Brucker's political compass:
Economic Left/Right: -4.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.05
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You know, while I like these sorts of tests, I often feel that there is a lack of proper precision in the wording of the statements used to measure attitudes. The best example of this is probably on page 3, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Do I agree with this statement or disagree? It depends a great deal on what the test is assuming the meaning of that statement to be. While I'm going to assume that they mean it the way that most people interpret it, i.e. "When one is wronged, it is acceptable to seek revenge," my personal understanding of the phrase (and I am not unique in having this interpretation) is rather, "If you feel a need to be avenged, don't escalate your restitution beyond the scope of the original crime."
That example is more of a matter of social baggage of the phrase itself, but in other statements, the issue being raised can be confused by wording. On page two, there was a statement that read. "A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies." Well, by definition, a "genuine free market" has no regulation, but I don't think that's what they mean. Since the test is about measuring personal opinion, what they really mean is "I believe that the market should be regulated to protect against the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies."
Other examples: "A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system." Well, yes, but I'm guessing that agreeing with this statement would be measured as meaning that I support the idea of a one-party system, which I do not. "Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers." Not a problem for me, but if you're either a person who feels mothers should not have careers or a person who feels a mother's first duty is not to be a homemaker, then you'd disagree, but you wouldn't be on the same part of the political spectrum, would you? "It is important that my child's school instills religious values." Important to me, yes, but that doesn't mean I think public schools should be teaching religious values, so…? "Sex outside marriage is usually immoral." This is odd for the reason that I would disagree with "usually", but that's not the point of the statement, I'm pretty sure. "These days openness about sex has gone too far." Honestly, I felt there were far too many ways to interpret this, so I took a response at random.
Maybe I'm over-analyzing, but it is notable to me that I fell in the green quadrant here, when many previous tests of this type have placed me in the red quadrant, although I'm usually close to the line nonetheless.
BUT… I don't think that there has been as much discussion of the matter that I really wanted to cover in this thread as I wanted. I'm not surprised that most users fall in the green quadrant, but the question is how do we react when something (meme-wise) arises that challenges those sensibilities? I'm a strong believer in impartiality when it comes to free speech and free press (the latter of which is, IMHO, where we fall as a site), but how much does the fact that most of us share the same general political leanings affect our coverage of politically-charged memetic content?