Renzatic on 18/8/2018 at 21:22
The most common response to that question is "why should I be forced by the government to pay for something I don't need!"
Starker on 18/8/2018 at 23:44
Quote Posted by heywood
If you think I'm being too critical, I'll repeat my challenge. First, find a set of answers that give you a result where they've placed Obama and/or Macron. Then try to reconcile those answers with their record in office. Bonus points if you can tell me how Macron and Ron Paul rate the same, or Obama and Thatcher, or how the Labour Party goes from being solidly Authoritarian-Right to Libertarian-Left in a span of 2 years.
I think you're taking it far too seriously. It's just a website that throws around a few ideas and tries to offer a different perspective on the usual left-right divide. As I said, it's not a serious tool for detailed analysis or anything close to that. And yes, it's entirely subjective and non-transparent.
It is also not meant for you to accurately position yourself (or anyone) relative to everybody else. It just tells you where you land on their model -- whether you lean towards maximising personal freedoms or towards obeying authority and whether you lean towards collective control in the economy or leaving it completely up to market forces. It doesn't really say anything about individual policies or politics and it isn't meant to.
As a result, Macron and Ron Paul don't "rate the same". They have the same leanings on the PC's chart -- very pro free markets and leaning somewhat towards individual freedoms on average. I don't know about the Y-axis, but the X-axis sounds about right.
Obama and Thatcher are not that dissimilar as you may think -- they both heavily championed free markets, for example. Even Obamacare was an attempt to find a market based solution. As for authoritarianism, I already brought examples from Obama and I don't think I need to convince you that Thatcher was leaning heavily towards authoritarianism as well.
Labour has been on the right side of the chart for a while now. I suppose you have heard of New Labour and the Third Way? And Miliband championed the free market heavily as well. Right now, though, it is led by Jeremy Corbyn who proposes things like nationalising the railways and public utilities.
Starker on 18/8/2018 at 23:53
Pyrian, that quote is solid gold, but you could just as well have quoted this very thread:
A: "Health care, university, and basic income should all be free."
B: "Socialism doesn't work."
C: "It does in Scandinavia."
D: "Scandinavia isn't socialist."
E: "We're not talking about socialism, we're talking about "socialism"."
heywood on 19/8/2018 at 19:53
If you're going to place survey respondents on the grid based on their answers to the questions, then you have to do the same for the candidates. You shouldn't use one rating standard for respondents and a completely different and arbitrary one for the parties and candidates. As best it's meaningless. More likely it's disingenuous, purposefully portraying the political parties they don't favor to be far away from the average score attained by respondents on the test.
I don't like portraying politics as a 1-dimensional or 2-dimensional thing or reducing people and candidates to a score. It discourages issue-oriented debate and encourages partisan debate. But if we must go there, I suggest starting with a better political spectrum quiz. This one has better questions which are less loaded. They also ask demographic questions and you can compare your result to the average for different demographic groupings, including political parties.
(
https://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html) https://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html
They also show scatter plots of respondents from each of the national US parties, so you can see the distribution of responses for each party:
(
https://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/poli-compare-parties.html) https://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/poli-compare-parties.html
Renzatic on 19/8/2018 at 20:05
That test gave me results about on par with the previous one. It says I'm a slight bit more to the left, and not quite as socially libertarian, but still pegged me out in about the same ballpark.
Nameless Voice on 19/8/2018 at 23:12
Some of those second set of questions seem very US-specific to me.
Either way, in both tests I end up in the bottom-left quadrant. More to the left and much closer to the centre of the authoritarian/libertarian scale in the second test. Which kind of makes sense because I believe in regulating things where otherwise humans will be evil to each other and ruin it for everyone.
Inline Image:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/chart?ec=-7.13&soc=-6.05Anyway, going back to the original topic, people keep talking about the importance of free speech, but I don't agree with what some people consider that to actually
mean.
The idea of free speech is that you should be allowed to express your opinion even if it contradicts with that of the state (mainly) or the majority of people, and that you shouldn't be suppressed or persecuted by the government for criticising them.
But the thing is, that's talking about political beliefs, like for example believing in the right to keep arms, or believing in gun control; believing in the free market or believing in regulation. You should be free to be anywhere on that political spectrum.
But what I don't agree with is that hatred should be protected by the right of free speech. If your speech is designed solely to attack and hurt others, then that is not okay and you should not have the right to that speech. You have the right to have an option. You do not have a right to spread hatred and vitriol, to attack others. Those aren't valid political beliefs, they're behaviours which are unacceptable in any society.
I keep seeing "freedom of speech" being used to defend the alt-right. No. Just no. Stop trying to use free speech to defend the indefensible.
Racism, bigotry, sexism, death threats, these things are never okay, anywhere, on any side of the political spectrum.
Recently someone said to me "Of course, when you're far left everything to the right of you is alt-right".
That's just wrong on so many levels. It's like saying that if you're on the left, everyone to the right of you is a bigot. The two don't equate at all.
If you're far left, then everything to the right of you is
the right. Such people are going to have more conservative views, like believing in businesses over people, less government regulation, and so on. That's fair, and people are entitled to such opinions even if I don't agree with them.
Starker on 19/8/2018 at 23:59
I'm also more to the left and less to the bottom on the other test. Also, non-interventionist and socially liberal. Well, duh.
As for Political Compass, it's perfectly valid to look at a candidate's record to see where they stand on issues rather than take their own word for it.
Also, of course it's better to look at individual policies and issues rather than simply saying a candidate is left or right of somewhere. But it's not like Political Compass is meant to be a replacement for that. It's not meant to be the tool for political analysis. It's simply a small step away from the usual left-right dichotomy. Kind of like what happens when people specify that they are a fiscal conservative.
The reason so many parties are on the right side is because most of them are pro-capitalism. And yes, even Labour has had a pro-free market capitalist political stance.
Nameless Voice on 20/8/2018 at 01:01
Quote Posted by Starker
As for censorship, not every group deserves a platform equal to all others. For example, certain far-right ideas are an existential threat to large groups of people. Also known as the paradox of tolerance.
This deserves to be quoted, rather than just being off-handedly referenced, as it feels very relevant to this discussion and to today's world:
Quote Posted by Karl Popper, defining The Paradox of Tolerance
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
SD on 20/8/2018 at 01:35
The political compass is decent, it's their "assessments" of where parties and politicians are that is way off.
Inline Image:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/chart?ec=1.5&soc=-6.1My chart is doubtless pretty standard for a European liberal (socially libertarian, economically centrist) but they put my party in the upper right quadrant, seemingly apropos of absolutely nothing. Given that the Liberal Democrats is the party that drove legalisation of gay marriage in the UK, wants to legalise marijuana etc, it's difficult to understand how they managed to put them up there:
Inline Image:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/charts/uk2017Renzatic on 20/8/2018 at 05:19
It depends on which far right we're talking about. Are we debating with anarcho capitalists, minarchists, and their ilk, or people who want to try and kill all the Jews again?
