Even so, you thought that accepting discipline was important. That in itself at least implies the fact that you think subservience is important (to some extent). The question wasn't ``dealing with discipline'', but ``accepting discipline''.

I think that everything should be questioned. The reasoned answer may not be different from what happened, but simple acceptance implies a bent towards authoritarianism.

Of course, people tend to think too much about questions on such tests, so that one may not have ended up being valid for you. But that's why they have so many questions.

Oh, and I thought that most of the questions that I was ambivalent on were worded in such a way as to make ``disagree'' a fairly ambivalent answer.

Economic Left/Right: -6.00
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -5.54

Interesting... assuming this test is in any way accurate, I wonder what the rest of the USA would score. I've always been confused at how my personal beliefs seem to be at odds with the majority of the powers that be. Most "liberal" press seem to think that the ruling powers are completely out of touch, but I wonder...

...are we the ones who are out of touch with the rest (majority) of the world?

Even so, you thought that accepting discipline was important. That in itself at least implies the fact that you think subservience is important (to some extent). The question wasn't ``dealing with discipline'', but ``accepting discipline''.
I think that everything should be questioned. The reasoned answer may not be different from what happened, but simple acceptance implies a bent towards authoritarianism.

Ah, that's an interpretation of my answer that I hadn't considered. I think the main difference is that I didn't read that question as "simple acceptance". To my mind, "accepting discipline" is part of "dealing with discipline". I completely agree discipline should be questioned, but if it turns out that the discipline is warranted, then one needs to be able to deal with, and accept it. I think there are, perhaps, too many people who question the discipline, then refuse (or are unable) to accept it, even if warranted.

I definately wasn't thinking of subservience -- I was thinking of examples such as getting caught pinching money from your friend's wallet. My concept of "discipline" also, I think, went beyond what might be considered "formal" discipline, such as when you get punched by your friend for stealing his money.

That's not really what I meant. I meant that some of the questions implied, in my mind, no positive outcome.

For instance:

Our race has many superior qualities

The way I see the possibly answers to that question, if you say agree it means you're a racist who thinks their race is better than everyone else's. But I also think that saying disagree (or perhaps "strongly disagree") could mean that you think your race is inferior to others. It's probably just a technicality and probably one that exists only in my mind, but my real answer to that was "all races are equal", so I just chose "disagree."

So for me, there were several questions like that. I never like any quiz that only has three or four of the same answers for every single question on it.

h, Jim, you beat my girlfriend! You are even more of a crazy liberal than she is!

I confess! I voted for George McGovern!!

Funny, With respect to some of the questions that perhaps you and CanuckinLA disliked, I think I disliked them initially, but then started to think that they were rather clever. Their lack of a "no opinion" option is deliberate as, I think, are the "no good answer" questions that pose something like "the most important thing is...." Those force uncomfortable value/priority judgement.

Just for fun, I retook the test and gamed it to eliminate any "middles" .I changed everything to "strongly" in the direction of my original answers (which certainly made some of the answers look like *really* stereotypical liberal/left answers -- "I strongly agree that all children have a right to learn macarme!!" Anyhow, that exercise gave me:

Economic Left/Right: -8.75
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -9.18

Obviously, if "perfect" is 10, I am still getting some of the answers wrong!

The compass is an interesting exercise, and I don't have a negative reaction to it in the way I do to some of those personality tests, but I have the feeling that is something is missing -- that there's a third axis that they haven't found yet.

The Authoritarian/Libertarian axis puzzles me a bit, at least with respect to my initial, ungamed score. Sure, I consider myself a "small L" libertarian, but my score aside, I *hardly* consider myself an anarchist, and I am really a pretty strong Federalist and anti (big L) Libertarian. (I confess! I used to work for the health department! And, yes, I'd probably round up all those poxed prairie dogs and shoot 'em!), so I'm not sure I get the libertarian/authoritarian scale entirely.

Economic Left/Right: 5.62
Authoritarian/Libertarian: 0.56

Economic Left/Right: -0.75
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -0.72

That's interesting -- on that question, I chose strongly disagree. I didn't think that such an answer could imply that I might think my race to be inferior. My first thought was like yours -- races are equal (more, or less -- there are biological differences aside from skin colour, such as genetic pre-dispositions towards certain diseases such as cystic fibrosis, but they don't affect capability or intelligence). From that, I took the root idea of the question as "some races are better than others", which, to me, is a such a repugnant attitude that I didn't feel I could do anything but choose strongly disagree. I think that's how I answered a lot of the questions -- I may not have had a strong opinion to the wording of the question, but on some level I could agree or disagree with the basic philosophy underlying the question.

Well, I knew I was in good company here

Economic Left/Right: -0.38
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.51

It seems that this board is one on which the negatives do out number the positives...

-1, -2.51

Puzzles me a little - reckoned I'd be much closer to the Dalai Lama. I blame the questions. About a quarter of them had no answer I could reasonably accept so had to pick ones using various arbitrary criteria.

Who granted several audiences to, and received a donation of more than $1 million from Shoko Asahara, leader of the Supreme Truth cult of Japan, and spreader of sarin gas in the Tokyo subway?
The Dalai Lama

So you take it into your mind to cast aspersions on someone simply because their political beliefs were vaguely mentioned as a reference point? You're an inappropriate fucking asshole.

Way to throw gasoline onto the lit match, Bitt.

I just can't stand the asshole. He twists everything to suit whatever ``ideal'' he wants to espouse without any sort of continuity. If we'd been talking about the Dalai Lama or Buddhism or even religion, that'd be one thing, but this is an out-of-the-blue non sequitur attack for no reason.

In one way, he's an excellent troll, but he lacks subtlety, grace, and nuance. That lack of elegance really pisses me off. If that was there, I could at least respect him for that.

Of course, the fact that I feel like I'm going to puke on my keyboard at any minute doesn't help.

I have to keep reminding myself: He's just a kid, and I was an asshole when I was his age, too.

Wait a minute... I'm still an asshole...

And members of drug cartels have given to the Catholic Church. You have no point.

-Zeke

Economic Left/Right: 0.12
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -3.95

Who granted several audiences to, and received a donation of more than $1 million from Shoko Asahara, leader of the Supreme Truth cult of Japan, and spreader of sarin gas in the Tokyo subway?
The Dalai Lama

Ok, if you want to go down that path;

The Dalai Lama received a $1m donation from someone who later used a nerve agent to murder 12 people, and injure up to a thousand more. There is no way that The Dalai Lama can be implicated in that act - he didn't sell the nerve agent in question, and could not have know that the cult was intending to use a nerve agent to kill people.

The US Government under the command of George Bush Sr. received God-Knows-How-Many millions of $ in 'donations' from Saddam Hussein, and gave him nerve agents in return that he then used to kill _thousands_.

From http://www.shelbycountyliberalpress.org/iraq.htm;

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia.

Come down from that high horse before the fall kills you.

In addition to which, Aum Shinrikyo appeared to be a (slightly odd) sect of Buddhism, before it became apparent that it was really a cult of personality.

Don't take it so personally. I wasn't implying anything about anyone here, just the facts about the Dalai Lama. Nobody has any problem saying Bush is a lying murderous oil stealer, which is based more on uninformed speculation and suspected alterior motives/conspiracy theories. My post came straight from the political compass website

My post came straight from the political compass website

Ah. So you were actually trying to make the same point that Bitt was trying to make... That associating yourself with someone because you share their political compass means nothing.

You just didn't make it clear enough and he thought you were being an asshole for implying that the Dali Lama supported murdering people with poison gas.

humans eat other races so we must be superior.

Oh. Not that sort of race

The Dali Lama was a work of a famous artist, right? I guess that would be Dali's Llama.

I got -3.12, -2.97, incidentally.

Hmmm
-1
-5.74
Which would explain my feelings towards Tony Blair and George W

Yes, I wasn't trying to imply that anyone here would gas a subway based on a political quiz. I wasn't trying to spit on the Lama either.

By the way, I agree that some of those questions are hard to answer. Such as "Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity." I reckon your answer to that will either classify you as "authoritarian" (agree) or "libertarian" (disagree). I do agree with the statement, but that doesn't mean I don't desagree with some of the things the government does. For example, I don't think it's right that the BATF won't allow me to put a bayonet or a collapsible stock on my rifle, but I'm not about to go burn down the BATF headquarters. So I guess I'm at peace with the establishment and I'll try to change things I don't like through peaceful ways such as voting. Does that make me an authoritarian? The test isn't perfect.

What I find most amusing is that, while the whole point of the Political Compass is to prove that you really need two dimensions to explain politics, there is a very high correlation between the two axes they use. In particular, based on the 21 posted scores (granted a somewhat biased sample), there is a .83 correlation between the left/right and libertarian/authoritarian axes. In fact, a single combined factor explains over 90% of the variance in the scores.

If you look at their graph of world leaders and restrict it to politicians in democratic countries it appears that the same fact holds. In fact, the second dimension really only comes into play with such democratic luminaries as Saddam, Stalin, Mugabe, Arafat, and the pope.

I should note that I actually believe that two or more dimensions are required to explain things, but their test is clearly not well suited to describing politics in modern democracies.

--John

My post came straight from the political compass website

FWIW, there are some out here who recognized that as such -- you weren't the only one to have looked at other parts of the website. IMHO, someone owes you an apology...

I should note that I actually believe that two or more dimensions are required to explain things, but their test is clearly not well suited to describing politics in modern democracies.

FWIW, I have been told that members of the Unofficial Phatbox BBS line up very neatly along a 215/135 degree axis, so, as always, the sample is they key, eh?

OK, more seriously, what kind of model do you have in your political skunkworks? How many dimensions *will* do the trick?

FWIW, I have been told that members of the Unofficial Phatbox BBS line up very neatly along a 215/135 degree axis, so, as always, the sample is they key, eh?

Did you mean 215/35? If so, that's consistent with here--I computed the angle as 36 degrees.

OK, more seriously, what kind of model do you have in your political skunkworks? How many dimensions *will* do the trick?

I'm not really sure. I've long wanted to get my hands on raw data from one of the broad issue polls so I could do a principal components analysis and see what comes out.

I think two dimensions, one for economic and one for social issues is a good start. But I wouldn't be surprised to see some other major factors pop up.

I also read an article a while back where the authors had studied the voting record in Congress from roughly 1946-1996 and tried to determine the dimensionality there. Their conclusion was that it was mainly one-dimensional except during the 60's when a second dimension came into play on civil rights. They also noted that the explanatory power of the primary dimension (i.e. the degree of partisanship) was highest at the end of the survey period.

--John