political compass

Long ago, with a very different readership, I blogged about political compass.

I haven't thought about it ages, but just yesterday MSS of Fruits & Votes mentioned it in comments. James, also in comments, re-took the test.

If you're not familiar with this tool, here's something about it from the website:
The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left', established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher?

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

Political Compass doesn't want to say more until after you've taken the test, so I won't spoil it for them.

There are some fun categories on the site, showing the positions of the parties in the 2005 Canadian election and of the candidates in the 2004 US "election". Comparing the two graphs is particularly interesting - and, for me, reassuring.

Take the test here and tell us where you score on the quadrant. This is one time where it would be fun to have a few wingnuts around. Still, wmtc readers don't march in lockstep, so I'm curious to see where each of us fall.

My own results:
Economic left/right: -9.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.51
[far lower left quadrant]

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