Some of my
postings here may leave doubts in readers' minds that I'm a peaceful man,
preferring to focus my heart and head around issues of spirit, and matters of
family, language, history, and so on. Certainly in this forum I've collected
plenty of splinters on the soles of my feet from leaping quickly onto the
sturdy soapbox and pulling your eyes and attention to yet another outrage from
the right, or The Right.
But I do
favor peace – wholesale, and retail – in dealing with other folks. I resort to
potshots only when I feel attention, a voice, is needed. (E.g., our emperor has been strutting for years sans
culottes, and it is both my right and duty to point this out. I do not delight
in the sight.)
In one of my blog-postings a couple days ago, I made
mention (not for the first time) that friend and occasional contributor
Spartacus "politically is farther to the left of
me". With years in the USAF solidly behind him (and having
shaped him), with wife and progeny and animals and model airplanes and workshop
and poison-ivy patch out back, I do forget that Sparks also has a solid
grounding in politics, and he bristles at the simplistic ignorance behind those
"left"/"right" and "blue"/"red" labels.
While aware
that the concept of a straight-line spectrum spanning from infradig to
ultraviolent is inadequate to embrace the range of lemons that come rolling out
underfoot each time someone in the world pulls the lever in a polling booth (or
hoists or burns a new flag), I have still been rather automatically seeing
things more monodimensionally than is the case in real sociopolitical world,
even just right here in the States – let alone the odder mélange (again, to my
eyes) that the rest of the world serves up.
Sparty
called my attention to this deficiency of mine yesterday via an email:
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:33 AM
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:33 AM
Hey Guy!
Re the latest political screed —
you really need to take 10 minutes out of your schedule to take this quiz:
It's a better way of looking at
where you are politically — instead of just dealing with the old left/right
political spectrum, it also helps quantify the authoritarian/libertarian scale
of values — hence the "political compass" rather than just
"political spectrum".
The test is easy and fun. It only
takes about 10 minutes. You do not have to register for it or supply an e-mail
— you are completely anonymous. They won't try to sell you anything, and
participating does not result in any spam. The results may surprise you — I
wasn't really surprised, but my results did give me ideas for further reading
which I may not have thought of on my own. I have followed up on some of that
suggested reading and it has been quite rewarding in helping me to refine my
personal political philosophy.
If you do decide to go there,
please take the test before reading over the rest of the site —
prior reading could unconsciously bias your answers.
I urge you to do it — and pass it
along to your other correspondents. Put the URL up on your blog — it's such a wonderfully
useful little tool.
I've been sitting on my results
for weeks now — I'm just dying to talk them over with you (and vice versa).
OK, I'll step down from the
soapbox now.
Have a great day!!!!
Rab L. Rouser
That seemed
rather interesting… so of course I went over to the site to give it a go. And
it was fun. Thanks, Sparta!
Having
reviewed that site, and tested there, I must say I find it darned interesting
and revealing indeed. To that simple straight-line, bar-spectrum view of
sinister/dexter politicians, the folks at Political Compass have added a whole
new dimension.
Politically,
people of course sway more this way or that in terms of social issues and
economics. So… they've broken these out as separate spectra, x
and y axes against which one can place individual points (and
pointed individuals) based on where they fall between four
extremes, not two. (I’m sure you remember this kind of layout from high-school math classes.)
Fascinating! Authoritarian versus anarchistic, collectivism versus small-L
libertarianism – what a concept!
I can't say
more here, since it could skew how you test out – but I, too, urge each of you
to head over to that site, read their preface on this far more realistic
concept, and go ahead and take the test. You'll simply mark the level of your
agreement/disagreement in response to a series of "propositions", or
statements of… well, I guess you could say social, political, and economic
opinions/concepts.
Specifically
– not to put you on the spot, sir – I'm looking at you, Blue Dog
(among others, too), to give this one a go. I think it would serve as a great
springboard at your own blog, which sees exponentially more readers than this
little corner of the 'net does. I'd also like your reaction, Blue (just email
me, or just leave a reply/comment below), on that site's concept in general,
what the testing says about you, and how adequate/accurate you feel this is
(and why). I'll only post up here what you okay in advance, of course.
I'll also
fire off a note to our Anon E. Mouse to do the same, asking her as well to reel
in her husband long enough to get him to test there at Political Compass, and
ditto their friend F3, with whom I had such a delightful online tussle a few months ago here.
Spartacus
and I have already discussed the spectrum-concept further offsite; once I've
got his thumb up (versus, say, merely one of his fingers), I'm going to post
his take on what the test and its analysis told him, and where it led him.
Not to be a
partypooper, I'm probably not going to do the same for myself here,
though. While my own views on politics and (to a lesser extent) social and
economic issues have been hanging from my blog's clothesline here for some
time, I really don't want to bias anyone's testing at Political Compass, one
way or another.
The Compass
people also demonstrate where various worldshakers – good and bad, yesterday
and today – plot out on that graph/compass. I will say that (with some
interest and genuine comfort) my neighbors include Mohandas Gandhi, and the
(Fourteenth) Dalai Lama. And I'm in an entirely different quadrant from His
Holiness, Benedetto XVI!
Okay, now
class: begin the test. There are no right or wrong answers, and you do not have
to put your name on the papers. But I will be collecting them. Ready,
set…
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