This is a very good site that's main point, as stated in the paragraph above, is to show that the traditional way of viewing human's political views as "left wing" or "right wing" is bullshit. There is an annonymus test to show how you fall on their scale, plus maps showing where various political leaders past and present fall, as well as a map specifically for the U.S. 2004 election.Welcome to The Political Compass.
There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left' , established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?
On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.
The whole site is very clear and descriptive without being boring or too wordy. It doesn't take long to read, although it's set up nicely so you can just skip to what looks interesting.
So. Opinions, anyway? Did you take the test yourself?
I did, and the results were Economic Left/Right: -2.38;
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.72. This put me slightly below and to the right of Ghandi and Nelson Mandela, and Ralph Nader, if you need a visual.
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I'm deep.
