The Political Compass is a website to assess where you are politically. It displays your location on a graph of two axises. I first introduced this website to my readers on Feb 1st 2008. Just before Super Tuesday in the 2008 Primaries. I took the test, showed you all my results. Just out of interest however. I took the test again recently, yesterday in fact.
If you would like to learn more about The Political Compass, please see their website or my Feb 1st 2008 post.
I looked at my old posts and compared my results then to my results now. I was shocked. I moved, my political beliefs have changed over the last couple of years. But let me step back for a moment.
The two axises are Economic and Social. Going Left and Right as we know it the economic scale. Rating from Economic Conservatism to Socialism.
Going Up and Down the axis we are not used to measuring, Social issues going from Fascism on the top to Libertarian on the bottom. Please keep in mind the way they use Libertarian is not the way I’d use it, but I’ll get to that later. I would call the bottom of the Social Graph Anarchy, because that in short is what it is. A lack of laws to control how people act in society. A lack of police, a lack of control in the society as a whole. Complete Social Freedom.
Going Left and Right the axis we are used to measuring, economic issues, measured from left to right as we do in the US, Conservative to Liberal. That everyone is used to. The question is what’s a social issue and what’s an economic issue. That’s harder to answer in fact many are both. I think, however, the political compass does a good job breaking it up.
Here is the grid:
Now, onto my specific graphs. And their change over two years.
Two years ago, I was very close to center I was at: Economic Left/Right: 2.12 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.00. Here is that graph:
Since then I’ve moved more right, and a little bit down, but not much. My new position is at: Economic Left/Right: 6.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.62. Here is that graph:
Why has this happened? Maybe it’s because I feel more strongly now about economic issues, to me THAT is the biggest problem in this country right now, we’re spending way too much. So I was more likely to “strongly” agree or disagree on those. I’m sure however as I’ve gotten older more mature and more concerned about money over these last two years, I’ve gotten more conservative. All I can say is that political belief is not a fixed thing… Your beliefs change… And if the party doesn’t change with you they no longer support you…
Be individuals, not party members, vote with your mind, not your party.
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