Lost in the Bozone found his point on the Political Compass today. And referenced this website which helped him find it. The Political Compass explains that simple Left and Right does not adequately define one's political views. They add a second, verticle, axis called Authoritarian - Libertarian.
As you can see in this figure, economically Hitler was more of a Centrist, while Stalin was to the Left, yet economics aside, both were pretty much off the scale in terms of Totalitarianism. Milton Friedman on the other hand is pretty extreme Right, economically but Libertarian in his views of government.
Other world leaders may be Left or Right economically but most tend to be pretty much on the Authoritarian side of the axis. Not unsurprisingly. So I took the test, answered the five or six pages of questions and ended up where I expected to be. A Left Wing Anarchist. If I were 35 years younger I should like to think I would blow something up but I don't know what. Maybe expensive black cars with black windows.
fyi: the anarchists are generally peaceful. One of their old slogans was "you can't blow up a relationship" which refers to how they viewed society. Most of them believed that an individual in a community needed to protect their most valuable assets- their relationships to others and their own unique selves.
ReplyDeleteThe most violent people are actually the authoritarian followers. In the name of their leader, they are the people who are most likely to kill others. Too many examples to name.
You came out in the same block as Gandhi- another lefty anarchist. And most of the Quakers fit in there too. Maybe you should invest in plain cotton clothes instead of tinted windows :)
True, no quarrel with that.
ReplyDeleteHowever the Anarchists I was thinking of were much less than peaceful. These were the ones operating before and during the Russian Revolution and ensuing civil war. Also anarchists are quite regularly cartooned as carrying a round black bomb with a lit fuse.
I was two blocks west and one block north of you, old man. Turns out I am far more libertarian than I thought. But I think the reason I scored so libertarian is from the ambiguity of some of the wording in the questions. Also because I really am not a fan of the creepy counter-terrorism scans at the airport.
ReplyDeletePerhaps more interesting, albeit harder to chart, would be a person's changes, if any, over the course of his or her lifetime.
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