The age we live in lacks 'mitleid.' It's so easy to offend without trying? Bed bugs, here I cme, ready or not! Good night.

You might be interested in taking the Political Compass test. By answering a series of multiple choice questions it will place you on a two dimensional graph with the vertical axis running from libertarian to authoritarian on the social scale and the horizontal axis running from left to right on the economic scale.

I highly recommend the Political Compass to anyone interested in politics and policy.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Jonathan Hoag

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Jonathan, I'm pretty sure I took that test a few months ago. I was disappointed that I only scored a fourteen, which put me near the average. I've always fancied myself as a staunch anti-authoritarian. In fact one of my fantasies is that I'm part of the Milgram Experiment and I end up punching the lab guy in the nose. It probably wouldn't go down that way. Although to my credit, or detriment, the biggest impediment to my career has been the fact that I'm belligerent with my superiors and let my subordinates take advantage of me. Needless to say, I'm not in the military.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

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I just took the test again and scored -3.00 economic, -6.00 authoritarian. The only celebrity near me was the Dalai Lama.

I'm not sure I would have the two lines perpendicular to each other. I think communism and authortarianism are closer than 90% apart.

I don't want to "regulate" corporations... I want to abolish them.

I'm not sure I would go that far. I would definitely be in favor of abolishing corporate personhood.

In my opinion corporations should not be allowed to influence the political process in any way. They are not citizens and have no right to act as such.

As it is now, corporate lobbyists are actually writing the damn laws to suit themselves. That is anathema to a free society.

We need to restore the rights of citizens to control their own government, which in a democratic republic such as ours *is* the citizens.

As long as you are playing that game:

I've been following the comments, asked a couple of questions, and so far this looks like good old conservative bashing. I've seen nothing positive, just another bitchfest.

You folks might want to consider, that unless you offer something better, authoritarianism is the only game in town.

Okay.. fair enough. Let me propose this, then; authoritarianism provides easy answers to complex problems. Easy answers work, for a while. Then, after time passes, those easy answers start to fall apart.

Well, if you an authoritarian, I can see the viewpoint that criticizing authoritarian views can seem negative. I see it differently. I see accepting those views as counter-productive when those views fail to pan out in the real world. I see criticizing those views as the first step in creating a realistic critical dialog which may bear the fruit of realistic solutions.

To put it in terms you might grasp: authoritarian = concise, clear, brief and direct solutions to problems; liberal = measured, weighed, diplomatic and academic solutions to problems.

As for bashing conservatives -- please, are you kidding me? The current administration bears little or no resemblance to anything traditionally "conservative."

Schopenhauer valued mitleid but discounted mitfreude.

Nietzsche valued mitfreude but discounted mitleid.

Look elsewhere.

Buddhism rejects pity (grade B mitleid) and condescension but values true compassion (authentic mitleid, between equals). Those who believe that authentic mitleid comes from God may find it in Paul's "agap'e" and Joseph Smith's "charity" and many other places.

Spider Robinson values both mitleid and mitfreude, and wrote the motto of Callahan's and alt.callahans, "Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased. Thus do we refute entropy."

I'm not sure I would have the two lines perpendicular to each other. I think communism and authortarianism are closer than 90% apart.

I was reading some wingnut's blog the other day. He actually wrote this:

The other issue is a thornier and not entirely clear to me yet. It is that conservatism is not on the right, as opposed to the left. If been told several times by people wiser than me that the connection between conservatism and "the right" is a ruse perpetrated by the left. A regular named Jerry ("jerry") over at Roger Simon's site told me this a year or two ago, for example, saying that "right" was coined by Stalin to distinguish himself from other leftists with whom he was incompetion. What makes the issue even more interesting is that "left" must disappear when we dissolve "right" into nonsensehood. Anyway, I'm not the historian that Jerry is. But I am a philosopher, and I have something to say about the matter. It does seem to me that the philosophical status of conservatism is not to the right in any sense at all. There will be a lot to think when we get to that post, as we will do soon.

I think this from the guys who did the Political Compass test is probably closer to the truth:

"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."

Arbitrary seating arrangements or some fucking wingnut's conspiracy theories? What do you think?

If you lived in Somalia any time in the recent past, you might call it damn close to hell, or totalitarian, or an anarcho-capitalist's paradise. Milton Freidman was an anarcho-capitalist but he wouldn't last 5 minutes over there.

Communism is not totalitarianism. Period. Left and right refer to economic models in the political compass scale. Capitalism is not a form of government. George Orwell was a democratic socialist. A socialist, and a most dedicated anti-totalitarian, an anti-Stalinist. Get it? And Hitler was not a socialist or a leftist. Say that and everyone laughs at you.

Stalinism was not Marxism, socialism or even communism.

"Liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness" meant very different things to Jefferson and Franklin than they mean to you average corporate boardmember today, I guaranfuckingtee you.