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. That's about as much as we should tell you for now.
So, the traditional Left-Right political scale would appear to be obsolete. Go ahead and take the test here that takes into account authoritarian vs. libertarian tendencies as well as the more traditional left/right economic measuring sticks.
Here’s how we scored.
We thought we would’ve been a little more to the Southeast but then again, we’ve never been good test takers.
H/T: Head Noises
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2 comments:
I'm just a few steps up the y-axis. Economic Left/Right: 4.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.00
Dean, I think your test taking is alright. I am just one block to your right (Economic 5.88, Social -1.23) where I would expect us to be relatively speaking. I too expected to be farther "south," so maybe it is just the test. It didn't distinguish very well between things that I thought were wrong, but shouldn't be illegal vs. things that I thought were wrong and should be illegal.
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