hey trip, you wanna run for office on the same ticket? i landed in exactly the same spot as you.

though i have to say that some of the questions were borderline unanswerable, imho. poorly worded or ambiguous. oh well.

Ok, I got you all beat. ;-)

Economic left/right: -8.75
Authoritarian left/right: -7.28

Questions: Why is "right" positive and "left" negative? Why is "Authoritarian" positive and "libertarian" negative?

Just asking.

I love it! It turns out Isbadiddle isn't a liberal site at all! It is a Liberterian site!

David: the left / right thing is just standard cartesian practice, if I remember correctly from algebra, and it would be kind of silly to put "right" on the left. As to why authoritarian is up and libertarian is down -- maybe authoritarians like it on top?

Wow. Outflanked by the other David.
Economic: -6.12
Libertarian: -6.72

Just to make it clear, I'm a big believer in the ideals of this country. I don't think it's surprising that we're all libertarians. I'd like to think that, and not consumerism, is the essence of American-ness.

Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.56

DB, you and I appear to occupy the exact same enterprise zone.

Interestingly, I've always thought of myself as a liberal communitarian. "Libertarian Leftie" doesn't quite sum me up. So I think the test could do more toward illuminating attitudes about community and civic virtue.

It might be interesting for the test to incorporate statements such as "Voting is a responsibility" or "Individuals have a responsibility to give back to their communities" or "America would be a better place if all young people were required to spend a year in a national public service program."

Might give us more opportunity to find common ground. And provide new openings for rancorous disagreement, of course.

Rock on.

hey trip, you wanna run for office on the same ticket? i landed in exactly the same spot as you.

though i have to say that some of the questions were borderline unanswerable, imho. poorly worded or ambiguous. oh well.

Ok, I got you all beat. ;-)

Economic left/right: -8.75
Authoritarian left/right: -7.28

Questions: Why is "right" positive and "left" negative? Why is "Authoritarian" positive and "libertarian" negative?

Just asking.

I love it! It turns out Isbadiddle isn't a liberal site at all! It is a Liberterian site!

David: the left / right thing is just standard cartesian practice, if I remember correctly from algebra, and it would be kind of silly to put "right" on the left. As to why authoritarian is up and libertarian is down -- maybe authoritarians like it on top?

Wow. Outflanked by the other David.
Economic: -6.12
Libertarian: -6.72

Just to make it clear, I'm a big believer in the ideals of this country. I don't think it's surprising that we're all libertarians. I'd like to think that, and not consumerism, is the essence of American-ness.

Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.56

DB, you and I appear to occupy the exact same enterprise zone.

Interestingly, I've always thought of myself as a liberal communitarian. "Libertarian Leftie" doesn't quite sum me up. So I think the test could do more toward illuminating attitudes about community and civic virtue.

It might be interesting for the test to incorporate statements such as "Voting is a responsibility" or "Individuals have a responsibility to give back to their communities" or "America would be a better place if all young people were required to spend a year in a national public service program."

Might give us more opportunity to find common ground. And provide new openings for rancorous disagreement, of course.

Rock on.

I was the Obsessive-Compulsive Count. Was anybody else the Obsessive-Compulsive Count?

Actually, I came in at a responsible yet compassionate -4.50/-6.10. I'd also like to point out that Trip, Emily, and I are in almost exactly the same spot as Gandhi. (Didn't he die peacefully in his sleep, loved by all his countrymen?)

Actually, Ghandi was brutally murdered.

He was assassinated -- shot to death by a religious fanatic.

Mike, I understand the Cartesian graph concept, but why can't positive numbers be on the left, and negative on the right? Is it because we write from left to right? I wonder what graphs would look like if Des Cartes spoke Hebrew?

Which reminds me: Everyone knows the story of Des Cartes at the cocktail party, where the waiter came around and asked him if he would like an hor d'oerve. He said, "I think not!" and promptly disappeared.

What I like about that (very) old story is that he was able to say "I think not!" before he disappeared. He was in full voice immediately before his disappearance.

That means that he wasn't Des Cartes before he was Hoarse.

Regarding the act of dying peacefully in one's sleep, I am reminded of Emo Phillips' classic line:

When I die, I would like to die peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather, not screaming in terror, like all the passengers in his car.

[NB: Edited to correct punchline.]

Emily: Yeah, these things are always a little ambiguously done. Kinda like the BeliefNet survey, which told me I was most aligned with Hinduism.

David: The x and y axes are simply arranged the way the original site has it. I’m pretty sure there are no nefarious implications.

Greg: Perhaps there should be a z-axis of responsibility, ranging from “It’s all the government’s job” to “It’s your own damn fault”

Colin and Emily: Considering Ghandi’s demise, we should be watching our backs. Maybe we could form one of those back-to-back-to-back things you see in some action movies. Right before we KICK SOME ASS!

My ex-wife let me know of my son's holiday book wish list:

1. Emerging Democratic Majority, by John B. Judis
2. Selling Out, by Mark Green
3. Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, by Dan Savage
4. When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism, by Bill Mahar.

That's my boy! ;-) He may be further towards the bottom left corner than I am!

He works for Barnes & Noble in South Burlington, VT. Did you know that B&N lets employees borrow hardcover books to take home for 2 weeks? You could be buying a book you think is new but it's "previously read." Anyway, he took Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men" out, read it, and then asked me to buy it for him -- which I did, along with Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."

Proud Papa

Looks like Greg, Dave, and I can form a triad, too. My political compass points to:

Economic Left/Right: -6.75
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.56

Debbie

Whoops. That last message was posted by me, not Mike (just so you know he's not trying to frame me as being a radical leftie, as part of some liberal conspiracy or something). I didn't realize the comment function on our home computer was automatically set to his info.

Debbie

Well, looks like I'm right in there with the Gandhi crowd:

Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.05

I'm not sure if the quiz is right, though, as I thought I might be a bit to the right of some Ishbadiddlers. Not on the economic axis or libertarian/authoritarian axis, but maybe some other (z-prime?) axis of conflict resolution.

While I believe non-violence is a fundamentally good idea (to borrow a phrase from the political compass folks), I think fighting a war in self-defense can be justified, e.g. the US in WWII. That's why I felt that the recent war in Afghanistan was justified (and probably necessary), though I know not all my friends agreed. In contrast, the proposed war against Iraq has nothing to do with self-defense. Hence, my opposition. Of course, (to digress even further) sometimes self-defense just leads to an endless cycle of violence (e.g. Israel-Palestine). So, I guess David Block would say I'm conflicted on the issue of conflict resolution.

But are you resolutely conflicted?

I feel so isolated way over here on the right...you all still like me, don't you?
Jim? Buddy?

BTW, I heard on NPR the other day that the BJP's new history texts (Extra-Hinduized for your protection) weren't going to mention that Gandhi was murdered for promoting cross-religious harmony in India. Terrific.

Fascists! In our midst! The horra, the horra.

It would be interesting to compare the qualitative data from our posts with these quantitative summaries.... and to return every few months to track the changes, if there are any.

I'm at (-7.88, -5.49), by the way.

Liz

I was the Obsessive-Compulsive Count. Was anybody else the Obsessive-Compulsive Count?

Actually, I came in at a responsible yet compassionate -4.50/-6.10. I'd also like to point out that Trip, Emily, and I are in almost exactly the same spot as Gandhi. (Didn't he die peacefully in his sleep, loved by all his countrymen?)

Actually, Ghandi was brutally murdered.

He was assassinated -- shot to death by a religious fanatic.

Mike, I understand the Cartesian graph concept, but why can't positive numbers be on the left, and negative on the right? Is it because we write from left to right? I wonder what graphs would look like if Des Cartes spoke Hebrew?

Which reminds me: Everyone knows the story of Des Cartes at the cocktail party, where the waiter came around and asked him if he would like an hor d'oerve. He said, "I think not!" and promptly disappeared.

What I like about that (very) old story is that he was able to say "I think not!" before he disappeared. He was in full voice immediately before his disappearance.

That means that he wasn't Des Cartes before he was Hoarse.

Regarding the act of dying peacefully in one's sleep, I am reminded of Emo Phillips' classic line:

When I die, I would like to die peacefully, in my sleep, like my grandfather, not screaming in terror, like all the passengers in his car.

[NB: Edited to correct punchline.]

Emily: Yeah, these things are always a little ambiguously done. Kinda like the BeliefNet survey, which told me I was most aligned with Hinduism.

David: The x and y axes are simply arranged the way the original site has it. I’m pretty sure there are no nefarious implications.

Greg: Perhaps there should be a z-axis of responsibility, ranging from “It’s all the government’s job” to “It’s your own damn fault”

Colin and Emily: Considering Ghandi’s demise, we should be watching our backs. Maybe we could form one of those back-to-back-to-back things you see in some action movies. Right before we KICK SOME ASS!

My ex-wife let me know of my son's holiday book wish list:

1. Emerging Democratic Majority, by John B. Judis
2. Selling Out, by Mark Green
3. Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, by Dan Savage
4. When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism, by Bill Mahar.

That's my boy! ;-) He may be further towards the bottom left corner than I am!

He works for Barnes & Noble in South Burlington, VT. Did you know that B&N lets employees borrow hardcover books to take home for 2 weeks? You could be buying a book you think is new but it's "previously read." Anyway, he took Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men" out, read it, and then asked me to buy it for him -- which I did, along with Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy."

Proud Papa

Looks like Greg, Dave, and I can form a triad, too. My political compass points to:

Economic Left/Right: -6.75
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.56

Debbie

Whoops. That last message was posted by me, not Mike (just so you know he's not trying to frame me as being a radical leftie, as part of some liberal conspiracy or something). I didn't realize the comment function on our home computer was automatically set to his info.

Debbie

Well, looks like I'm right in there with the Gandhi crowd:

Economic Left/Right: -5.38
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.05

I'm not sure if the quiz is right, though, as I thought I might be a bit to the right of some Ishbadiddlers. Not on the economic axis or libertarian/authoritarian axis, but maybe some other (z-prime?) axis of conflict resolution.

While I believe non-violence is a fundamentally good idea (to borrow a phrase from the political compass folks), I think fighting a war in self-defense can be justified, e.g. the US in WWII. That's why I felt that the recent war in Afghanistan was justified (and probably necessary), though I know not all my friends agreed. In contrast, the proposed war against Iraq has nothing to do with self-defense. Hence, my opposition. Of course, (to digress even further) sometimes self-defense just leads to an endless cycle of violence (e.g. Israel-Palestine). So, I guess David Block would say I'm conflicted on the issue of conflict resolution.

But are you resolutely conflicted?

I feel so isolated way over here on the right...you all still like me, don't you?
Jim? Buddy?

BTW, I heard on NPR the other day that the BJP's new history texts (Extra-Hinduized for your protection) weren't going to mention that Gandhi was murdered for promoting cross-religious harmony in India. Terrific.

Fascists! In our midst! The horra, the horra.

It would be interesting to compare the qualitative data from our posts with these quantitative summaries.... and to return every few months to track the changes, if there are any.

I'm at (-7.88, -5.49), by the way.

Liz

Tufte would probably say you need to fade the crosshatching some more, maybe fade it and reduce it to simple plus marks at the intersections. :-p

Yeah, he's got a thing about crosshatching. He'd probably also want me to re-number everyone from left to right. Maybe next iteration.

I'm at (-7.88(hi Liz!), -6.82), though I agree with some earlier comments that this doesn't really take into account one's beliefs about individual rights and obligations, which are critical to any democratic discourse.

Tufte would probably say you need to fade the crosshatching some more, maybe fade it and reduce it to simple plus marks at the intersections. :-p

Yeah, he's got a thing about crosshatching. He'd probably also want me to re-number everyone from left to right. Maybe next iteration.

I'm at (-7.88(hi Liz!), -6.82), though I agree with some earlier comments that this doesn't really take into account one's beliefs about individual rights and obligations, which are critical to any democratic discourse.

Jim’s comment made me think: Anyone here able to do a quickie statistical analysis of this data? Like it seems that we are mostly not that far from equating Leftism and Libertarianism. The line from dead center to pure southwest would pass right through Ennis and Debra, and would come within one tick of nos. 1, 7, and 8.

I confess, I don’t really know what “statistical analysis” would mean, but you know, it must be truth, right? It’s statistics!

Well, I've been reviewing some statistics lately, so why not put on my pedantic suit?

So, first of all, we're not exactly a random sample, which means that we can't generalize from this sample to the broader U.S. population. Any analyses we do will only apply to the population of Ish-readers-who-posted. Which makes this a little less fun.

Having said that, just by eyeballing the graph, there's clearly a strong degree of correlation among the IRWP between "left-leaning" and "libertarian-inclined" - overall, those people who are further to the left politically, as measured by the Political Compass survey, also provide more "libertarian" responses to the survey. For the first ten responses (sorry, Andrea, but that's all the freebie calculator I found could handle), the correlation between the two variables is 0.734, which is reasonably strong.

Oddly, when you remove Cebra and Jim, the correlation actually *decreases* to 0.675 - that is, there is less association between "left-leaning" and "libertarian" when you remove the people who are further to the right. If Cebra and Jim were really outliers, then removing them would increase the degree of correlation.

When you run a linear regression, again on the first ten responses, you get, "y= 0.234x -4.57. That is, for every 1 point variation in how far people move from to the right, there is a 0.234 increase in authoritarian preferences. However, R-squared = 0.54, so "left-right preference" explains only 54% of the variation in "liberatarian-authoritarian preference."

Here, excluding Cebra and Jim yields a slightly different result: y = 0.341x - 3.87, so for every 1 point movement to the right, there is a 0.341 increase in authoritarian preferences. R-squared is a bit lower here - left-right preference explains only 45% of the variation in libertarian-authoritarian preference.

At this point it's probably appropriate to insert the standard caveat that "correlation does not imply causation." This could just be a poorly designed survey, or maybe we're all being influenced by gamma rays from North Korea.

Those are the numbers. I'm open to creative interpretation, um, truths.

Liz

if you want to see a wider statistical range, i could forward this to my high school friend's fiancee's wacko republican brother, with whom we all spend a lot of time arguing. problem is, then he'd probably come here and argue with everyone.

i like this chart, though, because it explains why i do, sometimes, agree with this guy. while on radically different sides of the left/right axis, we are probably at about the same place on the authoritarian/liberatarian axis. thus we agree on less contentious points, such as, "should people get away with suing mcdonald's for making them fat?"

i took the beliefnet quiz, too, but i'm convinced it's set to recommended unitarianism to anyone who enters contradictory responses like i'm sure i did.

i hadn't noticed that i was in about the same spot at gandhi. nice! i went through a big tolstayan period in high school and i guess some things haven't changed.

So, taking Mike's points about media bias, and looking at this chart, any reader of Ish should factor in a liberal/libertarian bias, right? Fine.

But reviewing the comments to this chart, I noticed a recurring theme of disatisfaction with many of the questions of this test: wording, vagueness, etc. So then I found myself wondering, "isn't it interesting that when one fights through the vauge questions, we still end up with such a lefty skew?" Which, of course, made me wonder about just how objective this test is (not that I ever thought it was very).

So-o-o-o-o-o-o . . . off we go to the web. The original link gives very few clues. Developed by a "political journalist with a university counselling background," and "a professor of Social History." Sounds pretty academic and viewpoint-neutral, right? After all, they assure us - "there is no right or wrong." They are just helping people self-identify. No judgments here! Let's keep looking.

There are various clues that make it obvious it is a UK site, but the only other contact clue I could find was the copyright from "Pace News Limited"

Turns out there are only four links in Yahoo to such an organization, one of which is an older version of the same test (Copyright 2001). Except that one seems to be sponsered by webbanners for one and only one site - oneworldaction.org.

THAT turns out to be a British-based, left-leaning organization devoted to supporting women's organizations, trade unions, and "giving people a say in the decisions that shape their lives" (read: "we hate the World Bank"). Hmmm.

So then I went back to Mike's link about Logical Fallacies and started looking at some of the questions. I started looking at some of the prejudicial language the test uses to slant questions ("absurd" "serve humanity" "worrying" "sad reflection"). I noticed that some questions used tremendously loaded words, meant to drive you to an obvious conclusion (my favorite: Â"We'd be better off if companies simply told the truth, rather than spending a fortune on manipulative consumer advertisingÂ" Â- implication: adversiting is always manipulative, and companies who advertise never tell the truth). I decided to screw with the machine . . . .

I took the test. Any question that had a loaded word in it, I answered as a weak agree/disagree towards the obvious conservative slant. In other words, I answered that advertising question Â"disagreeÂ" just to be really conservative about it. I answered any question that used neutral language weak agree/disagree with a liberal slant (note, I mean neutral-language, not neutral-ideology. Pretty much all of the questions have an obvious right/wrong answer depending on your left/right leaning). I didn't answer any questions with a "strong" agree/disagree (even incredibly loaded questions like "Those who are able to work and do not should not expect to eat(!)")

My score? Left and Libertarian.

I'm not going to connect the dots any more, but keep in mind that even by intentionally answering every biased question AGAINST the obvious bias and in favor of the nutty conservative answer (yeah, man! The disabled should be sterilized!), I STILL came out left/libertarian. I'm sure we all already realized that this "objective test" is slanted to make you self-identify as a liberal and a libertarian, but the strength of the skew even surprised cynical ol' me.

You would have to be one sick bastard to get a right wing score.

Like mine.

Jim’s comment made me think: Anyone here able to do a quickie statistical analysis of this data? Like it seems that we are mostly not that far from equating Leftism and Libertarianism. The line from dead center to pure southwest would pass right through Ennis and Debra, and would come within one tick of nos. 1, 7, and 8.

I confess, I don’t really know what “statistical analysis” would mean, but you know, it must be truth, right? It’s statistics!

Well, I've been reviewing some statistics lately, so why not put on my pedantic suit?

So, first of all, we're not exactly a random sample, which means that we can't generalize from this sample to the broader U.S. population. Any analyses we do will only apply to the population of Ish-readers-who-posted. Which makes this a little less fun.

Having said that, just by eyeballing the graph, there's clearly a strong degree of correlation among the IRWP between "left-leaning" and "libertarian-inclined" - overall, those people who are further to the left politically, as measured by the Political Compass survey, also provide more "libertarian" responses to the survey. For the first ten responses (sorry, Andrea, but that's all the freebie calculator I found could handle), the correlation between the two variables is 0.734, which is reasonably strong.

Oddly, when you remove Cebra and Jim, the correlation actually *decreases* to 0.675 - that is, there is less association between "left-leaning" and "libertarian" when you remove the people who are further to the right. If Cebra and Jim were really outliers, then removing them would increase the degree of correlation.

When you run a linear regression, again on the first ten responses, you get, "y= 0.234x -4.57. That is, for every 1 point variation in how far people move from to the right, there is a 0.234 increase in authoritarian preferences. However, R-squared = 0.54, so "left-right preference" explains only 54% of the variation in "liberatarian-authoritarian preference."

Here, excluding Cebra and Jim yields a slightly different result: y = 0.341x - 3.87, so for every 1 point movement to the right, there is a 0.341 increase in authoritarian preferences. R-squared is a bit lower here - left-right preference explains only 45% of the variation in libertarian-authoritarian preference.

At this point it's probably appropriate to insert the standard caveat that "correlation does not imply causation." This could just be a poorly designed survey, or maybe we're all being influenced by gamma rays from North Korea.

Those are the numbers. I'm open to creative interpretation, um, truths.

Liz

if you want to see a wider statistical range, i could forward this to my high school friend's fiancee's wacko republican brother, with whom we all spend a lot of time arguing. problem is, then he'd probably come here and argue with everyone.

i like this chart, though, because it explains why i do, sometimes, agree with this guy. while on radically different sides of the left/right axis, we are probably at about the same place on the authoritarian/liberatarian axis. thus we agree on less contentious points, such as, "should people get away with suing mcdonald's for making them fat?"

i took the beliefnet quiz, too, but i'm convinced it's set to recommended unitarianism to anyone who enters contradictory responses like i'm sure i did.

i hadn't noticed that i was in about the same spot at gandhi. nice! i went through a big tolstayan period in high school and i guess some things haven't changed.

So, taking Mike's points about media bias, and looking at this chart, any reader of Ish should factor in a liberal/libertarian bias, right? Fine.

But reviewing the comments to this chart, I noticed a recurring theme of disatisfaction with many of the questions of this test: wording, vagueness, etc. So then I found myself wondering, "isn't it interesting that when one fights through the vauge questions, we still end up with such a lefty skew?" Which, of course, made me wonder about just how objective this test is (not that I ever thought it was very).

So-o-o-o-o-o-o . . . off we go to the web. The original link gives very few clues. Developed by a "political journalist with a university counselling background," and "a professor of Social History." Sounds pretty academic and viewpoint-neutral, right? After all, they assure us - "there is no right or wrong." They are just helping people self-identify. No judgments here! Let's keep looking.

There are various clues that make it obvious it is a UK site, but the only other contact clue I could find was the copyright from "Pace News Limited"

Turns out there are only four links in Yahoo to such an organization, one of which is an older version of the same test (Copyright 2001). Except that one seems to be sponsered by webbanners for one and only one site - oneworldaction.org.

THAT turns out to be a British-based, left-leaning organization devoted to supporting women's organizations, trade unions, and "giving people a say in the decisions that shape their lives" (read: "we hate the World Bank"). Hmmm.

So then I went back to Mike's link about Logical Fallacies and started looking at some of the questions. I started looking at some of the prejudicial language the test uses to slant questions ("absurd" "serve humanity" "worrying" "sad reflection"). I noticed that some questions used tremendously loaded words, meant to drive you to an obvious conclusion (my favorite: Â"We'd be better off if companies simply told the truth, rather than spending a fortune on manipulative consumer advertisingÂ" Â- implication: adversiting is always manipulative, and companies who advertise never tell the truth). I decided to screw with the machine . . . .

I took the test. Any question that had a loaded word in it, I answered as a weak agree/disagree towards the obvious conservative slant. In other words, I answered that advertising question Â"disagreeÂ" just to be really conservative about it. I answered any question that used neutral language weak agree/disagree with a liberal slant (note, I mean neutral-language, not neutral-ideology. Pretty much all of the questions have an obvious right/wrong answer depending on your left/right leaning). I didn't answer any questions with a "strong" agree/disagree (even incredibly loaded questions like "Those who are able to work and do not should not expect to eat(!)")

My score? Left and Libertarian.

I'm not going to connect the dots any more, but keep in mind that even by intentionally answering every biased question AGAINST the obvious bias and in favor of the nutty conservative answer (yeah, man! The disabled should be sterilized!), I STILL came out left/libertarian. I'm sure we all already realized that this "objective test" is slanted to make you self-identify as a liberal and a libertarian, but the strength of the skew even surprised cynical ol' me.

You would have to be one sick bastard to get a right wing score.

Like mine.

Thanks for the analysis. I understand that the survey presents these loaded questions so people will have something to strongly react against, but it's distrurbing that the results are skewed. Also, why have this sort of methodology, when you could pretty much ask a straight question about policy without the loaded question?

Still, it was fun, wasn't it?

Thanks for the analysis. I understand that the survey presents these loaded questions so people will have something to strongly react against, but it's distrurbing that the results are skewed. Also, why have this sort of methodology, when you could pretty much ask a straight question about policy without the loaded question?

Still, it was fun, wasn't it?

Wait, so I would have been the Obsessive-Compulsive Count no matter what I said?

Very belatedly jumpin on this bandwagon, and as I sort of predictaed, I'm smack-dab in the middle of the same quadrant as everybody else -- not quite as left-leaning as most, but max-libertarian for this group and about as leftie as Ennis:

Economic Left/Right: -3.75
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.72

The questions that pissed me off the most were the inscrutable ones -- I see what they're getting at in terms of authoritarianism, but I mean, "Some people are naturally unlucky?" Jeez, why don't you just ask me to agree or disagree with, "First there is a rainbow, then there is no rainbow, then there is"?

(BTW, I strongly agree with the rainbow statement.)

CMM

Wait, so I would have been the Obsessive-Compulsive Count no matter what I said?

Very belatedly jumpin on this bandwagon, and as I sort of predictaed, I'm smack-dab in the middle of the same quadrant as everybody else -- not quite as left-leaning as most, but max-libertarian for this group and about as leftie as Ennis:

Economic Left/Right: -3.75
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.72

The questions that pissed me off the most were the inscrutable ones -- I see what they're getting at in terms of authoritarianism, but I mean, "Some people are naturally unlucky?" Jeez, why don't you just ask me to agree or disagree with, "First there is a rainbow, then there is no rainbow, then there is"?

(BTW, I strongly agree with the rainbow statement.)

CMM

I'm delighted to read these comments regarding www.politicalcompass.org

For any who are interested, my index there is Economic Left/Right: -7.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.64

Now . . .

I'm posting this because I'm intrigued not only to discover a community of people who are close to my own location on this map, but also to share with you all a little more of my interest in these things,and to offer some releated materials.

Firstly, I was pointed to politicalcompass by another member of a listserv called 'co-opnet' which was, then, a place that linked co-operators (folks involved in the co-operative movement).

Although initially intended (I suspect) to link co-operators in the UK (as I then was - I now live in Toronto, in Canada), co-op net was a great place that became open to co-operators from all over the world. As time went on, the ability of the hosters/moderators to cope became overwhelmed, and this activity is now web-based (at www.co-opnet.coop).

Anyway, that background was to help explain that I had posted a thought experiment as a 'Political map' at co-op net, based only on my opinions,, experiences, and views of existing political parties.

However, as was pointed out, this was a recreation of the deeper work of www.politicalcompass.org (ie, less their algorithmic hard work), but with their horizontal axis inverted (ie with the pro-capitalist point placed at the left-hand edge, and with the ani-caipitalist/not-pro-capitalist point on the right-hand side*.

(* a decision based upon my view that the trend of history is essentially from the left hand side to the right hand side - as noted in another posting on this list - a convention from English writing, and, therefore/also, from my chemist's viewpoint of 'the arrow of change'.)

Subsequently, all this was bundled together with other political propositions in the CAOS ('Centre for Alternative Organisational Studies')paper that I gave earlier this year at the UofLeicester's Business School, the text of which is inthe 'Papers' section of www.interestfreemoney.org *

(* Under the title 'Co-operative Socialism: Theory and Practice' - OK, a bit pretentious perhaps, butuseful, then, and needful for clarity?).

Now, there's a very similar mapping at a place called www.environics.net or .org - follow the links to'Fire and Ice'*.

(*That name is a book title which looks at the myth of convergence of values between Canada and the US - Michael Adams, the author has a number of nice related books.)

Anyway, he/they produce similar two-dimensional maps (but this time with the same sort of orientation as with 'my' political map, it seems - ie with the 'reversed' horizontal axis.*

(* On that mapping I'm almost off the bottom of the vertical axis and about 0.6 towards the right-hand axis.)

You all might also enjoy doing the environics test too (and sharing the outcomes?).

In regard to the apparent (and I've no idea if true) determinedness of politicalcompass's 'driving' towards the left/libertarian quadrant*, it's worthwhile me saying that the environics mapping does include people from all the quadrants (and gives both cross-sectional and longditudinal - right phrases? - analyses.

(*Which, for 'my' mapping I choose, still, to call 'co-operative socialism' - a decentralised,liberal socialism, based in part, at least, on the Statement on teh Co-operative Identity of the International Co-operative Alliance - again ,see www.interestfreemoney'.org 's Papers section for this world-class, I'd say, document.)

So, why I am rabbit-ing on like this?

Partly to talk with some like-minded friends, but, also, to wonder where all this might take me/us/the world?

If there were a time when a new approach to human life were needed, this, undoubtedly, is it/one.

What-ever so-called 'New'political/social movements are at present, none seems to be making headway towards real change, with, perhaps only the Social Forum Movements and the green-socialists - all of whom are probably in that 'co-operative socialist'/'libertarian socialist'/'deep green socialist'quadrant - making any impact?

Despite my hope that it were otherwise!!

Any thoughts out there?

So, enough for now - best and hugs

john (courtneidge)

And,again, my thanks for havingfound this and you

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