, whatever that mild mood-enhancer in chocolate is... 

I for one would not feel I'd done that question justice if my answer were less than about a page of text.  A single bit answer, forget it...


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## speedfreak (Apr 3, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: 4.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.77

Go figure a Libertarian Capitalist

I'm just happy to far away from the likes of Hussein & Stalin.


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## brianleahy (Apr 3, 2004)

> Actually there's a large number of possibilities in between, depending on what X is.



That's certainly true.  My point was just that the wording of a question can have a somewhat spurious influence on the answers - but it's also true that questions on a survey may cast an issue as black and white, when in fact it's a very gray area.


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## Randman (Apr 3, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -6.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.85

I'm in the same boat as MDLarson. I thought I'd be a little more conservative.


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## adambyte (Apr 3, 2004)

lol. It's okay, Randman, most people don't know they're liberals. That's why "liberal" has been so easily made a bad word in the US.


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## michaelsanford (Apr 3, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -6.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.1


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## MikeXpop (Apr 3, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: -4.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.38

I thought some of the questions were badly worded. Like the ones that said along the lines of "Should the rights of corperations be held above the rights of citizens?". You're taking that test as a citizen, so why would you answer any other way? They kind of through the test off a little to the left.

I'm almost right where Ghandi is. I also find it interesting that Bush is almost exactly where Thatcher is.


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## goynang (Apr 4, 2004)

Economic Left/Right: 0.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.64

Had a real hard time answering some of the questions. As others have pointed out the questions in these kind of things are often skewed and it's hard to answer with a simple negative/positive response. Sometime there are more than 2 possibilities to a situation so a simple pick 'a' or 'b' is no good - I want to pick 'c'!

That said, seems I'm more right wing than you bunch of ivory tower, liberal, fence sitting middle of the roaders. ;o)

I find it interesting that there is no one on the part of the compass that I ended up in. Everywhere else there are loads of example of famous people. yet my bit is empty.

There must be someone in that bottom right hand corner! Can anyone suggest somebody???


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## markceltic (Apr 4, 2004)

I feel your frustration at some of those questions goynang.But since you find yourself at a position on the chart where no else is maybe you should run for office.Who knows you may start a new movement,then everything you ever said on here may come back to haunt you.


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## pds (Apr 4, 2004)

Now, now, we middle of the roaders aren't sitting on any fences... we're out there directing traffic


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## scruffy (Apr 4, 2004)

What got to me was a couple of questions asked you to express, not your opinions of certain activities, but what the reality is.

I can't exactly remember the question, but there was one that was something like "International corporations are illegally exploiting African nations by (doing something nasty, I forget what - dumping pollutants, maybe?) (Y) (N)"

Well, how should I know?  What am I, an investigative journalist with a month-long expense account and a driver and interpreter to take me around Nigerian villages and negotiate bribes for the cops?  I tried not answering that one, but it wouldn't let me continue...


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## MDLarson (Apr 5, 2004)

My wife is:
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.31

I guess we're pretty compatible on the political front!


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## brianleahy (Apr 5, 2004)

> There must be someone in that bottom right hand corner! Can anyone suggest somebody???



Tchaikovsky.

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/composers.html

You're not, by chance, a writer of music, are you?

Also, note the following text from the results page:



> The usual understanding of anarchism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal "anarchism" championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America's Libertarian Party, which couples law of the jungle right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues.


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## Rhisiart (Jan 9, 2007)

Attached is my plot. I really don't know what to make of it.


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## Satcomer (Jan 9, 2007)

rhisiart said:


> Attached is my plot. I really don't know what to make of it.



I would say a socialist. 

My score is: Economic Left/Right: -1.25
                 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.13


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## Rhisiart (Jan 9, 2007)

Being a dimwit, can you show it via a graph?


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## chevy (Jan 9, 2007)

My kids and colleagues would never have put me where this test decided I should be !


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## Satcomer (Jan 9, 2007)

I was trying to be funny, sorry. What your graph shows is you are left of center but believe your government should be involved in a lot of people's daily lives because of being left of center with a strong leaning toward Authority/Goverment. If you think about, Bush's graph would look like yours, but on the right side of  the center line.

My graph shows that I am almost center (independent political thinker)thinker on the Western political scale. I think most politicians are nut jobs at best.


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## Mikuro (Jan 9, 2007)

I'm in the position almost exactly opposite Bush. That does not surprise me. I'm close to where they put the Dalai Lama. That surprised me a little, actually, but in a good way. 


P.S.: I was wondering how this thread got so big without me ever noticing it. Then I realized that the first 4 pages are from 2004!


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## Ferdinand (Jan 11, 2007)

Economic Left/Right: 0.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 3.44

And that is?


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## ksv (Jan 11, 2007)

ksv said:


> -7,62, -7,54 here. That leaves me 2,38 points right of my brother



I've moved a little since 2004:

Economic Left/Right: -8.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.56

Glad to know I'm still socialist


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## Decade (Apr 6, 2007)

Economic Left/Right: 0.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.13

I agree, this quiz has too many loaded questions. For example, many people conflate support for corporations as support for private enterprise. Or opposition to the drug war as support for anarchy.

The organizers also seem very off about G.W.Bush. His "compassionate conservative" platform has him promoting protectionist trade policies, censoring scientists, using signing statements to get around the lack of a line-item veto, using weird legal inventions to get around the Geneva Conventions (Authoritarian), and promoting No Child Left Behind, Faith-Based Initiatives, expansion of Medicare, and so on (Communism). In matters of faith, I've seen him endorse Islam more than Christianity. I think he's closer to Robert Mugabe than people give him credit for.


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## fuzz (Apr 15, 2007)

Wow, I'm in the middle of both axis almost!

Economic Left/Right: 0.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.82


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## CaptainQuark (Apr 18, 2007)

fuzz said:


> Wow, I'm in the middle of both axis almost!
> 
> Economic Left/Right: 0.00
> Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.82



You fence-sitter, you!   

I've always thought of myself politically as being  marginally to the right of Attila the Hun, so imagine my shock when this graph came up!  

L/R *-7.00*  
Lib/Auth -4.21


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## fryke (Apr 18, 2007)

Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.87

I'm a little right of Ghandi.  ... Hmm. Kinda expected it.


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## pds (Apr 19, 2007)

Still out in the Middle of the Road, directing traffic, but seemingly after a small left turn.

2004
Left/Right 0.17
Lib/Auth 0.28

2007
Left/Right -1
Lib/Auth 0.26


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## pds (Apr 19, 2007)

ksv

Wouldn't the true socialist be more authoritarian - that is trying to engineer social change? Your libertarian tendencies show you want to lead by example rather than by governmental fiat.

Sorry man, you are anarchist material!


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## bbloke (Apr 19, 2007)

I think I was close to Gandhi when I first did this, but I saw I hadn't posted first time around and so tried again.  I may have shifted slightly over the years!

Economic Left/Right: -7.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64


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## bbloke (Apr 20, 2007)

I wanted to see how the results so far compare, as it is a little hard to visualize the sets of numbers for everyone.  I plotted a graph of the scores (if anyone had two sets, I used the most recent) and thought I'd post it here.


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## fryke (Apr 20, 2007)

Nice.


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## CaptainQuark (Apr 20, 2007)

bbloke said:


> ...I plotted a graph of the scores ... and thought I'd post it here.



Of course, some people HAVE a life...


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## bbloke (Apr 20, 2007)

fryke said:


> Nice.


Thanks, fryke.  



CaptainQuark said:


> Of course, some people HAVE a life...


Could you explain how I could get one too, please?  Preferably with the aid of a range of charts...


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## CaptainQuark (Apr 20, 2007)

Roflmao!


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## ksv (Apr 22, 2007)

pds said:


> ksv
> 
> Wouldn't the true socialist be more authoritarian - that is trying to engineer social change? Your libertarian tendencies show you want to lead by example rather than by governmental fiat.
> 
> Sorry man, you are anarchist material!



The 'socialism' term is wide enough to cover diverse political views, and I think the limit to what can be defined as socialism is rather the degree of authoritarianism than libertarianism.

It's a debated question of definition, similar to that of the term 'democracy'. Both the president of the U.S. and I embrace democracy, but we have vastly different conceptions of what democracy means.

I believe that what we eat, wear, work with and voice our opinion about is of far greater political importance than for whom we vote every fourth or fifth year, and that's the essence of my anarchism. Politics is for everyone, not only politicians.

M:a as salama ; )


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## reed (Apr 27, 2007)

Nice test adambyte
 Eco: -6.63
 Social: -6.62

I have sent the "compass" around. 

  Add me on if you can bbloke. 

Cheers all.


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## bbloke (Apr 29, 2007)

reed said:


> Add me on if you can bbloke.


No problem.


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## ksv (Apr 29, 2007)

Welcome to the neighbourhood reed 
A completely unrelated question: does your nick imply you're playing some kind of reed instrument?


Nice work on the chart bbloke!


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## bbloke (May 2, 2007)

ksv said:


> Nice work on the chart bbloke!


Thanks, ksv.  

I think it is easier to see where everyone is, this way.  That and I need to get out more!


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## CaptainQuark (May 2, 2007)

bbloke said:


> ...That and I need to get out more!



"Oooh yes!"


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## bbloke (May 2, 2007)

CaptainQuark said:


> "Oooh yes!"


You're stalking my relatives now?!


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## reed (May 2, 2007)

Thanks ksv.......

It's nice being not too far from the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. Two cool guys. On a graph at least. Cheers.


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## loyaltubist (May 3, 2007)

I'm not new but I have never posted here until today.

My politics: I am conservative. I normally don't get political about things but my lifestyle, my religion, and my politics are all very conservative.

That's probably all I will say about this topic.

Oh, yeah... And I live in Vietnam...


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## bbloke (May 3, 2007)

loyaltubist said:


> My politics: I am conservative. I normally don't get political about things but my lifestyle, my religion, and my politics are all very conservative.
> 
> That's probably all I will say about this topic.


Fair enough.  But no scores to add to the thread?


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## loyaltubist (May 3, 2007)

Economic: +6.47

Social: +7.11

The figure on my avatar isn't Napoleon, it's Mad Man Muntz, who started out as a car dealer in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. He later designed his own car line as well as electronic items, including one of the first cellular phones. Would he be alive today, he might have his own line of computers... maybe!


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## reed (May 3, 2007)

Loyaltubist,
  Way to go. Say what you like. Nothing mean here. This is why I like this site. Everybody can say what he or she thinks because everybody can talk back and say what he or she thinks. Always polite, with a few exceptions. 
 This is ONLY a fun test by the way, but interesting all the same. We can sometimes change ideas too.
Henry V didn't agree with Charles VI, but everything worked out at the end. A little late for sure but better late then never. Like Vietnam and the USA?


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## bbloke (May 3, 2007)

I've now updated the graph to include your scores, loyaltubist.


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## loyaltubist (May 4, 2007)

reed said:


> Like Vietnam and the USA?



But I am American. And living here hasn't changed my politics one bit.


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## vladx (May 4, 2007)

Was late to the party, however I was out of town.

Economic Left/Right: -2.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.85


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## Mikuro (May 4, 2007)

I saved the graph from when I took it in January, and my actual numbers were:
Economic Left/Right: -5.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.69

I just took the test again, and the results were a bit different:

Economic Left/Right: -2.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.77

I think the difference reflects the way I interpreted the questions more than my actual opinions. If I took it again this minute, I'd probably get different results again. But I'd say I'm more of a social libertarian than an economic leftist, so I guess the second one is more accurate.


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## reed (May 14, 2007)

Late reply.
   Thanks bbloke. Interesting results for the Political COMPASS concering the local yokals who hang out here from time to time.

Also.....

  What's it like out there loyaltubist? I ask this question with all honesty. Must be very interesting. My politics haven't changed since Lincoln, if that means anything....but more recently Nixon/Johnson. Keep us posted if you feel like it.


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## bbloke (May 14, 2007)

(Updated the graph...)


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## reed (May 15, 2007)

Way to go bbloke. Thanks.


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