Political Spectrum
I figured I should tackle this issue pretty soon. Many of the people I know see Democrats and Republicans as the end-all be-all of political views. This however is not the case. We may have a two party system, but a persons political views are hardly ever one or the other.
I like to use the 4 way social-economic political compass when talking about political views. The political compass consists of a Left and Right for the economic spectrum and an Anarchist and Libertarian for the social spectrum. An example of the political spectrum is shown below.
[Pictures from www.politicalcompass.org]
These diagrams should help give you a basis to what each political affiliation means, but let me elaborate.
First let’s touch on the economic part of the grid. There are two distince sides, a left side and a right side. The far left is Communism and the far right is Libertarianism, but most people will never go that far. If we are going to tie this into the current two major U.S political parties then Democrats lean left and Republicans lean right. The left is defined as a more socialist view on the economy, with the idea that a collective agency should run it. On the other hand, the right is saying that the economy should be controlled by competing organizations and individuals.
Now on to the social spectrum. The authoritarian point of view is akin to the fascist point of view, while the same can be said about libertarianism and anarchism. In a nutshell, authoritarians believe that tradition and authority should be obeyed while libertarians believe that a persons personal freedom should be maximised. Examples of both the social and economic views can be seen in the charts above.
Understanding this compass should give you a general idea as to where you stand. I highly doubt many of you stand for left or far right, or for the sake of the matter far high or far low. Most people stray towards the middle of a particular quadrant. For example, I fall into the Left-libertarianism ideals.
You can see for yourself where you stand at http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
I’ll touch on my own personal views in an upcoming blog post.
