Told you...

Just to give you some indication where that puts me: I'm slightly more authoritarian than most of the Democrat presidential candidates as they were before Obama won, and less free-market ('right') than both them and the Republican batch. In terms of European politics I'm the equivalent of Austria (oh great), among composers I'm apparently closest to Johannes Brahms, in terms of world politics I'm in between Kevin Rudd, Jose Luis Zapatero and Romano Prodi, and the closest the Conservative party has ever got to me was in the 1972 local elections. Hmmm... but given that last time I was at least a square more libertarian and two squares more communist, I'd say the trend towards the Iron Lady (7.00, 7.00 approximately) continues :)

And let's face it, it's really just a bit of fun...

At least, however, my predictions of the questions that would turn up was bang on - distributive justice and perfectionism-vs-liberal-neutrality. My distributive justice essay, in which I defended the citadel of Nozick heroically against the besieging forces of Rawls and luck egalitarianism, was unsurprisingly the longer of the two; though I'm actually rather proud of my second essay, because I came up with an argument that didn't actually get mentioned in class, namely that there is a way in which liberal neutrality is forcibly reducible to perfectionism when the state is forced to decide between clashing conceptions of the good and thus has to promote one at the expense of the other, thereby sacrificing its prior claim to neutrality. In fact, now I think of it, I've had quite some luck with predictions of late - this week's results in Last Choir Standing were precisely as I predicted before I even watched Saturday's episode (Sense of Sound out, Revelations saved in the sing-off) - so I think I'll make some more this evening.

First of all, since I'm about to retake the Political Compass test in light of my new knowledge of political theory, I'm going to predict that I've moved slightly towards authoritarian (don't worry, I was only just on the paternalist side last time) and a lot towards free-market (I was bang on the vertical axis, so economically neutral last time). Second of all, I'll go international. No, I'm not talking about the Olympics, because other than the Chinese and the athletes no-one really gives a flying fajita what ultimately happens there, I'm referring to South Ossetia. See the next post for that one; I was going to post it here but I got so into it I'm going to give it a post all of its own!

So, after the exam I treated myself to a pizza deal at the newly-built Pizza Nova on Bay Street, sat in my room watching Bill Bailey's Bewilderness on YouTube and stirring through my email correspondence for a bit, then went for a wonderfully relaxing evening walk at about 19:15. Now I'm going to do nothing for the rest of the evening apart from the considerable backlog of newspaper puzzles I've managed to accumulate. Oh, and I might help myself to a bit of Djangoa - I did regiment myself rather stricly over the weekend prior to the exam, so now I'm free of work till October there's no reason not to...

*******

So, it's a beautiful day here in Chicago. I'm upstairs in Mister and Missus Mayweather's living room full of dappled sunlight streaming through the trees outside. We have the TV on in the background. Miss Mayweather's idea is that we'd watch daytime telly and do a social critique of the commercials. I think she just wants an excuse to make me watch 'All My Children' but it's as good a prompt as any. Besides, I just witnessed a particularly repellent ad for penis enhancement, and that doesn't happen often enough. That 'smiling Bob' jackass is dressed as Santa Claus at an office party. All of the women are squirming in line to sit on his lap. It's not that I'm a prude or that I think everything has to be child-friendly, but should a man dressed as Santa be hawking hard-on pills at one-thirty in the afternoon?

*******

This morning Miss Mayweather and I took the El down to Daley Plaza for the farmer's market. I picked up a lovely dried fruit mix, cherries, and several Saturn peaches, which are an amazingly delicious heirloom variety of peach. So very sweet with a hint of almond bitter, abundantly juicy, and with a skin so fine you don't need to peel it. Miss Mayweather bought a jar of Four Seasons Gourmet Foods 'Rosy Rasbperry  Vinegar' from the guy who made it. He let us sample some and we were sold. You never tasted a vinegar so delicious. We asked him if it was available in stores and he said Whole Foods just turned him down. They are insane. The label on the bottle gives a website of www.fourseasonsgourmetfoods.com, but no site comes up for it. The address on the label is 'Four Seasons Gourmet Foods, Glenview, Il, 60025'.

*******

Gargunza just sent around a really interesting internet test a few minutes ago. Try it. My results put me on the political compass at:
Economic Left/Right: -4.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.05
Which put me slightly to the right of Ghandi and as libertarian as the Dalai Lama. The classical composers page is funny if you appreciate classical music.

*******

A few months ago I wrote a post that mentioned a racist website. I hesitate to mention it again because I keep getting hits from searches for 'n*gg*rmania.com', 'why is n*gg*rmania.com down?', and such in addition to multiple variations of the key offending word in the previous phrases. I find this unsettling, but it shouldn't be unsurprising. The flame of racism is rekindling with no small heat in America these days.

*******

Tonight Miss Mayweather made an amazing dinner; an improvised risotto with chicken, asparagus, button and dried chantarelle mushrooms reconstituted in chicken stock, a mixed assortment of heirloom cherry and plum tomatoes that we got at the farmer's market this morning along with an Amish garlic cheese that formed a sauce with the white wine and chicken stock. Garlic, leeks, pine nuts, parsley, margarine, summer savory, salt, and pepper gave flavor and body to the meal. We must eat to live and therefore should appreciate, savor, and give our attention to every meal we take. It is being mindless about food that causes us to eat ourselves into diabetes and worse. This mindlessness can come from emotional distress, bad habits formed in ignorance, or any number of intimate personal reasons it is presumptuous to make assumptions about; but it is self-destructive in any case. It is what we ignore that kills us.

*******
Check it out, it's groovycool-
Devendra Banhart - Carmensita (featuring Natalie Portman)

My political compass

Economic Left/Right: -7.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.54

But the left and right were an illusion, as the fabulous http://www.politicalcompass.org/ shows. It aligns people based on their social and economic views, and also has created a variety of 'compasses' for the politics in various countries and regions. I recently added it to my facebook page, where I can also compare my results with those of my friends. I turned out to be a libertarian left, as I already knew, thus agreeing with two of the three friends which have taken this test, the other being a libertarian right.

Buoyed with my new found position in the world I clicked on the link to see where the candidates in the US primaries lay, even though I live in the UK. To my dismay almost all of them were authoritarian right. I'm closest to Dennis Kucinich, whom I have never heard of. Both Obama and McCain are in with the main group. Slightly put back I compared this with the current climate Europe and the state at the last general election in Britain. All three main political parties in Britain are currently in the authoriatian right with most countries in Europe. Even more depressing is the chart tracking the changes in the position of Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems since the time of Thatcher. Labour used to be libertarian left, with the Lib Dems to the right but they, and the conservatives are moving ever towards an extremist position in the top right corner of the compass.

What does this show? A great belief in the free market certainly, but also a worrying trend towards the Fascism that lies at the top of the vertical scale. Between Labour and the Tories there is very little gap, as so many political commentators have remarked before me. In fact, from the graph showing the change over time, in 2008 Labour are more fascist than the Tories, worrying indeed. This does not show what early Reds wanted, in fact, there appears to be a shift away from Communism, not a new age and natural progression to a 'Grand People's Uprising'. This chart also shows how close Communism and Fascism really are, they are not at opposite ends of the political spectrum, as so many before me have remarked, in fact, the chart shows that you can be both at once at the top left of the compass. But that is not the main worry to me. My main concern is that choice is being so limited. There are no other options. You must be an authoritarian right. That is all there is. It's not my position to tell everyone it's wrong. But if 75% of those on my facebook account that have taken the test are the opposite of what we are being channeled into, then surely that is 75% who won't be able to vote as they want next time there's an election. Where's the democracy and choice and representation of the people that we are so proud of? Democracy is surely dying, what a shame...

Shock horror Comrades

Update

Rudi's comment alerted me to the placement of the major parties on this compass and a comparison is certainly interesting.

According to this I am to the left of the greens !!

Oh the humanity!

Maybe I should take up Lattes after all!!

:eek:

While taking the test, I tried very hard to be honest in my answers (it seems to be in our nature, at least in mine, to answer as we would like to be, not as we are on these self-discovery quizzes). It was hard to be truly unbiased because of some of their characterizations of the different areas in which the test-taker may align politically. I have included their explanation below:

Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist.

[ . . . ]

On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.

Great examples. Gandhi or Stalin? Friedman or Hitler? There doesn't seem to be much saving grace in being above the x-axis on the social dimension. Even the term "authoritarian" is a bit problematic. Libertarians are accepted in society. Authoritarians are to be feared.

I happily was validated to find out I share the same quadrant as Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela (even if barely). Though this bodes well for my place in history, it also seems inevitable that I will one day be in prison or exiled. I suppose that is the price you pay as a, albeit moderate, liberal leftist.

One of the members of our community, Pete Wolf wrote on my Innovation Culture post about,

the way ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are used to apportion the political field in a way that, although it does in some ways respond to existing divisions, also exacerbates certain tensions while suppressing the differences between many diverse interests.

I think the community on this blog is proof that the liberal-conservative identifiers are becoming useless in defining our politics. Perhaps the political compass (above) is more useful in locating us in this multi-dimensional world. Here is an example where some political figures might fit on this map.

The biggest problem with contemporary American politics is that locating ourselves along a left-right continuum makes for gridlock. Even though there are many differences of opinion on this blog around given issues, my guess is that we all locate ourselves somewhere in the bottom half of the compass in a decentralized, networked society. From that position of common beliefs, it becomes easier to seek common solutions to problems like alternative energy, education and health care. I'm interested in your thoughts on this.

I am about to take an 18 hour trip to Singapore on business, so for the next week I will be on a very different posting schedule. It may be sporadic, but I assume this issue of the political compass may provide grist for the comment mill, while I am offline.

I've done the Political Compass a couple of times before, I like to return to it as it's been some years since I first did it and it's interesting to chart whether or not one's perception has changed over time.  I thought this time as I read through the questions that perhaps I was becoming a little more authoritarian if not any less economically left.  Both Longrider and Big John have done the compass this month so it prompted me to do it again.  And I've barely moved, my economic score is I believe consistent every time, whilst I believe I'm back to my more Libertarian principles having strayed to an Authoritarian -7.69 last time!  Strangely there don't appear to be any 'famous' figures in my section of the graph, it's a bit lonely down there.

And no I don't manipulate my answers, what would be the point, nor do I remember the questions - if I had suddenly become right-wing in my old age, I just wouldn't tell anyone!

That being said having now just posted this I am awaiting a visit from MI5 and perhaps a nice orange jumpsuit for my trouble!

Song Of The Day ~ The Wombats - Moving To New York

This is my political compass. Calculate yours.

La ligne Gauche/Droite convient parfaitement pour établir des positions sur le plan économique. Les chercheurs de Political Compass introduisent une dimension sociale qui possède également toute son importance. En plus de l'axe Gauche/Droite, leur grille d'analyse propose une échelle qui va de l'autoritarisme extrême au libertarisme extrême.

En ajoutant la dimension sociale, on visualise bien qu'un personnage comme Staline était un gauchiste autoritaire (accordant plus d'importance à l'Etat qu'à l'individu) et que Gandhi, croyant en la valeur suprême de chaque individu, était un gauchiste libéral. Le site de Political Compass donne d'autres exemples que je laisse à votre lecture.

Cette grille d'analyse apporte davantage de finesse dans l'analyse des positions politiques. Par exemple, elle nous indique que l'opposé du "fascisme" n'est pas le "communisme" mais l'"anarchisme" (socialisme libéral) et que l'opposé du "communisme" (économie plannifiée d'état) est le néo-libéralisme (économie dérégulée à l'extrême).

J'y vois également un intérêt pratique. La méthode est facile et permet d'analyser les positions d'un point de vue atomique : dans notre système politique proportionnel, il serait alors plus aisé d'imaginer des points de convergence ponctuels sur certains aspects (et pas d'autres) en réfléchissant autrement que par l'unique axe Gauche/Droite.

Si les partis et leurs représentants figuraient dans une telle grille, l'électeur pourrait peut-être au moment des élections effectuer des choix plus rationnels -- sans compter évidemment des programmes lisibles et des évaluations honnêtes des politiques menées.

Un autre schéma de Political Compass nous montre le positionnement des leaders politiques européens et autres. On en pensera ce qu'on voudra :

Je ne résiste pas à l'envie de communiquer mon score personnel sur l'échelle bidimensionnelle de Political Compass.

• Economic Left/Right: -6.75
• Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.56

On peut soi-même obtenir un résultat en allant sur http://www.politicalcompass.org/test. Les questions sont en anglais et sont culturellement orientées, mais il me semble malgré tout que la proposition méthodologique soit valide.

* La première assemblée française a utilisé une autre distinction qui n'est pas sans faire penser à la seconde dimension de Political Compass : la Gironde et la Montagne.

As you can see, We're pretty much the same except for my every so slightly lefty ways (though I dispute this!).

What is clear is that we here on this trusty stead of B&D are firmly on the liberal perspective with a dash of saucy reality thrown in. We're not 'wishy-washy' and we are not hard headed Fabian aliens.

Although some of the questions are bit loaded, I recommend you have a look if only to see where you come. Personally I take it with a very small pinch of salt, as the slightly left and slightly right are so marginal as to be near the same.

As Mr D has mentioned, some seem to take being a liberal or a libertarian as some sort of Johnny Depp long haired 'Free The Rabbits', 'Ban The Fox' nutters who drink port all day.

Although I would love to drink port all day, I haven't go the bank balance to give it ago.

Or, even worse, to take liberalism as being left-wing, which is just plain stupid. Being free to make your own judgements, but with a safe and sound framework that is designed to regulate rather than dictate, is always going to be the way people were meant to live.

In this age of ID card proposals it is imperative that the libertarian (not the lot with the website) spirit is revived to challenge the reactionary media and their allies in Parliament and those who wish to gain ever increasing control over the people.

Unfortunately I didn't save the results. It's a little like the Political Compass, only with the poles of the Y axis reversed, isn't it?

Via Reed Braden.

Entre autres compliments, on trouve ceux dont l’objectif est d’amalgamer tous les représentants et toutes les représentantes de la gauche et particulièrement les membres du POP & Gauche en mouvement, à, dans le désordre, Staline, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Hitler, j’en passe et des pires. Voici d’ailleurs un de ces commentaires qui est une belle illustration de la perte du Nord politique de certains:

Ceux qui sont proches de vous sont Staline, Hitler, Trotski, Mitterrand, Mussolini, Pol Pot et compagnie ...

La logorrhée et le langage utilisés dans ces commentaires auraient pu me pousser à effacer d’autorité ces commentaires. Eh bien non ! Creusons un peu plus loin, essayons d’en avoir le cœur net. Posons-nous la question, pourquoi ces commentateurs assimilent-t-ils la gauche de gauche à la droite extrême, pourquoi confondent-ils Mussolini, Staline, Hitler et Pol Pot? Pourquoi estiment-ils que tout ce qui est d’extrême gauche est forcément proche de l’extrême droite?

La réponse est relativement simple : ces commentateurs évoluent dans un espace politique à une seule dimension, celui de l’axe classique de la gauche et de la droite économique. Cet axe unique est insuffisant pour décrire un profil ou une personne politique. Ces trolls commentateurs confondent aussi allègrement, et peut-être volontairement, autoritarisme, gauche de gauche et extrême-droite.

Pour introduire une deuxième dimension d’analyse, il est possible d’utiliser un test du genre de celui de Political Compass. Ça vaut ce que ça vaut, mais ce genre de test a au moins le mérite de donner du relief et de la nuance au classique axe unique d’analyse.

Outre l’axe gauche-droite économique, le Political Compass introduit un axe libertarien-autoritaire social. Et c’est cela qui fait toute la différence.

Cette deuxième dimension permet ainsi de distinguer entre quatre profils :

• autoritaire de gauche comme Pol Pot ou Staline
• autoritaire de droite comme Pinochet ou Hitler
• libertarien de gauche comme Mandela ou Ghandi
• libertarien de droite comme Milton Freedman ou Friederich Hayeck

Pour ma part, après avoir passé le test, je me trouve avec les coordonnées suivantes
«axe économique gauche-droite : - 8.62 et axe social libertarien-autoritaire: - 7.23».

Ce qui me situe à l’opposé de G.-W. Bush et d’Augusto Pinochet, très loin de Pol Pot, Staline ou Ceaucescu et à proximité de Mandela, Ghandi ou Kropotkine.

Autrement dit très à gauche et très peu autoritaire.

Maintenant, tous les tests du monde ne remplaceront pas quelques propos clairs et bien sentis. C’est pour cette raison que je ne saurai trop vous recommander, en plus d’effectuer ledit test, de lire cet excellent article d’Ashram de Swâmi Petaramesh qui nous explique de manière limpide la gauche et la droite.

Bonne lecture et merci de vous abstenir dorénavant de m’assimiler à quelque autoritaire que ce soit. À moins que vous n’ayez définitivement perdu la boussole. Et si, contre toute attente, cela devait être le cas, je vous suggère d’établir votre profil.

Juste histoire de savoir avec qui on cause.

Много ще е полезно някой да направи подобен  компас и за следващите избори в България, няколко лесни въпроса и се ориентираш много добре в обстановката. Особено полезен като за мен, един политически dummy.

[from Jilly]

This is what mine looks like:

Conservative Prime Minister (and Bush-buddy) John Howard was defeated Saturday in the Australian elections. He lost to Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, who ran a campaign promising to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq.

If you're curious about their political affiliation, check the compass:

John Howard was running on the Liberal party ticket, and Kevin Rudd was with the Labor party (comparable to Republican vs. Democrat in the US elections).

The coming months will tell whether Prime Minister Rudd chooses to fulfill his campaign promises.

Hello Rudd.             Goodbye Howard.

Our spectrum of choice is a very narrow selection of what in reality are two factions of the same business party that dominates American politics. Each viable candidate in the running for public office relies on a large backing from American corporations, to which they are expected to serve specific financial interests. The main candidates may differ on a few social issues (abortion, gay marriage, gun control, etc.), but their economic and foreign policies are often very similar.

Election campaigns are run by a public relations industry looking to sell their candidate to an audience, avoiding real issues and relying on image to market their product. Third party candidates are usually excluded from debates and do not receive media coverage.

Take a look at our options in the 2004 Presidential Election:

The names most widely recognized in this chart are George W. Bush and John Kerry, the Republican and Democratic nominees. The third party candidate with the most support behind them was Ralph Nader; he was not allowed to participate in debates, did not have the financial backing of large corporations, and was even left off the ballot in some states.

Now take a look at the political compass of our upcoming Democratic and Republican primary candidates :

The names most popularly recognized (Clinton, Edwards, Guiliani, McCain, Obama, Romney) all lean to the Authoritarian Right. The two candidates of the Democratic party that lean slightly to the Libertarian Left (Gravel & Kucinich) have been essentially ignored by the corporate media. Neither were invited to attend the Jefferson Jackson dinner in Iowa, Gravel was recently excluded from a debate by NBC, and when they do debate they are often given less time than their political counterparts.

So 'we the people' do have our choices every few years, but those choices are severely limited by the PR industry running the campaigns and the corporate media that provides coverage to the mass audience. It is quite revealing to contrast either of these presidential election choices with the political compass of my family, as revealed in the previous post.

Nearly all of my family falls somewhere between either Ralph Nader and John Kerry (2004) or Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards (2008). So how is it possible that members of my family cast their vote for Bush in the 2004 election?

The PR industry running election campaigns tend to focus on qualities, rather than on real issues. It is often very difficult to tell where a specific candidate stands on the issues. I don't think it would be possible to vote for John Kerry if you were basing your vote on charisma - he has about as much as a door stop.

Anyhow, it is this illusion of choice (Authoritarian Right vs. slightly less Authoritarian Right) that needs to be repaired if America is going to become the democracy it claims to be.

Standard rhetoric limits the spectrum of political thought to a 'left' or 'right' ideology. While this may be acceptable in discussing economic issues, real political affiliation is more complicated than the standard left-right line. The political compass test plots the result of political affiliation in both economic and social dimensions.

They closely evaluate the public statements, manifestos, interviews and, most importantly voting records of world leaders to find out where they fall on the compass.  Feel free to take the test yourself (post your results in the 'comments 'section below), but for now, here are the current results of my family's political affiliation (click to enlarge):

Based on these results, you can see that most of my family falls within the inner few units of political center. In contrast, I have developed a much more leftist, libertarian viewpoint.

Looks like Mick Gravel and Dennis Kucinich are the only two of the bunch who manage to place themselves at the same field quarter with me. I was no longer surprised for the outcome since Kucinich also topped the result I got from both Candidate Calculator and Presidential Candidate Selector. As for Gravel, he was close to top in Candidate Calculator but somewhere in the mid region in Presidential Candidate Selector.

As usual I want to point out that this sort of surveys should only be considered as web entertainment. I would never consider casting a vote according to a survey score (even if I had one in this particular election). That said, my interest in these two fellows has been awaken.