My Political Compass

After 59 plus years on this planet, I should know enough about myself to never say never.  Or in this case never promise to not write about politics.  All it ever does is get me all in a tizzy and sour my outlook on what the boneheads in DC are doing at any given moment.  But like a fly drawn to shit, I just cannot keep my mouse from hitting links of the political kind.

I made this promise to myself along with other promises to resist ever present Web generated enticements that would divert my focus from the very real task of trying to pull my bike business up by its bootstraps and get back on the road to profitability.  It worked for a couple of months.  I guess I should be happy about that.

So anyway, I wake up most mornings, sip on coffee and spend some time perusing the news as the Internet sees it.  Until recently I have successfully just skimmed the news that is sure to get my bowels in an uproar.  News about political stupidity, religious stupidity, and any news that focuses on celebrities and who they are banging or not banging this week.

That doesn't generally leave me much to read, so I am done scoping the news before that first cup is drained.  I then switch my computer time to time dedicated to making my bike shop run smoother.  Build orders, check my bank balance to see what checks have cleared and whether the credit card charges from a few days ago made it safely into my account.  I spend time searching for new products and vendors who supply them.

Somehow a series of links found me looking at "The Political Compass".  It is a website that insists the traditional Left/Right designation is not enough to really pin down a person's political bias.  Hmm.  I was intrigued.  Finally someone else out there feels as I do.  Claiming anyone is a Left Wing libtard because they are Pro Choice does in no way mean that is what they are.  Just as thinking anyone who is for Gun Rights is not enough to label someone a Wingnut from the Right.  People have all sorts of conflicting views on things and pigeonholing them based on the flash point issues doesn't tell the whole story.

They set up the political bias as an Axis chart.  Right/Left as the horizontal line and Authoritarian/Libertarian as the vertical line.  Doing this they claim allows one to locate a truer representation of where one sits politically.

After answering 5 pages of questions, it was no surprise to me they had me Left of center but favoring the Libertarian view on Life as it should be.  What really caught my eye though was that Mahatma Gandhi and I seemed to sit on the exact same spot.  Or at the least we were within ear shot of each other.

I found it odd he was as close to Libertarian as he was.  But as most of us seem to do when knee jerking,  I am prone to see things in one dimension at times also.  I guess it makes sense he would fall below the line between Authoritarian and Libertarian given his lifelong battle against what could be considered an Authoritarian government at the time he lived in.  The British may be polite now, but back in the hey day of the "Commonwealth", they could be damn brutal when the need arose.  And Gandhi did spend his whole life struggling to kick their butts out of India.

My only complaint about this test is the same tired complaint I have about all tests of this sort.  The answers I had to choose from did not always accurately cover my take on the question.  But over all, I would say as tests of this sort go, this was one of the better ones.  And once again I have confirmed what I always knew about myself.  Keeping the government out of most of our societal interactions is the way I would like to see the World spin.  But we need some structure and guidelines to keep the sleaze bags who would take advantage of the rest of us on at least some kind of leash.

Keep it 'tween the ditches......................................