nyerm

The Political Compass is an interesting site that decries the terms “left” and “right” in describing people’s political leanings. It leaves left and right as a scale describing economic politics, with communism on the far left and unregulated free markets on the far right. It then introduces a second dimension to describe social politics, from “authoritarian” (fascism at its extreme end) to “libertarian” (anarchism at its extreme end). The result is a grid, rather than a line, and while still an abstraction, it’s a far more useful one than the prevailing left versus right paradigm.

The site includes a brief test to see where you fall on the political compass. My results don’t surprise me too much; I’m well into the left economically, and even further toward libertarian on the social scale.

Economic Left/Right: -4.62
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.33

What does surprise me is that on a chart where they’ve plotted values for various global political figures, I’m pretty much a political dead ringer for the Dalai Lama. I’m not sure what to make of that, if anything.

There is also a chart of candidates for the 2003 United States Presidential primaries. Based on their statements and voting records, most of the candidates aren’t very different from each other, with the majority hovering in the right/authoritarian quadrant, but not too far from the center (except for Bush, who’s very far to the right, economically). The two exceptions are Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton, who are both left/libertarian.

via NSLog()