Political Compass
One of the regulars (i.e., 1,000+ posts) at Democratic Underground (DU) has a recent post drawing attention to an interesting quiz subjectively assessing a person's political stance, along the lines of personality tests many of us are probably familiar with. In this case, the two axes of the "political compass" involve the familiar over-simplistic "left-right" quandary while the other addresses libertarian vs. authoritarian. Obviously this is still comically oversimplified, but it is far better than the binary left-right thinking that has become so ingrained as to be dangerous.
The original DU post that caught my attention is here. You creative sorts will find what you need pretty quickly (and do take time to tack through a few comments), but in the interests of jumpstarting, here's the place to go (from second comment in thread, by original post author) to actually get going on taking the quiz. Should you want to actually be included in the DU compilation, note that you should record your quiz results, since the quiz is hosted at an independent site with no automatic passing on of your "score." Once you've recorded your two numbers, return to the previous DU page where there is a chance to log your position. Keep yours secret if you like, obviously.
But, for the record, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are my closest compatriots, though my interpolation is that I am slightly more "left" and more "libertarian" than either (ok, -6.25 and -5.23). Kucinich and Gravel appear to be the only politicians in my general neighborhood - but over 60% of the folks recording their results at DU are on my block. Very interesting, considering how frequently spats of various sorts seem to break out in comments at DU. I'd guess that may be attributable to a small percentage of very outspoken sorts either conflict-prone or at least with very little conflict aversion. And, oh, yes, more than a few trolls, basically participating solely to stir things up.
Caveat - I have no idea how the "famous" folks with presented "bearings" were persuaded to complete the quiz and share their results (Gandhi perhaps most interesting!). Perhaps there are some notes on that at the quiz sight - I did not dwell over-long there.
But there is a lot to ponder here. For starters, check out all of the mainstream presidential candidates from both parties (with prior caveat fully in mind!).
The original DU post that caught my attention is here. You creative sorts will find what you need pretty quickly (and do take time to tack through a few comments), but in the interests of jumpstarting, here's the place to go (from second comment in thread, by original post author) to actually get going on taking the quiz. Should you want to actually be included in the DU compilation, note that you should record your quiz results, since the quiz is hosted at an independent site with no automatic passing on of your "score." Once you've recorded your two numbers, return to the previous DU page where there is a chance to log your position. Keep yours secret if you like, obviously.
But, for the record, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama are my closest compatriots, though my interpolation is that I am slightly more "left" and more "libertarian" than either (ok, -6.25 and -5.23). Kucinich and Gravel appear to be the only politicians in my general neighborhood - but over 60% of the folks recording their results at DU are on my block. Very interesting, considering how frequently spats of various sorts seem to break out in comments at DU. I'd guess that may be attributable to a small percentage of very outspoken sorts either conflict-prone or at least with very little conflict aversion. And, oh, yes, more than a few trolls, basically participating solely to stir things up.
Caveat - I have no idea how the "famous" folks with presented "bearings" were persuaded to complete the quiz and share their results (Gandhi perhaps most interesting!). Perhaps there are some notes on that at the quiz sight - I did not dwell over-long there.
But there is a lot to ponder here. For starters, check out all of the mainstream presidential candidates from both parties (with prior caveat fully in mind!).
posted by Sir Gumbo at 11:08 PM
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