[at-l] OT Non-partisan politcal link

[pmags at yahoo.com (Paul Magnanti)]

So who went hiking this weekend? :-) Seems like too
many of you watched political shows...

I made an igloo myself for a winter backpacking trip.
Pictures and trip report to follow tomorrow.

But, in any case, here is a really interesting
political link. I think it is safe to say that many of
us can agree that the Left and Right designations for
political thought are inadequate.

To quote from the website whose link I am about to
post:

Welcome to The Political Compass. 
There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old
one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left' ,
established for the seating arrangement of the French
National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for
today's complex political landscape. For example, who
are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they
the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who
have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives
like Margaret Thatcher ? 
On the standard left-right scale, how do you
distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not
sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left
than Gandhi. There are fundamental political
differences between them that the old categories on
their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally
describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet
that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe
and Pol Pot off the hook. 

**********

To sum this up, it rates people not only as
CONSERVATIVE and LIBERAL, but also as AUTHORITARIAN
and LIBERTARIAN.  Much more accurate guage of the
political spectrum than saying Democrat or Republican.

Anyway, a very interesting site:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Mags
(moderatley liberal..strongly libertarian)



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The true harvest of my life is intangible.... a little stardust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched
--Thoreau