Where do You score on the political compass?

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Vote for a party that represents your views. If nothing else, it makes that party seem slightly more electable, and might make one major party change their stance to try and attract voters like yourself.

me too

Economic Left/Right: -8.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.46

Making everyone buy private health insurance is not nationalizing health care. On the economic scale, it's closer to fascism (tying up government with industry) than to communism (public ownership of industry).

You're absolutely right. Fascism – not with all its emotive connotations, but in a purely economic sense – is in fact what the mainstream American left stands for. In Obama's case, though, I believe that what he really wants is to destroy private insurance, leaving the way clear for fully-socialized medicine.

I took it twice and that's were I ended up.
The first time it was 8.50 and 6.15.

Neither of the parties represent my views in any way shape or form. They only represent the views of corporate America that gives them the money to get elected. The US is not a democracy that people can elect leaders. It's a corporate republic. Anyone who thinks that they can make a difference by voting, is just misinformed.

Fascism is a far-right-wing doctrine. By definition.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... sh/fascism

Fascism is diametrically opposed to communism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-fascism
Communism is the far left of leftism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-leftism
Therefore, Fascism is diametrically opposed to leftism.

And just who supports Obamacare? It ain't the right wing. If an American self-identifies as leftist, I guarantee that he will be a fan of the ACA, or at least consider it a step in the right direction.

The original fascism under Mussolini – himself a former socialist – was fundamentally a system in which private ownership was nominally retained, but the government exerted overall control. FDR's New Deal did not nationalize the means of production, it merely seized control over large swaths of the economy. In some aspects it closely resembled Mussolini's policies, and there were critics who pointed this out at the time. But who loved the New Deal then, and who venerates FDR today? The left.

In the US today actual communists and socialists are a tiny fringe minority. Aside from the medical field nobody is advocating that the federal government seize and operate entire industries. The economic debate is between those who want the government to exert more control over the economy (the left) and those who want the government to exert less control over the economy (the right). Sorry if you feel that those aren't real leftists. We need useful terms with which to describe our debate.

I regard the conventional spectrum, with Mao at one end and Hitler at the other, as a preposterous attempt to define liberty out of existence. Dictatorships, whether commanded by a King or a Führer or a Central Committee, are not opposites. To the man in the street they are all but indistinguishable, differing in rhetoric only. A more logical spectrum has dictatorship at one end and liberty at the other.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Obamacare is a joke. If they really want to change the US healthcare system, they have to go with a public system. The problem is, with all the stubborn Republicans and their "lol socialism is evil" rhetoric, that'll never happen.

I honestly believe that the US would benefit from a multi-party political system like what we have here, where people have some freedom to pick and choose instead of being forced to pick between the Republicans and the Democrats (both of which are terrible, IMO).

The ACA is a Republican policy that they've only started opposing because the Democrats decided they were gonna use it. The right didn't have any problem with it until the centre-right decided they quite liked it. Party politics at its ugliest.

Bit ironic to suggest that in a thread dedicated to viewing political opinion as a plane, no?

Trees and grasses are not opposites because they are both plants. Trees and giraffes are not opposites because they are both tall.
In reality, we can compare "tall living things" and note differences between trees and giraffes, or we can compare plants and note how much taller trees are than your lawn. Likewise, we can say "Gandhi is like Stalin is like Hitler is like Friedman is like Gandhi, but Gandhi is not like Hitler and Stalin is not like Friedman". It just involves equivocal uses of language.

The PPACA has almost nothing to do with healthcare. If you read it, it is structured as a consumer protection bill more than anything else.

True, but the GOP of today is not synonymous with 'the economic right' – not if the latter includes Mises, Hayek, Rand, Friedman. In actual policies, if not rhetoric, Romney is basically an FDR Democrat.



Libertarians and free-marketers had a big problem with it.



No. We're focusing for the moment on the economic axis. It is still useful to be able to describe someone as economically authoritarian but socially liberal (for example).



I hope that makes more sense to you than it does to me.

As Governor, yes, that seems broadly fair.
In his presidential campaign, Romney consistently argued for reduced spending and reduced taxes at the Federal level, except when it comes to the military. He also argued in favour of Free Trade, and reduced regulation in the banking industry. The areas where you suspect his rhetoric might not have matched his policy are the areas where he was really flip-flopping, like the environment and argiculture subsidies.

The GOP set up a long list of "not-Romney" candidates who argued in favour of abolishing multiple departments.

Indeed.

Anyway, I just combined my previous pool of responses with Fisplen's link and the subsequent responses in this thread, which results in the following distribution. 51 scores in total so far, with two members (Stefan10 & Tequila) having exactly the same score.



Link: Pooled crowd chart

Contenders for medals so far:

Top Left:
1. Dvcal
2. RushKing
3. FeralRobot

Top right:
1. AntDog
2. GGPViper
3. Luanqibazao

Top Authoritarian:
1. AntDog
2. RedStar98
3. DVCal

Top Libertarian:
1. FeralRobot
2. RushKing
3. DentArthurDent & joannaaleksandra (tie)

And combined:

Top Left-Authoritarian:
1. RedStar98
2. DVCal
3. Tyri0n

Top Right-Authoritarian:
1. Antdog
2. John_Browning
3. GGPViper

Top Left-Libertarian:
1. FeralRobot
2. RushKing
3. joannaaleksandra

Top Right-Libertarian:
1. Dox47
2. EliteEnigma57
3. Luanqibazao

Breakdown by color category:

Blue: 3 (5.9 percent)
Red: 4 (7.8 percent)
Green: 34 (66.7 percent - or exactly two thirds)
Purple: 9 (17.6 percent)
Unaligned: 1 (2.0 percent)

I am fairly sure Fnord didn't take the test and just made up his score based on his perceptions of himself.

But very interesting stuff, Viper.

The left - including myself - want a single payer plan, and resent the fact that Obama took it off the table. The fact that Obama and the Democrats implemented an industry-based plan, originally formed and supported by Republicans, is part of the proof that Obama and the Democrats are not true leftists.

The reason that leftists say that the ACA is 'better than nothing' is because it does, at least, place limitations on the private insurance agencies in a way that makes their depredations slightly less revolting than they were in the virtually laissez-faire system that they used to have.


Guess who benefited under Mussolini? The richest capitalists. Guess who benefited under FDR? The people at large.


If you use those actual words, you're correct... but if you ask people, 'do you support public roads,' or 'do you support public schools,' or 'do you support public police and fire-fighters,' you'll see an awful lot of people expressing support for socialistic programs.


And I'm not, either (though, as indicated above, I support public water, public roads, public law enforcement, public epidemic control, public fire suppression, etc.) I'm a socialist, not a communist.



That's true, but it's only part of the truth.


We're debating on a thread with visual representations of two axes, and you still want to say that one axis is legitimate and the other is not?