Where do you fall on the line on the left?

[hyphenate]

The line:

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<---------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------->toward fascism
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We've pretty much taken the political compass test, but I'm looking to see where you believe you come from.

[EFerrari]

1. Someone needs to anchor the left.

[givemebackmycountry]

2. I'm sorry - I had to vote for the Freeper "lost" choice...

That was too damn funny...

:hi:

[PerfectSage]

3. I'm a little less socialist than the Dalai Lama and a little less libertarian than the Dalai Lama...

...but I'm a whole lot more RATM than the Dalai Lama. ie Killin' in the Name of: Fuck You I won't do whatcha tell me. MotherFucker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykgh0SV_yCs

[Selatius]

6. Left wing libertarianism, basically. That's basically what Gandhi and the Lama are.

Having said that, not all left wing libertarians are pacifists. There comes a point where one must decide for himself to pick up a gun for defense. The Anarchist militias in Spain during the Spanish Civil War were examples of people who mobilized to defend themselves against annihilation. Of course, in that civil war, Franco and the fascists eventually won and then executed everyone else who opposed them. It was a bloodbath.

Left wing libertarians aren't the same as members of the Libertarian Party. Those are right wing libertarians in general or anarcho-capitalists.

[Fridays Child]

4. I see it as more like a circle than a line.

If the circle is a clock face, I'm probably at about 8:00 (a definite leftist but not quite ready to take up torch or a pitchfork). People who consider themselves centrists would be at 12:00, obviously. And, for those who bottom out at 6:00, it ceases to matter whether they're Conservatives or Liberals. They're just extremists.

[Jed Dilligan]

5. Is there a meaningful left position in America?

If so, tell me where to sign up!

[libodem]

7. I think I have Socialist leanings

I like to share everything with everyone. I'd be a good Kibbutznic. I'd give up material possessions to live a philosophical ideal. I like the parts in the Bible where they say each according to his needs. Provide for everyone the basics. I hate greed and hording. I think its immature behavior. We are only as strong as our weakest link. We are only as strong as the hungry homeless couple living in a van by the river. That is the American dream at a weak link. We are only as strong as a prison inmate with hepatitis who gets no treatment because the medical services have been outsourced to a company who makes money by ignoring infectious disease. We are only as strong as a cancer victim with no insurance having to take out a 90 thousand dollar bank loan to get admission to a hospital. We are only as strong as dead migrant workers in the Arizona desert. We are only as strong as the hospital emergency room tuning away a woman in labor because she is not from this country. What ever. We are getting weaker by the day.

[Selatius]

8. I'm probably most in agreement with free-market socialism. The basic blueprint is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy#An_alternative_model

There are much more detailed descriptions of Schweickart's model, but basically for the purposes of this thread, this is enough.

[pnorman]

9. The 2-dimensional Politicl Compass makes soooo much sense.

Dropping back to a 1-dimensional line is just plain ridiculous! WHY?

Here's what I mean: http://www.politicalcompass.org/

pnorman
On edit: Below is what I had scored on that Political Compass test, several years ago. I haven't bothered to take it again.

Economic Left/Right: -7.50
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.92

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

10. In my core I am a liberal, but I am becomming more and more a libertarian

California seperatist.

[comtec]

17. WOO HOO FREESTATE!

hee hee cyberrun reference.
Im all for California leaving, adn taking any states that want to go with it.
We have been abused by the right coast WAY TOO FUCKING LONG!

Mind you if we DO go free state, then there will be a split between North N south.
Personally they can have south of SC.. or Monterey.. whichever is farther ;)

[liberaltrucker]

11. Crashing through the far laft wall

As I say in my profile, "I'm probably farther left than most of y'all".

Che, Fidel, Lenin, Marx are my mentors.

:7

[anonymous171]

12. Frankly, I'm bothered by ideological extremes. nt

[Fox Mulder]

13. I'm as far left as you can get.

[old mark]

14. I believe in freedom of the individual

and kindness in society. I don't care for the extremes on either end.I don't see too many differences between the extreme right and the extreme left-it's like comparing Hitler with Stalin.

Lose-Lose.

mark

[Unvanguard]

15. To be honest, I've never got that argument.

Sure, you can say that about Hitler and Stalin, but Hitler and Stalin are notoriously difficult to place reasonably on a two-dimensional political spectrum anyway. Was Hitler "extreme right" in appealing, and responding to, to the fears of free market capitalism on the part of the German middle class? Was Stalin "extreme left" when the factions he supported helped crush the social revolution in Spain in 1936?

Are Peter Kropotkin and, say, Ludwig von Mises so politically close?

[Selatius]

18. They were both authoritarian on methodology. You can compare Stalin to Gandhi.

They both advocated left wing economic positions, but one of them relied upon informing the people and letting them decide collectively what to do, while the other enacted change through force and terror. A person could be a full-blown socialist, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is automatically as bad as Stalin. Nevermind ultra-right wing capitalists like Augusto Pinochet.

With regards to the argument that far left wing positions are intrinsically bad, I'd only have to point to Noam Chomsky as an example of a far leftist who isn't an advocate of mass murder of the opposition.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

16. I support:

:- A free-market economy, in which the rich are taxed a lot and the poor only a little.

:- Free-at-point-of-use health care paid for by general taxation

:- More spending on education than is currently the case in the UK, and less emphasis on teaching to the test.

:- Abortion available on demand in the first two trimesters, and in some but not all circumstances in the third.

:- Gay marriage (the pedant in me would prefer civil unions with identical legal status, but human dignity is more important than pedantry), with the proviso that the best way to get there may be via some years of civil unions.

:- The separation of Church and State; the disestablishment of the C of E; an end to the compulsory "daily act of collective worship of a broadly Christian nature".

:- Military intervention by first-world countries in other countries in those situations where it's in the interests of the country being invaded - I supported Kosovo and still do; I supported Afghanistan until I realised how badly it was being done (and still think that if done right, with a massively greater focus on nation-building, it would have been a good thing); I didn't support Iraq but only because there was no way to put a better regime in place after removing Saddam; I would have liked to have seen troops sent to Darfur.

:- A massive increase in aid to the third world.

:- A national DNA data-bank, if and when it can be done well - at present I don't think it can be, but in a decade or two I suspect it will be viable. It would be a negligable loss in liberty, for a large gain in security.

:- Not bringing in national ID cards - see above, with the words "negligable" and "large" reversed.

:- A reduction in the possible length of detention without trial.

:- UK-level gun control.

:- Shutting down Guantanamo Bay; trying the inmates in civilian courts; almost certainly reimprisoning most of them as a result, but releasing the - quite possibly large - minority there isn't sufficient evidence against.

:- Freedom to incite religious and racial hatred, provided it's not done to a captive audience (e.g. employees) - taking it away is the start of a very slippery slope.

:- The ban on cigarette advertising.

:- Vivisection for medical reasons.

:- Stem cell research

:- Taxes on pollutants.

:- Kyoto

:- Removal of all elected officials from the justice system. Those who make laws should be answerable to the will of the people; those who enforce them - judges, attorneys, the police, etc - should be answerable only to the law and one another. C.F. Nifong, Mike.

:- Electoral boundaries established by civil servants, not partisan politicians.

:- The legalisation of cannabis.

:- An end to agricultural subsidies in the first world - the harm this does to first-world agriculture will be outweighed by the benefits to third-world agriculture.

:- Easier legal immigration, an amnesty for most existing illegal immigrants, but a crackdown on future illegal immigrants (contingent on first making legal immigration easier): whatever level you believe immigration should be at, it's strongly in a country's interest that all that immigration be registered.




So where does that put me on the left-right line? I'd say that I'm

*Generic left-wing on economic issues,

*Far left on the whole web of religious/sexual/medical/social ethics issues

*Centre left or centrist on law and order

*"Eclectic" on foreign policy - at present the split seems to be between left wingers advocating altruistic isolationism and right-wingers advocating self-interested interventionism; I'm a nominal left-winger who wants altruistic interventionism.

[Greyhound]

19. Extreme left (using the American scale which is far to the right of the rest of the world)

except for the issues where I am pretty far right...

The problem with pigeon holes is that frequently the pigeons don't fit.