authoritarian/libertarian-left/right spectrum test

[Ben Davis]

Economic Left/Right: -8.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.90



Quite a few questions left me with no choice but to disagree strongly because my actual view was nowhere near represented by any scaling of the question. Shame really.

[Dystopia]

After doing another quiz I scored like this (http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/politic...s-alt.html)



I think this graph shows better my political orientation than the other one, I'm not a fan of government intervention, and I'm slightly more on the right.

[Ben Davis]

404 error

[Dystopia]

404 error

http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/politic...-quiz.html

It's this one and it's working for me

[Clueless Morgan]

Economic left/right -4.5
Social lib/auth -5.85

Almost smack in the center of the green.

[Ben Davis]

http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/politic...-quiz.html

It's this one and it's working for me

You are a far-left moderate social libertarian.
Left: 8.04, Libertarian: 3.37

[stonedape]

Pretty much the same result I had last time. Center left libertarian.

[tjakey]

Economic Left/Right: -8.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.00

Some of the questions seemed to assume accepting nation / states as being necessary and permanent. I disagree. The test seemed a bit pre-occupied with sex as well, which I don't see having much to do with economic politics, unless once is in the porn industry. As far as determining libertarian / authoritarian tendencies, why not ask about speed limits or parking tickets instead of sex? Question the old 55 mph speed limit or speed traps and nearly everyone would come out -10 on Libertarian / Authoritarian.

Though a -8 in the libertarian scale, in no way do I think of myself as a Libertarian. As a political position I consider the Libertarians to be self-centered, judgmental, and hostile to any but a narrowly selected few. I also suspect they are not very good at math, wanting a first world society without paying for it or, worse, wanting someone else to pay for it. That aside, I consider both the desire to lead and the desire to follow as moral failings. I will work with you. I have no desire to work for you, or have you work for me. All politics should flow from the same basic attitude, and the only legitimate governments are those made of elected officials who are nothing more or less than representatives enabling large groups of people to work things out so they can work together.

Human beings are social animals who function best as members of a society. But society is only a collection of people working together. The "rugged individual" is as much a myth as any religious deity. My problem with liberals / left is they tend to worship society as a thing in and of itself. My problem with Libertarians / right is they tend to worship the individual. (Often themselves.) But worshiping is never a good thing, not when we worship, and not when we are worshiped. A scale of authoritarian to libertarian is, to me, a false scale. Can you work with others to get things done ... that is the scale that matters.

But then I am an atheist in a world full of religious people, as are most on this forum. We are a pretty small minority with a word view vastly different than most of the rest of the human race. All by itself I suspect that skews our placements on this test. After all, how "authoritarian" is any atheist in a western society likely to be, regardless of his or her politics?

[Ben Davis]

My problem with liberals / left is they tend to worship society as a thing in and of itself.

Hi. This isn't true of Liberals/Left in the UK. Instead a 'fair & equitable' society is held up as an ideal towards which we should strive, with the people & government working in concert to provide resources & effort and administrate their distribution as effectively as possible*. We brits tend to worship next to nothing; religion isn't as big a thing as it is in the US and even our celeb-fanatics only generally manifest in the 8-15 age range.

For the rest of your post, +1.




*as a side note, the recent Labour & Lib Dem leadership have moved to the right of their founding position with their support of Corporate political sponsorship and Conservative economics, but that's another conversation...

[tjakey]

Hi. This isn't true of Liberals/Left in the UK. Instead a 'fair & equitable' society is held up as an ideal towards which we should strive, with the people & government working in concert to provide resources & effort and administrate their distribution as effectively as possible*. We brits tend to worship next to nothing; religion isn't as big a thing as it is in the US and even our celeb-fanatics only generally manifest in the 8-15 age range.

So far as I can tell there is no liberal / progressive party in the US. The Democrats under Clinton and now Obama are pro-Wall Street, War, and police state surveillance tactics. The Republicans under Bush can only be described as a disaster for the economy and personal liberty. And the current rendition of conservatism in the US under the T-party is just plain bat-shit crazy. Cutting taxes has for the rich has never worked, supply-side economics is a religion as based in myth and woo-woo as any god belief. They are suppressing voting rights, civil rights, and women's rights as rapidly as the Supreme Court will allow. We are being dragged into yet another Muslim civil war by all three parties. And we are burning though the limited resources of the earth at an unsustainable rate with the right wing claiming that's the way god wants it.

Ours is a seriously malfunctioning society that is completely militarized and has probably fallen past the point of no return. What happens next will put a bend in humanity's path ... for good or ill remains to be seen.