[Mustapha]

I'm issues oriented. Don't like dogmatic viewpoints.

 

[Hydrogen]

I'm all over the map--it depends upon the issue rather than the ideology.

I'm the same way. I'm always surprised when I encounter people who will augment their views in order to fit in to their desired ideology.

How does one have 'mixed' views? Isn't that essentially a centrist?

Only if one wants to somehow 'average' those things out.

There is a wide range of assumptions of what constitutes a left-wing or right-wing point of view on many topics. What is interesting is when some otherwise isolated practice, belief or attitude becomes casually identified as being the belief of a specific 'wing' point of view and how that assumption then gets adopted across the board by the followers of one or both both 'wings.'

 

[detroitbootybass]

I'm a slightly left-leaning Libertarian... that's why I voted for 'mixed'.

 

[Whoaccio]

These compasses aren't terribly useful, but are fun to do anyways. One of these days we should just abandon this "left-right" spectrum. It wasn't particularly descriptive during the French Revolution and it means next to nothing now. Historically left wing goals like laissez faire capitalism and equality under the law are now pretty much the preserve of some right wing groups while historical right wing values like cultural nationalism are almost exclusively an NDP issue.

They also don't adequately take into account the role of history. So, "left wing" parties in Eastern Europe tend to be quite pro-NATO, an obvious reaction to a history of getting screwed by Russia while the conservative communist parties tend to favor a return to the status quo of Russo centrism. Moving west of the Oder though and roles sort of reverse, where left wing groups in traditionally Atlanticist Western Europe favor a more Continental outlook. In Canada you get obvious questions about the direction of Confederation and the division of power within it which don't have any obvious right-left attachment.

If I had to pick a party which most adequately represents me, it would probably be the Democraten 66 or the VVD in the Netherlands, though its positions on European integration aren't quite relevant to me as a Canadian and sustainable energy sources are generally bollix. Broadly speaking, I support neoliberalism as the bedrock of economic policy, liberal social policy and cosmopolitan or internationalist foreign policy. "Left vs. Right" is just an identity issue for most people.

 

[Brian69]

You got me doing the compass one and, darn it, you've made my rethink my choice with the result!

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Well, perhaps not. Actually, there is a bit of pop analysis going on with many questions I had difficulty answering using only the four strong variations of agree/disagree. But I will agree it was fun.

I also concur with the fluidity of beliefs as opposed to strict right/left absolutes. Life is too complicated to get hung up on labels and there's little benefit blindly following a viewpoint that tries to encapsulate every possible aspect of life. History does have a way of affecting or changing viewpoints. The American founding fathers were somewhat radical for their time and had no interest in melding church and state and yet the modern Christian right in America idolizes them.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

WTF?

 

[cacruden]

About what I expected....

 

[Brian69]

Prometheus, you've got me thinking I'm back in the late '70s playing Simon again!

 

[kEiThZ]

I think I am pretty much in line with quite a few folks here. Economic Left/Right: -2.38. Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.54

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

LOL bwian!

p.s...

 

[kEiThZ]

Only if one wants to somehow 'average' those things out.

There is a wide range of assumptions of what constitutes a left-wing or right-wing point of view on many topics. What is interesting is when some otherwise isolated practice, belief or attitude becomes casually identified as being the belief of a specific 'wing' point of view and how that assumption then gets adopted across the board by the followers of one or both both 'wings.'

Maybe I'm mixed then.

Using the political compass, I would sum up our political spectrum as ranging from somewhere between left-authoritarian (nanny state laws, over reaching HRCs) to right-authoritarian (misdemeanors' = jail time). Given that I have a libertarian streak, maybe that makes me more mixed than centrist.

 

[Brian69]

I also have a libertarian side and I (perhaps incorrectly) took centrist as someone who tries to be moderate and balanced as often as possible. I must admit everything might balance out in the end but it comes from strong views at both ends as much as balanced ones. Naturally I blame this misunderstanding on the presence of the mixed option.

 

[urbandreamer]

How I felt tonight:

 

[afransen]

Chris Selley had a great piece on nanny statism in the National Post the other day:

You can't cheat death, and you probably shouldn't try
Posted: May 21, 2009, 3:35 AM by Chris Selley
Full Comment, Full Pundit, Chris Selley

Of all the wise things Tony Soprano ever said, perhaps the most profound was to his psychiatrist on the topic of Anthony Jr. having wrecked his mother’s car: “You can’t put sh-t back in the donkey.†This is an excellent life lesson, but one that’s understandably difficult to keep top of mind in the wake of a preventable tragedy. All tragedies being in some sense preventable—if we banned air travel, there would be no plane crashes—there’s a natural urge to take steps to ensure they don’t happen again. Recent events in Ontario and New Brunswick illustrate the attending pitfalls.

On July 3, 20-year-old Tyler Mulcahy took a boozy lunch with three friends in Ontario’s cottage country, then drove them into Lake Muskoka. Only a female passenger survived. In response, Mulcahy’s father launched a campaign to change the rules for younger drivers that seemed to be designed to prevent his son, retroactively, from dying. (That sounds horribly callous. I don’t mean it to.) Tyler had accrued demerit points for speeding, so his father suggested speeding tickets result in an automatic licence suspension. Tyler had been drinking, so he suggested zero tolerance for even a trace of alcohol in a driver’s blood. Tyler had three friends with him in the car, so he suggested people not be allowed to drive their friends around. Tyler was under 21, so that’s the age to which he suggested the restrictions should apply.

To be fair, it’s not like Mr. Mulcahy pulled these ideas out of thin air. They’re the sorts of things safety groups and the crypto-prohibitionists at Mothers Against Drunk Driving recommend all the time. Nevertheless, having met with Mulcahy personally, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty soon declared he was happy to institute some of these suggested reforms, because he’s a father himself, you know, and children are our most precious commodity, and our future, and so on. (The Transport Minister was left to insist, valiantly, that there was no straight-line correlation between the Muskoka accident and the new rules.)

McGuinty was later forced to back off, partially, amidst protest from people who felt that it was unfair to punish one group of adults for another adult’s mistake, and that it was totally nuts to restrict teenage drivers to a single teenage passenger. Perhaps the most memorable moment in this headache-inducing debate came when the president of Young Drivers of Canada said he supported the passenger limit but hoped police wouldn’t enforce it if the excess passengers in question happened to be drunk, and the driver responsibly sober.

History is repeating itself in Bathurst, N.B., where a coroner’s inquest into the deaths of seven high school students and an adult, in a horrible accident in January 2008, wrapped up last week. The inquest highlighted several very valuable lessons, for example, that it’s risky to drive around in a rustbucket van with questionable brakes and bald tires, in bad weather, when fatigued, and with passengers who aren’t wearing seatbelts. I’m certainly not arguing with any of that.

These were also among the recommendations, however:

* That school athletic schedules “minimize travel in winter months.â€

* That it be illegal to transport students to “off-site extracurricular events†in bad weather, and that games be cancelled if there’s a “storm alert.â€

* That student travel should be in yellow school buses or minibuses, not fifteen- or seven-passenger vans, and that these always be driven by qualified school bus drivers, never parents, coaches or volunteers.

So, no school sports in bad weather. In Atlantic Canada. Between September and June. No teacher or coach, under any circumstances, to drive a student from A to B. No student, under any circumstances, to be transported from A to B in, say, a properly maintained minivan.

Does anyone honestly believe this wouldn’t result in less school sports, period? Already educators are carefully raising concerns. “I just don't see how, financially, the department could bear the cost, and we certainly couldn't bear it," a Fredericton high school athletic director told the Daily Gleaner. " I would love to see all our athletes on a school bus, but if it is not going to be fully 100 per cent funded, you basically don't travel or you don't have a team."

Politicians inevitably err on the side of more rules in cases like this, because it's easier than doing the opposite; already New Brunswick has promised to implement the lion’s share of the recommendations. Viewed rationally, however, there should be nothing inevitable about it. Coaches and parents driving kids to and from sporting events isn’t any more dangerous now than it was before the Bathurst tragedy. If, upon sober reflection, parents decide it’s still an acceptably safe practice, then they should refuse to be dragged along by people intent on stuffing poop back into donkeys.

It’s not as if school-related travel poses a unique risk. Four hundred and thirty-one Canadian children died in car accidents in 2005. Some of them would have been on their way to important things, some unimportant. I imagine very few of the trips would be considered essential by their bereaved loved-ones in the cold light of hindsight. But as irrationally as we humans assess the risks of hitting the road, we soldier on in knowledge we can’t stay home. Are school sports important? I don’t know anyone who’d say no—and certainly nobody who’d say no when ranked against going to a movie on a Friay night, or to the cottage every single summer weekend, or any of the other “dangerous†things Canadians do routinely, without thinking twice.

 

[Whoaccio]

Ohh yeah! Take that Hitler!