Tom Simard

Poetry, Music, and Prose

14 Jan 2014
15 Comments

The Political Compass

Here’s a test you might be interested in taking.  And there’s no pass or fail!

Here are my results:

pcgraphpng.php

Posted in Authoritarian, Left, Libertarian, Politics, Right, The Political Compass

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15 thoughts on “The Political Compass”

  1. orijinalchris on said:

    Ha! I did this about a year ago… my red dot is 2 up and 1 over from yours! Yay for left-leaning libertarians! Or should that be left/libertarian leaners?

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  2. Sol Mussons on said:

    Very interesting!

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  4. Smaktakula on said:

    Somehow I missed a couple of your posts, including this very interesting one. Like “orijinalchris” I’m two boxes north of you, but aaaaalllll the way over in the last green box before it turns to purple. I think that’s probably close to being accurate regarding my politics.

    I also recently took a Time Magazine political test (which only measures liberal/conservative–I was something like 75/25–but what does that even mean?). This one was far better, and although it didn’t have as many as the Time one did, this had a couple questions that rankled me:

    “No one chooses his/her country so it’s foolish to be proud of it.” — Unlike the question before it “My country right or wrong” (which is the title of a great Midnight Oil song, if you ever get the chance to hear it), I don’t see how the answer to that question can determine a person’s politics. I think it’s true that a lot of very conservative people are proud of their countries, and I suspect that’s what the test is going for. I don’t consider myself particularly conservative (nor do either of the tests), but I do believe that. If I were born in Yemen, I’d be rooting like crazy for Yemen in the World Cup. If I were born in Sri Lanka I’d be proud of Sri Lanka (horrible civil war or no). If I were born in France I’d….well, I don’t want to go and say something foolish.

    Likewise, how is a person’s answer to the fusing of entertainment and information in any way indicative of his politics?

    Still, these things are fun.

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  5. Jackie on said:

    I hadn’t taken this test for years so I decided to take it again. I sit right about where you do on the chart. :-D

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    • tomsimard on said:

      Everybody’s in our corner so far!
      One can’t help but notice that the majority of politicians are in the upper right-hand corner.
      While I’m under no illusions that our political persuasion is the majority one, I do still think there
      is a great divide between what citizens want and think and that of their elected representatives.

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  6. Touch2Touch on said:

    For what it’s worth, I’m in the same corner too, although more toward the middle of it.
    Interesting post.

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  7. howard johnson on said:

    thanks for the like. and i’m down near you, and your other comment posters–Gandhi, too. this i expected. but what troubles me is that our would be ‘leaders,’ both elected and rejected are so close together and so far away from us that no matter which of any of them win, we lose.

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  8. tomsimard on said:

    “Our would be ‘leaders'” is a good way of putting it
    They are certainly all clustering in that corner of theirs – I think of it as something of a country club that I wouldn’t belong to if I could.
    Hard to argue with that final point of yours.
    After a lifetime of voting for what was the lesser of two evils I decided instead to vote conscience even though the candidate in question has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected.

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