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Here. Many are familiar with it.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/test
Scroll down, the quiz starts at the bottom of the page (on my screen).
Here are my results:
I don’t know how to copy the chart here, but here are my coordinates. My position on the chart would be similar to zn’s.
Your Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -9.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.56About this test:
On another forum, nearly a year ago, I had the toughest time trying to get through to a right-libertarian (propertarian) about how the scores were done. No matter how I reworded things to say the top to bottom scores had nothing to do with the left to right scores, he just wasn’t buying it. In his mind, apparently, the further left someone goes on the spectrum, the more authoritarian they have to be. I actually placed well below him on the anti-authoritarian scale — almost to bottom (meaning extremely anti-authoritarian) — but because I was also very much “far left,” he refused to believe I was anything but a Stalinist. He was incapable of seeing any leftist as “libertarian” or anti-authoritarian, even though, historically, the left wrote the book on those things, not the right.
Societal brainwashing, etc. etc.
One would think in the Age of the Internet this would be less prevalent than it is. But if you investigate how leftist thought is depicted (when it isn’t silenced altogether), how “socialism” is defined (and by whom), it’s not surprising. Web software, the kind used to customize your news sources on this or that app, for example, has become blatantly tilted to the right. Search for “socialism” in the Itunes library, for instance, and you’re likely to find “definitions” from mises.org or some other propertarian organization, and pretty much never by actual leftists. Same goes for Google apps.
Silicon Valley is dominated by right-libertarian billionaires, as gatekeepers, and they do what they can — consciously or subconsciously — to steer the average Joe or Jane away from leftist thought. The main method for doing this appears to be . . . never let leftists speak for themselves. Never point to actual leftist writers and writings, if you can, instead, point to third and fourth-hand accounts coming from the right.
Obama doesn’t,t govern as a conservative! how bizarre!
Bizarre, fer sure. But it’s true. Obama has governed as a conservative.
Of course, no American president has ever governed with complete ideological consistency/purity. But, overall, the vast majority of Obama’s policies and proposals would have been supported by Republicans, as is, if he were a Republican. In many ways, in fact, Obama has been a much better Republican than presidents Reagan, Bush Sr. and Dubya.
As in: Obama pushed for massive deficit reduction and a deficit commission in the midst of a terrible economic downturn. He oversaw the loss of 800,000 public sector jobs during that downturn. He froze federal pay and hiring during that downturn. Reagan, Bush Sr. and Dubya all wildly increased spending in the face of recessions; oversaw the hiring of more than one million new public sector employees, each, on their respective watches; and they never held deficit commissions.
Obama re-upped the (supposedly temporary) Bush tax cuts twice and made them permanent. He rehired Bush’s Fed chairman, and his defense secretary. He kept Bush’s bailouts of Wall Street and Detroit going. He never went after Wall Street crooks, shielding them from prosecution. He shielded Bush/Cheney and their respective admins from prosecution, when they easily could have and should have been frog-marched into the Hague.
He expanded the Bush wars, increased the size and scope of the “GWOT.” He expanded the surveillance state, and went after Occupy. He pushed for TPP and other very conservative trade agreements. His state department was/is aggressive in ramming capitalism down the throats of other nations, especially in Central and South America, advocating (for our capitalists) the privatization of public sector after public sector.
The ACA is a very conservative law, based on the Heritage Foundation proposal, later implemented by Romney in Massachusetts. Obama and the Dems prevented any talk of Single Payer, and kicked even the public option under the bus. Rather than try to resolve our health care debacle through non-profit, universal care, he and the Dems chose the “market solutions” approach, by keeping it for-profit and selective, which is why it’s so expensive in the first place.
The above is just for starters.
I’m pretty confident you can’t name any of his policies that aren’t conservative, outside a coupla “culture war” things like Same Sex Marriage. When I bring this up to conservatives, they never can. But they still insist Obama is a “liberal,” despite the record.
Here’s mine. It’s -8.38, -7.54.
So, other than ozone and bnw and maybe dak, I guess that makes me the Thatcher of the group…LOL.
I’ve come a LOOOOONG way from my initial days of the Herd when I was in the top right quadrant a lil bit…
I’d say I’ve changed, but it’s not so much that as I just finally got right with my principles and core fundamental beliefs in a real way as it relates to all human beings on the planet.
As I had to confront the truths beyond all sorts of borders, I got to where I am today and I’m never going back.
I decided that I’m not only going to vote for Dr Jill Stein, but I’m gonna donate enough to get a t-shirt so I can wear it around town.
Do Greenies make cool Tees? I’ll wear a whack Tee, but it’d obviously be better if it were cooler.
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
Wow! Some of you commies on this board are REALLY extreme. I am in the sensible center–of the left–or just below center but certainly normal.
And of course I am correct on everything I believe. If you matched my results–congratulations! You win! Otherwise–I don’t know what world you live in.
Actually I hate tests like this. I’m always turning the questions over in my mind in different ways and depending how I think about it I can give a different answer.
But I’m on the left–obviously–and that’s no surprise.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. " Philip K. Dick
I decided that I’m not only going to vote for Dr Jill Stein, but I’m gonna donate enough to get a t-shirt so I can wear it around town.
Do Greenies make cool Tees? I’ll wear a whack Tee, but it’d obviously be better if it were cooler.
——————–
Yeah, after the Calif result, I guess its time i took down my Bernie sign, and made a big green Jill sign.Maybe I’ll get a Tee shirt too. Or maybe I’ll just get some green textile paint
and a white shirt and make my own. Maybe have a green paint party.bnw has to be loving this — we’re gonna get Trump elected, LoL.
Well, so be it.
w
vAnyway, back to my point — which was NOT about what ‘label’ we arbitrarily chose — the point is, do you understand that we are NOT Democrats. And do you understand that there are such things as “leftists” (or whatever label u want to use) who cant stand Obama, Clinton, the Republicans and the rest of the “system” politicians. Do you get that? Not lecturing here, just asking if you get that?
WV, I think you’re asking too much from “conservatives,” who really aren’t conservatives anymore. They’re right-wing radicals. The current American iteration is well to the right of the Reagan conservative, and they keep moving to the right. They pretty much do this each time the Dems stake out more of their old territory — which is constant — and feel the need to always and forever be to their right. The Dems are now planted firmly on the center-right, own it, after it was vacated by Republicans. The Republicans have in turn purged their ranks of the old guard, the Eisenhower Republicans, etc. . . . even the McCain of 2000 version.
This new breed of faux-conservative has been brainwashed to unprecedented degrees for forty years, and pretty much everything is the End of the World!!! for them. The slightest move from the Federal government means the Apocalypse is nigh. Reagan played into this with his talk about Medicare meaning the total end of all freedom for Americans. And with Obama? A year before he took office, you had large numbers of Republicans thinking he was the anti-christ. That number is roughly 25% now. Majorities believed he was foreign-born, a Muslim, a secret agent sent to destroy America, a Marxist, socialist, bogeyman, etc. etc.
They were fed this nonsense 24/7 by hate radio, their churches, and their reps, and it’s never stopped. This is why they can never see Obama for what he is — a true conservative, an pre-Reagan Republican. They’ve been told for years and years that he was, quite literally, the devil, that he “palled around with terrorists,” that he’s a Muslim secret agent, blah blah blah.
So they’re just never going to see how lucky they were that he was elected. They got an actual conservative in office, who implemented actual conservative policies, most of them falling waaaaay short, which was to be expected. But who gets the blame? “The left.” Even though Obama implemented center-right government. They couldn’t have written a better script.
And while you’re obviously, self-evidently correct about the massive gulf between leftists and Obama, if you spend any time on “conservative” websites or websites with large participation by “conservatives,” it’s pretty much an article of faith among them that Obama is “far left,” as are the Dems in generally. They simply believe in the myths, legends and propaganda handed down to them from hate radio, the Birchers, the religiously wrong, the Randians and so on. Now, bnw may not be like his peers, but I haven’t seen any evidence that he differs from them on this issue. He thought it was absurd when I said Obama has governed as a conservative — which he has — and I don’t think he’ll ever understand that the Republican party is no longer conservative in the slightest. It’s a radical, far-right party now. The Dems are now the true conservatives in America.
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