4/09/2007

What Is a Left-Libertarian?

Now and then, I'm confused with the definition of left and right in politics partly because of the paradoxical CCP official propaganda. Sometimes I took myself as an individualist, while another day I found consistent with egalitarianism. Was I suffering from split personality? So I took the Political Compass questionnaire composed of a long list of questions on a broad spectrum of social and economic topics to check which side I am taking on earth.

The result appears even far clearer than I expected. Read from the diagram below, I am significantly marked with a tag of left-libertarian.

Then what is in deed a left-libertarian or liberal leftist?

Rather than the redundant and boring interpretation, I think the following map could shed more light on this classification.

Besides, there is also a chart of internationally known contemporary leaders on the compass to revive the coordinate.

Comparing my position on the compass with the later two, it is so exciting for me, though not much to surprise, to find myself standing with the Holy Hero Gandhi side by side, as well as Mandela and Dalai Lama, who are all icons on my book. What is more, finding George W Bush well at the other end of the diagonal makes the analysis even more convictive, which is certainly not at odds because the test is not a mystic prophecy but a positivistic generalization.

Can anything else be told from the compass? Yes, a lot. For example, it is obvious that near all the 'successful' political leaders are authoritarians. Why does a dictator always win in the name of democracy? And as to China, most of the puzzling phenomena, including the crazy economic blooming and the crazier social polarization, could be interpreted by the CCP government's translocation across the vertical axis from Stalin to Bush. Unfortunately, it doesn't make me much less uncomfortable, if ever any, as I'm a 'left-libertarian'.

4 comments:

Harrison said...

看上去挺准。从你经常指摘布什的文章,从你的《离开雷锋的日子》,这些看来,都是跟测试结果相当一致的,圣雄。
我也测测看,会不会是希特勒呢?哈哈。

Harrison said...

我的测试结果。

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -1.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.15

也算是个微Left的Libertarian? 或者说,Middle-Libertarian.

以为自己会是右派的呢。原本或许会和你比较近,我的右倾估计很大一部分跟听张大勇ESS理论的课有关。
张大勇还说,生态学家中有很多是左派。嗯,那我在其中可能算是右翼了吧。

反Authority方面,咱们差不多。

Harrison said...

右倾可能还有很大一部分是受你教我的Firefox及Google fan系列行为所影响。

Harrison said...

8.16更新:
今天发现有人已经把这套“西方政治坐标系测试”汉化了。
http://blog.farmostwood.net/politics
重新做了一遍,个别题目略有不同。得分为:
经济立场坐标(左翼<->右翼)0.88,政治立场坐标(专制<->自由)-5.13
“根据周围人群的实验结果,中国人的测试结果普遍位于第三象限(即两坐标均为负值),平均值位于(-2,-2)附近。为了区分中国人习惯意义上的“左与右”,可以以(-2,-2)为坐标原点重新划分坐标平面,即经济坐标小于-2为左,反之为右。政治坐标小于-2为自由,反之为保守或专制。”
第四象限,看来极不适合从政 :)

另外还有一套“中国政治坐标系测试(北大未名版)”:
http://blog.farmostwood.net/politics_bdwm
据说更适合中国人测定。
偶得分:政治立场坐标(左翼<->右翼)1.8,经济立场坐标(左翼<->右翼)0.2,文化立场坐标(保守<->自由)1.3
这个测试正负2为极限制,因此看来,偶还是右翼(政治上“极右”^_^)自由分子。