Political Orientation

[Totenkopf]

While there have been 2 or three threads similiar to this in the last 3 years, I don't recall this system being used. It's a quick 10 question quiz. Where did you fall on this one and is it where you thought....

 

http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php

[The Betrayer]

Nolan Chart says I'm Centrist, moving slightly toward Statist and Liberal. Can't say I disagree, though most of those issues aren't here in my country.

[mimartin]

"Your answers suggest that you are a centrist"

 

Did not like the practically like the questions on the test either. For example: While I support individual gun ownership that does not change my interpretation of the Second Amendment. Also not really happy with the vague reply either of “mentally unstable people.” As defined by who? Same types of problems with Questions; 4. Foreign Policy, 5. National ID Card, 6 Corporate Welfare, 7 Trade and Money, 8 Social Security, 9 Health Care, 10 Taxes, Spending… Test just seems too short and restrictive to give an accurate result.

[True_Avery]

As I always do on these things, I'm centrist although, like most of these, I take issue with the wording of some of the answers. Particularly in this one there were a few answers that seemed to be more redundant and too similar.

 

Between Liberal and Conservative I hit dead center in the middle, but oddly enough my star was a little down to Statism. Now, to be honest, I knew the word but had no idea what that meant so I looked it up and, well, not too thrilled with the philosophy but, then again, I also dislike libertarianism as well so... there is that.

 

A few things to mention:

 

"Speech, assembly, press, and Internet should be free except when it comes to protecting against terrorism and other threats to public safety. Free speech zones can be established to protect the right of free speech while insuring security at public events. Eminent domain should be maintained in practice, but it should not be available merely as a means to enrich private developers via enforced land transfers."

Chose this simply because I think too much of a single thing can be harmful. I very much enjoy my "free" speech, but don't really have a problem with the FBI, for example, paying Hal Turner a visit when he posts the names and addresses of judges and tells his fans to kill them. Defamation in the wrong hands can also greatly ruin people's lives.

 

In general, I support the right to bear arms. However, it is prudent to have government regulate arms via registration requirements and other regulations to ensure that mentally unstable people can't get guns and go on shooting rampages.

Pretty self explanatory and think this is probably the view of most. This particularly comes to mind when I was sitting in on a judge running through people and taking away wife beater's and drunk driver's right to bear guns in Cali for a few years. While it does infringe on their rights, I do think you give up certain rights when you prove yourself to be mentally unstable or misguided. I'm also not really for nukes being sold at wal-mart, so I'm pretty OK with most gun regulations as of now.

 

Undecided.

Anyone who knows me might find this a little out of character for me, but when I really sit back and think about it I'm basically torn between "Allow rights" and "it should be voted in".

 

I used to just ****ing snap at people when this topic was brought up, but when Prop 8 passed here in California it basically broke me on this topic. Sort of started to sink into depression after it passed, and particularly after something said by GTA:SWcity the topic basically went limp and fell over for me.

 

After a lot of soul searching and research I basically admitted defeat to myself and gave in. In a perfect world, I'd say "Absolutely yes" but this is reality and I'd prefer public approval over forced reformation. But, looking through history and studying in sociology I have also basically accepted that is never going to happen.

 

I answered Fully Supported, but really I stopped caring or hoping awhile ago.

 

Undecided

In the end I finally chose "America should play an active role in world affairs", but I thought ever one of the answers was poorly written and even more poorly thought out for a test. I really only chose it because it was seemingly the only option that took public opinion into account.

 

However, I take particular issue with this answer:

"'Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none,' said President Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address. America's interventionist policies over the past 100+ years have done little or nothing to reduce international instability, have led us into an endless series of wars, and have cost us dearly in American lives and money. The best defense of our borders is to defend our rights and liberty, not to sacrifice them while constantly growing our gigantic military, led by a parade of Presidents who repeatedly stick our nose into other countries' affairs."

 

Thomas Jefferson's quote was a warning that would eventually come true with the alliances forged that eventually gave way to the two World Wars. It was not so much friendship but an obligation to ally with other countries. Entanglement if you will.

 

However, the rest of that answer takes that quote and spits on its face. I find the rest of it to be both an offense to the quote, and an offense to history. The idea that there has been no change in international stability in 100+ years is the stupidest ****ing thing I've read in awhile.

 

While the last two sentences are reasonable, adding the Jefferson quote and the "no change in 100+ years" makes me question the validity of this test.

 

What?

Ok, this one actually had me double take. What is the idea of a National ID Card? Isn't that what a passport sort of is? State License? Car License?

 

Could someone fill me in?

 

Government involvement is necessary where private industry can't do the job all by itself. As an example, agricultural subsidies should continue to support small farmers.

While I do not support the bailing out of the Banks or the Big 3, keeping a net under things like agricultural is a good investment. The agricultural crash in the Great Depression is a good example of why having no net can be devastating.

 

The rest of the questions... meh, nothing worth mentioning. My issues with the test may be self explanatory in my Centrist outcome, though.

 

Overall, I've seen better tests and thought this was poorly written and restrictive.

[jonathan7]

I broke the test... It continually had a problem loading the page for my result.

 

I think your American software couldn't handle the liberalness of the European

[Ping]

The thing said I'm a liberal, and I seem to be closer to the statist side of the chart, too.

[Web Rider]

I generally kind I'm moderate with socialist leanings. But yeah, test is borked.

[Litofsky]

I broke the test... It continually had a problem loading the page for my result.

 

I think your American software couldn't handle the liberalness of the European

 

I regret to say that I couldn't access the test, either. Though, Jon, it might be equally afraid of what happens if a 'Southerner' takes the test as a Brit.

[mimartin]

I broke the test... It continually had a problem loading the page for my result.

 

I think your American software couldn't handle the liberalness of the European

 

No, I can no longer load it either, but the test was broke even before the page went down.

[Jae Onasi]

See, I would have pegged Web Rider as pretty liberal, jonathan7 as very liberal on some things but conservative on others, True_Avery as very liberal and me as centrist-right (very conservative on some things, liberal on some others). I didn't get a chance to see the test yet, however.

[Astor]

I tried the test earlier, apparently i'm a centrist liberal libertarian (at least I think that's what it said), although I couldn't see the chart and where I was in relation to other viewpoints.

[True_Avery]

True_Avery as very liberal

One of the only things I consider myself very liberal with is same-sex marriage. I'm pretty moderate/indifferent on most everything else, mainly because most issues don't affect me directly. If I'm reacting to something its either out of my own confusion on the topic, or more an issue with the person and not the topic.

 

Very liberal people go out on marches, have stickers on their car, and are pro-choice/pro-same-sex/anti-death penalty/anti-torture, etc. See, that is my mother.

 

I, however, am only strictly pro-same-sex with almost no drive to defend the position anymore.

[jrrtoken]

Labeling others is arrogant... but the fact that I'm even saying this would probably place me as a liberal sodomite.

[Jae Onasi]

You can be liberal without being the activist that your mother is, however. I'm pretty liberal on environmental issues (on the theory that if we pollute ourselves so much that we die off, there won't be anyone left to do business). However, the only thing I do activist-wise is feed the wild birds in my backyard and do backyard bird counts and then submit the data to eBird so Cornell University and the Audubon Society can use the data for research. I'm very conservative on pro-life issues, but I don't get activist about it. I think it's far more useful to just help the women who are in a situation of an unexpected pregnancy with practical things like diapers and baby clothes.

[jonathan7]

Labeling others is arrogant...

 

Isn't that a self defeating statement as you've just labelled others

[Totenkopf]

....but the fact that I'm even saying this would probably place me as a liberal sodomite.

 

Well, you know those liberal sodomites, Jon, they just can't control their urges.

 

RE the quiz, I thought it a bit short and somewhat unsatisfactory also. Just like mimartin's doubts about the issue of "mental instability", I have problems with ambiguous terms like "other threats to public safety". As defined by? Also, the foreign policy question seemed to leave you with 3 basic choices: being a total busy-body in the name of national interests--no matter the cost, caving in to the UN or a form of isolationism. I think they should have refined that first answer at the very least and that to argue that America's interventionism over the last 100 years has done little or nothing for international stability is dubious at best.

 

Also, this rationale

Government involvement is necessary where private industry can't do the job all by itself. As an example, agricultural subsidies should continue to support small farmers

could be used to justify a natioanl healthcare system that would end up as a govt single-payer entity. Even Barney Frank has conceded that that is the ultimate goal of the progressives in govt via a "public option" camels' nose-in-the-tent approach.

 

 

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[Web Rider]

See, I would have pegged Web Rider as pretty liberal, jonathan7 as very liberal on some things but conservative on others, True_Avery as very liberal and me as centrist-right (very conservative on some things, liberal on some others). I didn't get a chance to see the test yet, however.

 

That's because we never discuss anything here that I lean to the (american)right on. It's not real easy to see my conservative side as there are few issues that bring it up. EX: I'm very pro-gun rights, I'm big on personal freedoms, and I'm quite in favor of the death penalty, among other forms of corrective punishment.

[Q]

Hm. Linky no worky.

But I was deemed slightly left of center in the last "political compass" test. But, then again, according to the questions asked by that test, anyone right of center is a bigoted "we don't want their kind around these here parts" neo-nazi, so I'm guessing that I'd be slightly right of center with this one.

Anyone who knows me might find this a little out of character for me, but when I really sit back and think about it I'm basically torn between "Allow rights" and "it should be voted in".

 

I used to just ****ing snap at people when this topic was brought up, but when Prop 8 passed here in California it basically broke me on this topic. Sort of started to sink into depression after it passed, and particularly after something said by GTA:SWcity the topic basically went limp and fell over for me.

 

After a lot of soul searching and research I basically admitted defeat to myself and gave in. In a perfect world, I'd say "Absolutely yes" but this is reality and I'd prefer public approval over forced reformation. But, looking through history and studying in sociology I have also basically accepted that is never going to happen.

As someone who was conscious of his surroundings during the 1980s I can say with a fair amount of confidence that you should probably not be so depressed about this. Homosexuals were regarded as something less than human back then. I know, because I was there.

[mimartin]

As someone who was conscious of his surroundings during the 1980s I can say with a fair amount of confidence that you should probably not be so depressed about this. Homosexuals were regarded as something less than human back then. I know, because I was there.

 

Very true, during the starts of the HIV crisis people were even talking serious about sending homosexual males to an island somewhere.

 

While the first cases of AIDS were discovered in 1981, President Ronald Reagan never addressed the subject until May 31. 1987 after 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with disease and 20,849 had died of AIDS. According to Reagan’s Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, the white house belived "because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs…They were only getting what they justly deserved”

 

That kind of narrow minded thinking cost my best friend his father. His dad got a blood transfusion in 1984 during open heart surgery. Died a few years later of AIDS, thanks to the forward thinking of Reagan and the bean counters that thought it was too expensive and would bankrupt the blood banks to test the blood supply. Funny it seems the blood banks are not bankrupt since we started testing the blood.

[True_Avery]

As someone who was conscious of his surroundings during the 1980s I can say with a fair amount of confidence that you should probably not be so depressed about this. Homosexuals were regarded as something less than human back then. I know, because I was there.

Indeed, I can't deny that there are times and places where thinks would be worse.

 

But, in my own subjective experiences it depressed me. I put a lot of vestment into the people, and threw a lot of hope into the result especially since I had just helped two friends marry after 15 years together. The results came in and it wasn't a land slide, but it was still pretty crushing.

 

It was a heavy topic in the schools, the news, the forums, and I got into my fare share of debates and even led a debate on the subject. It grated on my nerves enough that I perhaps put too much investment into the final result; I honestly cared about the outcome of Prop 8 more than the Presidential Election or anything else on the card. My "No On 8" signs were being stolen left and right, there was not a street corner without at least 5 Yes signs in the ground, and all over the country Yes was getting incredible amounts of funding and backing.

 

It passed, and it knocked the wind out of me. For the moment, my friends had just had their marriage nullified and It had been made a constitutional amendment in the state I planned to spend most if not the rest of my life in (partly due to my career track). I had held back a lot of feelings from school on the subject, and this was just finally the last straw for me.

 

Couldn't comprehend why. So, I did some soul searching and delved into history and tried to educate myself best I could on the history of LGBT rights to try to get a firmer, better understanding, this time with some basic knowledge of sociology to help decipher, as well as trying to understand more of the psychology behind sexuality.

 

After soul searching with the info and with plenty of comments in and out of the forum I decided to give up on the subject. Its a dead-end topic with a predictable outcome that repeats and shows itself everywhere, with the end result basing a "rational" aversion. After delving into the psychology of the topic I found that the positions I thought were dead wrong before were probably more dead on than I realized.

 

I lost my drive to support the topic. Does that make me naive, ignorant, and spoiled of the experiences those before me had? Yes, and I probably have little right to be depressed. If anything, I'm a coward.

 

I fully expect a strong conservative/religious movement to undo what has been done so far so, from my point of view, I don't really have any reason not to see myself as an abomination and the support of the topic to be anything other than pointless. I'm a defeatist on this, so sue me.

[mur'phon]

My political views are so all over the place and context sensitive (I like to pretend this is due to me being a pragmatist) that tests tend to place me all over the place. The exeption being privacy issues, where I want the government far far away. As an example I support a massive carbon tax in just about every western country, while at the same time opposing it in most of the LDC countries.

[The Betrayer]

Ok, this one actually had me double take. What is the idea of a National ID Card? Isn't that what a passport sort of is? State License? Car License?

 

Could someone fill me in?

 

A National ID System is very different from a passport or a driver's license, True_Avery.

 

A national identification number or National Identity Card number is used by the governments of many countries as a means of tracking their citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents for the purposes of work, taxation, government benefits, health care, and other governmentally-related functions. Sometimes, the number will appear on an identity card issued by a country.

 

The main issue, at hand, of course, is the privacy of the user. And although it might provide an additional layer of protection from terrorism, the government also gains the ability to track its citizens. Here's a link for further reading.

[mimartin]

The main issue, at hand, of course, is the privacy of the user. And although it might provide an additional layer of protection from terrorism, the government also gains the ability to track its citizens. Here's a link for further reading.

 

I can't really say where I stand on the National ID, but law abiding citizens are easily tracked by the government, banking, credit, health care and insurance industries with a little thing called the social security number.

 

As someone on the watch list, because my name is the same as someone on the no fly list, I am unsure how I feel about a national ID card. If it is to be administered by the worse government agency ever designed, Homeland Security, then I am totally against national ID cards.

[Web Rider]

I can't really say where I stand on the National ID, but law abiding citizens are easily tracked by the government, banking, credit, health care and insurance industries with a little thing called the social security number.

You are right that if the government WANTS to track you, it will. That has always been true, a new card will not really change this. Certainly it may make things easier, but lets face it, the government really isn't going to be tracking everyone on a regular basis. And even if they did, it would be only a cursory evaluation, they simply don't have the time or money to figure out if every person is having regular bowel movements.

 

I think a National ID card would be a good idea, if only to standardize licenses/IDs across state, I mean, I have no idea if the guy with the Minnesota ID is using a fake, I don't know what a Minnesota ID looks like out in California.

 

As someone on the watch list, because my name is the same as someone on the no fly list, I am unsure how I feel about a national ID card. If it is to be administered by the worse government agency ever designed, Homeland Security, then I am totally against national ID cards.

Change your name. That's the hilarity of it. All you have to do is make a minor change to your name, and suddenly "The List" won't pick you up anymore. It's the most idiotic way to check for terrorists ever.

 

TSA: "Oh, you said your name was John Smith? You're on the list. Sorry."

two days later:

TSA: "Oh hi again, you said your name was Johan Schmidt? Go right ahead!"

 

Yeah....

[mimartin]

From what Homeland Stupidity informed me, a name change would not work. It could just be that they put all forms of a name into the data base. So if your name was Robert Smith, you could not change it to Rob Smith, Bobby Smith, Roberto Smith, or Bob Smith to invade the list. If one form of someone’s name is on the list then every form of that name is on the list. Kind of understandable why the list grew so big, so fast and is now more a hindrance to security and not the tool it was advertised to be.