how is that possible?

Somebody get the tar and feathers!

between "most people here's" political philosophy and the political system in the U.S.; also a huge disconnect between "most people here's" political philosophy and those they vote for.

I've seen these axes before by groups touting libertarianism. *shrug*

http://www.politicalcompass.org/facebook/pcgraphpng.php?ec=-6.88&soc=-4.56

(That's me)

A couple of antonyms of authoritarian are "democratic" and "liberal"; not as shown here, libertarian.

I also note that the compass doesn't include communism or socialism or anarchy and is quite limited though nominally better than just the 2-dimentional left versus right.

I'd also include some information about the Overton Window theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Perhaps longer ago or more recently? Well, it's measured in years not minutes or hours.

I "scored" off the lower left of the chart; yep...the furthest south and west was where my "dot" landed. After that, I went and played with the various answers to see how their "methodology" was calculated. It's strongly driven by the "status quo" and "common knowledge"; in short, it falls short. That would be why, in part, I suggested the Overton Window. That adds another layer to who, why, and how people acquire certain "values" which then inform their "opinions"; including their "political" identification.

were somewhat missing the point of it.

Yeah, I can see where people might think adding something to "the mix" might be missing the point. Asking people to read beyond a certain instance of "tunnel vision" might make it difficult to expand their view point.

My apologies.

the OED says "one who approves of or advocates liberty". (The narrow, US-centric usage as in "Libertarian Party" doesn't alter the original meaning of the word.)

But my experience of "L" and "l" libertarians have been those so far to the right it's difficult to differentiate them from fascists; that is, those to the extreme far "right" of authoritarianism. Hardly advocates of Liberty with any case of "l".

While you're looking in the OED; check out the definition of "competition". Quite amazing how it's been twisted since its beginning. As have so many other words and their meanings.

I don't really care how one identifies themself; I'm more interested in how their values manifest, how they act, in the "real" world.

As to this so-called metric of political compass; I find it falls short. If that bothers people, I can't help that. It's too either/or and not enough both/and; it doesn't do nuance. People, generally speaking, are rarely so 2-dimensional as this metric tries to convey. That would be my opinion based on some years of interaction with non-2-dimensional humans.

Are you familiar with Principal Components Analysis? Oblique versus orthogonal rotations?

We're basically talking about simple concepts such as the percentage of variance accounted for in a given factorial solution. The Compass does have some empirical legitimacy.

However, I'm sure your intuitions is far superior to mere empirical data.

I like you and I've agreed with you over the years.

Your appeal to authority at this point in time because I criticized an online "test" and stated I thought it was too simplistic, not being one of those times.

I may get back to you later or decide it's not worth the effort.

and trust that this minor spat won't sour a long-term relationship. I got a lot snarkier than the situation called for. I really generally try not to do that, but sometimes my impulses overcome me.

Anyway, I did look up some of the original literature on the construction of these factorial models & need to back off a bit on the degree of empirical solidity behind the Political Compass.

Principal components analysis (and its near-cousin, factor analysis) is a method of simplifying large data sets. Imagine that you have 100 variables--say, answers to questions about political attitudes--and you compute Pearson correlations between each of the possible item pairs. The number of item pairs is something like (100*99)/2 You end up with a very large triangular matrix that is very difficult to make sense out of. PCA/FA starts with this correlation matrix & attempts to reduce it to a smaller set of variables (i.e. components or factors) that account for most of the information in the matrix.

Depending on what it is you are trying to analyze, you may find that a very small number of factors can account for most of the variability among the original variables. People who are pro-choice are also likely to favor accessible contraception, etc.

One major problem with any PCA/FA is that you obviously can't discover anything about relationships among variables that aren't included, so sometimes people incorporate implicit theories in their selection of just what variables to include in the original analysis.

Also, different approaches can yield somewhat different results, and there are several methods of conducting a factor analysis (e.g. Principal Factor, Maximum Likelihood,etc.). There is also controversy about what rotational schemes should be used to produce, and there are a number of such schemes with esoteric names like Varimax, Quartimax, Oblimin, etc. Some of these rotational schemes are oblique (i.e. they permit correlated factors) and others are orthogonal (i.e. they permit only uncorrelated factors that schematically lie at right angles to each other).

Two-dimensional schemes like the Political Compass are based on the first (i.e. largest in terms of variance accounted for) two factors to be extracted.

So, in any case, upon looking back at the PC literature, I see that it does present some unresolved problems, particularly in terms of which variables were included for data collection & analysis.

OK now, if you're still with me after that terribly boring discourse, let me suggest that we share the goal of moving the "Overton Window" in a direction more to our liking.

Economic Left/Right: -4.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.28

put me in minus territory? Being the ideological and philosophical antithesis of Mitt Romney strikes me as being positive, not negative.

because, I should think, Europeans read from left to right, and so it's traditional to put 1 to the left of 2, 2 to the left of 3, etc.

You could argue about whether authoritarian should be a negative score; perhaps they saw that most people, especially in the west, fall either in the left/libertarian or right/authoritarian quadrants, and though it would make more sense to have most people either negative/negative, or positive/positive.

based on unexamined presumptions.

We've explained why left is negative. For you just to say "this is an unexamined presumption" is itself a presumption. They may have had a reason for putting authoritarian at the top.

The middle coordinate is (0,0). Anything to the left of that point is registered in negative numbers and anything to the right of that point is in positive numbers. That's the way graphs work. Being in positive or negative territory has no moral implications.

that I've been able to find; it offers the best system for categorizing political positions. In my opinion.

It clearly shows the chasm between where I stand and where American politicians operate. It's based on actions, not words. It also graphically shoots down the "lesser evil" doctrine shoved down our throats every election season.

Or so offended when folks say they feel the two major parties are too similar.

I'm also increasingly under the impression that Democratic politicians come closer to Republican voters than their own and also probably are closer in views to Republican voters than Republican politicians because right or left economically, most Americans probably lean toward the bottom of the map anti-authoritarian so Democrats being on the right economically tend to be a little less authoritarian.

Those of us on the bottom left have no representation of substance at all. We've got pretty much no one of stature on our half of the map and even less in our quadrant.
For many of us a Jill Stein would be a lesser of two evils, still substantially to our right and north a piece. Expecting even minimal satisfaction from a consistently opposite quadrant is silly, of course folks are going to hunger for folks in their approximate neighborhood.

I think we could improve this by expanding the House significantly and requiring regular shapes in districts. The huge districts overly homogenize and the funky lines exacerbate and dictate this. I think this would force a greater variety of voices and perspectives while making the Representative more accountable to their district.

I also think the parties should be stripped of all power in dictating their primary races (no super delegates, no party fund raising, no influence on election dates) and party should not be identified on ballots. Of course all elections would be fully publicly funded. I tend to think that a national primary day would be good for the process too instead of the over-weighting and jockeying that goes on now. I bet many of us have never cast a meaningful primary vote in our lives because the race is decided by the time we come to the plate.

voting system with a mixture of proportional representation and alternative voting.

Last time it was Mahatma Gandhi, next it will be Jesus Christ. Nobody here really takes this stuff seriously, do they?



p.s. these "you might be Libertarian" charts are total horseshit and so is the beloved politicalcompass.org, which is as dubious as Internet sources get, complete with misleading attribution: "Pace News Ltd." has no known connection to Pace University or to any other reputable publication, institution, or organization. Good for a laugh, like sneaky RW propaganda always is, and that's it.

going on & on about it.

The main problem here seems to be that people can't distinguish between the original meaning of a term like "libertarian" and the deformations of that meaning brought about by nutcases like Rand Paul and Ayn Rand who co-opted it. The latter are Right libertarians, who have little in common (except maybe ending the drug war) with Left libertarians.

American "Libertarians," which is to say, Right Libertarians, are interested mostly only in the liberty of the powerful to stomp the commoners. True libertarians (in a sense that is not much used in this country) seek increased civil liberties and self-determination for the common people. This generally does not include the "freedom" to amass huge amounts of money & power with which to subjugate everyone else.

ending the war drug, and some also ending the persecution of the worlds oldest profession.

"Real libertarians" vs those you consider to have co-opted the term.

And its very accurate, way more accurate than the joke that is the political compass.

while the model itself is 2-dimensional. If Gandhi & Mandela lie somewhat near the Paulites on one dimension (and I don't think they actually do), they differ greatly from each other on the other.

giving any credence to them.

Which just shows rational observers how wacky political compass is--if you read its op-eds, it's run by a Paulbot.