Well done Wembley for remembering the Political Compass from all those years ago!
;-)
God knows what my score was then, right now it's:
Economic Left/Right: -2.75 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.64
...though on many, possibly most, of the questions, I was looking for a radiobutton marked "it's ridiculous to expect a glib one word answer to a complex question like this".
Interesting exercise though, now as then, and the basic point that a simple left-right distinction is inadequate is surely correct.
Wembley said: No government should have the right to tell its people what to do. It should ONLY have the right to stop people doing things that stop others doing things they want to do. Life, liberty and the persuit of happiness.
This reminded of one of the most famous philosophical essays of the 20th century, Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty. Interestingly Wembley, by both traditional and alternative measures a man of the Left, has repeated above a negative definition of liberty, one most often associated with the philosophical postions of liberalism and libertarianism, as opposed to the positive definition, as espoused by the politically correct and Socialist Worker salesmen everywhere.
Which goes to show what a nuanced fellow he is, even if a bit of proof-reading would not go amiss.
Personally, I now find myself more economically right of centre (less government regulation and interference) and more libertarian (less government intrusion into our lives). Politics is a trade off and I am starting to feel that an increase in social provision and support from the state inevitably brings an increase in state intrusion and social authoritarianism.
Wembley's comments on pragmatic socialism sound good in theory but based on my own observation and experience don't work in practice. You mentioned that 'interesting that, of the regular constibutors, only JP is working for the man. The rest of us, in various ways, are defining our own realities in micro-industries' which implies that the Labour government is a friend of small business. The businesses the regular contributors run are too far below the radar to be of any significant interest to the government (we are small two or three people operations with no permanant staff). This lack of interest shouldn't be mistaken for support. When a small business gets to the point of needing permanant staff then regulations and interference become more of an issue. In fact the increase in regulations for business just favour the giant corporations who have the finances to employ large legal and adminstrative departments to deal with the paperwork. So in the case of this socialist government, Labour create an extreme polarisation between very small business (like our own) and Big Business.
Economic Left/Right: 0.00 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.18
I ended up doing the test twice. The first time my score put me just to the right of Ghandi, but I didn't feel that accurately represented my actual views. On refelction I felt that I answered a lot of the questions with an implied 'in an ideal world' at the beginning of each statement. Taking a stricter view of the statements gave me a score that I think more accurately reflected my beliefs and voting intentions:
One for Wembley to fisk/take issue with I think: Peter Hitchens argues that there is little difference with a supporter of the NF/BNP/Fascist and a Trotskyist/Communist/Marxist revolutionary as both political movements if they came to power would inevitably result in persecution or massacre:
"As for the hypothetical comparison with theoretical Tories dallying with the National Front, I don't accept that there is any significant moral difference between the two positions. Modern National Socialists tend to be Holocaust Deniers (for which repulsive lie we rightly condemn them) but this means they are people who maintain that Hitler cured unemployment and renewed his country, but didn't murder millions of Jews. Thus they pretend to themselves that a Utopian national socialist point of view won't lead to persecution or massacre, though it would. Very few indeed now applaud these massacres, at least in public. Likewise, modern socialist revolutionaries tend to be Trotskyists, trying to avoid complicity in the crimes of Stalin, Mao and the rest. They pretend to us and to themselves that their theories won't lead to the imprisonment and massacre of the revolution's enemies, though they would. We don't, oddly in my view, condemn this pitiful evasion as much as we should.'
11 comments:
Good question. While we on the subject of explaining would Wembley care to explain the Government's position on 'civil liberties'?
In which case we should all be looking to vote for whichever party is committed to undoing Blair's assault on civil liberties...
See this earlier thread for more on this topic.
Thanks Wembley. I think that was a brilliant analysis.
Well done Wembley for remembering the Political Compass from all those years ago!
;-)
God knows what my score was then, right now it's:
Economic Left/Right: -2.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.64
...though on many, possibly most, of the questions, I was looking for a radiobutton marked "it's ridiculous to expect a glib one word answer to a complex question like this".
Interesting exercise though, now as then, and the basic point that a simple left-right distinction is inadequate is surely correct.
Wembley said: No government should have the right to tell its people what to do. It should ONLY have the right to stop people doing things that stop others doing things they want to do. Life, liberty and the persuit of happiness.
This reminded of one of the most famous philosophical essays of the 20th century, Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty. Interestingly Wembley, by both traditional and alternative measures a man of the Left, has repeated above a negative definition of liberty, one most often associated with the philosophical postions of liberalism and libertarianism, as opposed to the positive definition, as espoused by the politically correct and Socialist Worker salesmen everywhere.
Which goes to show what a nuanced fellow he is, even if a bit of proof-reading would not go amiss.
JP said that he was benignly conservative
If I remember rightly I related a Thatcher quote that I read recently, to whit: "the facts of life are conservative", and gave my broad agreement.
Of course we could no doubt have an endless debate about precisely what that means. And maybe we should!
Personally, I now find myself more economically right of centre (less government regulation and interference) and more libertarian (less government intrusion into our lives). Politics is a trade off and I am starting to feel that an increase in social provision and support from the state inevitably brings an increase in state intrusion and social authoritarianism.
Wembley's comments on pragmatic socialism sound good in theory but based on my own observation and experience don't work in practice. You mentioned that 'interesting that, of the regular constibutors, only JP is working for the man. The rest of us, in various ways, are defining our own realities in micro-industries' which implies that the Labour government is a friend of small business. The businesses the regular contributors run are too far below the radar to be of any significant interest to the government (we are small two or three people operations with no permanant staff). This lack of interest shouldn't be mistaken for support. When a small business gets to the point of needing permanant staff then regulations and interference become more of an issue. In fact the increase in regulations for business just favour the giant corporations who have the finances to employ large legal and adminstrative departments to deal with the paperwork. So in the case of this socialist government, Labour create an extreme polarisation between very small business (like our own) and Big Business.
Economic Left/Right: 0.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.18
I ended up doing the test twice. The first time my score put me just to the right of Ghandi, but I didn't feel that accurately represented my actual views. On refelction I felt that I answered a lot of the questions with an implied 'in an ideal world' at the beginning of each statement. Taking a stricter view of the statements gave me a score that I think more accurately reflected my beliefs and voting intentions:
One for Wembley to fisk/take issue with I think: Peter Hitchens argues that there is little difference with a supporter of the NF/BNP/Fascist and a Trotskyist/Communist/Marxist revolutionary as both political movements if they came to power would inevitably result in persecution or massacre:
"As for the hypothetical comparison with theoretical Tories dallying with the National Front, I don't accept that there is any significant moral difference between the two positions. Modern National Socialists tend to be Holocaust Deniers (for which repulsive lie we rightly condemn them) but this means they are people who maintain that Hitler cured unemployment and renewed his country, but didn't murder millions of Jews. Thus they pretend to themselves that a Utopian national socialist point of view won't lead to persecution or massacre, though it would. Very few indeed now applaud these massacres, at least in public. Likewise, modern socialist revolutionaries tend to be Trotskyists, trying to avoid complicity in the crimes of Stalin, Mao and the rest. They pretend to us and to themselves that their theories won't lead to the imprisonment and massacre of the revolution's enemies, though they would. We don't, oddly in my view, condemn this pitiful evasion as much as we should.'
Here is the link to the Hitchens' quote above:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/08/musings-from-hadrians-wall.html
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