Which commonly made sage talking point is more annoying?

[Cassius]

The American political reality doesn't allow Democrats to be what they should be, but that doesn't make them further to the right than conservative parties (who, I might add, would also be more right-wing if they could, usually).

Who cares about "what they could be"? We're talking about what they are.

Way to completely ignore the actual point of his statement, which I've taken the liberty of "bold"ing for you.

Yet every statement to this effect has had no supporting evidence.




Here's two charts for the Conservative Party in the UK and the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. The Conservative Party is slightly to his right. Hardly the wide ideological gulf that people here are suggesting.

Really... The political compass. My dead dog is/was a better judge of ideology than that test.

(On a side note, wasn't it dreamed up by some hard-lefties?)

[Cassius]

Cassius, to my knowledge, the Nolan Chart, which either is the Political Compass, or resembles it greatly, was thought of by a founder of the Libertarian Party. Haven't checked Wikipedia in a while though.

Oh not the Nolan chart (which does, in my view, have a little value). It's the political compass test that I'm led to believe was invented by some lefties.

[Cassius]

Also, there's been about 10 responses along the lines of: "lol political compass sux", "lol it was made by a true leftist". Is that really the best you guys have? If you're going to try to disprove something, at least use actual evidence.

It's better than anything the Political Compass has.

Why, because it disagrees with the groupthink?

If all you have to say in response to the following points:

The Political Compass charts are a great example of how you can get people to believe utter nonsense just by putting it in fancy graphs and charts and all. Their agenda has become more obvious with that writeup and wasn't all that disguised before (one amusing thing about their previous charts was labeling one dot "Labour/New Labour") and it's not just on US or British politics that they're so ridiculous, note this chart.

And once again, to say Obama is the equivalent of a far right whackjob in Europe has some very odd implications. It states that the Thatcherites are the equivalent of left wingers in the US, which would only be possible if unions in the US were actually completely illegal or something, while in fact someone like Scott Walker's actions on unions would be completely at home in a European conservative party. Also look at the actual far right nutjobs in Europe's positions on immigration, and compare it to Obama.  Imagine if a US politician proposed that children of immigrants have completely separate schools to avoid them from "tainting" American culture. This was actually proposed by the leader of what was once the largest right wing party in Austria. The US is also certainly not the most capitalist country in the world, what country is is tough to discern and it's not like this can even be objectively measured, but somewhere like Switzerland or some East Asian countries would be better candidates (even if you exclude those micronation tax havens), even a country like Germany in some ways has an economy that's less regulated than the US's. The fact that company unions are illegal in the US is a topic rarely brought up but worth considering.

The US is also far more friendly to marijuana legalization than almost all other countries, and Obama hasn't exactly stood in the way, despite the demonization he gets from libertarians over this he did hamstring the Justice Department from doing more against states that legalized it, and he could've done A LOT more if he was serious about stopping it, and he even issued guidelines recently that would protect banks doing business with legal marijuana sellers, and essentially prevented some overzealous federal prosecutor from filing charges over them doing business with illegal drug sellers.

I took the test, answering as Obama would (though some of it is guess work, because a lot of the questions are ridiculous and have nothing to do with policy) and came in basically at the center, a little south into the libertarian half. I have no idea how you can take the test with Obama's positions and get a result anywhere near what that idiot did.

Also, if Stewart Alexander is only halfway to the fullest extent of the economic left, what would a 100% economic leftist look like? How far can you go beyond socialism?

Also there's plenty of amusing things about that chart of the British parties above, but there's one that stands out that I feel the need to highlight: the closest party to Labour is the DUP.

... is vague and lazy charges of "groupthink", then well I guess you can keep digging that hole.  But you're not doing yourself or your arguments any favors.

Leif: Already responded to that one. Most likely based on actual policy implemented during his term as opposed to stated policy positions. In 2008 he was shown as more to the left than in 2012.

Rep. Deus: There are different degrees of socialism just like there are different degrees of capitalism. Regardless, Communism would still be to the left.

Long name guy: Just having an "agenda" in and of itself doesn't disprove the charts, although it is a reason to be wary. I also responded to this, nobody said Obama was comparable to a far-right whacko in Europe, but to a mainstream European conservative. In fact, I expressly disagreed with the original poll that said "far right European parties are left of the Dems". I do agree with you that immigration is one of the few issues that Democrats are to the distinct left of European conservatives, but that doesn't erase all their other similarities. Obama still totally opposes marijuana legalization or decriminalization, just because he didn't order the feds to drone all marijuana dispensaries doesn't make him any more liberal on the issue.

Also, I'm still waiting with bated breath for these huge ideological differences between Obama and Cameron.

Well, for starters, their respective positions on budget deficits and debt are pretty much opposed. Whilst it is true that under Obama cuts have been made to government expenditure, his main priority seems to have been going for growth, unlike Cameron, whose 'mission' in government seems to be to balance the budget and reform the public services (by streamlining and decentralising them and so forth). There are major differences on economic policy between the two, it's just that Obama hasn't been able to implement a lot of his agenda due to the presence of a GOP controlled House. Let's take another issue, immigration. Cameron has made it clear that he'd like to see immigration sharply reduced. Obama, whilst not exactly making the opposite case, has called for amnesty for illegal immigrants, something that I'm sure Cameron would never do.

But, to digress from this argument, it really is like comparing apples and oranges. Our experience in the UK with the issue of immigration is completely alien to the American experience, because we're in a different part of the world, receiving different immigrants, with a different society for them to be slotted into. We don't (really) have the big foreign policy debates that you do, because we're far less influential as a world power than we once were. Our economy is very different to yours, and thus, again, the political issues that surround it are different. To put it more simply, comparing a U.S. President with a UK Prime Minister is like comparing William Gladstone to Nick Clegg. Gladstone, if he lived in our age (assuming of course that his mindset didn't really adapt to the modern world) would probably be considered as being to the right of Nick Clegg. Yet, in his day, the government's that he led enacted some quite radical changes, which, if not left-wing per se, can be seen as more 'progressive' for his time than the positions of Nick Clegg today. Again, all comparisons must be contextualised, otherwise there is just no point in comparing them.

As for the political compass test, its a biased failure. I can't say it any plainer than that. The whole Nolan Chart thing, whilst it does have a little merit, is just to simple to convey the wondrous multiplicity of human thought that feeds into ideology. No-one, truly, in their hearts, is a straight-up socialist, libertarian, conservative or whatever. We are all influenced by a maelstrom of competing influences that swirls around the sea that makes up our own political point of view. Even if the political compass wasn't biased, and actually had some more searching questions, it still, ultimately, would be no more than an amusing little exercise which shows some correlation with your own thoughts and predjudices. This is why, in my view, a lot of political analysis is fundamentally flawed. We humans are not 'rational' beings who carefully way up the merits and demerits of every possible political position and then feed this back into some giant calculating machine which then produces a nice little label for us to stick upon our breast. We are closer to the, admittedly flowery, description that I posted above.

Obama is clearly to Cameron's left, if we simply talk about his 'goals', and, more importantly, the way he seems to see the world. Now, as much as I dislike the man, Cameron is no left-winger, he is clearly cut from the cloth of the right. Obama is cut from that of the left, as his pronouncements on taxes, economics, social-policy and the environment indicate (though again, here we fall victim to the ever-present threat of boxing). There is no more to say, sir.