Thursday, February 1, 2007

Political Tests & Quizzes: Have you been tested?

Earlier today I stumbled into an online argument about Fascism. The "debate" occured here: News Hounds: Dennis Kucinich Debates Hannity And Colmes On The Fairness Doctrine (in the comments section), but there is really no need to follow the link, fascism-wise, anyway. Pretty much the whole "debate" was downright silly. A few right wing trolls began tossing out insults & whatnot, and few of my fellow lefties--who I gather had some time to waste--returned fire. (Ok... I admit that I've been sucked in to these kinda things once or twice, myself... But my contributions usually consist of a single good(?) one liner that I'm compelled to type & post. These newshounders were makin' a COMMITMENT, as though they were defending... (I don't know... What would we crazy liberals be willing to fight real hard to defend?) ...the right to spit on Sparling. What I'm tryin' to say is, they were really goin' at... My usual view on these things is, "Don't feed the trolls, and they won't multiply.")

So, anyway... Somewhere in the middle of this melee, someone accuses the opposing political philosophy of being fascist. (Yeah, I could go check the transcript so as to be more precise, but my head hurt just reading it the first time. Besides, a representitive of the aggrieved political party pretty quickly suggested that no, it was the accuser's party that're really the fascists, so it doesn't really matter. If the trolls/lefties didn't say it first, they said it second.) The Communists were added to the battle, followed quickly by the Nazis. It was a typical troll-induced mess. (I'm convinced that political trolls--regardless of their outward political philosophy--secretly ARE Nazis, or at least employees of a promotion firm out to increase everyone's exposure to the Nazi party. Were it not for the trolls, how often would anybody discuss the Nazi party on the internet? But with 'em... Well, have you ever seen a trolling that didn't involve the Nazis? Me, neither.)

As the original topic was the Fairness Doctrine (government control of the diversity of political speech over the broadcast airwaves), the folks doing the arguing above were not completely off topic. As with much troll-induced verbiage, they were streching the topic to it's illogical extremes.
The Fairness Doctrine will give us one state run radio station, offering one point of view.
No Fairness Doctrine will give us many radio stations, all owned by one corporation, offering one point of view.

Between the "who's the real fascist?" argument, and the control factor (state or corporate) inherent in the Fairness Doctrine topic, I got to thinkin' about political philosophy. All this talk, finally, brings me to my actual topic...

When I first started crawling around political newsgroups & "egroups" (remember them?), someone started talking about how the spectrum of political thought is really more than just left - right. That scale describes economic political thought, but says little about how one feels about government power and control, the authoritarian - libertarian scale. S/he says s/he got the idea from this site: Political Compass (It's been upgraded at least a few times since I was first there). And along with the thinking, there's a quiz you can take to determine where you fit on their political graph. (As many have pointed out, including the political compass folks themselves, there does seem to be a bias to the questions. But it's still kinda interesting...)

Here's how I scored on Political Compass:
Economic Left/Right: -7.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.30

These scores set me pretty far LEFT and fairly LIBERTARIAN. It's difficult to compare myself to others, as I've only had 2 occasions:
1) when I heard about this test (see above), many folks took it, and posted their scores on whatever group it was, and
2) more recently I saw a whole list here,
but I can say this much;
On the left - right scale, I've seen relatively few (-8's), and only 2-3 (-9's) that I can recall.
On the authoritarian - libertarian scale, (-5) or (-6) was/is more common, both then and now.

If you want more info: Political compass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

While I was redscovering the Political Compass, I found other political tests and quizzes. I won't describe them all; you can check 'em out for yourself.

Political Survey. (Follow the "Take the Survey" link from this homepage.) ((Not crazy about this one, myself.))

My scores:
left/right -5.1350 (-0.3091)
pragmatism +0.5082 (+0.0306)

(Hard to tell what they mean, really... But there they are...)
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OkCupid! The Politics Test

According to this test,

I am a Social Liberal (75% permissive)
an Economic Liberal (10% permissive)
& best described as a: Socialist.
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Moral Politics - A Morality-Based Political Test (Long version)

My Score:
-2 on the Moral Order axis and +3 on the Moral Rules axis.

Matches
The following items best match your score:
System: Socialism
Variation: Moderate Socialism
Ideologies: Social Democratism
US Parties: No match.
Presidents: Jimmy Carter (84.07%)
2004 Election Candidates: Ralph Nader (80.24%), John Kerry (77.47%), George W. Bush (53.02%)
Statistics
Of the 280620 people who took the test:
0.6% had the same score as you.
12.9% were above you on the chart.
82.4% were below you on the chart.
48.6% were to your right on the chart.
30.5% were to your left on the chart.
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World's Smallest Political Quiz

According to this test I am a LIBERAL
LIBERALS usually embrace freedom of choice in personal
matters, but tend to support significant government control of the
economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net"
to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation
of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations,
defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action
to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 90%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 20%.
================================

Millennium: Social Attitude Test

My scores:
Radicalism: 80 percent
Tenderness: 39.5 percent
Socialism: 62 percent

These scores indicate that you are a tough-minded radical; this is the political profile one might associate with a liberated atheist. It appears that you are cynical towards religion, and have a balanced attitude towards humanity in general.

To round out the picture, your attitudes towards economics appear neither committedly capitalist nor socialist, and combined with your social attitudes this creates the picture of someone who would generally be described as left-wing.
======================================


If I'm not mistaken, that's all of 'em. If you want still more info (Believe it or not, some political spectrum theories don't have a quiz.), go here: Political spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My advice; get tested. 8>)

(Originally posted at What'd I Say?)