Many political debates here have included references to The Political Compass, which uses a set of 60 questions to assess one’s political orientation in terms of economic left/right and social libertarianism/authoritarianism (rather like the “Libertarian diamond” popular in the US).
Whenever such a reference is made, there is often dissent regarding whether the assessment it provides is valid, notably by US conservative posters, either because it is “left-biased” (??) or because some questions are clearly slanted, ambiguous or self-contradictory.
Now, the site itself provides answers to these and other Frequently Asked Questions, and I think that even the most poorly conceived questions give some insight into one’s true position, but I think that it is such a useful site that it might be worth exploring the entire thing here in detail.
And so, every so often I will begin a thread in which the premise for debate is one of the 60 questions. I will give which answer I chose and provide my justification and reasoning. Others are, of course, invited to do the same including those who wish to “question the question”, as it were. I will also suggest what I think is the “weighting” given to the various answers in terms of calculating the final orientation.
It might also be useful when posting in these threads to give your own “compass reading” in your first post, by convention giving the Economic value first. My own is
SentientMeat: Economic: -5.12, Social: -7.28, and so by the above convention my co-ordinates are (-5.12, -7.28). Please also indicate which option you ticked.
(The above will be footnoted in every new thread in order to introduce it properly. To date, the threads are:
Political Compass #1: Globalisation, Humanity and OmniCorp.)
*Proposition 2: * I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.
SentientMeat ticks Strongly Disagree.
Gosh, where to start? Try substituting the word “child”, “political party” or even “own behaviour” for the word “country” and the utter moral bankruptcy of the statement shines through. If we, or our children, or our favoured politicians do something wrong then the right thing to do is to speak out in protest and try and prevent future instances of the same action or behaviour.
In individual terms, this usually involves a higher authority (such as the courts) to enforce said prevention. Now, although it is questionable whether such a “higher authority” can be said to truly exist with respect to a nation state, its perceived absence surely does not excuse outright immoral actions on a country’s part. Just because one can get away with it does not make it less wrong. Might does not make right; it merely makes so.
Of course, the perception by those who would tick Agree is often that other countries, whose people did ascribe to the proposition, would gain some advantage by having such a loyal populace and so we must compete right back at them. However, there is surely no universal stricture which says that competition or resistance to coercion is in any way wrong - one is merely justifying the forceful or even violent actions of one’s own country by somehow declaring them right. Even the most hawkish attitude is not equivalent to “I support my country when it is wrong”, agreed?
The National Interest is merely Self Interest raised to the level of a sovereign geopolitical entity. While it is absurd to disregard self interest as a valid motivation, when it is unfettered by moral principle it clearly becomes a monster; this is the entire basis of ethics.
I believe that national interest ought never to outweigh moral principle. And so I tick Strongly Disagree, which I believe shows a strong aversion to authoritarianism and adds, say, a -0.25 score to the final Social value.
