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 Polonius wrote:
I love polls like this, because everybody wants to be a special snowflake that doesn't fit neatly unto a political spectrum.

There are plenty of axes to political thought, theory, policy, and practice. And sure, just because you like low taxes doesn't mean you also want school prayer, but all of those distinctions hide a simple one: do you think that power belongs in more hands?

Conservatism, independent of all of it's seeming contradictions, can be summed up with a simple statement: That the people in power should, for the most part, keep their power. Liberalism, as a political movement, is essentially the opposite, and can be summed up with the statement "more people should have power than currently do."

When you look at the policy goals of both ideologies, they all boil down to either keeping (or even consolidating) power in the hands of those that have it (almost always the rich), or expanding power to those that do not (usually the poor, although often minorities.)

So, sorry, my libertarian friends, you are right wing, because you want power kept in the hands of the wealthy. You might not like being lumped in with theocrats, corporate capitalists, and good of fashioned white supremacists, but you're on the right.

Thats a false dichotomy. Theres more to politics than just Left vs Right. You can be an authoritarian Leftist, or a Libertarian Right winger. And vice versa. My political views are all over the place, I do not fit neatly onto an A vs B spectrum.

This isn't about being a special snowflake, its an acknowledgement that life and politics are more complicated than this crude and simplistic bs Left vs Right narrative that you believe in.

Get on my level!

 Polonius wrote:
I love polls like this, because everybody wants to be a special snowflake that doesn't fit neatly unto a political spectrum.

There are plenty of axes to political thought, theory, policy, and practice. And sure, just because you like low taxes doesn't mean you also want school prayer, but all of those distinctions hide a simple one: do you think that power belongs in more hands?

Conservatism, independent of all of it's seeming contradictions, can be summed up with a simple statement: That the people in power should, for the most part, keep their power. Liberalism, as a political movement, is essentially the opposite, and can be summed up with the statement "more people should have power than currently do."

When you look at the policy goals of both ideologies, they all boil down to either keeping (or even consolidating) power in the hands of those that have it (almost always the rich), or expanding power to those that do not (usually the poor, although often minorities.)

So, sorry, my libertarian friends, you are right wing, because you want power kept in the hands of the wealthy. You might not like being lumped in with theocrats, corporate capitalists, and good of fashioned white supremacists, but you're on the right.

You misestimate the evaluation of the Left/Right spectrum, it is an economic axis. Whether that is a valid axis to make political judgements on is another discussion, but it argues either in the direction of economic conservativism, or in the direction of economic liberalism. The Right leans towards deregulation, a free market, and financial self-sustainment. The Left leans towards regulation, government intervention, and financial support.

The "who holds power" axis is better defined, but not wholly, by the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis. Authoritarians lean towards tradition, rule of law, state-enforcement, mandatory culture, and strong heirarchical leadership.
Libertarians lean towards the opposite of that (I ran out of words).

The two combined give you a look at which policies a person may prefer, but do not tell you who they think should hold power. Remember, extreme Libertarianism is Anarchism, the idea that each person should self-rule, while extreme Authoritarianism seems to split along the economic axis into Communism or Nazism. All three of these, I might add, are things I consider to bring us to mass violence.

 Polonius wrote:
I love polls like this, because everybody wants to be a special snowflake that doesn't fit neatly unto a political spectrum.

There are plenty of axes to political thought, theory, policy, and practice. And sure, just because you like low taxes doesn't mean you also want school prayer, but all of those distinctions hide a simple one: do you think that power belongs in more hands?

Conservatism, independent of all of it's seeming contradictions, can be summed up with a simple statement: That the people in power should, for the most part, keep their power. Liberalism, as a political movement, is essentially the opposite, and can be summed up with the statement "more people should have power than currently do."

When you look at the policy goals of both ideologies, they all boil down to either keeping (or even consolidating) power in the hands of those that have it (almost always the rich), or expanding power to those that do not (usually the poor, although often minorities.)

So, sorry, my libertarian friends, you are right wing, because you want power kept in the hands of the wealthy. You might not like being lumped in with theocrats, corporate capitalists, and good of fashioned white supremacists, but you're on the right.

Congratulations. You just defined the best fit line through an N-dimensional hypervolume.

In my experience from talking to Libertarians, they don't want power in the hands of the wealthy, they just fail to see how that is nearly instantly the guaranteed outcome if Libertarian values are put into law.

I'm not surprised to see most dakkanauts are middle-of-the-road people.

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:Thats a false dichotomy. Theres more to politics than just Left vs Right. You can be an authoritarian Leftist, or a Libertarian Right winger. And vice versa. My political views are all over the place, I do not fit neatly onto an A vs B spectrum.

This isn't about being a special snowflake, its an acknowledgement that life and politics are more complicated than this crude and simplistic bs Left vs Right narrative that you believe in.

Everything is more complicated than you think, that doesn't mean you can't assign a simple and crude label that still has meaning.

Each person has a wildly diverse and fascinating set of viewpoints, and in today's incredibly polarizing time, when it seems like everyone is a hyperpartisan, it makes a lot of people want to distance themselves from that divide. But having idiosyncratic beliefs doesn't mean you're on the spectrum somewhere.

Selym wrote: You misestimate the evaluation of the Left/Right spectrum, it is an economic axis. Whether that is a valid axis to make political judgements on is another discussion, but it argues either in the direction of economic conservativism, or in the direction of economic liberalism. The Right leans towards deregulation, a free market, and financial self-sustainment. The Left leans towards regulation, government intervention, and financial support.

The "who holds power" axis is better defined, but not wholly, by the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis. Authoritarians lean towards tradition, rule of law, state-enforcement, mandatory culture, and strong heirarchical leadership.
Libertarians lean towards the opposite of that (I ran out of words).

The two combined give you a look at which policies a person may prefer, but do not tell you who they think should hold power. Remember, extreme Libertarianism is Anarchism, the idea that each person should self-rule, while extreme Authoritarianism seems to split along the economic axis into Communism or Nazism. All three of these, I might add, are things I consider to bring us to mass violence.

You can, if you want, define a right/left spectrum as purely economic, but that's not inherent to it. Conservatism, as a concept, or an ideology, is old. Very, very old. It's probably older than nation states, but it certainly goes back to the English Civil wars. Conservatism stems from monarchism, the idea of that a hereditary monarch should hold power because, well, they're the king. The idea that those in power should stay in power is a simple one, but it gets complicated by the way that savvy conservative leaders (often people with considerable power) use forces like traditionalism, religion, patriotism, etc. to win support for the idea that the mob should allow rich and powerful people to keep their wealth and power.

Authoritarianism is strongly coupled with conservatism, but there are plenty of counter-examples, going back to the harsh laws under Cromwell compared to more relaxed Stuarts. Communism is highly authoritarian, and at least in principle liberal.

And libertarians lean against authoritarianism, but most strongly when it's repression against themselves. I'm sure there are libertarians with genuinely complex political beliefs (for example, they want lower taxes, but actively support Black Lives Matter, a group that agitates for more power for black people). Usually, Libertarians point to their zest for personal freedom in the form of drug laws or gay marriage or whatever, but that doesn't actually change who has power.

the other problem is that Libertarianism is an extremely right wing ideology when it comes to economics. It's hard to hold such a strong position on one aspect of political thought, and not have it control.

Not really surprised myself.

 feeder wrote:
In my experience from talking to Libertarians, they don't want power in the hands of the wealthy, they just fail to see how that is nearly instantly the guaranteed outcome if Libertarian values are put into law.

It's one of those coincidences. Like how every libertarian I've met in my life has been a white guy from an upper middle class family.

Edit: in fairness, so has every socialist. So, there's that.

Speaking of special snowflakes...

Where's South Park Republican™?

 whembly wrote:
Speaking of special snowflakes...

Where's South Park Republican™?

I was expecting a slap at our favorite fascists, the Alt-right, but the South Park Republican works too.

 Polonius wrote:
I love polls like this, because everybody wants to be a special snowflake that doesn't fit neatly unto a political spectrum.

There are plenty of axes to political thought, theory, policy, and practice. And sure, just because you like low taxes doesn't mean you also want school prayer, but all of those distinctions hide a simple one: do you think that power belongs in more hands?

Conservatism, independent of all of it's seeming contradictions, can be summed up with a simple statement: That the people in power should, for the most part, keep their power. Liberalism, as a political movement, is essentially the opposite, and can be summed up with the statement "more people should have power than currently do."

When you look at the policy goals of both ideologies, they all boil down to either keeping (or even consolidating) power in the hands of those that have it (almost always the rich), or expanding power to those that do not (usually the poor, although often minorities.)

So, sorry, my libertarian friends, you are right wing, because you want power kept in the hands of the wealthy. You might not like being lumped in with theocrats, corporate capitalists, and good of fashioned white supremacists, but you're on the right.

This is so oversimplified, that your view of "baseline dichotomy" is unaplicable to half of European countries... It might be partially true in US and UK because of historical continuity of those two particular countries, but go as close as France and this falls apart because of French Revolution and then a nation wide historical trauma of bleeding out during WWI... Go a bit further east and you'll find a mild-clusterf#$%k of '89 reunited Germany and then a totally messed up history of Poland... Our currently ruling party is considered to be right wing, yet it is the most pro-social government in two decades; has fair amount of deregulatory actions and lowers taxes; it actively seeks to reduce overgrown government yet is accused of gathering all three pilars of democratic power under a single rule just because one of those pillars is completely non-democratic post-communist leftover and they try to fix that; it lowered retirement age, seeks to improve health care, actively works toward improvement of law clarity and economic freedom; gave long demanded medical information acces for homosexual couples (which our "liberal" party couldn't get to vote for 8 years) yet they are totally catholic party and they prove it on a weekly basis.

And you are completely off on libertarians, at least here in Poland - most of those I know are almost indistinguishably close to radical lefts in many, many aspects. But funnily enough, polish Libertarians openly label themselves as far-right, at the same time having esentially the most egalitarian approach (to an extent of total practical failure of society if they ever made it real).

You simply cannot make any meaningfull dichotomic divide in post-soviet central european countries. None whatsoever. You'll struggle with two axis approach, will do a bit better with three axis model, but even then there will be outliers which wil not fit anyhow.

 feeder wrote:
In my experience from talking to Libertarians, they don't want power in the hands of the wealthy, they just fail to see how that is nearly instantly the guaranteed outcome if Libertarian values are put into law.

And are usually blind to historical evidence, that this in fact occured every time someone tried to make an actual Libertarian state.

I view myself as Centre Left... for Canada.

You can be trans whatever, doctors can help you kill yourself, everyone should be treated equally under the law, let women get abortions if they want. Basic Health and Dental should be state funded, including life saving surgeries and the like. Bring in the refugees, too, as far as im concerned.

The reason why im centre is because I dont think the state should have to pay for someone to change from a guy to a lady or vice versa, a doctor should be allowed to refuse to assist in suicide, and unless it's life threatening abortions shouldnt be paid for by the state.

Also, i am generally fine with pipelines over protecting the forest, since the oil is coming anyways, and might as well try to finagle a deal out of it.

As for the refugees, they should be on Army bases or in sponsored homes, rather then stuck in downtown Vancouver hotels like they are right now, and there should be a limit to how long and how much government aid they get.

I dont mind bigger government, since that usually means more well paying jobs... but I dont want them to be wasteful make work jobs.

I put myself as 'right wing' in the poll since I am typically conservative, especially by my perception of Dakka standards.

If we look at the origin of the left/right dichotomy it first came into use in the national assembly during the French revolution, where those on the right side supported the king and the church and those on the left supported the revolution. Thats how I would define the left/right divide, the right wants to keep the current status quo(or return to a recent status quo) while the left wants to revolutionize things. This has been muddled though over the last 30 years where all political parties rushed to the centre.

8values
Results
Economic Axis: Centrist

40.9%
59.1%

Diplomatic Axis: Patriotic

72.3%
27.7%

Civil Axis: Statist

34.6%
65.4%

Societal Axis: Traditional

60.1%
39.9%

Closest Match: Right-Wing Populism

Sounds about right.

Feels about right, I guess. I know for sure I'm not a special snowflake.

Hehehe, take this all you "wingers" of all stripes



Right down the middle baby!

Economic Axis: Centrist
56.1%
43.9%
Diplomatic Axis: Internationalist
19.7%
80.3%
Civil Axis: Liberal
63.8%
36.2%
Societal Axis: Progressive
27.1%
72.9%
Closest Match: Social Liberalism

Hmm might even be fairly accurate.

 RiTides wrote:
Hehehe, take this all you "wingers" of all stripes

Spoiler:

Right down the middle baby!

We found a filthy Neutral!

That poll is pretty pointless. What's considered left/right in country A doesn't necessarily mean that it's left/right in country B.

For instance, the democrats in the US are considered "left", but by swedish (nordic even) standards, they are very much right-wing, with the republicans being even more so.

That 8values thing was quite interesting though;



Seems about right.

One issue I had with that 8values-poll though is that they seem to think that religion = tradition, which I disagree with. Tradition doesn't automatically have to have religious tendencies.

Religion is usually, however, traditional. What that religious tradition does is another matter though...

I find it rather interesting that nobody has had any objection to their 8values result, despite our assumption that the American system is far more to the right than European countries. If the 8values is agreeing with everyone's self-label, surely that indicates the self-labeling method used in this poll is not as significantly affected by cultural differences ass we thought?

Seems about right. I am fairly left, moderately so by swedish standards but by the standards of the States I am probably the kind of 'communist extremist' you shoot in Call of Duty.

It's very contextual, though. I am liberal in many things, but on the other hand I imagine many of you are familiar with my stance on gun control by now, and I am still not sure of what I actually think about legal drugs.

Polls are only as useful as the questions they ask and the samples they utilize. This is a nonscientific poll which simply measures self identification. Nothing to get worked up over.

Left and Right are extremely broad labels that have tremendous differences in meaning by nation and region, regardless of the history of the terms. It gets even more complex when you start talking about personal identity as it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with accepted terminology and more to do with self justification.

I can't figure out how to make it a picture so here is the URL.

It's not entirely inaccurate.

How did Capitalism Fascism works? You have a very strong state with hard control about everything but not economy? (And this is a Honest question. I tought that normally Fascism states use a more state-controled economy type)

IIRC state uses its hard control to assist businesses/push "business friendly" policy.

 Selym wrote:
Religion is usually, however, traditional. What that religious tradition does is another matter though...

I find it rather interesting that nobody has had any objection to their 8values result, despite our assumption that the American system is far more to the right than European countries. If the 8values is agreeing with everyone's self-label, surely that indicates the self-labeling method used in this poll is not as significantly affected by cultural differences ass we thought?

8values does not use any left/right distinction. It uses four axis "absolute" system of reference, but is relative (it has moveable '0' point based on self-perception).

But for me it still doesn't give true answer, because of assumed partial dichotomies...

I consider myself center right. I had right leaning beliefs in financial and foreign policies, but left leaning beliefs in social policies.

 Verviedi wrote:
IIRC state uses its hard control to assist businesses/push "business friendly" policy.

It's really funny you say that because it's the opposite for me. Heavy-handed government doesn't touch the economy unless something is seriously wrong or a direct threat to the government