I took a little test at www.politicalcompass.org and it scored me this way:
Economic Left/Right: -1.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.67
They also provide a sample chart showing where some notable people would fall. Here it is:
To give you an idea, the axis is 0,0 so if you’re a negative/negative you fall in the lower left hand quadrant with Gandhi (that’s me). If you’re a negative/positive then you’re up there with Stalin, if you’re a positive/positive you’re in with Thatcher and positive/negative puts you in the company of Friedman. Personally I don’t think that examples like Hitler and Stalin because quite simply I think they were sub-human and they don’t belong on any chart that tracks normal human behavior/beliefs. I also think it unnecessarily offends people who might legitimately fall into those sectors but don’t believe in wholesale killing.
If you go to the site you’ll see an overview of what this
means.
Thanks to David Boyd for pointing to this.
Update: Potato Stew put together a plot that shows all the scores for local bloggers that took the test. I’m thinking that it would be interesting to do one for my family.
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Agree on Hitler/Stalin. Killing several million people gets you your own chart.
Not surprising, I suppose, that I’m 4.75 and 5.33, but oh do I like the company: Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.
Hmm. I’m slightly Stalinist – go figure.
Economic Left/Right: 0.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.41
But, in general, I’m pretty evenly keeled in the middle of the fence!