An interesting website that I'm sure many of you have come across before - based on a series of questions you are given a result showing where you lie on the political spectrum. The x axis shows the economic scale - whether you are left- or right-leaning; the y axis shows the social scale - whether you are more libertarian or authoritarian. I was reminded of this test after seeing Cov's post asking people to tell him where he stood politically.
Below are the results of some famous people:
Also worth pointing out: Robert Mugabe and the Pope are in the Authoritarian Left section; George Bush and the former French and Italian Prime Ministers sit in the Authoritarian Right; and both Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama are in the Libertarian Left section.
I'm interested to see what everyone else gets. You can take the test here.
Almost forgot - here is my result:
Same side, but not quite like yours.
mine's similar too. Green ftw
The first question is asking "do you believe your race (ie. asian, black etc.) has many superior qualities compared with other races?".
Second one is asking whether you think the government should pay for a broadcasting company - for example, Australia has the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is funded by the government and doesn't allow advertising/sponsorship in order to have a non-biased (in other words, the opposite of Fox News) channel. If you think this is a good idea, then disagree. If you think it's a bad idea, hit agree.
This question is saying that in order to be civilised, there always needs to be somebody above you to boss you around and somebody below you for you to boss around (eg. in a company, the employees will be held accountable by their managers, the managers will be held accountable by the executives, the executives will be held accountable by the shareholders). If you think this is true, click agree, otherwise click disagree.
And this one - think about the forests being cut down in Brazil - do you think big companies are being unethical/immoral by cutting down these forests?
I hope I explained those accurately.
So I got this, anyone can tell me what does this mean?
Put very simply (I'm no expert on politics), the left represents a regulated economy (eg. to make sure we don't have massive gaps between the rich and the poor, to regulate the market so that one company can't have a monopoly, all that sort of stuff) where the far left is communism. The right represents a free market.
For example, let's say you have A and B selling a product. A uses locally made products, whereas B imports products from China because it is cheaper than making them locally, thus lowering their prices. Now, the left might place a tax on imported products in order to balance out the prices and encourage people to buy locally, whereas the right would say "people can make the decision to buy locally or not themselves - if the consumer chooses to buy from overseas that's just the way it goes".
The difference between authoritarian and libertarian is that an authoritarian government wants to control your life, censor things and so on (Hitler and Stalin were very authoritarian), whereas a libertarian government values the rights of the individual (an extreme libertarian believes in anarchy/no government).
Marijuana prohibition or abortion are two examples I can think of. An authoritarian government might say "we don't agree with marijuana and abortion so we are making it illegal for everybody" if that suited their interests at the time. A libertarian government would say "people are smart enough to make their own choices, that's why we are allowing people to choose whether they want to have an abortion or smoke pot".
Again, I'm not too crash-hot on politics - I'm half expecting Zero or JJJ to come along and wipe the floor with this post. But as far as I know this is correct.
Here are my test results.
It means that people should work with what they're best at and do their best at their job. And everyone should be payed according to how much they and their family needs, rather than what they work with or how much they work.
IMO it would be a good idea but humans are selvfish assholes, who wont work unless they get something directly out of it.
Yea, initially I was tempted to choose unemployeement, but then I realized how much worse the effects of inflation would be.
While I'm on the topic, I'd like to say I think of my criminal philosophy as Individualism. What I mean by that is basically, if what I'm doing doesn't affect anyone else, it shouldn't be illegal
I just linked directly to the image from the website.
What did you answer for that question about sterilising people who have genetic defects? I imagine answering agree would move it towards authoritarian heaps.
Even if their children don't inherit their disabilities you can't think that they would be fit parents.
Still, you can't take away someone's bloodline. It's taking away a natural right.
So? I'd prefer that over the alternative. At best the child would have to deal with the social stigma of having metally disabled parents and being raised by other people, at worst they themselves would have the same defects.
What? Nothing you said made any sense. Why do you magically think they would be a strong person? Why do you think we should willingly put someone through that situation? What makes you think the mentally disabled don't reproduce?
Mentally disabled people have children with other mentally disabled people. Only in rare cases do they have children with normal people, and usually that's because they were together already and there was some sort of accident which left one of them disabled.
And are you really going to argue that by denying certain people from having children, we're actually denying the existence of those children?
Well, we have two completely different views but mine rely on the fact that I think it is cruel and unusual to deny someone their reproductive rights... not much else behind that reason haha.
Yeah you said before that Hitler did that lol.
The question doesn't mention sterilizing, so I don't know why you're jumping to that conclusion. It's possible that they would just make it illegal for them to have children, much like how the laws on incest work.
I have a serious inheritble disease (though I'm not sure if it counts as a disability), and I don't plan on having children because of it. I don't want to knowingly put anyone through what I had to go through, even if there's only a smallish possibility it will happen.
If I ever do want to have a kid, I can just adopt. That option is open for those with serious inheritable disabilities as well, so it's not like you'd never be allowed a child. Maybe you just really really want to continue your bloodline, which while understandable, I don't see much of a reason for, especially when it may cause suffering for your child.
The question for reference:
People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.
I believe I said strongly agree (again this is when I thought it was refering to severe mental disabilities). Of course, one extreme view doesn't determine where I am on the spectrum lol.
Who is this ruling class? Unless you're simply refering to the majority of the public as the ruling class. I won't argue that it's not more authoritarian, but it's not as though this would snowball into every single choice of ours being controlled by the government. That's just jumping to a conclusion again.
I never made any claims on to how this would be enforced, though I found some of your ideas amusing. In the end I can't argue on how the government would handle it, seeing as I am not a part of the government. I could give ideas about the way I find would be most ideal to go about it, but that would be relatively pointless, as I doubt that you would agree with my standpoint even if I could think of a good way to enforce it.
In the end the question is more about how you feel about restricting the rights of the people. You obviously don't agree with it, and I do. I think that despite the hit to their freedom, in the end it would be more of a good thing than a bad thing, and you disagree (or you simply don't think it's worth it).
There's no way to guarantee that any law is enforced lol. Weed is illegal, yet I know plenty of people who do it and don't get caught. Murder is illegal, yet not everyone who commits murder is caught. The law would prevent some people from doing it, but you're always going to have those who don't care and do it anyways. Again, I'm not sure why you feel for this one law, they would go to the extremes of sterilizing people.
You're jumping to more conclusions :P
Sure you can, it's just impractical and would be extremely expensive to do.
It's extreme because it's unnecessary. You've already made a law to prohibit it, there's no reason to go any further than that.
I never said if you made a law it was accomplished, I said there was no reason to go further than that. The question says "should not be allowed", not "should not be able". Making a law that says it's illegal for them to have children, makes it something that is not allowed. I'm well aware that short of sterilization or constantly monitoring them it's not possible to completely stop them. I've said in pretty much every post since I've started talking to you that it wouldn't be possible to completely enforce, and in the one that I didn't, I mentioned that sterlization is not how it would be done.
It's not as though I'm suddenly changing what I'm saying lol.
I don't see how sterilizing is enforcing the rule, given how if you sterilize people there's no point for the rule to exist to begin with seeing as they can't accomplish what you've made illegal anyways.
Should be "how sterilizing is the only way to enforce the rule".
By making a law and arresting those who break it? Like how every other law is enforced.
ok, i guess I was thinking along the lines of, if were talking about a governent that is willing to actually strip the right away from certain people to produce they must be quite authoritaian and would take extreme action, so any other possibilites didnt cross my mind with that line of thinking dominant in my head.
I kind of figured that was the case.
Pretty sure he knows what he said.
Just a bit annoyed when I dont know why people are disagreeing with me and their not explaning why I am wrong.
For anyone interested, here are the positions of Obama, Romney, Paul, Gingrich and Santorum.
Obama is towards the right?! Most U.S. politicians are almost entirely authoritarian?! o_O
I will be perfectly honest in saying that I find that hard to believe.
Also, here's mine:
This was the reasoning:
"The Democratic incumbent has surrounded himself with conservative advisors and key figures — many from previous administrations, and an unprecedented number from the Trilateral Commission. He also appointed a former Monsanto executive as Senior Advisor to the FDA. He has extended Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, presided over a spiralling rich-poor gap and sacrificed further American jobs with recent free trade deals.Trade union rights have also eroded under his watch. He has expanded Bush defence spending, droned civilians, failed to close Guantanamo, supported the NDAA which effectively legalises martial law, allowed drilling and adopted a soft-touch position towards the banks that is to the right of European Conservative leaders. We list these because many of Obama’s detractors absurdly portray him as either a radical liberal or a socialist, while his apologists, equally absurdly, continue to view him as a well-intentioned progressive, tragically thwarted by overwhelming pressures."
So did you go through and answer the questions as he would, or did you just manually place those dots there?
It was done by the people who created the website, who I'm assuming went through and answered the questions based on the party/candidate's policies.
Hmm... Strange. I went through and answered as Obama would most likely do (judging by what he has vocalized and what he has done about said vocalizations) and got almost the exact opposite:
But how do you know the makers of the site based it on what he actually did? What if they were the ones who acted as he would while biased? What if we're all biased? (Hint: We're all biased.) Try taking it yourself, based on what you know that he thinks, and see what results.
Not only that, but a lot of the questions on there were just... weird. The astrology one, for example. Who actually believes that astrology holds all the answers? If someone did, I highly doubt that would affect their political alignment. (Unless I misread it and it really said "astronomy"... in which case I still don't see how that would affect political alignment.)
yeah, I was kinda confused by the one about art in the middle of the criminal justice questions. Noone knows what politicians think about that kind of stuff, and I'm pretty sure Obama is to the right, though I'm not sure how much.
There being weird questions that have little to do with politics?
Those could definitely alter the results. Greatly, in fact.
So can the questions that are obviously one-sided morally regardless of alignment. However, those are somewhat equal in numbers, so I suppose the difference that they make isn't huge.
Also, what exactly is the "central point" of the chart? Isn't everything relative?
1. *Astrology. Also, they could have been a bit more hypothetical than essentially saying "Do you fully believe in something that almost everyone, regardless of alignment, agrees is not an actual true thing?"
2. Yes, but that's the point I'm making. There shouldn't be so many of those questions, because then it makes the final results biased. However, I will say that it does seperate some political dictators of history from modern-day people by including those extreme questions. However, unless those extreme questions are scored in a way that the more extreme answer causes more "points" in a certain direction than the other answer would in the other direction, then I find it impossible to buy the whole thing as a whole.
3. This sort of goes along with both 1 and 2. We don't really know precisely how things are "scored", and what is listed as the "left" or "right" or "authoritarian" or "libertarian" may not correspond to how individual societies use those terms in real life.
I implore you to at least give "answering those questions as various politicians would" a try. You don't have to take your final result seriously, if you don't want to, but at least realize that the people who placed those dots where they placed them have opinions of their own, and even if they are perfectly unbiased, they can still make big missteps.
1 & 2: But the problem is that a lot of these questions do nothing to determine political alignment (like the astrology one) and/or are so very extreme that it calls into question the reliability of the point system.
3. I'm not talking of the terms themselves, I'm speaking on how everything is relative to the observer's position, not on the chart, but also in other aspects as well. (This is because politics is too complex to even divide into a 2D grid. Maybe a 4D grid would work, if possible.) If somebody was very authoritarian, but less authoritarian than, for example, Hitler was, then Hitler would claim that that person "cares far too much about human rights," even though by the charts standards that person would be quite authoritarian.
Allow me to re-word a bit more concisely one of the things I said:
Think of it this way: Compared to other governments of history, Western society as a whole (especially in the U.S.) is definitely towards the right, and actually (in terms of society itself, not neccessarily the government [which is rather unfortunate]) somewhat towards libertarian (because of so many human rights being outlined in base constitutions and whatnot).
So, what could be considered "towards the right" according to the chart, could very well be "towards the left" by (even unbiased) modern standards.
Wait, no, but then the chart makers themselves missplaced the...
But then how could...
Argh! I'm confusing myself. :/
But then that one stance places them as more authoritarian than Obama?
And I'm still pondering how in the world Obama could *actually* be as far to the right as the site creators say he is. Yes, yes, you've posted their explanation, but I still highly doubt it, judging by the sheer weirdness of the questions.
But then if you look at the stuff that he HAS done, you'll find that he still ranks pretty far left on the spectrum. At least, further left than the people of the site have said.
Also, abortion is hypothetical? And I didn't mean your basis, I meant the site people's basis.
Yes, I do. Because if you put controls on what other people do with their bodies, then you're a lot less libertarian, and thereby more authoritarian.
I was, however, confused as to why you refer to abortion as "hypothetical," and why you assumed that it was your basis that I was pondering over.
Also, there's also the stimulus plan. Honestly, the stimulus plan and the healthcare bill combined spent so much money in an effort to "right social wrongs" (which is essentially the basis of being "towards the left," is it not?) that it's seriously difficult to portray him as "right-winged."
Also, I'd prefer not to bring my own intelligence into the matter, thank you.
Even though he sta-...
Wait, yeah, that's actually a valid point.
