Political Compass

Werf_Must · Post by **Werf_Must** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:06 pm

I found this interesting...

Where do you guys end up?

Nanti-SARRMM · Post by **Nanti-SARRMM** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:32 pm

When it has been done before at the booths in the Wilk, I have landed somewhere in the center.

Portia · Post by **Portia** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:36 pm

I did this by proxy making my best guess where Jesus would be, considering only Biblical textual evidence, and he ended up near Gandhi.

vorpal blade · Post by **vorpal blade** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:40 pm

Portia wrote:I did this by proxy making my best guess where Jesus would be, considering only Biblical textual evidence, and he ended up near Gandhi.

When I did this for Jesus I ended up with a score of +4.00 on the economic left/right, and exactly 0.00 on the Social Libertarian/Authoritarian axis. Between Hobbes and Kirke, but slightly more authoritarian.

When I did this for myself a couple of years ago I was more in the center.

Just out of curiosity, when trying to answer a question, would you really think, "Jesus would answer this way, but I wouldn't"?

vorpal blade · Post by **vorpal blade** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 12:36 pm

The political compass seems to have been developed by people in Britain, judging by the spelling used. I think this is interesting in the light of differences between a conservative and liberal in Europe and in America. Consider this quote:

What many conservatives, including Bush and Buchanan, fail to grasp is that conservatism is neither identity politics for Christians and/or white people nor right-wing Progressivism. Rather, it is opposition to all forms of political religion. It is a rejection of the idea that politics can be redemptive. It is the conviction that a properly ordered republic has a government of limited ambition. A conservative in Portugal may want to conserve the monarchy. A conservative in China is determined to preserve the prerogatives of the Communist Party. But in America, as Friedrich Hayek and others have noted, a conservative is one who protects and defends what are considered liberal institutions in Europe but largely conservative ones in America: private property, free markets, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and the rights of communities to determine for themselves how they will live within these guidelines[1]. This is why conservatism, classical liberalism, libertarianism, and Whiggism are different flags for the only truly radical political revolution in a thousand years. The American founding stands within this tradition, and modern conservatives seek to advance and defend it. American conservatives are opposed on principle to neither change nor progress; no conservative today wishes to restore slavery or get rid of paper money. But what the conservative understands is that progress comes from working out inconsistencies within our tradition, not by throwing it away.

1. See Samuel Huntington, "Conservatism as an Ideology," American Political Science Review 51 (June 1957); and Friedrich Hayek, "Why I Am Not a Conservative," in The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).