PC scores of founding fathers

[jokerman]

What do you think would be the Political Compass scores of founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and James Madison?  This dosen't necesarily mean the modern day version but maybe on a more relative scale to the day.

[Gabu]

Prediction: every single answer will be slanted towards the respondent's own Political Compass score.

[MaC]

ha, that's probably true Gabu.  I would think that my score would be about halfway between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  Alexander Hamilton, however, I think would rank in the econ+  social+ quadrant.

[A18]

Obviously they would all be right-wing economically by today's scale, but by the terms of the time, left-wing was actually the good side.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I won't try with precise scores, but Jefferson would be in the lower right quadrant, Franklin and Tom Paine in the lower left, and Hamilton in the upper right. I don't know about the upper left, maybe Adams.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Beats me where pro-slavery diests should go.  But yeah, Franklin was probably in the liberal quadrant.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

er, you think Hamilton was the most economically leftist?

[A18]

er, you think Hamilton was the most economically leftist?

Scale of the time. He was for the biggest government.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

What do you think would be the Political Compass scores of founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and James Madison?

They'd be about like me.

[PBrunsel]

John Adams would be the most Conservative socially, being the only one of our founding fathers who attended church services three days a week.

Franklin would be considerably more liberal. Let's face it, Adams learned French by reading French funeral songs. Franklin learned it relaxing in a bed with three lovely ladies.

Washington would be the moderate of them all. A millitary man who was considerably more open minded on religion, Was religous, but unlike Adams, had a love of dancing, fine foods, and lively music. He was not a "prude" but had moral standards.

[Cashcow]

Hamilton was also an abolitionist, but primarily for economic purposes. Remember that he thought the debt to be a national blessing - one of the many differences between him and Thomas Jefferson. I'm not quite sure where one would place him on a moderate political scale.

Personally, he is my favorite founding father.

[Cashcow]

Wow, I do agree with you on something!

Truth be told, I'm not sure he would have been an excellent President. One of Hamilton's biggest shortcomings was his distrust of the average citizen; never in a million years would he have "the people" voting in mass numbers. Thankfully, his service to our nation didn't involve anything of the sort. He was invaluable.

[socaldem]

I would say:

Thomas Jefferson
E: +8
S: -1

George Washington

E: -2
S: +2

Alexander Hamilton
E: -5
S: -2

James Madison
E: +5
S: +1

I think its very hard to do the ratings system...in my view the left/right economic scale needs to be viewed in terms of what interests were believed to be most important.  I think Jefferson's agrarian-republican-anti-big-government ideology can only be considered leftist in that time period because it sought to promote the interests of yeoman farmers whereas Hamilton's pro-business, pro-government whigist economic views were definitely more right-wing.   

If we consider the positions advocated by each today, Hamilton would fit nicely with Robert Rubin and centre-left/right economists.  Jefferson's economic positions in today's context are definitely right-wing, but back then, I would have to consider them on the left side of the political spectrum.

The slavery issue notwithstanding, the social scale may be easier to approximate with the religiously pious more traditional founding fathers (Adams being an exemplar) on one side and the more enlightenment-oriented thinkers on the other.

[angus]

What do you think would be the Political Compass scores of founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and James Madison?  This dosen't necesarily mean the modern day version but maybe on a more relative scale to the day.

neither computers nor electronic calculators nor political tests existed in that day.  had they, our founding fathers' brains would not have had time for thinking.  they'd have been overweight, undereducated, unthinking slobs schlepping for the king and not thinking twice about it.  the revolution wouldn't have occurred, we'd not have our great constitutional system, England would have lost war after war, and all the world (except china which would remain a mystery behind a wall to westerners) would be mired in poverty and dodging Russian and German nuclear warheads by now.

[Platypus]

they'd all be upper right.